Speaking of childbirth (with author Mary Karr)

I've been writing and photographing peace and love a lot lately because it's Christmas, of course. Plus I'm an ardent advocate of peace and love. But there's really one more thing we must talk about since it is December 25.

Childbirth.

Since I have the luxury of having (now looking at my watch) four days off from work so far, I got to read. That's the thing you do with bound pages of ideas when you have more than five minutes of interrupted time while rocking in a chair next to a window of natural winter light that bounces off white snow. Turn on the fire place, if necessary.

I'm reading Mary Karr's "Lit." You may recognize Mary Karr as the author of the now famous "Liar's Club" which changed the way memoir was viewed in the literary world. Mary Karr was one of those who made creative nonfiction cool, and also credible. She writes her life like a painter paints. It's not self-absorbed, but totally truthfully, and painfully hilarious. She describes her rural Texas upbringing as being raised in the ring-worm belt. She makes trauma funny, while somehow maintaining the dignity of her characters, aka, her family.

She can write a metaphor like, like. . .I can't write a metaphor. I could concentrate for a day and not come up with a good metaphor. Her metaphors ooze out of her pours. She drips them from her eyeballs. She drops them from her fingertips. Pages and page of amazing, incredible metaphors and images. (She talks them too, pick them out in her video below.) For months I've been wanting to just sit and write them down. Finally, I sat down yesterday, the morning of Christmas eve, and wrote down Mary Karr's words from chapter 15 of "Lit," her story of childbirth, entitled Journey of the Magi:

Mary Karr's childbirth metaphors:

mythical mothers: "pop out babies like pieces of toast"
herself in third trimester: "rocking all night like some bulbous figure in a horror movie"
the hospital: "treating the mother like a piece of furniture"
husband's head while coaching delivery: "like a drop of water squeezed from a turkey baster"
delivery: "a good twenty hours of exorcism-quality dismay"
delivery: "the nurse with the tiny white head and garantuan blue eyes -- real crocodile-sized peepers -- leans over me saying, Breath. . ."
take a guess: "thunderclap of pain"
baby and mother's pulse: "they syncopate somehow like tom-toms from far off villages."
other baby: "this kid has a face like a caved in squash"
other baby: "his full head of hair lends him a werewolf aspect"
her baby, comparing with roommate's werewolf baby: "bald as a bubble infant"
baby in first week: "wails like a freight train"
to other mother with ugly baby: "smile welded in my face"

I didn't plan to read this chapter on the eve of the commemoration of the most famous childbirth in the history of the world, but since I did, I'm so happy I could write down the metaphors. And then color them in. And then blog about it.

The cool think about falling in love with an author in this day and age is you can follow her on Facebook, and watch her you tube videos. And suggest to your kid to apply to the college where she teaches.  (Actually Teen Girl came up with this idea all her own. One of the zillion campuses she's considering. I'm game.)And figure out if you can get to a writing workshop where she's presenting. Or possibly, just read more chapters.

Christmas vacation and me get along very well. I hope you enjoy this video I've uploaded, Mary Karr herself talking about her book, "Lit." I recommend.

Love to you and yours

Yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

The guy who lives on our sidewalk -- a Christmas message

Last Christmas, the homeless guy who lives on the sidewalk outside our church building decorated the courtyard tree with soda bottles. Ten to 20 of those ornament-looking Coke bottles were artfully placed on the branches of a fur tree outside the office door. Each bulb-like drink container had the first name of a person on it. Most of us knew that homeless people slept in the courtyard, protected under the veranda of solid rock. What we didn’t know before was that one of them had a special interest in Christmas decorations. We never found out who all those names represented. I imagined them to be people who he had loved and lost, maybe people from his former life before living on the streets, or our sidewalk.

In a way it seems cold to “let” homeless people sleep outside the church building. Why don’t we let them sleep inside? Why don’t we help them? Why don’t we get them shelter and services? Those questions are valid and they are certainly ours to answer. Why don’t we?

It was hard to catch up with the homeless guy who decorated the tree with pop bottles because he was always careful to be gone at dawn; he didn’t want to be seen. There’s a vulnerability to being homeless that we can’t understand – the rule of law is different for that population. Being seen means being hurt, assaulted, jailed, robbed, or killed. Just like the characters in Cormac McCarthy’s book, “The Road.”  If you don’t have a home base, you lay yourself bare to all the ugliest aspects of human nature because you are no longer seen. As we all know, human beings can get pretty hideous when no one is looking.

