I can’t get that bad movie I watched the other night out of my mind, which is by no means a recommendation of it. It was set in Mexico where religious symbols are everywhere, which means that in the background of every dirty deed performed on screen was an image of Our Lady, or a Crucifix. Unlike the scene in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (a movie I DO recommend), in which a character is unable to perform in the sack because of the statue of Our Lady on his girlfriend’s dresser, the characters in this movie were oblivious to the religious symbols that surrounded them.
It’s troubled me for a couple of days, their coldness and oblivion. I thought at first that the movie makers were thumbing their nose at religion, my religion, in particular. And since it was a coming of age story about teenage boys, it made me feel despairing about the spiritual life of young men during that pivotal time in their lives. I was tempted to say that adolescence is some sort of parenthesis to the spiritual life—a time when young men are in less control of their wills than even before the age of reason.
Today, it occurred to me, that as troubling as the lives of American teens seem to be, there really is no parenthesis to the spiritual life. God became man: a baby, a child, an adolescent, a young man. The beauty of the incarnation is that Christ is not oblivious to any of the temptations that any man in any stage of life might feel. Of course there is a Crucifix in every heinous scene of that movie, because Christ is privy to all the wretchedness of humanity, whether or not we want to give him the credit for understanding what we’re capable of. We would prefer to think that he’s glaring over our shoulder waiting to judge and condemn us for these temptations that are too terrible for him comprehend.
But if Christ became man to save us from our sin, it is probably a safe assumption that he is present to us in our adolescence, battling fiercely to win our hearts, perhaps more than at any other time in our lives. And his victory is more often than not in the contrition that we feel once we have surfaced from our oblivion and recognize that he loves us still.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Naked Post
My son is in a swim club that meets at the local public high school pool. After practice, the kids are allowed to go into the locker room to change clothes, but I’m not very cool with the idea of sending my seven-year-old into the high school boys’ locker room, so he usually just puts his clothes on over his suit. It’s cold on the ride home, but not cold enough for hypothermia, so to me, a preferable option.
I’ve noticed lately that other young people have found their own ways of going around the locker room issue as well. After practice last night, I noticed a couple of kids hovered in the corner doing a little bait and switch right there in front of all who would take notice. These kids were Japanese siblings, members of a small community of Japanese people that have found a home in rural Indiana due to the Japanese auto manufacturing business.
I first noticed the little boy, probably around seven-years-old himself, girding himself with a towel in order to remove his wet trunks. I caught a flash of his bum by accident, with that inevitable lifting of the towel and dropping of the drawers—one of those moments when the eyes register “a naked bum” and it takes a moment for the brain to catch up and think, “That’s not very common out here among the English.” Same thing happened to me the other day driving on the interstate when I saw a woman apparently having bladder urges on the stretch of I-74 where there’s no exit for fifteen miles. “I think I just passed a naked bottom. How odd.”
Anyway, it cracked me up, the way the boy just gave up girding his loins when he got his tighty-whities pulled up. He hopped on one foot in his underpants trying to get his wet toe into the leg of his pants.
There’s a fair amount of nudity around our house; seven-year-old bottoms are a pretty common sight, which is why I’m always a little concerned that my kids will be the ones undressing in public, not realizing that there are different standards for nudity in public than there are at home.
Seeing the kid, and seeing other people take notice of him with sort of shocked expressions, I had a moment of thinking, “Americans are so provincial. What’s the big deal with a little nudity at the bathhouse?” You see, I’m enlightened about nudity. I have a little bronze statue of a naked discus thrower on my desk. Kewpie dolls are adorable. “The Last Judgment” is fantastic. I deal with so many bodily fluids, so many intimate functions of the body in my life as a wife and mother, that nudity is about as tame as it gets, harmless, and even a bit lovely. How quickly I forget...
I watched a bad movie last night after swim club, when the kids were in bed. My grandma used to watch the “Dukes of Hazzard” over our shoulders when we were kids, and she’d say, “This is horrible! Isn’t this awful?” Yet she was powerless to turn it off—that’s how I felt. I kept thinking the worst of the movie was over, and yet it wasn’t, but I kept watching anyway. By the end of it, I felt like a needed to take a bath myself. It was a coming of age movie about teenage boys—you can guess. I turned it off thinking, “That’s why no one I love should ever set foot in a boys’ locker room.”
Just being in a high school brings back so many memories for me, the smell of it: books and sweat, hash browns in a deep fryer. I walked through a gathering of post-practice football players, ripe with wet grass and testosterone. I felt scared for my life, scared for my future: in less than ten years I will have four teenage boys under this roof. They currently all share a room. That won’t last.
I came across a picture of my high school girlfriends and me in a friend’s swimming pool, all wearing bikinis, hugging one another. Half naked was our state of being for a large portion of our lives back then. If it wasn’t bikinis, it was the itty-bitty shorts we wore for track, the cheerleading skirts—the high kicks supposedly guarded by our “spankies,” the little underpants we wore underneath. We had a sense of physical familiarity with everyone in our graduating class. Even of those we didn’t “know” in a biblical sense (and many did “know” one another), we could draw up a pretty accurate mental picture of those supposedly hidden flesh points with little prompt.
The American high school is such a strange universe, but every day millions of American parents send their fledglings into it without much ado, perhaps a pang of recognition that their innocence is over. They scoff at the foreign boy hopping around the pool deck in a pair of tighty-whities (“Should we tell him that’s not acceptable?”), but everything changes once you set foot in the locker room. Nudity is shameless when we’re young, and shameless when we’re old, shameless in a family. It is required in childbirth, in bathing, in the marriage bed, in some of the most pivotal and important times of our life. And then there’s this one little parenthesis in our lives that is the educational system of America’s young adults, where nudity or semi-nudity is more prevalent than anywhere else, so far from innocent, and serves such little purpose, but we make our kids jump right in. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I suppose the faulty line in my thinking is the assumption that everywhere but high school is some sort of Eden. Post for another day...
