I want to be able to tell you that I did something, ANYTHING other than suck up and soak in the news of the Democratic Convention this last week. I’d be more of a liar than I already am though, if I did. No, wait; I read a novel in under 24 hours, delighted in a doggie date with my sister and her new pup, baked 18 bagels in an afternoon, watched two good movies and one bad one, had lunch with an old friend and pruned the neighbors tree at midnight with a new one. Not a wasted week so much as a mostly unproductive one.
This afternoon, I actually had a lovely nap in the waiting room at Ashlieanna’s therapist’s office. This is not the first time I’ve drifted off in the sparse little room, with its comfortable chairs, dim lights and soothing music. I’m not much of a public relaxer, so it struck me as odd, as if somehow, said therapist has hit upon some perfect lullling mix of mellow music, natural light and cool filtered air. Anyway, I highly recommend her office to anyone needing a catnap and am beginning to actually feel like both the child and I have gotten our co-pay’s worth when we emerge into the sultry afternoon, rejuvinated and refreshed each Friday afternoon.
I have spent the last week reading Jim Wallis’ “God’s Politics; Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it“. As an agnostic with Buddhist leanings, raised in an evangelical household, the intersection of religion and politics is of particular interest to me and Wallis’ book is easily the most profound thing I’ve yet to read on the subject. As I wrap up the last chapters, I find myself thumbing back to certain pages, marked with a creased page or a penciled arrow in the margin. The following paragraph is from one of those pages.
“The real theological problem in America today is no longer the religious Right, but the nationalist religion of the Bush administration, one that confuses the identity of the nation with the church, and God’s purposes with the mission of American empire. America’s foreign policy is more than preemptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant; but rather bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. George Bush’s personal faith has prompted a profound self-confidence in his “mission” to fight the “axis of evil”, his “call” to be commander and chief in the war against terrorism, and his definition of America’s “responsibility” to “defend the hopes of all mankind”. This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology.” (Jim Wallis can be found at Sojourners and Beliefnet. I highly recommend his writings for the faith-into-action peacemakers among us or those you know.)
Nineteen years ago today, I became a mother. I was all of twenty and quite terrified, tucked away in that cramped Air Force maternity ward. Nineteen years later, Micachu is all but grown, and I finally realize why every parent since the birth of parenthood stresses the “all but” in that phrase. He has a job at a little cafe down the street, a girl he runs around with until the wee hours of the morning, got his first tattoo a few weeks ago and paid off his Spring Semester fees so he could register for Fall art classes at the local J.C. And today, as we waited to catch him for a few moments of birthday celebration between work and play, I realized that he was, for the moment, nearly as much of a stranger today as he was on this day nineteen years ago. The conventional wisdom says that teenagers do this, go underground for a few years, re-emerging in their mid-twenties, no longer all-but, but actually grown up. And so, I await that day with breath, baited and fill up the meantime with all manner of motherly pride.
At 7:10 this evening, I find myself peeling back the skin around my cuticles and defending Lenny Kravitz, one of which is something I tend to do when I am nervous, and the other, something I haven’d done in at least a decade. For most of the evening, I’ve been out on the back porch, reading “God’s Politics” and ignoring the Rottweiler Sasha, barking at regular intervals from the other side of the tall fence in our backyard. Chloie, who curls up on the backyard couch with us whenever we go out, doesn’t bark back. She’s good like that.
Recently, I find myself hesitant to write down (and hit “save”) when I have mundane details to report; nothing life-threatening, nothing earth-shattering, no liquid prose to pass along. I write and then delete. I save drafts and then dispose of them later. The habit of blogging, or to be more precise, seeing the world through a blog-worthy lense, is one I’ve inadvertently lost over time. Is it odd that I want it back?
I was sitting in traffic this afternoon behind one of those PROUD PARENT bumperstickered cars, and feeling the same ugly knee-jerk reaction that I feel when I get calls or letters from that old friend who speaks and writes of her teenage children only in superheroic terms. If your child is three years old, then yes, she can do no wrong. If he is nine, I expect you to seem a little frazzled. But if you are actually parenting someone between twelve and twenty, well I’ve come to expect a certain glimmer of terror, an anticipation of every possible horror, a hint of fear and foreboding in your eyes. Otherwise, I suppose I don’t quite trust you.