Last Christmas, Bob and other church staff sought to figure out who exactly the tree elf was. Turns out it was a man named David. We don’t know his story. We don’t know how he ended up living on our sidewalk. Or why he doesn’t stay at the brand new homeless shelter a few blocks away. But he has been showing himself more lately, especially around the tasks of decorating for Christmas.

A couple months ago he came inside on a Wednesday night, when the church serves a delicious full course meal on a weekly basis for whoever shows up. Did he want to join us for the meal? No, he didn’t. He wasn’t much for crowds. But he did accept a to-go package of hot food. After hearing about him for about a year, that was the first time I actually saw him. Since then, he has helped set up the large wooden crèche outside and the tall trees inside. He must be strong because those things are heavy. Recently, he has also started to come inside and eat on Wednesday nights. We’ve officially met.

This morning after services, a bunch of people stuck around to install the “floating stars” art show for Christmas Eve and Christmas. There was a glorious hum of community all about the job of hanging 300 stars on wires that were strung back and forth atop the pews in the sanctuary. It required an industrial sized scaffold to be wheeled up and down the center aisle, and people without vertigo to stand atop that lift to hook the stars onto the wires. I was there taking pictures and I saw David standing in the back watching. By now, I’m thinking that he seems to magically appear whenever there’s some kind of Christmas decorating going on. Not knowing if he remembered me, I introduced myself again.

“Are you going to help?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s a lot of people”

I continued with my amateur photography project, trying to get as many angles as I could. I hoped to capture the height of the stars and the depth of the togetherness. It didn’t take long before I noticed David in the middle of the action, he was up front attaching strings to stars, preparing them for placement in the heavens. He’s in my video below, but you won’t be able to pick him out because he blends in. He blends in because in this congregation we are unified by peace and love. 

In this church we don’t tell people they’re going to hell if they’re gay. (And we don't harass them if they are transgender.)

In this church we don’t make pronouncements that violence is a result of ungodliness. (And we don't sell cheap semi-automatic weapons.)

In this church we don’t believe that anyone is illegal. (And we don't ask for identification.)

In this church we don’t say you have to dress up or dress down. (You don't have to look good but you can if you want. Nor do you have to appear just humble enough to look pious. Come as you are.)

In this congregation we will sing and pray and dance and cook and share with anyone who will join us. And if they can’t join us, we will go to them – to the homeless shelters and hospitals and nursing homes and HIV/AIDs clinics and prisons and substance abuse recovery centers and refugee camps. And if we can’t go to them, we will send money to entities who can. And if they sleep on our sidewalks, we will let them. And if they walk into our office and ask for food, gas, bus tokens, diapers, or money to pay their utility bill, we will give it to them (after some checking around, etc, etc.) And if I have teenagers who are mysterious, they will mentor them. And if I am lonely, they will provide me friends. If I'm sad, they will play magnificent music and display splendid art. You get the idea.  

By now the stars are probably hung, all ready for the thousand or so people who will come for Christmas Eve services tomorrow night. I’m hoping David will come inside this year. If not, he will when he’s ready.

Ready or not, you’re all invited too.

This old house

Obviously, it's a blizzard here now,
but here's to thinking of warmer times in our backyard.
Or just plain more time.  

I'd like to say that we have a driveway. But we don't. We have a parking lot. And for those who count garage stalls, we have four.

When Bob searched for houses in Des Moines over five years ago, I was home sick in St. Paul. I was cooler than sick, I was radioactive sick, quarantined during my nuclear treatment for thyroid cancer. I like throwing in that N-word along with the C-word, because they sound so dramatic together. The reality was much less awesome. It involved a white world-spinning headache and ceramic-hugging vomit. The point though, for this story, is that I didn't get to help pick out our house.

When the good people at St. John's Lutheran Church in downtown Des Moines decided to interview Bob to be their associate pastor (an action that gave us more hope than you can ever, ever imagine, but that too is another story), Bob drove from St. Paul to Des Moines by himself to interview (driving four hours solo was in itself was a miracle because just a few months prior I had been spoon feeding him for loss of liver function, another story). The third time Bob interviewed at St. John's it was serious enough to warrant finding a house real quick. We would be moving from six years in student apartments to a full fledged house with a fully equipped yard.

My new house criteria was simple. I wanted an updated bathroom or two, a neighborhood with kids, and a specific school district. That's all.

The realtor was tricky. He was showing Bob houses while I was laying sick on a bed in a stark room rented in Stub Hall, a kind of monastic-style temporary housing option on the campus of Luther Seminary, my body absorbing that nasty radioactive pill. No TV, no radio, no pictures on the wall, just a bed and a little bathroom. I was there because I couldn't share a toilet with my kids during the radiation treatment. I didn't care about the lack of stimuli because I was so dang sick. I laid in bed fairly content to stare at the ceiling in quiet.

