driving past in the rainy night, the neon sign outside the solicitor’s office said, “need a will?”
ha! i said to jonno. you’re welcome to my four year old computer, wedding ring, and my iphone if I die.
i said it with a casual laugh, but i wasn’t joking. i have nothing of substance, nothing of value.
most of the time, i’m perfectly okay with that. most of the time, it pleases me – that rootless, aimless part of me that eschews being tied down to any place or any thing. most of the time, i’m comfortable flying through this world unfettered by objects. i don’t feel lacking, and i don’t want. it’s freeing.
but every once in a while, it strikes me just how different my life is to that of my cohorts – who have houses and cars and children and stock portfolios. things requiring planning, responsibility, insurance, protection. things requiring a will.
have you seen “up in the air”? when he’s talking about casting off that backpack? that scene completely resonated with me. that’s what i identify with. i thoroughly enjoyed that movie – i was envious of his spartan existence… until i suddenly realised that we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. it hit me: i’m supposed to be embarrassed by my dearth of things.
things = grownup. people without things are juvenile. people without things are not to be taken seriously. a crawling flicker of shame began to creep up from the pit of my stomach.
and so most days i continue along happily in my uncluttered lifestyle, oblivious to the pity or scorn of others. most days, i can laugh at the idea of a will. most days i could put all the things i hold dear in this world into a backpack, and be grateful for it.
but every so often, out of the blue, through a fictional movie or a simple sign passed in the dark… every so often, this culture has a way of making me feel like a real freak.
the thing is, i can honestly say that if i lived in a world without babies, i’d almost never think about them.
but i don’t live in a world without babies – i live in a world which is chockablock with them. both of my sisters gave birth to their second children in the last few months, my old university friend just had one. babies are in the street, the topic of conversation at work, on the television. babies are everywhere – they are the universal denominator.
and so, like it or not, the world is designed to force me to continually confront my decision not to have any. biology makes it difficult to avoid having children. society makes it difficult to avoid thinking about them.
i mention this because even though i’ve long since decided that giving birth isn’t for me… i would be lying if i said i never thought about it. every woman of childbearing age thinks about it, and i am no different. how could i not?
in fact, i might think about it more than many – because every day, i am made to continually evaluate and re-evaluate my “no” decision, in a world where the default is set to “yes”.
every day, people around me are pregnant. every day the media around me categorises women as mothers and mothers-to-be. every day i see or hear or read about children and babies and parents and how special and magical and wonderful it is – for everyone else.
and setting myself deliberately outside that circle, where i have consciously chosen not to share in the commonality of that experience, where i have opted out of one of the most singularly unifying human roles…
… well, sometimes it is a lonely place to be. sometimes it *does* cause me to question, in spite of myself. more to the point: sometimes i wish that i wanted a baby the way everyone else wants babies, because not wanting them feels like missing out. it’s annoying that babies take up my dedicated brainspace, that i so often find myself thinking about something i don’t want. but it’s built into the automated system: whenever i see a baby, my mind involuntarily does a little self-audit: “sure you don’t want one of those? yes, i’m sure. okay then… but are you *really* sure?” biology is an annoying fucker.
society knows this. it plays on this. i have unending sympathy for women who are infertile, because i imagine that, like them, i am hyperattuned to the saturation of messages that insist babies and children are the single most fulfilling life event to ever happen to a person. and i’m sure it is for those who have them – but it is tiresome to have to mentally reassert that my life is not bereft of meaning because i don’t want a baby.
yes, i’m actually saying that not having kids is sometimes lonely and tiresome. that’s hard to understand for most. and no reason to actually have one, of course.
still, it’s impossible to deny – in the face of all my certainty, the world that is full-of-babies constantly tries to throw clouds of doubt. and sometimes i can’t help but think the easier, less solitary path would have been acquiescence. to do what everyone does because everyone does it.
but that’s no reason to have a kid either. i know that, and believe wholeheartedly in my choice – i just wish life wasn’t constantly forcing me to think about it so often.
*thwack*. the sharp point of an elbow slammed into the back of my head and i saw stars float in front of my eyes.
sitting at my desk, i hunched low and kept my eyes down, hoping the teacher hadn’t noticed.
*thwack*. the elbow met my head again as she returned to her seat, ostensibly using the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. i did my best not to flinch visibly, even as the words on my paper swam in front of me.
crystal n_________. probably the smallest girl in the entire school. my tormentor.
hard to believe that back at the start of september, we’d been friends. i started sixth grade in a different middle school from all my old fifth grade classmates. at eleven, i was shy and awkward, with a choppy home-grown haircut, still getting used to my brown owl-like glasses. so when i recognised crystal from the accelerated enrichment class we’d both been in the previous year, it was a huge relief. we were both learning to play the flute, both liked prince and wore purple legwarmers. crystal had an indefinable edge to her, a coolness combined with the defensiveness of living in a grittier area of town – but i didn’t care. we quickly started hanging out together, passing notes, exchanging stickers, and even had a few sleepovers where we played 1999til we wore out the record.
and one evening, lying in our sleeping bags in the dark, she confided to me that she was abused at home.
i didn’t know what to do – what do you do when you’re little and someone drops that kind of reality in your lap? i only knew that when someone reveals something bad, you’re supposed to tell someone in authority. someone responsible. and so i persuaded her to tell our teacher.
we sat in the teacher’s meeting room, the three of us. i don’t remember what was said, but i remember staring at the wall as if my life depended on it. i’m sure the teacher said all the right things, made the appropriate reassurances.
that wall was seafoam green.
what came after that, was a fury directed at me that blindsided me, spun me round with the force of being clocked. at began with a campaign of silence. crystal no longer spoke to me. when i tried to talk to her, find out what was going on, she looked through me as if looking through a ghost. my notes and calls went unanswered. i couldn’t understand what i’d done to make her reject me so completely. but she never let up, not for one second. from that moment in the teacher’s meeting room, with the seafoam green walls, it was if i had ceased to exist.
until, that is, she switched alliances. crystal and i had been a pair of oddball friends, but somehow less odd for begin together. everyone else in our class had pre-established friends from years of graduating up through the grades together. she and i had become friends out of necessity. but now she began cultivating relationships with the popular girls, currying favour with them through her acid remarks and brazenness. as the leaders at the top of the food chain, they admired someone who could act so tough. they took her into the clique, and she soon became one of them.
i’m not sure what she told them about me, but it must have been pretty awful. previously they’d ignored me – i was completely peripheral to their day-to-day, not even worthy of attention. once crystal joined their group, all that changed. they began going out of their way to trip me, sneer at me, steal my books off my desk when i wasn’t looking and hide them. to them, i was something for their amusement – it made them laugh to knock my flour on the floor in home economics class, or snigger at a private joke until my face burned red. it was crystal, however, who reserved a special kind of hatred for me.