I’ve noticed lately that other young people have found their own ways of going around the locker room issue as well. After practice last night, I noticed a couple of kids hovered in the corner doing a little bait and switch right there in front of all who would take notice. These kids were Japanese siblings, members of a small community of Japanese people that have found a home in rural Indiana due to the Japanese auto manufacturing business.
I first noticed the little boy, probably around seven-years-old himself, girding himself with a towel in order to remove his wet trunks. I caught a flash of his bum by accident, with that inevitable lifting of the towel and dropping of the drawers—one of those moments when the eyes register “a naked bum” and it takes a moment for the brain to catch up and think, “That’s not very common out here among the English.” Same thing happened to me the other day driving on the interstate when I saw a woman apparently having bladder urges on the stretch of I-74 where there’s no exit for fifteen miles. “I think I just passed a naked bottom. How odd.”
Anyway, it cracked me up, the way the boy just gave up girding his loins when he got his tighty-whities pulled up. He hopped on one foot in his underpants trying to get his wet toe into the leg of his pants.
There’s a fair amount of nudity around our house; seven-year-old bottoms are a pretty common sight, which is why I’m always a little concerned that my kids will be the ones undressing in public, not realizing that there are different standards for nudity in public than there are at home.
Seeing the kid, and seeing other people take notice of him with sort of shocked expressions, I had a moment of thinking, “Americans are so provincial. What’s the big deal with a little nudity at the bathhouse?” You see, I’m enlightened about nudity. I have a little bronze statue of a naked discus thrower on my desk. Kewpie dolls are adorable. “The Last Judgment” is fantastic. I deal with so many bodily fluids, so many intimate functions of the body in my life as a wife and mother, that nudity is about as tame as it gets, harmless, and even a bit lovely. How quickly I forget...
I watched a bad movie last night after swim club, when the kids were in bed. My grandma used to watch the “Dukes of Hazzard” over our shoulders when we were kids, and she’d say, “This is horrible! Isn’t this awful?” Yet she was powerless to turn it off—that’s how I felt. I kept thinking the worst of the movie was over, and yet it wasn’t, but I kept watching anyway. By the end of it, I felt like a needed to take a bath myself. It was a coming of age movie about teenage boys—you can guess. I turned it off thinking, “That’s why no one I love should ever set foot in a boys’ locker room.”
Just being in a high school brings back so many memories for me, the smell of it: books and sweat, hash browns in a deep fryer. I walked through a gathering of post-practice football players, ripe with wet grass and testosterone. I felt scared for my life, scared for my future: in less than ten years I will have four teenage boys under this roof. They currently all share a room. That won’t last.
I came across a picture of my high school girlfriends and me in a friend’s swimming pool, all wearing bikinis, hugging one another. Half naked was our state of being for a large portion of our lives back then. If it wasn’t bikinis, it was the itty-bitty shorts we wore for track, the cheerleading skirts—the high kicks supposedly guarded by our “spankies,” the little underpants we wore underneath. We had a sense of physical familiarity with everyone in our graduating class. Even of those we didn’t “know” in a biblical sense (and many did “know” one another), we could draw up a pretty accurate mental picture of those supposedly hidden flesh points with little prompt.
The American high school is such a strange universe, but every day millions of American parents send their fledglings into it without much ado, perhaps a pang of recognition that their innocence is over. They scoff at the foreign boy hopping around the pool deck in a pair of tighty-whities (“Should we tell him that’s not acceptable?”), but everything changes once you set foot in the locker room. Nudity is shameless when we’re young, and shameless when we’re old, shameless in a family. It is required in childbirth, in bathing, in the marriage bed, in some of the most pivotal and important times of our life. And then there’s this one little parenthesis in our lives that is the educational system of America’s young adults, where nudity or semi-nudity is more prevalent than anywhere else, so far from innocent, and serves such little purpose, but we make our kids jump right in. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I suppose the faulty line in my thinking is the assumption that everywhere but high school is some sort of Eden. Post for another day...
Monday, November 30, 2009
Husks in My Teeth
I had a piece of corn wedged between my molars for several days. Whenever I bit down on something, I could feel it digging into my gum, and making it swollen. My tongue grew irritated from my subconscious attempts to dislodge it while I was driving, falling asleep, reading—always trying to get the corn out of my teeth. Finally, today, at my parents’ house, with a string from their fancy tube of dental floss, I removed the corn, right before my mom and I went out for an after-dinner walk.
“I can’t tell you how much relief I feel,” I said to my mom about my corn saga. “There’s such a wonderful void between my teeth.” The air smelled like fresh dirt. All the farmers were out late last night, lights on their tractors, turning over the fields before today’s predicted rain.
“Gives a little hint, doesn’t it?” she replied, “To what it might be like for people who are in pain all the time.”
I thought of my Grandma who’s had the shingles for three months now. She’s tired, locked in at home, in constant pain. She called Saturday morning, just to talk, but ended up crying on the phone, probably because crying is just a normal reaction to living in constant pain and loneliness.
After our phone conversation, I took my grandmother to see a movie. The movie made her feel good, and it got me out of the house, which made me feel good, and then I took her back home. Back to her pain and loneliness.
My corn problem felt very insignificant, which is exactly how it should feel when compared to constant pain and loneliness, but my having survived it, and my subsequent exultation at having it removed made me feel primed for deeper challenges. When it started to rain, and our cheeks were already cold from the nippy wind, I said, “Imagine what the pioneers went through—snow, ice, wind—anytime they went anywhere.”
Both my mom and I looked down on the two kids we’d brought with us in the double stroller. The baby was suitably covered in a full body fleece, but my daughter had left her hat at home. She was asleep with her face turned up to the sky and each rain drop caused her closed eyes to pull tighter in her sleep. I turned her face downward, and patted the top of her head. “She’s a good girl,” I said.
