Back in 2005 I started a draft of a post that I never finished. It has poignancy now because it's from the pre-kid time, even the pre-marriage time. Here it is:
Someday I want to teach the "when I first came to this land" song to my kids, if I have any. But I'll write new words so the guy will name his animals nice things (and he won't get to name his wife). The melody is really pretty and it's fun to sing. I would like to be one of those families where the kids sing and roll down grassy hills giggling and we all genuinely like each other.
So that I don't forget - here are some more basic things I want to share with my kids:
The Wishing Song ("Oh, I wish I was a hole in the ground...")
Books like The Ox-Cart Man, The Runaway Bunny, and Goodnight Moon
Sunday walks and the Path Pioneer tradition
Corn shucking, leaf raking, and other excuses to be outside
How to interact with animals and read their body language
Making popcorn on the stove
Howling at a full moon
Saying "rabbits" first thing in the morning the first day of the month
Making a wish when you drive under a bridge that has a train going over it (you also have to grab a button and take your feet off the floor as you are wishing)
Listening to classical music
Having tea after dinner while watching PBS or Mystery, like my parents do
When a family member comes home, meeting them at the door and hugging/kissing them
So, that was the draft. And now I really do have a family and a kid I can share some of these things with. I do read the three books that I mentioned to her. And we do make popcorn together, listen to music, and hug and kiss each time one of us leaves or comes home. So that's all good. The Path Pioneer tradition is one that I was thinking about resurrecting just recently. It would be easier if she could walk further - right now we're pretty much limited to routes that are paved so I can push her stroller. But we'll get there. Soon enough, I hope, she'll be darting through the woods ahead of me, spotting bracket fungi and pointing out birds and collecting leaves and rocks for me to carry and urging me and my husband to hurry up.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Chopped Liver
The train was crowded as usual on my way home this afternoon. I was standing in the middle of the train car, gripping the bar above my head with one hand for balance and holding my book open with the other, crammed up against strangers on all sides.
As we pulled into one station, the guy sitting in the seat slightly to my left stood up and made his way to the door. I glanced at the man next to me on my left, checking to see whether he wanted the seat before I took it. Instead of meeting my eyes, he looked past me to another woman who was standing a few feet away and said, "Would you like a seat?" She smiled at him and said, "Why yes, thank you." She had to push completely past me to get to the seat. I had a moment of brief outrage when I almost said something. It's not that I wanted to sit down so badly. I just didn't understand why he had done that.
First I thought maybe he wanted to flirt with her. She was a bit younger than me. But she wasn't noticeably more attractive than me, and wasn't pregnant, carrying any bags, or otherwise in need of a seat. And the guy didn't speak to her or look at her again the rest of the ride, so he apparently didn't offer her a seat in order to strike up a conversation.
It was easier to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened, and to keep reading my book, than to speak up. I don't know what I would have said, anyway. "Hey, I'm right here!" was what I really wanted to say.
I guess that balances out the time in the train a couple weeks ago, when a young soldier hit on me. He was making eye contact from the time we were standing on the platform together, commenting on the crowd and the trains, though I tried to ignore him. Then when we stepped onto the train he started asking me about the bus schedule and I answered so as not to be rude. Before long he was talking about his time in Iraq, showing me a picture on his cell phone of his 6-month-old daughter (with an already-ex-wife), and telling me about his midterms. He was so forward. I wasn't being encouraging at all, not volunteering anything, just answering the bare minimum to not be mean. I did mention that I too had a daughter, thinking that would put him off. He scribbled his name and email on a piece of paper and gave it to me. He was obviously barking up the wrong tree, chatting up a married woman who's ten years older than him, but I couldn't help feeling a little "still got it" glow that someone noticed me.
As we pulled into one station, the guy sitting in the seat slightly to my left stood up and made his way to the door. I glanced at the man next to me on my left, checking to see whether he wanted the seat before I took it. Instead of meeting my eyes, he looked past me to another woman who was standing a few feet away and said, "Would you like a seat?" She smiled at him and said, "Why yes, thank you." She had to push completely past me to get to the seat. I had a moment of brief outrage when I almost said something. It's not that I wanted to sit down so badly. I just didn't understand why he had done that.
First I thought maybe he wanted to flirt with her. She was a bit younger than me. But she wasn't noticeably more attractive than me, and wasn't pregnant, carrying any bags, or otherwise in need of a seat. And the guy didn't speak to her or look at her again the rest of the ride, so he apparently didn't offer her a seat in order to strike up a conversation.
It was easier to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened, and to keep reading my book, than to speak up. I don't know what I would have said, anyway. "Hey, I'm right here!" was what I really wanted to say.