The realtor knew what information to withhold from me, and which information to showcase to me, even from afar. As I retreated peacefully in the blank four walls of that little dorm room, a picture text came to me on my old-style cell phone. It was from that sneaky house salesman who didn't send me an image of the very long driveway that would need plowing in the winter, nor the huge yard that would need mowing in the summer, nor the two garages that would fill up with stuff in the meantime, nor the extensive lower level man cave that would flood the following season, nor the back yard swimming pool which I have renamed our private vortex of time-suck and money-take. This house was pure Bob, and the realtor knew it. This house was enough to make up for Bob's 46 years of living in the urban core of Brooklyn, New York, where yards are postage stamps and parking spaces are the next place someone pulls out of that you are luck enough to notice after driving around the block a few times.

He sent me a picture of the kitchen island and nothing else. It worked. I forgot to ask about the bathrooms and everything else. I didn't think about those silly details of a house that you forget to ask about when you fall in love with just one aspect of it. All I could see was the elaborate dinner parties that we would host on that island.

Details aren't always helpful anyway. If you knew everything, you'd never do anything. It's easy to look back and play the coulda woulda game. Besides, if time is an indicator of love, then Bob has more than proven his adoration for this place. He is a one-man grounds keeper, pool-boy, and home remodel-er. Sadly, I am no help at all. When it comes down to it, I'm kind of a condo-style lady. Yet when our lot is full of cars, yard full of guests, pool full of kids, trees full of laughter, I can see Bob's vision of hospitality. That's what this is all about. It's for the times when we can surround ourselves in community, which is the best source of all healing. Second guessing decisions is easy, even when you know it could have been far worse. This makes no sense. It's harder to absorb everything around you and just let it be and enjoy. Which is what I'm about to do starting now. Breath, just breath. Be thankful, be alive. Be thankful to be alive. Starting now. Exactly right now. One, two, three go . . .

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

How will I know?

My cell phone rang with a personal phone call earlier this afternoon while I was at the office. Caller ID showed it to be my 11th grade daughter, Teen Girl, who normally communicates by text.

"Mom," she said with her matter-of-fact, I-got-a-question tone of voice.

"Yes," I said. I had deadlines, a pile of folders, a stack of papers, my desk was covered with commitments to meet before 5 p.m. "What do you need?" .

"Can I go to France for six weeks?" She asked.

"Sure," I said. I returned back to the deadlines.

Our biggest worry, Bob and me, is that we are not preparing our kids for, for . . . I don't know, for what? To pay their bills, I guess. To survive. To give. To appreciate. Maybe even to be happy. To live their passions. To think big. I'd take even just one of those things. What are we preparing them for?

It's hard to prepare them for anything when you don't have a model. Don't get me wrong, Bob and I both have amazing parents. But the thing is, things have changed so much. Just as, I'm sure, what our parents thought. Growing up for one generation seems so vastly different than growing up the generation before. I'm not one who believes in "the good old days" so don't worry, I'm not going there. They never existed. That's not my point.

But I don't remember growing up when there was so much parental fear. I don't remember my parents worrying about kidnappings and killings and capturing children for sexual trafficking. But maybe that's because I was the kid, and kids don't worry. Or more like it, I had a charmed childhood. Plus, I'm still not sure that, statistically speaking, these horrors really are worth worrying about. Compared with real statistical danger, such as, say, automobile accidents or being born a woman. Since I started grant writing, I'm all into statistics and it seems that these days, statistically speaking, there is a pretty good chance for our kids to get blown away by a semi-automatic military-style assault weapon (Kids are 13 times more likely to get snuffed out in U.S. than other industrialized countries. Source: Rekha Basu).

When Bob and I talk about this -- compare and contrast our kids' childhood with our own -- the conversation always starts with transportation. I grew up in small town Minnesota where you could walk or ride your bike everywhere. Bob grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where it was much the same -- you could walk or ride your bike or take a bus or train everywhere. Presently, our kids are somewhere in between. St. Paul and Des Moines are too big to walk, and too small for robust public transit (although Boy Child has done pretty good with the city bus).