I’m not saying that’s fair, but at the very least, its honest. And today, as the light turned green and the PROUD PARENT of some honor-worthy student drove off through the intersection in front of me, I tried to soothe that suspicious and envious reaction and in doing so, I decided that I would like an honest bumper sticker of my own, one that read HUMBLED BUT UNASHAMED PARENT OF A DIFFICULT THOUGH DELIGHTFUL TRANSGENDER TEEN. I could live with that, I think. And if you pulled up at the stoplight behind me, I’d at least know that I’m not bullshitting you.
* Teenagers
Bob’s real birthday is in early May, but his familial birthday is in the first week of September. Around the house, we refer to him alternately as Bobert (an homage to the comedian Rob Cantrell) or The Tiniest Thing I’ve Ever Seen and often The Instigator, due to his habitual irritating of Ingatious and his balls-out violent attacks upon Chloie, the foot-eater. Still, this six-pound bastard is the warmest, softest, squishiest little thing in my world, and I wouldn’t trade him for, well anything. So stop e-mailing me those photos of things you want to trade for Bob. I mean it. It ain’t happening, buddy.
This is Mr. J.’s favorite dish. One of mine too. However, I like to prepare it over the course of a couple of days, and it makes the family a little crazy, the smells wafting from the oven and then the stovetop…the beef fat, onion bite, sweet brandy boiling off…and goddamn, it smells like some alcoholic carnivore’s heaven, all sweet and thick and substantial in scent. But seriously, no matter how much your mouth is watering, you’re not eating what you smell cooking tonight and somehow, you’re just going to have to get over that. Ok?
Over the weekend, I finally paid off my library fees and was rewarded with the opportunity of perusing the sacred stacks. I’d racked up some nasty late charges and as a self-inflicted punishment, had been subsisting on the shelf of books in my own stacks which, for one reason or another, I’d never gotten around to reading. It was a worthy exercise. As it turned out, there were both lovely and less-than things on that shelf. I fell in love with “The Bone People” and labored through “The Mermaid Chair”. I eventually finished “Gold By the Inch” only to realize that I needed to start over from the beginning, and joined the twenty-first century by finally devouring “Fast Food Nation”. But oh the joy of wandering the asiles of the library of my childhood, fingertips strumming the spines, touching upon ond friends and new possibilities. I tried to be conservative, choosing only five books to bring home, and as always, promising myself that I won’t rack up exorbitant late fees THIS TIME, that I’ll treat my beloved library with the respect she so rightly deserves.
In the last month, I’ve spent more time with the beasties than ever before, and despite the fact that Chloie was the dog we needed least, she is unquestionably the best behaved, most well-adjusted, only honest-to-goodness REAL dog we’ve ever had. My one bitch is that when she’s borred, the pup chomps on her feet. And yes, you could argue that she’s trimming her nails or digging out some stubborn sticker, but we’ve checked and rechecked, examined each of those possibilities. And despite the fact that all seems well, when things get quiet ’round here, she invariably shoves a paw into her mouth and mumbles it mindlessly. Yep, that’s my girl. The one who takes great comfort in eating her feet.
Micachu has these friends we call The Musicians, a boy with a ukalale and a girl with an accordian. They show up once or twice a week late in the evening and the three of them trundle off to Micachu’s bedroom to play. I not-so-secretly love having them here, love having them mutilate songs I love or mash out tunes I’ve yet to fall in love with. (This fact stands in direct contrast to the noise-related post from last week, but is nonetheless true.) Mr. J is not-so-secretly irritated by the additional household noise, but I believe also actually enjoys their presence. Ashlieanna flits about them like a little moth, particularly when the trio retires to the porch to serenade the neighborhood awake with a stilted-but-sweet rendition of “Imagine”. It was The Church’s “Under the Milky Way” that got me last night – the stumbling ukalale, accordian and electric piano lilting over those familiar bars and chords. I crept into the hall and leaned against the doorframe for a moment, trasported to those days, that time, their age. There was such a bittersweet pleasure in that moment.
wish i knew what you were looking for/might have known what you would find