“you’re dead. after school, you’re dead,” the note flung surreptitiously into my lap read. i managed to leave unseen by the rear exit of the school, and walk home by the back streets that day. but she wouldn’t let up – she hissed epithets in my ear when no one was looking, continually threaten to beat me up, shoved vicious notes through the slats of my locker. and her specialty – the elbow to the back of the head with an innocent look on her face, while i swallowed the pain.
and day after day, i endured it in silence.
i don’t know why i didn’t tell anyone. perhaps i knew without asking that the adults couldn’t do much. after all, she was so sneaky about most of it, it was invisible to the naked eye. perhaps i assumed that without proof, no one would believe me. perhaps i knew any intercession on my behalf might make things worse.
when, towards the end of the long school year, i finally told my mother, i remember only this: she offered me a prayer. a prayer that i clung to, repeated ceaselessly like a balm. a prayer that did little to stop the bullying, but somehow felt soothing nonetheless.
god has not promised
skies always blue
flower strewn pathways
all our lives through
god has not promised us
sun without rain
joy without sorrow
peace without pain
but god has promised us
strength for the day
rest for the weary
light for the way
god has promised us
help from above
unfailing sympathy
undying love.
i don’t know why or how that was supposed to make me feel better, but it did. even as i stumbled home in shame, hot tears running down my cheeks when i couldn’t hold them back until i got home. it makes me angry now, that message – that somehow the torment of that year was part of my cross to bear, and that if i only believed hard enough, i could continue to bear it with god’s help. no child should believe that the cruelty of others is part of god’s will.
and i did bear it. sixth grade finally ended, and by the following autumn, crystal and her friends had moved into different classes. i was once again blessedly ignored, forgotten about.
but i’ve never forgotten about her.
as an adult, i came to understand, of course, why she turned against me so viciously, in an effort to protect herself from someone who knew her secrets. funnily enough, i was a threat *to her*, though even in all that grief, it never once occurred to me to lash out, or use what i knew to discredit her. i understand why she did what she did.
i can understand it, but even now, more than twenty-five years later, i can’t forgive it.
i looked her up recently on facebook, out of curiosity. and there she was. looking almost exactly the same, only an older version of the eleven year old she was. my stomach seized up involuntarily – it seems unbelievable to me that someone who’s lived so long in my memory as this feared image could be right there, looking innocent in her curls as ever. if her facebook profile is anything to go by, she doesn’t seem like she ever softened at all. i guess she might’ve had a difficult life if she was so hardened by eleven. maybe life didn’t get any better for her after that.
and of course, i wonder if she ever thinks of me. if she’s ever sorry for what she did, the hell she made my life for that whole year. writing about it now, the tears i never let her see then, still spring easily to my eyes. it probably doesn’t even register on her memory.
I don’t make new year’s resolutions, as I think i’ve mentioned here before. Resolutions are doomed and there’s no point in making them – if you weren’t motivated enough to try to accomplish them throughout the year, you’re not likely to be any more successful just for starting on the magical 1st January. Instead, I enter into each new year with a sense of those things I want to try to shed and leave behind in the old.
This year, one of those things I want to leave behind is eating habits that are harmful to our planet.
There’s been a lot of mainstream attention given to our interaction with the food chain lately. Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, along with films such as “Food Inc.” and “Fast Food Nation” all document the way in which the public demand and consumption of food has changed, and the dramatic way in which those changes have impacted how food is produced and delivered.
None of this is news to me -it’s not that I didn’t know any of this before. But with each additional piece of information, I’ve had to do even deeper exploration of why I eat the way I eat. I’ve had to question why I continued to ignore the clear messages. I’ve been taking it all in, but closing my eyes when I bite into that burger.
Because when I take the time to examine it, it doesn’t make sense. I choose not to shop at ASDA or Tesco’s because I disagree with their marketing and labour practices. But day after day, I pretend my eating habits don’t matter. I continue to put meat in my mouth, knowing the environmental toll it takes on the planet.
What it boils down to is this: I, more than many others, have the luxury of making deliberate, considered choices about the food I put in my mouth. Doesn’t that obligate me to do so? And why would I not?
The problem is, once you start thinking about it, it’s hard to stop. There are people in underdeveloped countries who are most vulnerable to the effects of global warming and overfishing, and yet have the least power to affect change. I’ve been to some of those places, I’ve met some of those people, I’ve seen the pollution first hand. How can I ignore it?
Over the past few years, I’ve reduced my meat consumption dramatically due to the meat-churning factories, and patted myself on the back for doing so. But I’ve increased my fish consumption exponentially – and that’s just as harmful. The fishing-industrial complex rivals that of the intensive beef or pork or chicken industries. It is estimated that by 2040 *all* fishing will have collapsed. For millions of people in developing countries, fish is the primary source of protein.
A few years ago now, I stopped eating chicken because of the gross practices of the chicken industry. I’ve bought only free-range, organic meat when I do indulge – and it is an indulgence, sold at a premium. I’ve rationalised that if i’m going to buy meat, I should always buy the most “ethical” meat I can. That’s a good place to start.
But why do my ethics seem to stop there?
I have a choice. I have the knowledge and money and availability to eat in a way that reduces the impact I have on the planet, the suffering of animals, and my personal contribution to the suffering of other people. Many people don’t have that opportunity. It’s hard to justify squandering that opportunity and continuing to eat meat and fish, out of habit or craving. I’ve been wanting to make the change for a while now… so what am I waiting for?
And so from the new decade, I’ve turned over a new (old) leaf. I was vegetarian for 14 years previously, but reverted to eating meat this past decade, because it tasted good. These days it’s harder and harder to get past the taste of the bitter disappointment in myself.
I can do better… and so I will. No grand resolutions, just a quiet saying goodbye. Leaving behind the old lazy rationalisations and excuses, starting to exercise my firmer judgement and choice. Not perfect, not holier-than-thou, just an improved version of who I know I can be.
tomorrow’s my birthday, and so i present to you 37 things i’ve learned along my 37 years. i started this a few yearsago now, and i quite like the ritual of it – it puts me in a positive frame of mind to face the coming year, and allows me enough self-reflection to feel a bit wiser for my age.
so here we go:
1. waxing is *not* better than shaving. no matter what anyone says.
2. trying to get back to the weight of your 20s is futile. nature is conspiring against you on this one.
3. ditto #2 for the face.
4. a real xmas tree or none at all.
5. forgiveness is a gift you give yourself, and the freedom it brings is priceless.
6. giving really is better than receiving. and there is always something you can give.
7. simple meals done well are better than fancy meals that never get made.
8. things worth spending money on: good sheets, good coffee, good shoes.
9. things not worth spending money on: nylons, name brand ibuprofen.
10. the best things in life are still free. snow days, running, moonlight, footrubs.
11. the amazing thing about humans is that we are always capable of change. never give up hope that people will change for the better.
12. then be there for them with open arms when they do.
13. the internet has made expat life immeasurably better. email, video, voice, facebook. even in the past seven years, it’s made a massive difference to my world.
14. but sometimes nothing can substitute for being home.
15. the best friends are also family.
16. and the best families are also friends.
17. never take a working boiler for granted (she types with frozen fingers whilst awaiting the arrival of the plumber).
18. resolve never to take your partner for granted. you inevitably will, but it’s so important to try not to.
19. some people will cling to the illusion of security above all else: truth, justice and freedom. try not to judge them for needing it so badly.
20. health is merely the slowest possible rate at which we can die.
21. but access to healthcare is a basic human right which should never be dependent on how much you earn.