“Yes she is. She wanted to help out in the kitchen,” my mom laughed. “She’s imitating the women-folk.” After dinner, when we were clearing the table and loading up dishes, my daughter brought food items to the counter with a look of self-importance. “I was reading somewhere about how the first five to seven years of life are all about building up the idea of the self—the ego. And the rest of your life, then, is about overcoming it.”
“By trudging homeward through inclement weather?” I asked. My thighs grew numb as the rain seeped through my jeans.
“Think of how nice it will be when we have some tea and Dad makes up a fire,” she said, smiling into the wind. “The tea would not taste nearly as good if we had not been out in the cold.” My mom has become terribly pretty lately. She’s sixty, married forty years, but the cool made her cheeks pink, and the rain made her hair curl. Smiling at life’s adversity, and the grace soon to follow, she looked like a soup commercial.
My mom is a very rare specimen. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, and occasionally, she puts her foot in her mouth. But she is one of the few people I know who has fought the battle for holiness, and has met with some success. She doesn’t gossip or complain. She’s been pulled into the service of her parents, children, and grandchildren but doesn’t seem to mind. She makes it look as though that aforementioned emptying of ego might actually be possible.
It gives me hope, recognizing that this change has been gradual in her. She has always been a beautiful woman, but when we were little, I remember her being a little grouchy and tired. I have to mention the grouchiness, because people won’t believe me if I say my mom has always been beautiful and selfless. It also fits into the theme for the day: Like feeling relief when I’ve had corn in my teeth, and having tea after walking in the rain, Mom’s current beauty and selflessness is better appreciated in relation to her past grouchiness. It is the grace made possible by trial.
What must it be like, then, to never experience the grace? To never have the reprieve? To live with corn in my teeth for eternity? Constant pain and loneliness?
Some people have to sort through grouchiness for a lot of years, as seems to be the case for me. But one of these days, when I get serious enough about it, I’m going to conquer it—and won’t my kids be surprised? Or I should say, God will help me overcome it, when I have completely surrendered it to him, because there’s always some reason for holding on to our maladies. I know my reasons.
I can’t speculate as to why my Grandmother rejects my Mom’s invitation to move in with them, even if only temporarily, until she feels better. But I think that if my Grandmother allowed us to take care of her more, she might find it a reprieve, at least from the loneliness, if not the pain. And we would find it a reprieve from the services we so dutifully perform for ourselves—to be emptied of ego. But she knows her reasons.
By the time we reached my parents’ driveway, the rain had stopped. It felt also as though the temperature had dropped, but I think our wet clothes trapped in the cold. The children had slept through the rain, and remained asleep when we pushed the stroller into the garage.
Inside, the boys all slept around the football game on TV, and a fire burned in the wood-burning stove. It felt like walking into a womb.
“I can’t tell you how much relief I feel,” I said to my mom about my corn saga. “There’s such a wonderful void between my teeth.” The air smelled like fresh dirt. All the farmers were out late last night, lights on their tractors, turning over the fields before today’s predicted rain.
“Gives a little hint, doesn’t it?” she replied, “To what it might be like for people who are in pain all the time.”
I thought of my Grandma who’s had the shingles for three months now. She’s tired, locked in at home, in constant pain. She called Saturday morning, just to talk, but ended up crying on the phone, probably because crying is just a normal reaction to living in constant pain and loneliness.
After our phone conversation, I took my grandmother to see a movie. The movie made her feel good, and it got me out of the house, which made me feel good, and then I took her back home. Back to her pain and loneliness.
My corn problem felt very insignificant, which is exactly how it should feel when compared to constant pain and loneliness, but my having survived it, and my subsequent exultation at having it removed made me feel primed for deeper challenges. When it started to rain, and our cheeks were already cold from the nippy wind, I said, “Imagine what the pioneers went through—snow, ice, wind—anytime they went anywhere.”
Both my mom and I looked down on the two kids we’d brought with us in the double stroller. The baby was suitably covered in a full body fleece, but my daughter had left her hat at home. She was asleep with her face turned up to the sky and each rain drop caused her closed eyes to pull tighter in her sleep. I turned her face downward, and patted the top of her head. “She’s a good girl,” I said.
“Yes she is. She wanted to help out in the kitchen,” my mom laughed. “She’s imitating the women-folk.” After dinner, when we were clearing the table and loading up dishes, my daughter brought food items to the counter with a look of self-importance. “I was reading somewhere about how the first five to seven years of life are all about building up the idea of the self—the ego. And the rest of your life, then, is about overcoming it.”
“By trudging homeward through inclement weather?” I asked. My thighs grew numb as the rain seeped through my jeans.
“Think of how nice it will be when we have some tea and Dad makes up a fire,” she said, smiling into the wind. “The tea would not taste nearly as good if we had not been out in the cold.” My mom has become terribly pretty lately. She’s sixty, married forty years, but the cool made her cheeks pink, and the rain made her hair curl. Smiling at life’s adversity, and the grace soon to follow, she looked like a soup commercial.
My mom is a very rare specimen. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, and occasionally, she puts her foot in her mouth. But she is one of the few people I know who has fought the battle for holiness, and has met with some success. She doesn’t gossip or complain. She’s been pulled into the service of her parents, children, and grandchildren but doesn’t seem to mind. She makes it look as though that aforementioned emptying of ego might actually be possible.
It gives me hope, recognizing that this change has been gradual in her. She has always been a beautiful woman, but when we were little, I remember her being a little grouchy and tired. I have to mention the grouchiness, because people won’t believe me if I say my mom has always been beautiful and selfless. It also fits into the theme for the day: Like feeling relief when I’ve had corn in my teeth, and having tea after walking in the rain, Mom’s current beauty and selflessness is better appreciated in relation to her past grouchiness. It is the grace made possible by trial.