I guess that balances out the time in the train a couple weeks ago, when a young soldier hit on me. He was making eye contact from the time we were standing on the platform together, commenting on the crowd and the trains, though I tried to ignore him. Then when we stepped onto the train he started asking me about the bus schedule and I answered so as not to be rude. Before long he was talking about his time in Iraq, showing me a picture on his cell phone of his 6-month-old daughter (with an already-ex-wife), and telling me about his midterms. He was so forward. I wasn't being encouraging at all, not volunteering anything, just answering the bare minimum to not be mean. I did mention that I too had a daughter, thinking that would put him off. He scribbled his name and email on a piece of paper and gave it to me. He was obviously barking up the wrong tree, chatting up a married woman who's ten years older than him, but I couldn't help feeling a little "still got it" glow that someone noticed me.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Period of Celebration
I started my period today! Yay! I am ridiculously happy about it. It just feels so good to be normal again, at least for a little while. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up, or if I'm just having this one period and then won't get another for another six months. I have been thinking of it in terms of a mental struggle, like it wasn't happening for me because I didn't want it badly enough (but I did want it!), and it won't happen again unless I really concentrate and try (but I don't know how to do that).
It shouldn't be like that. Most women don't have to concentrate and will their periods to happen, they just happen all by themselves. I guess it's mental for me because that's the only way I can have any control over it - I can't physically flex a muscle to make it happen - and because periods are responsive to your state of mind sometimes. Last time I talked to my obgyn about it she asked if I was worried or stressed out, implying that my period was missing because of my state of mind. I felt like she was one step away from saying, "It's your own fault that you're not getting your period. You must subconsciously not want to have another child." But I do want to have another child. It's been so frustrating and saddening to me not to be capable of that, when my first child is two and a half already, and all around me the mothers who had babies around the same time as I did are now having or have already had their second.
So, in short, I wasn't worried or stressed out before, but having this mysterious thing wrong with me was starting to make me that way. I've spent the past few months beating myself up mentally because I wasn't menstruating, and being angry at my body for being wrong and abnormal. Now, as relieved as I am that I am once again back in the realm of the normal people, I am full of fear that I won't be able to keep it up.
Well. For now, everything is fine. I will celebrate my normalcy and try not to think about whether it will continue.
It shouldn't be like that. Most women don't have to concentrate and will their periods to happen, they just happen all by themselves. I guess it's mental for me because that's the only way I can have any control over it - I can't physically flex a muscle to make it happen - and because periods are responsive to your state of mind sometimes. Last time I talked to my obgyn about it she asked if I was worried or stressed out, implying that my period was missing because of my state of mind. I felt like she was one step away from saying, "It's your own fault that you're not getting your period. You must subconsciously not want to have another child." But I do want to have another child. It's been so frustrating and saddening to me not to be capable of that, when my first child is two and a half already, and all around me the mothers who had babies around the same time as I did are now having or have already had their second.
So, in short, I wasn't worried or stressed out before, but having this mysterious thing wrong with me was starting to make me that way. I've spent the past few months beating myself up mentally because I wasn't menstruating, and being angry at my body for being wrong and abnormal. Now, as relieved as I am that I am once again back in the realm of the normal people, I am full of fear that I won't be able to keep it up.
Well. For now, everything is fine. I will celebrate my normalcy and try not to think about whether it will continue.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Coffee, Carbon, and Climate
Today I drank three large cups of coffee. I never drink coffee. Hours later, I'm still feeling the effects - I feel a little queasy, a lot nervous, and my hands are shaking. I think the coffee is partly to blame for me picking a fight with my husband about global environmental change when I got home. The day of lectures on ecology and climate change that I attended, which inspired and depressed me, is more to blame, however, and is also the reason for the coffee. I'm so perpetually sleep-deprived these days that I didn't want to nod off and miss anything, so I kept slurping coffee in between talks. Maybe now I need a shot of whiskey to sober up.
The overriding theme of the day was that catastrophic change is, at this point, inevitable. All day long we looked at graphs of carbon dioxide levels rising up from 280 ppm in the preindustrial era, past 350 ppm (the limit to the "safe" range to which our environment can be expected to adapt), to 390 ppm today, on its way to 450 ppm in just a few years. Ecosystems all over the world are poised on the brink of a tipping point beyond which they can't be brought back. The Amazon rainforest generates a large proportion of its own rainfall, for instance, through evapotranspiration. The percentage of deforestation beyond which the region will be unable to generate this moisture and will steadily head toward desertification is 20%. Currently, we're at 19%. This was just one of many terrifying statistics I heard today from the top experts in the field, who are certainly in a position to know.