22. if you have the opportunity to go to school, always do it now, rather than later. my one regret is that i didn’t go to grad school when i had the chance earlier. it gets harder later.
23. people’s beliefs are so intimate, so personal – when you criticise their beliefs, you criticise their heart. try to be respectful, even when you vehemently disagree.
24. if you treat people with respect, you’re more likely to be respected.
25. choose your battles carefully – life is too short to spend it being angry all the time.
26. the iphone is even better than the hype.
27. “Serenity is what we get when we quit hoping for a better past.” -Alanon
28. you make your own luck in this life – sitting around waiting for a stroke of luck never worked for anyone, and wishing doesn’t make things so.
29. risotto is worth learning to make from scratch.
30. whimsical socks make me happy – even when i’m having an otherwise shit day, i can look down and see frolicking penguins. it’s hard to be unhappy when your feet are smiling.
31. if you’re talking, you’re not listening.
32. you can tell people you love them, but if they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel valued. so shut up and listen already.
33. you will spend your whole married life renegotiating three things: money, sex, and the thermostat.
34. give love unreservedly and often. lavish people with love. you will never be in short supply of it, and you will never be sorry for having done so. if we have nothing in our cupboards and nothing over our heads, we will always have love to give in abundance.
35. never be afraid of sounding like a sentimental fool.
36. getting older gracefully is not about letting go of little vanities – it’s about letting go of the struggle to be something you’re not.
now that i live an ocean away from my family, we usually don’t exchange gifts at Christmas. but the other day i saw a link to this charity gift card website, and thought it would be a really nice idea. so i sent everyone a small denomination giftcard which they can then donate to the charity of their choice. as part of the message going along with the giftcard i wrote:
This year I thought people would like the opportunity to pass on some good to any cause that is near and dear to their heart. Our family is so lucky, we have more than enough cheer to spread around
and while that it technically true – my family are lucky in that we all, thankfully, have enough to eat, shelter, and clothe ourselves – upon reflection, i think i’ve probably been a bit insensitive. i was really speaking only for myself – because while *i* have enough money to donate to others, others in my immediate family are definitely not as well-off. in fact, there are some in my family who probably could have made good use of that $25 themselves.
talking about this makes me a bit uncomfortable, actually. truth be told, i’m fairly well-off in comparison to many – i live in an expensive city, yet still have enough to do things like travel, go out to concerts, give nice gifts, and generally not worry too much. in fact, i live a fairly cushy lifestyle by some standards. that’s not to say that jonno and i don’t work hard, or watch our spending in other ways. but overall, we are extraordinarily lucky to have not only enough, but more than we need.
others in my family have it a bit harder. there are some who’ve had to rely on public aid. there are some who’ve had difficulty finding steady employment. there are some who worry about keeping the jobs they have. there are some who make ends meet – but only just.
and to be perfectly, excruciatingly honest, this is the only time it has occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it might bother them that i have certain financial freedoms that they don’t.
don’t get me wrong: there’s no one in my family who would let any one of us go without. but charity is a luxury available only to those that have a surplus. that’s a luxury that some of my family just don’t have.
if i critique my motives, i know that my heart was in the right place. but i have to wonder if perhaps i was so caught up in making the gesture to make myself feel good, that i never considered whether it was something that would make others feel good. if i wasn’t giving what i wanted to give, rather that what others would want to receive.
how’s that for selfish? i never stopped to think about it at all.
they say there is no such thing as a truly altruistic act, and i suppose i proved that to be true. but maybe even if my magnanimous gesture wasn’t such a great present for everyone else, at least it gave *me* something in return – a little self-awareness, a little sensitivity, and a little reminder of something i’d clearly forgotten. that no matter how well-intentioned, Christmas is not about the giving – it’s about family.
and what a gift that is indeed.
god knows (you’ve got to give to get) – el perro del mar
there are nights in our history that my family don’t talk about. nights where the calm of domesticity and image of family was shattered into a million sharp pieces that left us all scarred.
it is enough to say that much. in fact, i’ve probably said too much.
but this is not a post about the things that happen to a family, or the things that happened to our particular family. i’ve long since come to understand that all families have their hidden scars. given enough time, they eventually form part of the strength that hold us together – or sometimes, hold us apart. the shared bond and shared vulnerability of having survived – without words, we share a story.
and the thing is not that every family has them – because every family does. the thing is that we forget that others don’t know. me: i forget that others don’t know. i forget that people who did not know me during my twenties, don’t know what a massive crater those things that happened left in me, for so very long. they have no idea that i was not always whole.
there are people whom i’ve known for many years, who helped me live through some of those times, so they understand that there are things that are redacted from my past. for a very long time, the things that happened to my family were a source of pain that was sometimes so all-consuming that i was a walking, weeping wound. they felt like *the* defining characteristic of my family, and by extension, a defining characteristic of me.
(and just as my family doesn’t talk about those scars amongst ourselves, i do not tell the story of others in my family – those versions, those experiences are not mine to tell, and as much as i am open about myself, i am very private about most other people in my family.)
but friends i’ve made in the past ten years have no idea. and i forget that they don’t know. this post came about because i was with a friend in a pub the other day, and on a tangent of our original discussion, i found myself filling in the backstory to some of my own darker days. i had forgotten, you see, and said something along the lines of, “you know how when such-and-such happened…” and the blank look of complete non-recognition fell across her face.
so why is that remarkable in any way? because the friends i’ve made in the past ten years have no idea. those scars? they’re faded. the pain that once left gaping wounds in my heart for all to see? it’s no longer the hole at the center of my life. it too, has faded into memory. i can tell you where and how things shattered – but it is no longer the central, defining story of my family. it no longer defines me. in fact, i forget that many of my friends don’t know.
i thought about writing one myself – but in my case, it wouldn’t ring true. you see, while most people experienced the teenage angst of wanting to be an adult, or feeling that they were waiting for their lives to *begin*, i never really went through that. for me, that exhilarating freedom that comes with the autonomy of shaping your world and who you are, in accordance with no one else’s rules but your own… for me that happened at thirty.
i was thinking about that as i approach my 37th birthday in just a few weeks time. i always have this funny game in my head where i start thinking of myself as older long before the actual turn of the calendar. so really, i’ve been thinking of myself as 37 for a while now, and it has long since occurred to me that 37 is much closer to 40 than i realised.
i suppose i expected that, much like my dramatic and prolonged run-up to 30, i would be filled with dread at that prospect. after all, unless you’re planning to live to 100, 40 is truly “middle aged”. i expected to be struck down early by the doom of a “mid-life crisis” (seeing as how i tend to be ahead of the curve on such things – hell, i had a quarter-century crisis long before they became fashionable).
and perhaps i would be, if, like my 27 year old self, i felt i was living someone else’s idea of an expected life. if i had kids and a mortgage and a car and a flatscreen tv and a responsible career and parent-teacher nights and remodelling projects and vacations to disneyworld and retirement accounts and the local pizza place on speeddial and a sensible haircut and a life insurance policy and the prospect of another 40+ years of the same, i’d be absolutely despondent. i mean no offense to anyone else who has those things. they are good, honest and true things, and they were the things i was headed towards because they were what i thought i was *supposed* to want. but once i threw off those expectations, i realised they were not my idea of a life.