To further muddle the transportation issue, never one to make things simple, I set up our lives so that we must drive our kids to school. Ever since day on of kindergarten in St. Paul, I've taken advantage of public school choice -- that newfangled notion that you can apply to get your kid into any school you want, instead of your neighborhood school. The stipulation is that you provide your own transport. In St. Paul I couldn't resist the Spanish immersion option. In Des Moines I went for the racial diversity option. (Where bleeding heart mother meets politically correct mother. I'm a one stop shop. You may feel sorry for Bob.) And I'm a one-woman gas guzzler because I have arranged it so that for the past 12 years we have driven to and from school twice daily. It's a sign of privilege, of course. We did it because we could.

Our kids have done in great in respective schools (if you don't count all their academic grades), but, have we coddled them too much? Do we give them too much money? Do we have too lax of household rules? Is the TV on too much? Are we too busy to notice things? Should we make them walk more? Should we put them in schools where bus service is provided? Should we make them go to church? (Thanks to the free donut holes and a community of loving people, this isn't much of an issue.) Should we let them slouch around? How do we teach gratitude? Will our kids know how to do their own laundry? (Actually, that's covered. Our house is laundry-anarchy, everyone for themselves.) What about personal finance? Sex? Ugh.

And I wonder if I'm making that classic parental mistake, pushing my kids into things that I wish I had done. Living vicariously through my kids. Expecting my kids to fulfill out my unresolved dreams.

I don't know. Most times, I'm too tired to really think all this through. I either just bring the kids along with me (if I can, it gets harder with teenagers but I  have been known to use fast food bribery for really important stuff such as the pride parade) and I give them constant little hugs with a dorkified, "Mommy loves you." Like five times a day. They could be standing, sitting, slouching, lounging, laying, sleeping -- and I'll pause for a, "Mommy loves you" shoulder crunch or fist bump. As if that will make up for all my mistakes.

Actually, I'm counting on it.

And now, excuse me while I move hell and high water to get my kid to France.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

Made in Brooklyn

Bob, the kids, and I have a special way of determining spring break destinations. (Assuming we all have spring break, a little budget, and a working vehicle. These factors haven't all been in our favor in recent years but let's say they are.) They say families are supposed to plan vacations together as a team, giving everyone -- even the ragamuffins -- a voice and ownership. Our unique decision-making collaboration that goes something like this:

"Let's go to Chicago," one of us will say, for example.

Or it may be the Twin Cities, the Wisconsin Dells, California, Denver, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Black Hills, Florida, anyplace with a beach. Anywhere we haven't been. A place free from the daily routine. A change in scenery. Someplace new. In our dreams, the destination is France or Argentina or any episode of House Hunters International. Kid A says she doesn't like nature so that simplifies the choices (even though I crave nature). We choose a destination and spend weeks looking to the said destination, searching websites, travel deals, hotels, and road routes.

And then  it happens.

Every year the same thing.

Out of the blue just one of us, could be any of us, me, Bob, Kid A, Kid B. One of us offers an alternative idea. The suggestion always comes softly with little fanfare.

"How about we go to Brooklyn instead?" one of us will say.

That outer borough where three of us were made, and one of us did the making. That place past Newark Airport, past IKEA, hugging the Manhattan skyline, to the Goethels Bridge, departing New Jersey and entering Staten Island. At that bridge I always feel like we should pause and put our deep sea diving gear because we are going in, in, into the inner city, and we are not coming out for a week. (And I don't mean not coming out of New York City, I mean we barely make it out of Brooklyn itself even if its to get our butts over to Broadway or another tourist site which we hardly ever do.) Over the Goethal's Bridge, and straight east through Staten Island. And then East again crossing over the harbor via the Verazzano Bridge (think Golden Gate Bridge in terms of size and stature), connecting Staten Island with Brooklyn. At that point we just close our eyes and drive auto pilot to 45th Street. It's almost like we never left, like we merge right back into the life.

It's just a suggestion.

Poof.

The potential new destination goes away. That's all it takes for everyone to immediately agree to drop all other plans and collectively say, "Ok!"

That's pretty much our process for determining family vacations. We'll never make it in the creative family vacation lists.You?

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

How to get your kid into college through self medication and reverse psychology

Teen girl is in 11th grade which means in less than two years, well, you know. It's all over. And it all begins.

We have entered the spin zone of college searches. Teen Girl is really interested. She actively researches possible universities without me even nagging her about it.

Her searching is based on her top three interests, in order of priority:

1.) Cheerleading -- All girl cheer program that doesn't include bare middrift uniforms. (Oh wait, that second half is my interest.)

2.) Sororities -- And not just academic clubs or service organizations but real ones with impressive mansions where all the sisters live together.