The comment that touched off the argument with my husband was something the keynote speaker mentioned. Someone asked him about the prospects for future life on earth. He said, "Oh, the planet will survive, of course. It will even recover its biodiversity to current-day levels. It will just take a long time. Our species will not be around to witness it." That concept really struck home with me.
On the way home, I listened to NPR, and the day's top stories were all about the situation in Afghanistan, and the Fort Hood shooter, and the politics of human societies seemed so petty in contrast to the enormous environmental spasm our planet is undergoing. I felt irritated that our political leaders were being distracted by these stupid trivialities when they should be focused on climate change, exclusively. It's like someone said, "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." It's so frustrating that the political will to change is so weak, and most people are so clueless and ignorant about what's happening. The argument started because my husband suggested that if I knew anyone involved in the Fort Hood incident, that I'd rate that as more important. And I just don't think anything is more important than climate change. Period. How could the deaths of a few people, or a few hundred, or a few million, be more important than the certain extinction of most of the species on earth, including our own?
I felt like there was a handful of climate scientists and ecologists who understood what was happening, and the rest of humanity was either blissfully ignorant or willfully in denial about it, and I wanted him to be with me in the handful.
The overriding theme of the day was that catastrophic change is, at this point, inevitable. All day long we looked at graphs of carbon dioxide levels rising up from 280 ppm in the preindustrial era, past 350 ppm (the limit to the "safe" range to which our environment can be expected to adapt), to 390 ppm today, on its way to 450 ppm in just a few years. Ecosystems all over the world are poised on the brink of a tipping point beyond which they can't be brought back. The Amazon rainforest generates a large proportion of its own rainfall, for instance, through evapotranspiration. The percentage of deforestation beyond which the region will be unable to generate this moisture and will steadily head toward desertification is 20%. Currently, we're at 19%. This was just one of many terrifying statistics I heard today from the top experts in the field, who are certainly in a position to know.
The comment that touched off the argument with my husband was something the keynote speaker mentioned. Someone asked him about the prospects for future life on earth. He said, "Oh, the planet will survive, of course. It will even recover its biodiversity to current-day levels. It will just take a long time. Our species will not be around to witness it." That concept really struck home with me.
On the way home, I listened to NPR, and the day's top stories were all about the situation in Afghanistan, and the Fort Hood shooter, and the politics of human societies seemed so petty in contrast to the enormous environmental spasm our planet is undergoing. I felt irritated that our political leaders were being distracted by these stupid trivialities when they should be focused on climate change, exclusively. It's like someone said, "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." It's so frustrating that the political will to change is so weak, and most people are so clueless and ignorant about what's happening. The argument started because my husband suggested that if I knew anyone involved in the Fort Hood incident, that I'd rate that as more important. And I just don't think anything is more important than climate change. Period. How could the deaths of a few people, or a few hundred, or a few million, be more important than the certain extinction of most of the species on earth, including our own?
I felt like there was a handful of climate scientists and ecologists who understood what was happening, and the rest of humanity was either blissfully ignorant or willfully in denial about it, and I wanted him to be with me in the handful.
Friday, November 06, 2009
And It's Not Even Thanksgiving Yet
I've cheered up. I never seem to stay down for long. Today a friend and I were counting our blessings, and we just kept thinking of more and more. She's a social worker so she sees a lot of people who are in desperate straits financially and don't necessarily have support networks to help them out - so one illness, one accident, or one downsizing is all that stands between them and ruin. We're so lucky that we're shielded from that kind of poverty, that we have families we could always go back to, that our options for employment are varied. Losing our jobs wouldn't be the end of the world for us. We're young and in good health. We both have the babies we always wanted and dreamed of having, and husbands we love dearly who cherish us. Neither of us has ever lost a parent, a sibling, or a close friend. The world is full of perils, but we're insulated from the worst of them. As we talked together, we felt better and better.
It's funny because we started out talking about all the things we're scared of - H1N1, rape, random violence. But then we just deliberately started thinking about how, more than likely, the worst wouldn't befall us. Which is not to get cocky about it - you never know what fate might have in store for you. But it is better to live appreciating your relative good fortune from day to day, than to live in fear of a multitude of disasters.
It's funny because we started out talking about all the things we're scared of - H1N1, rape, random violence. But then we just deliberately started thinking about how, more than likely, the worst wouldn't befall us. Which is not to get cocky about it - you never know what fate might have in store for you. But it is better to live appreciating your relative good fortune from day to day, than to live in fear of a multitude of disasters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