but where i am now is so vastly different from where i was then. the other day jonno and i were discussing where we want to live next – new zealand, australia, or canada? we are discussing the possibility of doing another few months of travelling. i am readying myself to begin training for another marathon. the other day i had to go buy more dishes and silverware for my thanksgiving dinner, and i kinda resented it – for the past three years, we’ve had exactly four forks, four plates, four glasses, and i’ve loved that minimalism. in a few minutes, i’m heading out to the pub for a few drinks. on a school night. because i can. i have a job i could leave in a heartbeat, but provides a decent lifestyle, so i stay on. i have enough money to do the things i really want, and enough flexibility to do them. in short, i *love my life*.
and i live it according to no one’s expectations, no one’s rules but my own. it took me 30 years to achieve a life of my own, and i feel as though i’m just getting started.
if the past six years are anything to go by, i’ve got everything i ever wanted to look forward to.
so bring on 37. hell, bring on 40. i can’t wait to see what’s in store.
i was reading on facebook today about my cousin applying to medical school. and for a split second, i had that stomach-plunging feeling of guilt tinged with shame. only for a split second, but it happened nonetheless. so i shook my head to banish the negative thoughts before they could take root, clicked off the page, and went on with the rest of my evening.
it’s a reflexive reaction, this guilt – the guilt of someone who was always labeled as “gifted”, who was always told how talented and intelligent she was, who was always at the top of the class without even trying… and who has spent the past 20 years doing sweet fuck all.
i remember the first time i was singled out in some way – in the first grade, my teacher took those three of us who could already read and write aside, and gave us the primers for the second grade to begin on. a few years later, i was given an iq test. by the time i got to fourth grade, i was being taken out of class once a week and bussed to an “enrichment programme” to play with computers and work on logic puzzles. by 6th grade the advanced kids were segregated into different classes altogether. by high school, we were being encouraged to take calculus and physics to beef up our scores for a demanding university application. even within in those segregated classes, i was always in the top ten with ease. i applied to two very selective universities, and got into both.
don’t get me wrong – this guilt, this pressure to achieve “great things” has always been completely internally generated. no one ever told me i had to achieve – but with an educational upbringing like that, somewhere the seed that there were *expectations* was planted. to whom much is given, much is expected, after all. so i’ve always had the idea that i was supposed to be a neurosurgeon or human rights lawyer or research scientist – some noble profession that involved academic rigours and long years of selfless sacrifice hunched over in a lab or reading briefs late into the night, but making a notable contribution to the greater good. needless to say, i’ve clearly never pursued those paths. alternatively, i also saw myself perhaps becoming a missionary-type, dedicating my life to helping the poor in underdeveloped countries, leading some important ngo, speaking 4 lanugages and wearing lots of flowing linen and silver jewelery.
yeah, that never quite happened either.
instead, i’ve turned into a middle manager. i live, by all accounts, an ordinary life. i do some interesting things sometimes. i do some boring things a lot of the time. i’m not terribly ambitious about my current career. some of what i do matters to some people – but if i were to die tomorrow, the whole of humanity would not be diminished by my unfinished work. and that’s okay.
i am, by and large, happy. i do things i’ve always wanted to do. my parents and family are proud of me. my friends think i am a good person. it’s all i would ever expect or want for anyone else i know.
yet there are these flashes of doubt. this nagging idea that i have squandered my gifts. every once in a while that internal pressure rises up into my chest and makes me feel guilty for being happy at being ordinary. so when i read about my cousin who is doing research into hiv and preparing for medical school, i can’t help but wonder if i shouldn’t be doing something more than being content with being ordinary.
until i click off the page, pour a glass of wine, settle into the couch with my husband and cat. and spend a few moments in revelling in just how extraordinary being ordinary can be.
ordinary – the alternate routes
I’ve been wasting my days, Good and reckless and true, I have danced in the dark at the edge of the water, Swinging my hips at the black and the blue, When you die will you be surrounded by friends? Will they pray for a heaven out loud, a hope that somehow they will see you again? And at the end of the day, knowing not what it means, Will you stand in the ashes, building a flame for the rest of your dreams? Would you love, could you love to be ordinary? I know its hard but I can’t see you trying, Would you love, could you love to be ordinary? ‘Cause I can’t see you trying now
And I see strangers at war, I see strangers at peace, Still I hang my head in confusion, It’s always been a choice that’s been harder for me, And at the end of the day, knowing not what it means, Will you stand in the ashes, building a flame for the rest of your dreams? Would you love, could you love to be ordinary? I know it’s hard but I can’t see you trying, Would you love, could you love to be ordinary? No I can’t see you trying now
in fact, the imprecision of that statement irritates me – i am a *highly impatient* person. i like to joke amongst my friends that i have the patience of a fruit fly. i want results now, dammit – although if i’m honest, i’d prefer them yesterday.
and so back in march, i started to write a post that surprised me – i’d been doing yoga for a whole year. an entire year of at least 3x a week. a full year of practicing a form of quietude and discipline and patience. and i loved it. i know! i could hardly believe it myself. i felt centred and supple. balanced.
and then i got injured. the hip problems that forced me to drop out of my marathon forced me to give up yoga as well. difficult to do pigeon pose when even sitting on the sofa hurt. i did absolutely no exercise for five months, waiting for the deep pain in my hip to ease, even a little. i could practically feel my tendons shortening, my muscles contracting, as day after day i could do nothing to prevent it.
finally last month, i started beginning to work out again. the hip is still not great, but i couldn’t sit still any more. and i started trying to get back into my yoga.
i feel as weak as a newborn baby and i can barely touch my toes, let alone get chin-to-shin in janu sirsasana the way i used to. it’s so frustrating – to have to start all over again. to have to begin the practice of slowly stretching into the poses over time, building my strength back up for holding poses, ground myself through the shaking and wobbles, reconnect with my centre of gravity and stability.
because more than physical strength or flexibility, that’s what yoga is about. taking time to breathe, balance, centre. all the things i’m not naturally good at.
there’s a saying that’s continually repeated throughout classes: wherever you are today is exactly where you need to be. so here’s where i am, re-learning the lessons, reconnecting with my foundations. rediscovering patience.
the other day i turned around, and september was gone. i’d missed it completely, like a ship passing in the night.
this kind of thing keeps sneaking up on me – the elusive, mercurial nature of the hoursdaysweeks slipping past my consciousness, through my fingers. it’s beginning to feel worrisome – stop! i’m missing stuff! give me my day back!
i am more preoccupied than usual, this is true. i’ve been given something of a promotion at my job, and the unending mountain of things to do which just continues to grow has kept me busy for every working moment for the past few weeks. i come home and collapse in a heap on the couch, with barely enough energy to wield the remote control.
and it’s full autumn now. the advancing bookends of dark, chilly mornings and dark, early evenings tend to close in on the day, compacting it, making the hours feel shorter. rising in darkness, returning in darkness makes it seem like the cycle is speeding up on itself. wait, wasn’t it just dark a few hours ago? what happened to the intervening daylight?
in truth, i fritter hours away. i spend mindless time watching, surfing and tweeting with nothing to show for it. the days fly by indistinguishable from one another in cookie-cutter repetition. no grand projects to work on, nothing new to aim at. and so i kill the restlessness with numbness, an electronic novocaine.