3.) Academics -- This third point is evolving and I'm so happy it exists. It has included communications, international relations, public relations, actuary science, special education and/or anything having to do with science and math that might involve helping people and hopefully involve making a lot of money, or at least enough money to pay the bills. (Again, last point is my interest.)

Since Teen Girl is a natural born college researcher she is on many mailing lists. Our kitchen counters are covered with postcards, letters, and booklets with splashy headlines like how to make your life count or  how to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to make positive change. We must push aside such clutter to make toast or cut pizza.

While I am easy prey for believing in bleeding heart marketing ploys, the expense of it all positively scares the crap out of me. Me, one who has drank the kool-aid of pricey-changy-world university dreams not once, but twice. Me, who has now incurred a second substantial student loan debt for the sake of learnin'. Me, who now looks to her child to bear the responsibility of being responsible. Me, who expects said child to impress the admissions officers du jour with an amazing grade point average, a transcript of accelerated courses, high highfalutin letters of reference, and a long list of volunteer and leadership roles.

To me, all that equals dollar signs heading our direction. And possibly hope for the future. Just yesterday I got all googly-eyed about the idea of Teen Girl building her own online portfolio (which would already be waaay better than my pitiful one.) "You could post all the T-shirt graphics you've designed," I offered, trying not to sound too excited, "And a picture of you helping a troubled kid with art." More scholarship dollar signs bounce around my head.

So when Teen Girl says stuff like, "I decided to drop the high level English" or "I don't like French anymore" or "I'm getting a C in history but it's no big deal," I pretty much flip. No, it isn't pretty. When that happens I move back and forth between raising my voice, "Are you crazy!" to the silent treatment spiced with a whatever. My passive aggressive guilt-producing motherling responses make both of us feel awful. To top it off, they don't work. So I tell myself, who cares about college? Plenty of people who never went to college do way better than me. Drop it, just drop it.

But I've found a better response to the mediocre moments of college prep and parenting. It goes something like this:

"Shouldn't you be studying for the ACT test?" I say to Teen Girl on a late Saturday afternoon, who might be on her sixth hour straight of watching a high school soap opera drama found on Netflix.

"I did," Teen Girl will respond, wearing short shorts and Uggs while flopped in Bob's recliner, perhaps with a bag of chips and a ginormous glass of sugary orange juice squished on the tiny end table along with other assorted plastic wrappers and dirty dishes. She's looking down to text while following the teledrama of teen angst, and hoping, I'm sure, that I will exit the room as soon as possible. Two syllable answers usually mean the conversation is over. But I often ignore the cues, being the perceptive mother I am.

"Well you know," I say, "Community college is a perfectly honorable alternative to university."

It's a zinger. I'm being snarky, but I really mean it. I love my community college students, who I think have far more complicated lives than your average university student. Community college students are studying while juggling multiple jobs, children, and tuition payments. While university students are often cloistered in a utopia party funded by scholarships, credit cards, parents, donors, and whatnot. (I'm over simplifying, I realize, but you get my drift. And don't get me wrong, I'd die to get a job at any university in pretty much any capacity. As my latest favorite author, Mary Karr, would say, I'd tatoo the university on my forehead if it'd have me.)

The point is, whenever I bring up community college with Teen Girl, it pushes both of our buttons. I calm down and she amps up. It's the classic reverse psychology of both parenting and self-medication. I realize I don't care about my kid enrolling in a fancy liberal arts school. Teen Girl realizes she does care.

"I'm not going to no community college," she says.

"But there's nothing wrong with it," I say.

And we both mean it.

And such is the journey of my stellar parenting style in getting my kid to college, after having willfully plunged my whole family into yet another ocean of student loan debt, incurred all on my own.

The grace of this whole situation is this. Girl Child is simply amazing. I could be the worst parent ever, and she will respond with a bouncy optimism that reminds me she is a natural born idealist, one who google searches "inspirational cheer quotes" for her customized sweatshirt design; one who works with her principal to recruit the cheer coach; one who hangs out in her English teacher's classroom over lunch hour because, in part, she was a college cheerleader. Cheerleading is just the start. Is life easier for optimists? I hope so. Because if it is, this girl is destined to succeed wherever she goes, whatever she does. She may be leaving our immediate household in less than two years, but my direct influence has already changed and waned. If only I had understood it more when I had it. Still, I realize that this child will succeed, and not for anything I did, do, or will do. It's simply by the inherent beauty of who she is.

Plus, I predict that her student loans, if she gets any, will be paid back faster than mine. Because I'm slow at everything. And I'm the master of making things far more complicated than necessary.

Yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart