a movement

One seemingly crazy person saying things that sound crazy... well he is probably just crazy.

But many people, separated by time and space, saying the same things that may sound a little crazy to other people: that is a movement.

Christmas Eve, or "Oh...holy crap"

I took to the snow covered roads in my faded candy apple red Mustang convertible on the morning of Christmas eve with a short but important shopping list. The snow had fallen deep the night before and the roads were only partially navigable, but I was able to slide my way to the local mega-all-purpose retail center of my choice. I turned right out of the driveway of our apartment complex, the rear end of the Mustang sliding to the left, and quickly straightened the steering wheel and let off the gas to correct the slide. It was slow going down Ford road, but enough traffic had passed through to have worn tire ruts in the snow. I made it to the store without accident or difficulty and trudged to the front door after parking in what I thought was a spot in the snow covered lot.

First on the list, a snow shovel. The apartment complex plowed and cleared the snow...in theory. But the snow was still untouched on the walk leading from the front of our apartment to the parking lot when I had left, and that was late in the morning (they were still untouched when I returned after my shopping trip).

Second on the list. Cat litter. Very important. The cat was becoming impatient with the growing mounds of mess in the over-sized litter box. I had the tendency to just pour on more litter rather than scoop out the refuse; I was out of litter and the box was out of space.

Third: Tampons. I was a new husband of seven months and this was not the first time I had picked up some of those at the store.

Fourth: pregnancy tests. Now this item was a first for me. I bought a three pack. As I walked to the checkout lanes I wondered if I could return the Tampons if the pregnancy tests turned out to be the most applicable purchase I had made that day. If memory serves I also bought beer.

The lady at the register looked at my items, looked at me and with a smile asked: "Having a good day?" I returned a weak smile, paid for my items and left.

I used the shovel to clear my path to the front door and the area around my parking spot when I got home. I cleared the litter box.

Oh, and a pregnancy test was used too.

What we got as a result was a single vertical line. We were perplexed and enraged. What does that mean?!?!?

Well, it was a single line...like a minus sign, but vertical instead of horizontal, more like part of a plus sign. This told us nothing. Maybe it was defective. The second of three pregnancy tests was used, to the same result. Were we pregnant???

No, we couldn't be, right? We took the proper precautions. Sure, they are not 100% effective, but that 1% wasn't really going to happen, right?

We decided to try an experiment. We would have someone that we knew was not pregnant pee on the pregnancy test. We did not think it would work right if I tried it. But fortunately for us, my wife's sister was coming over to our apartment before we left for Christmas Eve Mass. When she arrived we explained our predicament and she obliged our request to pee on the pregnancy test. What happened next was not encouraging at all.

She got a negative sign. A real one. One that was horizontal, not vertical like my wife's was.

Were we pregnant? Couldn't be. My wife's sister-the wonderful, supportive sister she is-volunteered to go get one of the fancy, fool proof tests that actually says "pregnant" or "not pregnant". Me being a tightwad had bought the cheap, store brand ones. That was the problem, we were not pregnant. The cheap tests were defective. The expensive tests would be more accurate.

But no, the expensive ones that could have said "not pregnant" ended up saying "pregnant".

There we were, a young newly married couple without gainful employment or insurance, trying to digest this situation. To make the situation more excruciating, we then had to go sit through Christmas Eve Mass, trying to keep our composure while thoughts of our impending future danced in our heads. And once Catholic Christmas Eve mass concluded, since we are of "mixed" denominational background, we got to sit uncomfortably through yet another hour of church thinking about babies and our future as parents while all around us a protestant service crept through the little town of Bethlehem, the silent night, the manger, shepherds and the wise men. Thoughts of the young pregnant mother of Jesus giving birth alone in a cave or barn or whatever it was did not help. My wife cried. I tried to keep my composure.

With every day, every little event, the fact of my wife being pregnant became incrementally more real to me. Telling our parents, telling friends and co-workers, shopping for baby things and preparing the baby's room all brought me a little closer to accepting the fact that I was going to be a father.

But no one thing made the fact more real to me than seeing our first daughter enter the world, screaming angrily at being torn from her happy-snug womb. In honor of when we first learned of her existence we gave her the middle name Noelle. We had narrowed down the first name to either Miriam or Sylvie. But when she emerged she did not look like a Miriam, rather, more like a Sylvie, and so her name was decided on. (Coincidentally, Sylvie is of French origin, roughly equivalent to "woods". So quite unintentionally we named our daughter-loosely translated-Christmas Trees).

Perhaps there was one thing that did make the reality sink in more. That was when we walked out of the hospital, leaving the safety of the nurses and the nursery and the doctors behind. We loaded little Christmas Trees into the car for the ride home, more terrified than overjoyed. The joy would come later, after the overwhelming fear of our new responsibility gave way to the enjoyment of seeing a little ball of baby grow into a wonderful little person.

Loss through the eyes of a child

My two year old daughter Aine recently experienced, what was to her, a great loss. A loss that she has had some difficulty coming to terms with. She lost two of her favorite toys to the abyss. On the day of Halloween, she managed to remove the air vent in her room, and although the events that followed are sketchy, two of her beloved Cars, “Blue car” and “Orange car” fell into the duct work. Molly, my wife, heard the sound as they fell down to the basement level.

That night, before putting Aine to bed, I went to the basement to see if it would be possible to access the part of the duct that the cars came to rest in, but as I am no Bob Vila, I decided I would not risk pulling apart a system of duct work that I was not so sure I could reassemble. Blue car and orange car were effectively gone.

Since it was Halloween, we had managed to distract the girls with trick or treating (we hit about 20 houses before they were tuckered out), and the subject of the lost cars did not come up until bedtime. And then Aine was distraught.

“Blue CAAAAARRRR!” [She did not seem as upset over Orange Car’s passing]

“I’m sorry, honey,” I tried to console her, “Blue Car is gone.”

This was met with hollering and yelling. Aine went to the air vent, pulled off the air vent cover again and began yelling into the duct: “Blue CAAAARRRRR!”

I put the cover over the vent and walked down to the basement to see if I could fashion a rescue device with a magnet and rope. I found a magnet and some suitable thin rope [I came to find later that this would not work since the magnet stuck to the side of the duct-work like a, well, like a magnet], but before I could begin to craft my rescue rope, I heard a clattering through the ductwork, like the sound of a two year old taking the cover off of the vent in her room. I then heard, amplified through the air vent: “Blue CAAARRRRR!!!”

I went back upstairs. This time I put a heavy plastic dresser on either side of the air vent so that Aine could no longer remove it. She made her anguish known. I tried to comfort her with the offer of a story. She yelled and mourned for Blue Car. I decided to give her a few minutes.

When I returned, she was calm. We read a story and she went to bed.

Two nights later, Sylvie, our four year old, was at gymnastics class with momma. Aine and I began our usual routine, watching an eight minute episode of a computer animated cartoon show eight times in a row. Aine is fond of watching this particular show while Sylvie is at dance class because Sylvie does not like to watch it anymore. Moreover, it is a cartoon about one of her favorite subjects: racing cars. And naturally, it reminded her of Blue Car. But this time, she was not as distraught.

“Where Blue Car, Daddy?”

“Oh, honey, Blue Car is gone.”

“Oh no, Blue Car gone! Where Blue Car go?”

“Blue Car has gone away.”

“Ooooooh, Blue Car gone.”

We repeated this exchange several times.

It was as though she had to repeat it over and over again for her to come to grips with a new reality: a life with no Blue Car. [To be sure, we could have just bought another overpriced blue checkout-line car. But we were trying to teach a lesson about NOT dropping things down the air vent – don’t worry though, Blue Car was survived by Red Car, and recent arrival, Purple Car].

I am sure it is not the last time we will stop to remember Blue Car. Aine’s grieving process reminded me of Sylvie’s loss of her pacifier. Ok, true enough, she did not “lose” pacifier. Instead, I announced to her one night at bedtime that she was not going to have pacifier (or “yummy”, as she called it) any more.

Just as Aine had to repeat repeatedly that Blue Car was gone, Sylvie also took a while [several hours] to come to grips with her new reality: a life with no “yummy”.

“Sylvie,” I said, “you are a big girl. It is time for no more yummy.”

“But, I can have a new yummy.”

“No honey, no more yummys.”

“But, we can go to the store and get a new yummy.”

“No, honey, no more yummys.”

“But, Gramma can give me a yummy…”

I was in Sylvie’s room for hours that night discussing this with her. By the end, she seemed to be at peace with it. The topic came up a few times after that, but Sylvie had no yummy relapses. And, we learned our lesson; we took Aine’s yummy away much sooner, before she could try to talk her way around it.

Thinking about Aine’s loss of Blue Car also got me thinking about the losses in my life, and how, as we get older, we do not always talk or cry through our grief quite as well as kids do.

I remember back to how I expressed my grief for my Grandfather, who died when I was in my second year of college. I cried quietly when I got the call. I cried quietly while Molly comforted me in her arms that night. I cried quietly, and alone, now and again: like when a holiday phone call from his wife brought memories and sadness to the surface; or when I climbed into the car he gave me and the smell of the upholstery in the hot summer sun reminded me of the time he tried to teach me to drive the car with it’s manual transmission; when my grandmother expressed her sadness that they had divorced, and shared with me that she still loved him and had long hoped for reconciliation. But I never really shared that grief with anyone. I never spoke it, I never worked through it aloud and I always made sure to hide my tears from others.

I did work through a lot of that grief over time, but on my own, as I have done with other less weighty periods of grieving in my life. But as I watched Aine ask again and again about her Blue Car, and noticed that she seemed more and more comforted as we repeated together again and again that Blue car was gone, I was touched by the potential for healing that can come from sharing your grief and working through it with the support of your loved ones.

I know it is just a toy car that led to all this “philosophizing”, but it was Aine’s “Blue Car”, and that means a lot to a two year old.

I blow the steam off my coffee before...

I blow the steam off my coffee before I sip. Staring out the window at the strip mall reminds me that I hate the suburbs. It was the dream of my parents and grandparents generation to move to the suburbs and own a home. But the empty storefronts seem cold, especially when around the corner there is a new strip mall with new big box stores, while the others rot a few hundred yards away.

In this family restaurant I look around at the other early morning diners. Mostly old men complaining about the government and discussing the same things they probably discuss every time they meet up here. I pretend i am in a small town, or maybe a bustling city, probably the type of place most of these old-timers started out in, since this suburb was just a few farms not even twenty-five years ago. I idealize the small town and the city. My wife and I plan our move, we plan our escape, but I remind myself that nowhere is perfect. But there has to be a place for us better than here.

I once expressed my disdain for the suburbs, and my mother tearfully replied that they had moved here for us, so that we could have a better life and good schools. I realized that these rows of identical subdivisions and strip malls had been a promised land for some at one time. Hell, maybe even today it is a place of hope for some. But to me, it just feels bankrupt of individuality, spirit and promise. There is nothing to do here but shop, go out to eat and go back to your home entertainment center until you get sleepy and crawl off to bed. Sate your hunger with shopping, then take a siesta. No community. No community to speak of. If there is community, I have not found it.

We tried at church, and it almost worked, but most of the people there are older than us and we just don't see eye to eye. Not on politics or religion or anything. Not that our values are so much different. Not that they aren't nice people with good hearts. Not like we are trying to throw out everything we were raised under. It just does not feel right. We need to move on.

The coffee has cooled enough that I can almost gulp it down, and I do. The hot liquid almost scalding my throat as it goes down, down, down to the last drop and the few grounds that had settle to the bottom. I swallow the grounds too.