i read an article the other day about a woman who set out to read a book a day for a year. that would once have seemed like a dream project to me, and yet my first thought was, “where would i find the time?”
i am wasteful, wanton with my minutes. i am too lazy to corral them into some semblance of activity or productivity. the modern daydreamer trades in links and bytes.
because compared to many, i have nothing *but* time. no kids, no obligations, i only sleep 5-6 hours a night. even with 10 hours a day for work and travel, that leaves me with 8 hours a day during the week, and (with a lie in) 16 hours on the weekend. that’s 72 free hours a week. or 3,744 hours a year. i have 13,478,400 seconds at my disposal.
i am ashamed to admit that poetry, once as essential to my being as drawing breath, has faded amongst the familiar dusty “hobbies” that take time and attention and commitment, that sit on a shelf in the dim background like so much unnoticed wallpaper.
i used to write poetry ceaselessly. i used to write urgently, with the need to fill the page and spillover, writing only to *let the words out* as they demanded to be, tumbling over each other in their rush to make themselves known, claim their space.
these days i rarely do. the truth of it is, writing is easy, it’s -necessary- when your insides are all stirred up.
it’s hard to write about contentment.
that’s not a bad thing.
but it feels there is a part of me missing – some numb and disused limb that has atrophied. i miss the way words made me well up, the way they could light up my nerves and explode my heart. that’s fucking power. i miss it.
and so in that vein, i would like to offer you a little something i’ve written… but i don’t know if i’m brave enough for that. i find my stuff hopelessly derivative and gooey – i read it now and it makes me cringe a little.
so instead: one of my all time favourites (though not british, i’m afraid). perfect in its simplicity, simple in its perfection, it resounds within me like a clanging echo, banging around in my chest, which thumps a loud “yes” in reply.
Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
i want my grandfather to die, because i know if he were aware of the state he’s now in, he would want to be dead. he who owned a gun and would nonchalantly talk about using it against himself, can no longer manage a steak knife. he who took such pride in his perfect posture and thick black hair, has crumpled in on himself. he who piloted the plane that was my very earliest memory, and prized his freedom above all else, is locked behind safety doors. he who spent his life as a chemical engineer, can no longer tie his shoes. he who never wanted to be a burden on his family, is legally incompetent of mind and infirm of body. those essential things that made him the man he was so proud to be, have been torn away from him – and if he could have, he would have gone down fighting tooth and nail to go out with them. he is no longer aware of who he once was – but who he once was would rather die, than be who he is now.
i want my grandfather to die because at this present moment, he is happy. because i know that the path which lies ahead only becomes more distressing and debilitating. because i know there is no kind or peaceful ending for this cruel disease, there are no mercies. for right now, he is happy in his simple way. singing music, eating food, retelling times half-remembered, relaxing into a soft touch. but i know full well, that this will not last – there is future fear and sickness that i only wish he could be spared. he is happy because he knows none of this.
i want my grandfather to die because it’s killing my mother. it’s killing me to watch my mother lose her father in a thousand tiny moments, eroded memory by cherished memory, dignity by precious dignity. it’s killing me to see her try to be strong as he grows ever frailer. it’s killing me to watch her try to hold on to a ghost. it’s killing me to watch her watch him vanish in front of her eyes. it’s killing me to watch her see herself one day in his shoes.
i want my grandfather to die because the reasons i have for wanting him to live are so selfish, so cowardly. it’s me who is worried about grief and the avoidance of pain. it’s me who can’t bear the sadness that he no longer remembers me. it’s me who is too weak to watch him shuffle off for a diaper change, to watch him eat his meals with his fingers, to watch him become more childlike each time i visit. it’s me who can’t stand it when i feel his papery hand in mine, when i tuck his thinning hair behind his ears, when i tell him i love him and he says “i love you” back, not knowing who i am. it’s me who is too scared of a time when he can’t say it back. i want my grandfather to die because i cannot cope with the process of losing him. the steady, irreversible loss that wears away at my heart.
i don’t want my grandfather to die – but he is dying. i don’t want my grandfather to die. but my grandfather – strong, fiercely independent, pilot, engineer, devoted husband, proud father – is long gone.
if you were meeting your mate for the first time today, would you fall in love with them all over again? i mean, of course you would love them – the accumulation of shared experience and emotion through the years creates the kind of bonds that are hard to untangle. but would you fall in love with them? you being the person you are now, they being the person they have become, but both different than you were, in large part because of each other?
i ask because i saw (500) days of summer the other day. at first i was worried it might be just another manic pixie dream girl movie. the kind where the woman (in this case, “summer”) exists just to be an irrepressibly bubbly and eccentric muse to the male. and yes, it has certain cutesy elements of that kind of movie, but not overly so. and then when i began getting into it, i started to think that maybe the theme of the movie was about summer’s need to live life on her own terms and the lessons that it teaches the man (in this case, “tom”) about pursuing dreams. which it partly is as well – but that’s not really the point either.
and what we find in the end (and actually, what we’ve really known all along – as the narrator warns us in the first frame, “this is not a love story”), is that this story of a woman and a man is a modern variation on an old classic: unrequited love. or perhaps, not completely unrequited – because as the movie unfolds, we can see how in another time and another place, summer and tom might have had a future. summer and tom have the same taste in music. summer and tom have a similar quirky sense of humour. summer and tom tick all the right boxes, and even with the narrator’s warning in the back of our head, it’s both easy to forget and hard to understand how they don’t end up together. because they don’t. i’m not giving anything away in telling you that. but in spite of the warning, we the audience find ourselves getting sucked into seeing what we want to see in the relationship, much the way tom does. we assume that there’s a happy ending waiting for us, and so we frame everything we see through that lens.
the problem is, that in spite of all outward indicators of compatibility and romance, summer’s not in love. she sees clearly what tom cannot: they are not meant to be. for whatever reason, it’s just not going to work out, and no amount of wishing will change that. it’s a scenario that’s so relatable – we’ve all been there before, wearing our hearts on our sleeve, and it turns us inside out with the ache of it. we get caught up in thinking about what might have happened in an alternate universe where the pieces all click into place, and instead willfully ignore the painful reality of the mashed edges.
but in the movie, as in real life, we eventually learn that it’s only by letting go of the fantasy of what might have been, that we can allow space for someone new. finding someone with whom the stars align in the right sort of way to be a better fit than we could have ever imagined. an opportunity we might have overlooked if we were still wallowing in the place where the broken off relationship left us. the right person, in the right place, at the right time, appearing before us, and which we can only see when we have the clarity of experience.
which brings me back to my original question. because i have to wonder if part of finding the person you connect with, is also finding the person you don’t? the ability to move past the things that didn’t work out in order to be open to the one that does? can you really appreciate someone’s strengths (and vulnerabilities) without the benefit of hindsight?
in the unique triumvirate of right person/right place/right time that creates the possibility for a lasting and happy relationship, aren’t right place and right time just as important, (or perhaps even more so), than right person? and if so, wouldn’t meeting your spouse at a different place and time change the outcome and your future? in a reconfigured landscape, would we still recognise the one we love?
the narrator of the movie tells us, “this is not a love story”. but you know, it kind of is. after all, when so many of the circumstances that lead you to the right person – the one who fits, the one with no mashed edges, the one who *loves you back* – are left to the vagaries of fate… how could it be anything else?
In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And one sweet statue of a child stood by.
back when i was in my early twenties, i had blue hair. i had green hair, i had purple striped hair, i had white hair. i put holes in my nose and my lip. i wore a crew cut. i had visible tattoos (back when few people did). i wore combat boots.
i did all those things as a way of visibly setting myself apart. i wanted to be separate, unique, different. but more than anything, i wanted to rebel. i wanted people to know just by looking at me, that i was not someone to be trifled with. that i had my set of strong, outspoken opinions and that i didn’t give a shit about theirs.
i rebelled in other way too. i dropped out of university. i moved to new york and i moved to an unsavoury part of town. i took up smoking. i got engaged at 19. whatever was expected of me, i set out to do the exact opposite of. i did daring and sometimes unsafe things. i didn’t want to be confined, easily pinned or compartmentalised. being a “rebel” was absolutely central to the way i identified myself at the time, and i didn’t want the expectations of others to dictate my life. perhaps i wouldn’t have put it in so many words – in fact, if you’d told me i was doing those things specifically as acts of rebellion, i would have told you to fuck off. (after all, i would not be so easily categorised!) but i did those things as a decidedly deliberate way of asserting my freedom, my adulthood, my life.
ha! i was so very terribly conventional in my enthusiastic attempts to be unconventional.
needless to say, as i approach my forties, i no longer do those kinds of things – or if i do, i do them for very different reasons. in fact, if you ask me to identify myself today, i would probably say that i’m a woman, runner, expat, liberal, friend, advocate, (maybe even wife, although i rarely use that term out loud or in my own thoughts). my 20-something resolute conviction of self as rebel doesn’t even enter the picture.
how is it that something once so essential to how i felt and thought about myself, so easily slipped away? and what’s more: why don’t i miss it?
the thing that i understand now in hindsight, is how very intertwined my acts of rebellion and identity were. where i previously had no well-formed identity, i believed you *had* to rebel in order to establish yourself in the world, stake your claim on adulthood. that you had to show you could think and act for yourself by casting off all you’d previously been taught. as you get older, of course, you realise that the thing about rebellion, the reason it is overwhelmingly the domain of the young, is because defining one’s self in opposition to, or in defiance of something, takes so much focus and energy. to rail against the rules takes a lot of anger. and i found (and would guess that most people also find) that as my world got broader with age and experience, those things were in much shorter supply. once you travel a bit, try different careers, try different relationships, try different personas…the perspective from which you view the world, and your context in it, inevitably shifts. of course, when you’re young, you don’t believe that it will, but it does – sometimes in radical and unpredictable ways. it becomes harder to maintain a well-honed ire. but what becomes clearer and clearer to me with each passing year is this: there are so many worthwhile pursuits and people, and our time is so fleeting – you begin to weigh up the cost/benefit ratio before even engaging. is it really worth it to me to get wound up? is this something deserving of my anger? and do i want to spend any more of my life being angry than is absolutely necessary? because rebellion without anger is just posturing – if you’re going to truly rebel, you have to invest something of yourself. there are so many things to be angry about in this world, that you could spend all your days ranting and raving. but is being consumed by that kind of anger every day, any way to live? quite frankly, as i continue to learn and understand more about the world, that investment in anger just doesn’t seem like it gets such a great return.
along those same lines, the other thing you learn as you age is just how much people are all – *we* are all – so much more alike than we are different. that person whose personal politics are 180 degrees from your own? in your twenties, that person represents everything you detest. that person is the straw man for any and all of societies failings. that person is someone you strive to be the exact opposite of. but as you meet more people from all walks of life, with views and beliefs that don’t jibe with your own, a curious softening happens. you discuss, you debate, you defend… and it slowly, insidiously begins to dawn on you that more often than not, they want to achieve the same ends as you… they just have very different opinions as to how to go about it. the wider range of people you encounter, and the more conversations you have with individuals that challenge the facile stereotypes, the harder it becomes to revile them. how do you rebel against someone and something you know so well? being able to see and understand all facets of the argument not only makes you more informed, well rounded person – it makes it harder to take sides. if rebelling is charging left in a right leaning world, what do you rebel against when you find youself drifting towards the middle?
and while youth and inexperience accounted for so much, there’s something else that characterised that time in my life: a deliberate obstinance. the headstrong decisions to do things i knew probably weren’t good for me, even as i chose to ignore my own better judgment. that need to prove that i could handle whatever happened, even when the difficult situations i found myself in were ones of my own making. the freedom to make poor choices may be a right of adulthood, but in that heady freedom got lost the responsibility to decide well. so many of those choices were foolhardy, in retrospect – i can acknowledge that now, without losing face. because through those mistakes i’ve come to realise that making decisions from a place of defiance is not always the best idea. rebellion and wisdom often work at cross purposes, so the impulse to zig where i should have zagged wasn’t about proving i was mature – it was the equivalent of stomping my feet. it was only as the wisdom and consequences of those bad decisions sank in, that i realised that testing one’s freedom to fuck up, by deciding to fuck up, isn’t the most advisable course of action.
and finally, i’m also a lot gentler on *myself* as i’m older. i don’t need to be so harsh, to maintain such stringent adherence to one party line or another. i can encompass a whole multitude of contradictory things and still maintain my core beliefs. as i’ve grown and learned more about who i am, i no longer need to define myself so narrowly – or even at all. i am a woman, expat, runner, feminist, even wife – and if you ask me, those might be the words i’d use. but my truer self would say that i don’t need the security of well-worn labels. i don’t feel the need to tell people i am those things, because none of those things are who i am. they are only partial, contextual descriptors, at best – they are limiting. there is more to me than any one label, and now that i am more secure in myself, i no longer need that “rebel” tag that i used to wear so proudly. because as much as i wore that label, it also wore me.
in the end, my rebellion, like that of so many others, spoke most directly of an insecurity within. the outward crutch of someone who was trying too hard to find herself by identifying what she was not. and in discovering myself, however belatedly, finding i no longer needed to go to such great lengths. that angry, defiant, young woman, who wanted so badly to be her own person, finally is.
as it turns out, she’s not so angry, not so defiant… and not so young.
Yesterday, I sat down to write about Hillary Clinton. I wanted to write about how her recent stern retort in the Congo was interpreted as “losing it”. How the papers then went on and on attributing it to how she’d recently been “overshadowed” by Bill’s rescue mission in north korea . How if the situations were reversed, no one would ever dare ascribe what boils down to jealousy, to a man.
I sat down to write about it, and I couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t work up the requisite lather to expound on the media misogyny. It’s been happening a lot lately. A couple of people I know recently wrote impassioned blogs about the healthcare fiasco – blogs that got lots, and lots of comments and debate. And for a split second, I regretted not writing one of my own – but only for a split second. See, I know what kind of time and effort and energy goes into crafting a blog post like that. There’s research and reworking and balancing the right amount of emotion with facts. But mostly, you need a burning desire to engage the debate.