What must it be like, then, to never experience the grace? To never have the reprieve? To live with corn in my teeth for eternity? Constant pain and loneliness?
Some people have to sort through grouchiness for a lot of years, as seems to be the case for me. But one of these days, when I get serious enough about it, I’m going to conquer it—and won’t my kids be surprised? Or I should say, God will help me overcome it, when I have completely surrendered it to him, because there’s always some reason for holding on to our maladies. I know my reasons.
I can’t speculate as to why my Grandmother rejects my Mom’s invitation to move in with them, even if only temporarily, until she feels better. But I think that if my Grandmother allowed us to take care of her more, she might find it a reprieve, at least from the loneliness, if not the pain. And we would find it a reprieve from the services we so dutifully perform for ourselves—to be emptied of ego. But she knows her reasons.
By the time we reached my parents’ driveway, the rain had stopped. It felt also as though the temperature had dropped, but I think our wet clothes trapped in the cold. The children had slept through the rain, and remained asleep when we pushed the stroller into the garage.
Inside, the boys all slept around the football game on TV, and a fire burned in the wood-burning stove. It felt like walking into a womb.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Full of it
Driving up to my in-laws on a two lane highway, my husband and I tried to remember which of the pieced-together, badly-renovated, vinyl-sided houses that line the road was the one that got hit by a semi-truck last year.
“I think it was that one,” my husband said, pointing to a particularly dilapidated house. But I knew he was wrong, and didn’t feel like letting him rest in his mistake.
“No, it’s further north,” I said. Apparently the driver of the semi fell asleep behind the wheel and pummeled into the living room of a home set about twenty feet off the road. The home has been an emblem of horror and curiosity for us—the embodiment of how “this very night, your life may be demanded of you” while you sit in a recliner watching a football game. Whenever we go to my in-laws, we look for the house. It’s just what we do.
“I hate to break it to you,” my husband said, “But you’re full of crap. In fact that’s one of the things I’ve had to get used to being married to you, is that you always think you’re right, but you’re usually wrong.”
“Well, Happy Thanksgiving!” I said, a little bruised, but wondering how long he’d been waiting to make this remark. He’s had to get used to my being full of crap. It’s taken time for him, yet it is a matter of fact that I’m full of crap. And then I felt happy for him, because I’d finally served him his moment to get that thought off his chest.
Full of crap, I may be; I was still right, and he was not. Nevertheless, I decided to let him have his little drive-by victory. That could be the house if he wanted it to be. I can be wrong if he wants me to be. Not worth fighting over.
In the past I have fought over things that are not worth fighting over. One year for Christmas, my husband wanted to put up the Christmas tree in the spot occupied by my great-grandmother’s dining room table. We didn’t have room for the table, but it was an antique, a family heirloom, with which I did not feel I could part, so I had it crammed in a corner to use as an end-table. My husband wanted it out. It crowded the room, and putting the Christmas tree in that spot was a way to make the first step toward getting rid of it. We could put it in the garage during the Christmas season, and then onward to elsewhere for my grandmother’s table.
When he attempted to move the table, I sat on it, so he couldn’t lift it. And I kept sitting on it for about five hours. We had turned on the Christmas music, and brought the decorations down from the attic. The kids were excited about putting up the tree, but there would be no tree raising that night, because mommy was sitting on the table, and would not get off. There would also be no dinner that night, no bedtime prayer—because mommy had to win, and she was willing to do anything to stake her territory.
I knew, sitting there, that my husband was right. We didn’t have room for the table. But it was mine. MINE! If I caved on the table, then he’d start working on my desk, MY DESK, for which we also don’t have room, and which likewise takes up a large portion of real estate in the corner of the dining room. He’d been mentioning how he’d like to replace my desk with a smaller model, but I need space for my muse to spread out. If I retrenched on the table, and then the desk, the next thing I knew he’d be asking for my soul.
In last week’s Sunday Gospel, Jesus said to Pilate, “If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” But his attendants are not fighting to keep him. They are having a sit-in on the dining room table to protest the placement of a Christmas tree.
“If we say that God is really the ruler of all the earth, and all earthly authorities, we must ask ourselves whom we honor and why, whom we praise and why, whom we obey and why.” (Magnificat, Wednesday, Nov. 18)
After five hours of sitting on top of my table, ruining Christmas for my kids, it became very clear that I had spent too much time fighting to preserve my own sovereignty. Ultimately, I came down from the table and apologized to my kids. Of my own volition, I called my parents and asked them to take the table and give it to someone else in the family.
This time, in the car on the way to Thanksgiving dinner, I decided not to waste the hours asserting my rightness. I let it drop, and we drove on peacefully after gawking at the (wrong) house that got hit by a semi truck.
“I think it was that one,” my husband said, pointing to a particularly dilapidated house. But I knew he was wrong, and didn’t feel like letting him rest in his mistake.
“No, it’s further north,” I said. Apparently the driver of the semi fell asleep behind the wheel and pummeled into the living room of a home set about twenty feet off the road. The home has been an emblem of horror and curiosity for us—the embodiment of how “this very night, your life may be demanded of you” while you sit in a recliner watching a football game. Whenever we go to my in-laws, we look for the house. It’s just what we do.
“I hate to break it to you,” my husband said, “But you’re full of crap. In fact that’s one of the things I’ve had to get used to being married to you, is that you always think you’re right, but you’re usually wrong.”
“Well, Happy Thanksgiving!” I said, a little bruised, but wondering how long he’d been waiting to make this remark. He’s had to get used to my being full of crap. It’s taken time for him, yet it is a matter of fact that I’m full of crap. And then I felt happy for him, because I’d finally served him his moment to get that thought off his chest.