I stopped driving the surface streets to work, even though it is more direct, because it takes me through rotting suburb after suburb. It is almost like a history of urban sprawl. From our little suburban paradise, built up in the eighties and nineties, you move back in time to the idyllic suburbs of the seventies, then the sixties and fifties and forties until you arrive in the city where my employment is found. Right on the edge of the old inner city, where it is hard to tell where one municipality ends and the other begins, a line used to be clearly drawn. A racial and economic line. A line that kept opportunity and a better life separate from the abandoned inner city. An artificial line built up by racism. This line was defended vigorously as whites were allowed to cross safely to the side of opportunity while blacks were held back, locked into the city limits. Capital and jobs and ownership left with the whites. The brought the titles and deeds with them and then jacked up the rent prices. The whites retreated and scorched the earth as they did so. They had scorched the earth, sewn the fields with salt and then balked at the blacks for not growing their own economic success. And the whites continued to retreat from the city center and each decade spread out farther and farther. That is all I can see when I drive through suburban stronghold after suburban stronghold. The legacy of segregation writ across a metropolis.

So after tipping my waitress I pay my bill, pull on my coat, pull into traffic and am on my way. I bypass the surface streets by taking the freeway. It is a path that is nine miles longer than just driving straight through suburban kingdoms, lined up like a living suburban timeline, but it takes me ten minutes less time, and it avoids the scenery that reminds me of how much I hate the suburbs.

I would move out, but my family is here and my mortgage is here and I have nowhere to go just yet.

I don't want to move in haste, or I could end up somewhere worse!

The freeway is crowded with other suburbanites flooding the city for their daily work.

And together we will rush back out again in the evening.

Quote:

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell,
burn me in hell.
If I worship you from hope of Paradise,
bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you for yourself alone,
then do not withhold your eternal beauty from me.

– Rabi’ah al’Adawiya,
Muslim & Sufi mystic poet; she was born in Basra, Iraq
(717 - 801 CE)

music

music sounds differently when it comes from the back of my car while I’m driving down the highway at dusk mid fall.
as though there is a band in the backseat, inspired by the view that we are sharing;
out of the front window at the road unfolding before us;
out of the side at the skeleton trees--leaves clinging to the branches--next to the full trees of winter, about to enter their season;
and out of the back at the wisps of clouds, illuminated by the orange setting sun.

November 2000

Hopefulness

You don't realize the wall you'd constructed around yourself until it begins to crack.
The ramparts you had raised in defense, every new stone laid with every instance you felt faith broken, defensive placements of cynicism against the rhetoric used against you.
All 'round-about you the wall rose higher and higher until you'd enclosed yourself in bitterness against a culture that had seemingly purged you from its midst.
But when the cracks begin to appear you realize how high the wall had become.
And when the cracks grow and spread the width and height of your enclosure--as it begins to crack and crumble--you are struck by the raw emotion of hopefulness.
Like fresh air or rain or sunlight striking you, newly revealed from behind your defenses, it reminds you by its very essence of its goodness and cleanses you of the stale feeling of confinement.
The joy of simply being included in the national identity is surprising, when you had long written it off as a mantle co-opted for exclusion, like the garb of ideological identity.
Oh it does feel good to be able to feel pride in your nation again.
It does feel good to be hopeful again.
I am of the US.

Arch Rock, Mackinac Island

Where I'd Rather Be

more snow

And this morning it snowed. Not the slow fat snow that collects and piles up so that you can make snowmen and angels, but the thick cold wet snow that pelts your exposed skin and saturates your clothes with moist-cold. Jump ahead thirty seconds and it has stopped, just the cold wind remains. Five minutes later, the snow returns, blowing relentlessly with a backdrop of blue skies in the distance. Is the weather this schizophrenic anywhere else but in Michigan? I thought it was still early October. Two little birds sitting on a car tire, shivering in the wheel well had the same misconception that I did. My favorite part of the scene are the smart people. You know the ones who, even though they see this icy weather, still dress for the seventh of October. "It is October so I will wear a t-shirt and jeans!" But now the sun is out, the ground is drying, we are approaching our high of 48 degrees, and the bluebirds are hopping around trying to pull half frozen worms from the frosty ground.

Fall 2000