I’ve known for many years that it’s not possible to change people’s minds. That people’s beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies is such a truism that there’s a technical term for it: confirmation bias. People seek out information that confirms what they want to think, not information that contravenes it. If people want to believe that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim socialist Nazi, or that the 9/11 attacks were a government plot, or that man never landed on the moon, then no amount of objective information will change their mind. It’s like trying to argue with people who believe the world is flat. In fact, it can harden their resolve in their position, rather than weaken it. The more people invest in their beliefs, the more they have to lose if they’re threatened, and the harder they will fight to preserve them.
In short? Head, meet brick wall.
So when I rant about something political, I don’t actually believe I’m influencing anyone who doesn’t want to. When I’m ranting, it’s because I’m angry and venting, not because I think I might convert anyone from the other side. I have, however, previously always been happy to engage the debate. Pointedly so. Vociferously so.
And now… I’m just not. I’m tired or arguing just for argument’s sake. If it won’t make any difference in how people vote or think or behave, why bother? And I’m more than a little saddened by the extraordinary capacity for people to belief outrageously outlandish things, out of a desperate need to protect their own self interests at the expense of others. Arguing against stuff like that just seems like so much wasted breath lately. Wasted time and energy that could be put towards other things, rather than plugging away behind a computer hoping that if i just come up with just the right turn of phrase, my position will be so convincing that people will have to agree. Debating can be fun, but getting all worked up to debate well is soooo draining. More and more, I find myself letting the debate go – because life is too short to spend it throwing sand into the wind, and I’m getting too old to care much what other people think.
all the above? i sat down and wrote all that out yesterday morning. then yesterday evening, i read this, which is, on the face of it, about feminism, but the upshot of which is: you gotta represent. people don’t change their minds overnight, and maybe they sometimes don’t change them at all, but when they do, it’s because they hear about stuff and think about stuff said by people for whom it matters. people who are not an abstract hypothetical, and who are not an anonymous statistic, but people who hold their beliefs dear because they lie at the core of who they are and how they live their lives.
it’s given me a lot to chew on. do i, in some small way, influence people who might otherwise not be swayed? or is taking on the debate as futile and hopeless as it feels sometimes? does it invigorate me, or sap my energy? a few years ago, this wouldn’t even have been a question – am i just getting soft with age?
i know that in my real day-to-day personal life, i represent. so the question that i’ve been mulling since yesterday then, is: is this blog an extension of that? or does time spent debating here on the page take away from time spent *living my life*?
this is the problem: i am an inveterate muser, hopelessly mawkish, sappy and sentimental. a melancholy baby.
give me the right soundtrack and the right kind of afternoon-tinged sunlight, and i find myself tripping down that lane again. the endless lane of what ifs and what could-have-beens. the wonderings of who and what i left behind in my headlong, headstrong rush.
i rush ahead, for fear of being left behind. and so i crash forward full steam, all the while looking back. i make burn-bridges decisions, and then stand on the other shore, watching the flames and wondering why i’ve cut myself off from the mainland.
does everyone do this? think about people they used to know and people they used to be, and wonder just why the hell exactly they turned left instead of right?
and maybe everyone does it, but probably few do it with my special talent for wallowing in the heart-filled heartsickness of wishing. i revel in them, these waves of longing and ambivalence and memory. i take immense pleasure in the self-centred act of surrendering to the waves. allowing them to wash over me, drown me with their sweet sorrow. it’s the beauty of a really poignant song that reminds me of an affair that ended badly, but was oh so fun while it lasted. it’s the smell of late summer afternoons that brings me back to a place were i was once lonely, but which i filled with wine and poetry and hours of museums. it’s the flashback to a quiet walk in the fog with a good friend, who i did not then know i would never see again.
see? told you i was good at it.
i could turn it off, if i wanted to, i suppose. i sometimes suppose i should – it has the effect of stirring me to disenchantment. the present can never answer the questions of the past, or fulfill those old desires.
but there is a richness to those moments – holding pleasure and pain in the same instant can be exquisite. a complexity that brings each feeling to its fullest expression. a pairing of acidity with sun-ripened sweetness.
and so i wallow. i turn up the music, pour some more red, pore over old words, old photos. i let my eyes fill up, just because.
because life is beautiful and sad and full of songs and memories that can make you cry. because i am an inveterate muser, a melancholy baby.
there are some days as an expat, when you just wake up with your head in the wrong country. you feel yourself moving through the time and space where you are physically present, but it feels like floating in parallel universe – there is a disconnect, a doubling of vision that you just can’t seem to shrug off. a bout of wrong country-itis, like a feverish dream. i’m gliding through my regular workplace, and when i catch a glimpse out the window, am genuinely surprised to see a london skyline instead of a boston one. my brain has slipped into a different groove, like a record player needle sliding sideways with jarring effect onto a different track. perhaps it’s a symptom of the similarity of big cities that allows your mind to play tricks on you – all the samey-sameness of crowded pavements, grey buildings and public transport, so that on any given morning it feels i could be heading to work in any generic urban setting. or maybe it’s something about the light that morning that reminds me subconsciously of a particular previous life, and creates an alternate reality if only for a few seconds. i’m not sure why it happens, but it’s disconcertingly random, and is the only true twang of homesickness i generally get these days, so it blindsides me with the intensity of it – the force of here and now crunching up against the mental holiday.
and as much as i keep shaking my head to try to clear the fog and bring the picture back into focus, no matter how hard i try, i can’t seem to shake the hooked pangs of longing that have gotten under my skin and into my veins, trailing along behind me with the mist of memory, for the rest of the day.
my dad is pretty crazy. he turns 60 in just a few days, and when i was recently home, i spent father’s day with him. it goes like this: the plan is originally to go out for some brunch, so when i arrive at about 11:00, i’m dressed to head out to a restaurant. after a few cups of coffee and some chat, my dad says, “we can go in a just a sec, but i just need your help with something first. it’ll take two minutes.”
so he, my stepmum, and i all head outside to the back garden. it was raining pretty steadily earlier, and had now thinned to a persistent drizzle, but we are definitely getting damp. my dad shows me a tree he’s been working on taking down – a 30 ft pine in the corner along the neighbours’ fences that caught some fatal tree disease and needed to be chopped down. the tree was probably half down, with a good 12 feet of trunk remaining, and at the top, a large, 6 ft log was suspended by a chain. as he clambers up a ladder perched precariously against the tree, he tells us he needs us to pull on a nylon rope which would lift the weight of the log enough so that he could unchain it from its mooring, and lower it safely to the ground on his side of the fence.
so, like fools, my stepmother and i are planting our feet in the mud, heaving at a wet nylon rope to try to lift this log in the air. of course, the log gets caught on an errant branch, so my dad begins poking at it with a big sick, trying to swing it free. that doesn’t work, so he begins hacking at the branch with a handsaw. it comes free from the first branch, only to get caught on another on the way down, and this scenario repeats itself a few times before finally, a half hour later, the log is on the ground.
my dad has mist on his glasses, bark bits in his silver hair, mud on his jeans, and bleeding knuckles. “okay,” he says. “let’s go eat.” i turn to him and say, “you know, it just wouldn’t be father’s day unless you were 10 feet up a ladder, hacking at a tree in the rain.”