Full of crap, I may be; I was still right, and he was not. Nevertheless, I decided to let him have his little drive-by victory. That could be the house if he wanted it to be. I can be wrong if he wants me to be. Not worth fighting over.
In the past I have fought over things that are not worth fighting over. One year for Christmas, my husband wanted to put up the Christmas tree in the spot occupied by my great-grandmother’s dining room table. We didn’t have room for the table, but it was an antique, a family heirloom, with which I did not feel I could part, so I had it crammed in a corner to use as an end-table. My husband wanted it out. It crowded the room, and putting the Christmas tree in that spot was a way to make the first step toward getting rid of it. We could put it in the garage during the Christmas season, and then onward to elsewhere for my grandmother’s table.
When he attempted to move the table, I sat on it, so he couldn’t lift it. And I kept sitting on it for about five hours. We had turned on the Christmas music, and brought the decorations down from the attic. The kids were excited about putting up the tree, but there would be no tree raising that night, because mommy was sitting on the table, and would not get off. There would also be no dinner that night, no bedtime prayer—because mommy had to win, and she was willing to do anything to stake her territory.
I knew, sitting there, that my husband was right. We didn’t have room for the table. But it was mine. MINE! If I caved on the table, then he’d start working on my desk, MY DESK, for which we also don’t have room, and which likewise takes up a large portion of real estate in the corner of the dining room. He’d been mentioning how he’d like to replace my desk with a smaller model, but I need space for my muse to spread out. If I retrenched on the table, and then the desk, the next thing I knew he’d be asking for my soul.
In last week’s Sunday Gospel, Jesus said to Pilate, “If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” But his attendants are not fighting to keep him. They are having a sit-in on the dining room table to protest the placement of a Christmas tree.
“If we say that God is really the ruler of all the earth, and all earthly authorities, we must ask ourselves whom we honor and why, whom we praise and why, whom we obey and why.” (Magnificat, Wednesday, Nov. 18)
After five hours of sitting on top of my table, ruining Christmas for my kids, it became very clear that I had spent too much time fighting to preserve my own sovereignty. Ultimately, I came down from the table and apologized to my kids. Of my own volition, I called my parents and asked them to take the table and give it to someone else in the family.
This time, in the car on the way to Thanksgiving dinner, I decided not to waste the hours asserting my rightness. I let it drop, and we drove on peacefully after gawking at the (wrong) house that got hit by a semi truck.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Et Tu, Father Bob?
Pedge called after reading my Ball gown post and said, “I can’t stand it. I hate this attitude that we would rather be watching from our window while everyone else has a good time--that we’re somehow better off, and better people because we’re locked in our houses changing diapers. I say no! I say, I’m still going to the Ball, and I’m going to wear high heels and be the best looking woman in the room. My husband is going to love it, and every other woman in the room is going to want to be me, still. And afterwards, we’re going home, and I’m going to screw my husband, and it’s going to mean so much more than making out with some stranger in the hallway, because we have these five children, and these twelve years of marriage, and this relationship is more meaningful than any relationship I could have imagined when I was twenty-two.”
“Oh,” I said, mulling over her words for a moment.
“What?” she asked. “Am I wrong? Is that not possible?”
“I’m just trying to reconcile what you’ve just said with the absence of actual Balls to attend.”
“There are plenty of fun things to do. It doesn’t have to be an actual Ball.”
I hung up the phone with Pedge, thinking about the misplaced frugality that has prevented me from hiring a babysitter so my husband and I can go to the Reverse Raffle dinner at our kids’ school. The Reverse Raffle is a fried-chicken fundraising event held in the school’s basement cafeteria. Each class makes up a theme basket, local businesses donate gift certificates, and then the emcee gives a basket or certificate to every third ticket-holder drawn out of a pot. The last ticket drawn wins a thousand dollars. In years past, we’ve gone to this dinner, and sat awkwardly at a table with older parishioners we did not know, wondering how to get over to the raucous corner of the room where the young parents laughed and joshed one another, and made increasingly wayward paths to the bar. It's not really a Ball, but it might suffice.
We moved to this small town only a few years ago, and many of the young parents in the corner grew up here, and are themselves graduates of this parochial elementary school. Most of the teachers and the principal have been at the school long enough to see the children of their former students walking through the hallways.
My husband did not want to endure another night of this awkward watching. But I did wonder what might happen if we could somehow let go of the self-consciousness we have acquired over the years, and go sit by the keg like we own it and talk to people like we have a right to speak to them.
So armed with pocket shots of gin, and leaving our children with a sitter, my husband and I went last night to the Reverse Raffle.
At the door, we were greeted by our boys’ Cub Scout Leader, a woman with the open sunny face of Anne of Green Gables. Normally she dresses in casual adventure gear: shorts, athletic sandals, a scout uniform shirt. But for the raffle, she’d teased her auburn hair into a Brigitte Bardot semi-updo. She wore black leggings, a stylish military jacket, and stiletto booties. “Is that the den leader?” my husband asked. “She looks dynamite.” I said, relieved that someone had dressed out for the event more than I had. I had not been certain until that moment that I liked my boys’ den leader.
We sat down on the keg side of the room at the first available seats we found. We introduced ourselves to the other couples at the table, who seemed to be related to each other, and not very interested in talking to us. I looked around and spotted another couple that I knew from PTO meetings. She signaled to us that there were seats at her table, and my husband and I debated about whether or not to offend the people with whom we were currently situated. For me, it was a no-brainer. “Let’s go.” I said to my husband, and “No offense,” to the people at our table, “Have a great night.” For seventy bucks at the door, I was not going to spend another night feeling like an interloper at some other family’s dinner party.
The Emcee for the night, as in past years, was an Eddie Haskell-like alumnus of the school. He’s still lanky, with freckles, like his son, and you could easily see him as a boy showering compliments on his middle-aged female teachers, while they swatted away his antics with a flattered smile. His charming wife passed out baskets to the raffle winners, and rolled her eyes when he announced, “Congratulations number 798! You are the winner of two Pacer’s tickets, a Pacer’s jersey and a box of condoms!” It was his joke of the night, to add “--and a box of condoms!” to every other basket he called out, which is supposedly funny, because while Catholics drink and gamble, they do not pass out baskets of condoms.
“Let me see a show of hands,” he said, feeling comfortable in his roll as comedian. “Who here is worried about Father Bob? I’m worried. He has a new beard, and a new hair do. There’s an awful lot of hair gel going into the Rectory. I’m starting to wonder if he has a girlfriend.” His wife rolled her eyes, and Father stood up and brushed his hands through his hair, which he just recently began combing back off his forehead. With his sizeable mid-section and white collar there could be no doubt about his celibacy.
Whenever I have a drink or two, I start to think about also having a cigarette, but in this environment, I hesitated. I only smoke in certain company because I have a golden girl image to protect. So I excused myself as if to use the restroom, and snuck outside. I was hiding behind a corner of the Church when I heard some other female voices and smelled the tell-tale aroma of tobacco. It occurred to me that no one could doubt my conviction to the faith I profess simply because I’ve had a drink and a cigarette, so I peaked around the corner to see to whom the voices belonged.
I recognized one of them, a platinum-haired woman who drove a black Armada. She’d just had her fourth daughter, and when she saw me emerge from the shadows, she looked at me with surprise, as if to say, “You too?”
I held up my cigarette and said, “Only when I’m drinking. Or when I’m angry.” My husband and I watched a movie earlier in the week about an Irish-Catholic prison inmate who rolled his tobacco in the pages of the Bible. When a visiting priest said he should stop smoking the Bible, the inmate answered, “I only smoke the Lamentations.” I wanted to say that, “I only smoke the Lamentations.” But I already have a reputation in this town as the ‘crazy lady with five children’—no need to add: ‘who also quotes obscure movies.’
In any case, there is always an instant union of souls in discovering another closeted tobacco user. When my husband and I were in the very early stages of our relationship, we both hid from each other that we used tobacco. He chewed. I smoked more regularly at that time. But we’d been set up because both of our families were involved with Regnum Christi. He thought I was one of those pious Catholic girls who might be turned off by his tobacco use. And I thought likewise of him. It wasn’t until our fifth date or so that we’d both had a couple glasses of wine and we couldn’t stand it anymore. I bummed a cigarette off the waiter, and we split it. I remember him inhaling twice before he exhaled, and I thought, for some reason, that it was one of the most sexy things I’d ever seen--the depth of his lungs, the voracious authenticity of his need. We spent the rest of our courtship in tobacco heaven, until we married and had our first kid, and we both put our habits to rest. He’s never used any sort of tobacco since. And I only smoke the Lamentations.
It wasn’t long before our Reverse Raffle secret smoking society was joined by Father Bob. “You too???”
"Only under very particular circumstances." He also smokes the Lamentations.
I came off the night feeling warmly about all these other parents to whom I’ve only nodded in the parking lot pick-up line. I’ve spent a couple years now feeling as though these people are not my people. But I felt an indescribable affection when I saw a couple members of the Knights of Columbus pull their Sedan up to the Cafeteria doors and unload another keg out of their trunk.
In college it used to annoy me that people felt like they were best friends if they happened to get drunk together one night. Not I, oh no. I am not so easily won, nor so easily known, I thought. But I’m not as deep as I was then; my needs are no longer so difficult to meet. I’m happy with just some casual familiarity in this community in which I live. No more awkward attempts at eye-contact and conversation starting. I now know a hand-full of people with whom I can let down my pious golden-girl guard. And it so happens that one of them has heard my sins in the Confessional. It sort of cracks me up: “You too, Father???”
“Oh,” I said, mulling over her words for a moment.
“What?” she asked. “Am I wrong? Is that not possible?”
“I’m just trying to reconcile what you’ve just said with the absence of actual Balls to attend.”
“There are plenty of fun things to do. It doesn’t have to be an actual Ball.”
I hung up the phone with Pedge, thinking about the misplaced frugality that has prevented me from hiring a babysitter so my husband and I can go to the Reverse Raffle dinner at our kids’ school. The Reverse Raffle is a fried-chicken fundraising event held in the school’s basement cafeteria. Each class makes up a theme basket, local businesses donate gift certificates, and then the emcee gives a basket or certificate to every third ticket-holder drawn out of a pot. The last ticket drawn wins a thousand dollars. In years past, we’ve gone to this dinner, and sat awkwardly at a table with older parishioners we did not know, wondering how to get over to the raucous corner of the room where the young parents laughed and joshed one another, and made increasingly wayward paths to the bar. It's not really a Ball, but it might suffice.
We moved to this small town only a few years ago, and many of the young parents in the corner grew up here, and are themselves graduates of this parochial elementary school. Most of the teachers and the principal have been at the school long enough to see the children of their former students walking through the hallways.
My husband did not want to endure another night of this awkward watching. But I did wonder what might happen if we could somehow let go of the self-consciousness we have acquired over the years, and go sit by the keg like we own it and talk to people like we have a right to speak to them.
So armed with pocket shots of gin, and leaving our children with a sitter, my husband and I went last night to the Reverse Raffle.
At the door, we were greeted by our boys’ Cub Scout Leader, a woman with the open sunny face of Anne of Green Gables. Normally she dresses in casual adventure gear: shorts, athletic sandals, a scout uniform shirt. But for the raffle, she’d teased her auburn hair into a Brigitte Bardot semi-updo. She wore black leggings, a stylish military jacket, and stiletto booties. “Is that the den leader?” my husband asked. “She looks dynamite.” I said, relieved that someone had dressed out for the event more than I had. I had not been certain until that moment that I liked my boys’ den leader.