that’s the kind of thing my dad does all the time. i am consistently getting emails from him about all the crazy things he does. how he jumped into the ocean in a speedo and santa hat for charity (though i really didn’t need to see the picture!). how he challenged his 30-something staff members at work to a stair climbing race. how he’s sailing his boat down to north carolina singlehandedly. how he’s planning to bungee jump off the same dam james bond did in the opening scene of “goldeneye”. how for his 60th birthday, he wants to jump into boston harbour. how he was dancing in the square in venice with wild abandon when the police came along to break it up. how he was dancing in harvard square to some street performer playing folk music. even as a kid, he was always the father who used a real butchers bone in the halloween costume, who brought his honeybees into school for show and tell, who tried to build a log cabin in the woods, who learned to ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time, who liked to jump and click his heels together to show off. he was the kind of father who was always full of loopy ideas and enthusiasm in equal amounts, always singing and dancing and trying new things and throwing caution to the wind. and dancing, always dancing. the kind of unselfconscious dancing that doesn’t need a rhyme or reason or even a partner.
and i was always the painfully shy girl dying in the corner of embarrassment. my personality could not have been more different from my dad’s. i was the kind of girl who was terrified to do anything new for fear of getting it “wrong”. my deepest desire was to not stand out in any way, shape, or form. to be unexceptionally bland and undistinguishable in every way. attracting no attention, blending seamlessly with the wallpaper. i was quiet and sober and easily flustered. i hated being humiliated by my dad’s exuberance, as wanted nothing more than to slip through the floor cracks every time he acted goofy or silly. and anything i was uncertain of, or didn’t know how to do well was out of the question – i was so fearful of looking foolish, that i never tried anything at all.
i bring all this up, because the other day, my friends dragged me along to something called ceilidh dancing. i honestly hadn’t a clue what i was in for, and would never have agreed to go if i’d only known it was a form of scottish square dancing. so when we arrived at the big school-style auditorium and people began lining up in kilts and the fiddle began warming up, i parked myself on the bleachers and settled in with a beer.
you know how it goes next: prancing and dancing and drinking and sweating and laughing harder than i have in a very long time, with plenty of bruised toes to remember it by the next day. my dad would have loved it.
this didn’t start out to be a story about my father – only about this dance i went to the other night and wound up enjoying immensely in spite of myself. but i guess i couldn’t help it. it seems, somewhere tangled deep in my dna, even with all my years of cringing and blushing every time my dad unhesitatingly did something kooky or made a fool of himself, it turns out i am my father’s daughter after all.
i’m going to admit, right here, right now: sometimes, i have no idea why i’m married.
the thing is, i’m not alone. i was reading bitch ph.d’s analysis of sandra tsing-loh’s piece in the atlantic the other day. they both talk about the impossible standards we as a society set for marriage, the upshot of which is:
The Good Marriage is Supposed to be:
sexually monogamous
between one man and one woman (even though, or rather because, men and women Are Different)
for their entire lives
begun early enough that they can have children, plural, (if they want to), without having to go through infertility treatment
passionate, again, for their entire lives
respectful at all times
mutually supportive, at all times
economically successful
able to accommodate two careers, if so desired
a friendship
something you “work” at, but it’s not supposed to feel like work
flirty–but only with each other
not jealous
a PIllar of Society
more than these unwritten rules, as a society, we bully, cajole, and shame people into *never, ever admitting there might god-forbid possible be anything wrong* with our perfect unions. it starts when we’re young, when we feed children fairytales about “soulmates” and fateful signs like magic glass slippers that are supposed to tell you s/he’s “the one”. men grow up believing they must be strong protectors and providers, and women grow up fantasizing about their wedding day.
if i’m honest, in my heart of hearts, i think it’s all bullshit.
my parents divorced after 20 years of marriage, in spectacular meltdown fashion. i got married early, and divorced even earlier. the idea that we’re bound to be with just one person in a world of over 6 billion is ludicrous. the idea that we will stay in love with one person into old age is ridiculously improbable. that all the vicissitudes of children, and careers, and money, and sex, and health, and family… that all that will leave our personas unchanged, leave our relationships untouched… well, it’s bullshit. change is inescapable and impossible to predict. what on earth makes us think that the way we feel about each other is immune to those kinds of seismic forces?
and yet, we’re not allowed to ever admit to imperfections. to be brutally honest and say that there are days when we would happily walk out the door. to allow that, hell yes, it feels like work sometimes. that sometimes we deliberately inflict pain, and sometimes we are cruel and nasty and take it out of the other person for no good reason. or that even worse, we too argue about the indescribably mundane money and sex. that some days we fantasize about being someone different, being with someone different, however fleeting. and i say “we” with confidence, because i know i am not alone. people who say they never think or feel that way are flat-out lying.
we have unachievable expectations of our relationships, and unbelieveable guilt when we don’t meet them.
being in a relationship where you have to keep up pretenses that everything is always okay, all the time, is exhausting and incredibly isolating, and it puts every other couple under additional pressure to do the same. it’s so incredibly, pathetically phoney. when my first marriage was crumbing, we knew sometime after thanksgiving that it was over. and yet, we decided not to tell anyone in our families until well into the new year, for fear of “ruining their holidays”. so we pretended for 3 more months to keep up appearances. much worse than the breakup, was the amount of control it took not to break down during those three months. i look back on that time and think…why?
but for some reason, we continue to perpetuate this illusion. for those who are single, we don’t want to sour them against the dream of an ideal partnership. and for those who are paired, we don’t want to admit that our relationship might not measure up against (our perceived image of) theirs. no one wants to be the first to admit to shortcomings. the stakes are too high – when we live in a society that has invested so much in the construct of marriage, foibles are not allowed.
even when anyone who’s ever been in a long term relationship knows they are very, very real.
marriage is a fantasy that the reality can never live up to, and the odds start out against you and only get worse as time goes on – as personalities and pettiness and pedestrian problems grate. even under the best of circumstance, the statistics tell us there’s only a 50/50 chance you’ll make it. so yes, there are days when i have no idea why the hell i’m married. through a combination of work (yes, work), luck, and grace on the part of my significant other, they are exceedingly rare. i am, in the main, very happy. and against all odds, i hope to stay that way. (even as i write that, it feels like i’m qualifying my previous statement; i’m not, but i don’t wish to alarm readers who know me and my husband in real life!) but every time i paste on a faux happy-wife smile for the sake of others (and i freely admit to having done that), i wonder who i’m doing the greater disservice to: myself or my audience?
in spite of all the bullshit that goes with being married, and all the bullshit i admit to participating in, and all the bullshit beliefs we buy into… i’m still married, and glad of it. i feel like i shouldn’t say that after my diatribe above, but i’d be lying if i didn’t. so while i will admit to days when i don’t know why i’m a participant in this crazy and unrealistic institution, i will also admit to wanting to believe in it with all my heart.
in a world where 50% of all marriages end up crashing and burning… there’s also 50% who stay together. we all line up at the altar thinking we’re in that other half, and we don’t complain about the glass slipper that pinches, because hell, at least we’ve found one that almost fits, so we should just shuddup and feel lucky already.
and even though i may not like the odds, it seems i’m willing to play them all the same.
revelator – gillian welch