We sat down on the keg side of the room at the first available seats we found. We introduced ourselves to the other couples at the table, who seemed to be related to each other, and not very interested in talking to us. I looked around and spotted another couple that I knew from PTO meetings. She signaled to us that there were seats at her table, and my husband and I debated about whether or not to offend the people with whom we were currently situated. For me, it was a no-brainer. “Let’s go.” I said to my husband, and “No offense,” to the people at our table, “Have a great night.” For seventy bucks at the door, I was not going to spend another night feeling like an interloper at some other family’s dinner party.
The Emcee for the night, as in past years, was an Eddie Haskell-like alumnus of the school. He’s still lanky, with freckles, like his son, and you could easily see him as a boy showering compliments on his middle-aged female teachers, while they swatted away his antics with a flattered smile. His charming wife passed out baskets to the raffle winners, and rolled her eyes when he announced, “Congratulations number 798! You are the winner of two Pacer’s tickets, a Pacer’s jersey and a box of condoms!” It was his joke of the night, to add “--and a box of condoms!” to every other basket he called out, which is supposedly funny, because while Catholics drink and gamble, they do not pass out baskets of condoms.
“Let me see a show of hands,” he said, feeling comfortable in his roll as comedian. “Who here is worried about Father Bob? I’m worried. He has a new beard, and a new hair do. There’s an awful lot of hair gel going into the Rectory. I’m starting to wonder if he has a girlfriend.” His wife rolled her eyes, and Father stood up and brushed his hands through his hair, which he just recently began combing back off his forehead. With his sizeable mid-section and white collar there could be no doubt about his celibacy.
Whenever I have a drink or two, I start to think about also having a cigarette, but in this environment, I hesitated. I only smoke in certain company because I have a golden girl image to protect. So I excused myself as if to use the restroom, and snuck outside. I was hiding behind a corner of the Church when I heard some other female voices and smelled the tell-tale aroma of tobacco. It occurred to me that no one could doubt my conviction to the faith I profess simply because I’ve had a drink and a cigarette, so I peaked around the corner to see to whom the voices belonged.
I recognized one of them, a platinum-haired woman who drove a black Armada. She’d just had her fourth daughter, and when she saw me emerge from the shadows, she looked at me with surprise, as if to say, “You too?”
I held up my cigarette and said, “Only when I’m drinking. Or when I’m angry.” My husband and I watched a movie earlier in the week about an Irish-Catholic prison inmate who rolled his tobacco in the pages of the Bible. When a visiting priest said he should stop smoking the Bible, the inmate answered, “I only smoke the Lamentations.” I wanted to say that, “I only smoke the Lamentations.” But I already have a reputation in this town as the ‘crazy lady with five children’—no need to add: ‘who also quotes obscure movies.’
In any case, there is always an instant union of souls in discovering another closeted tobacco user. When my husband and I were in the very early stages of our relationship, we both hid from each other that we used tobacco. He chewed. I smoked more regularly at that time. But we’d been set up because both of our families were involved with Regnum Christi. He thought I was one of those pious Catholic girls who might be turned off by his tobacco use. And I thought likewise of him. It wasn’t until our fifth date or so that we’d both had a couple glasses of wine and we couldn’t stand it anymore. I bummed a cigarette off the waiter, and we split it. I remember him inhaling twice before he exhaled, and I thought, for some reason, that it was one of the most sexy things I’d ever seen--the depth of his lungs, the voracious authenticity of his need. We spent the rest of our courtship in tobacco heaven, until we married and had our first kid, and we both put our habits to rest. He’s never used any sort of tobacco since. And I only smoke the Lamentations.
It wasn’t long before our Reverse Raffle secret smoking society was joined by Father Bob. “You too???”
"Only under very particular circumstances." He also smokes the Lamentations.
I came off the night feeling warmly about all these other parents to whom I’ve only nodded in the parking lot pick-up line. I’ve spent a couple years now feeling as though these people are not my people. But I felt an indescribable affection when I saw a couple members of the Knights of Columbus pull their Sedan up to the Cafeteria doors and unload another keg out of their trunk.
In college it used to annoy me that people felt like they were best friends if they happened to get drunk together one night. Not I, oh no. I am not so easily won, nor so easily known, I thought. But I’m not as deep as I was then; my needs are no longer so difficult to meet. I’m happy with just some casual familiarity in this community in which I live. No more awkward attempts at eye-contact and conversation starting. I now know a hand-full of people with whom I can let down my pious golden-girl guard. And it so happens that one of them has heard my sins in the Confessional. It sort of cracks me up: “You too, Father???”
Thursday, November 19, 2009
“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”
--Czeslaw Milosz
In college I wrote a play. The play was autobiographical. It was about sin in my life. People who are living in sin love to point out the hypocrisy of others, so the play was also about my family and what I perceived to be their hypocrisy. It was staged in a black box theater with several other student productions. Many of the student productions were obscene. Mine was too. I did not want my family to know about this program.
Yet, for some unknown reason, perhaps because I was tired of living in secrecy, perhaps because I was proud of myself for having my play staged, I told my mom about it. There was likely a part of me that thought exposing myself would lead to some form of dialogue with my mother, and in turn, mutual understanding. I pictured her coming to one of the performances, perhaps feeling a little shocked, but then letting the floodgates open between us over coffee afterwards.
On the night of the performance, my mom had not arrived when the bell rang for everyone to take their seats in the theater. I felt relief for a moment, thinking she had decided to stay home. The lights dimmed, then the theater doors cracked open and in walked my mom, tiptoeing to find a seat, followed by my father and several members of my family, who were the models for characters in my play. She had apparently thought that my desire to shield my play from the family was some form of humility, and that I would be happy with this show of support.
I sat in my corner of the small theater, listening with an internal censor to the first couple of plays. F-words sputtered into the atmosphere like machine gun fire. When my play began, I could only watch my family, sitting in their row with tight lips and straight backs, looking like someone had taken a ruler and smacked them each in the face with it, one after the other. When my ten-minute spot was up, they all got up and walked out.
I vowed then and there that my family would never read another word that I wrote. But time sort of lessens the sting of most wounds, and a writer can only write in a hovel for so long, and now here I am with a blog, writing somewhat autobiographically. It’s an impulse, a way of making sense of the world and of relationships. When someone is born with this impulse, not writing, to some extent means not growing. And publishing is a natural end to this process.
There will always be a struggle then to write honestly and still protect the people and experiences that inform the writing process. In a writing course I took a couple years ago, I asked the professor what to do about this problem. He answered, “YOU WISH it were a problem. If this is ever a problem for you, it means you’re getting published. And in that case, you write what you need to write, and then you go to the people involved and tell them that this is going to be published, and if they have a problem you deal with it then. But you MAY NOT write in fear or you will most certainly never see publication.”
Blogging makes these issues more immediate. While some bloggers have no problem publishing their most private thoughts, for most of us, a reader would find that a very different account of actual events resides on the private pages of a diary. Still we occasionally make mistakes in discretion because we lack objective editors to temper our words.
David Matthews, author of “Ace of Spades,”says, “When it comes to writing about family or friends, you can be liked, or you can tell the truth. If you want both, you should become an accountant.”
For Christians, this reality becomes a moral problem as well as an ethical one: How to advance on the path of perfect charity while honoring the God-given impulse to write and make sense out of our lives.
I wonder sometimes if an element of fundamentalism hasn’t crept into our modern Catholic consciousness that prevents us from considering our writing, and our writing about ourselves, in particular, an art. We want to honor the Truth, and so order our fictional universes in ways that are not truthful.
It’s a complicated thing for any writer, and I’m not sure what the Christian answer should be. For me, as I've said before, I try to find the Gospel in the events of life. Where the events of life are concerned on this blog, however, don't take any of it as gospel.
Related posts:
A Bone to Pick with Modern Catholic Writers
The Truth is in the Lies we Tell
In college I wrote a play. The play was autobiographical. It was about sin in my life. People who are living in sin love to point out the hypocrisy of others, so the play was also about my family and what I perceived to be their hypocrisy. It was staged in a black box theater with several other student productions. Many of the student productions were obscene. Mine was too. I did not want my family to know about this program.
Yet, for some unknown reason, perhaps because I was tired of living in secrecy, perhaps because I was proud of myself for having my play staged, I told my mom about it. There was likely a part of me that thought exposing myself would lead to some form of dialogue with my mother, and in turn, mutual understanding. I pictured her coming to one of the performances, perhaps feeling a little shocked, but then letting the floodgates open between us over coffee afterwards.
On the night of the performance, my mom had not arrived when the bell rang for everyone to take their seats in the theater. I felt relief for a moment, thinking she had decided to stay home. The lights dimmed, then the theater doors cracked open and in walked my mom, tiptoeing to find a seat, followed by my father and several members of my family, who were the models for characters in my play. She had apparently thought that my desire to shield my play from the family was some form of humility, and that I would be happy with this show of support.
I sat in my corner of the small theater, listening with an internal censor to the first couple of plays. F-words sputtered into the atmosphere like machine gun fire. When my play began, I could only watch my family, sitting in their row with tight lips and straight backs, looking like someone had taken a ruler and smacked them each in the face with it, one after the other. When my ten-minute spot was up, they all got up and walked out.
I vowed then and there that my family would never read another word that I wrote. But time sort of lessens the sting of most wounds, and a writer can only write in a hovel for so long, and now here I am with a blog, writing somewhat autobiographically. It’s an impulse, a way of making sense of the world and of relationships. When someone is born with this impulse, not writing, to some extent means not growing. And publishing is a natural end to this process.
There will always be a struggle then to write honestly and still protect the people and experiences that inform the writing process. In a writing course I took a couple years ago, I asked the professor what to do about this problem. He answered, “YOU WISH it were a problem. If this is ever a problem for you, it means you’re getting published. And in that case, you write what you need to write, and then you go to the people involved and tell them that this is going to be published, and if they have a problem you deal with it then. But you MAY NOT write in fear or you will most certainly never see publication.”
Blogging makes these issues more immediate. While some bloggers have no problem publishing their most private thoughts, for most of us, a reader would find that a very different account of actual events resides on the private pages of a diary. Still we occasionally make mistakes in discretion because we lack objective editors to temper our words.
David Matthews, author of “Ace of Spades,”says, “When it comes to writing about family or friends, you can be liked, or you can tell the truth. If you want both, you should become an accountant.”
For Christians, this reality becomes a moral problem as well as an ethical one: How to advance on the path of perfect charity while honoring the God-given impulse to write and make sense out of our lives.
I wonder sometimes if an element of fundamentalism hasn’t crept into our modern Catholic consciousness that prevents us from considering our writing, and our writing about ourselves, in particular, an art. We want to honor the Truth, and so order our fictional universes in ways that are not truthful.
It’s a complicated thing for any writer, and I’m not sure what the Christian answer should be. For me, as I've said before, I try to find the Gospel in the events of life. Where the events of life are concerned on this blog, however, don't take any of it as gospel.
Related posts:
A Bone to Pick with Modern Catholic Writers
The Truth is in the Lies we Tell
Friday, November 13, 2009
Having a Ball
***
La robe rose
***
Les gants blancs
***
Le Cigarette
***
l'étranger noir
***
Commence-le-party
La robe rose
***
Les gants blancs
***
Le Cigarette
***
l'étranger noir
***
Commence-le-party
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