You want to win an argument? Here’s how.

It seems like we are ALL spending a lot of time arguing with other people these days— whether it’s about the current election, about issues that we feel strongly about, or whether it’s about something as “simple” as which way to run a fundraiser for the school.

There is never ONE best way to deal with conflict. To tell someone who is an introvert to “just go out to parties and socialize more” doesn’t solve anything. Likewise, changing someone’s conflict style isn’t likely in the cards. But, there ARE lots of things that we can LEARN to do which can help us to relieve our inner turmoil, and perhaps— just perhaps— get others to see things our way.

Take it back to preschool

When I was in high school, one of my best friends had a way of arguing that really cut me to the core. If I said something about someone else which was grossly unkind, or treated her in a way she didn’t appreciate, she would say “That is NOT OK.” 

It landed like a punch straight to the gut, and it really upset me. I talked to her about how it made me feel, and I realized that it had a very powerful effect on me. It is one of the most direct ways of verbally stopping someone in their tracks. And the reason I think it’s so powerful is because of its simplicity. It sounds like something a preschool teacher would say to little Joey when he’s actively biting his classmate. 

Other things which work similarly: “That is unkind,” or “That’s not how we talk about x.” Again, firmness, and standing your ground that you have boundaries, and there is behavior going on that you are unwilling to accept.

Use your strong, kind voice

Both those things are key— strong AND kind. When you are addressing others (especially others who are behaving badly), you need to be forceful, and yet kind. That doesn’t mean you have to be solicitous, or to agree with them. It simply means that you don’t get down into the mud. Mudslinging might feel great at the moment, but it immediately alienates the other person. Yes, you may say “They started it first!” However, as your mother said, if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you, too? 

Mudslinging does nothing to convince the other person, and actually weakens YOUR position. Do you want to be treated with respect? Do you want to have a meaningful discussion? Do you want to change people’s minds, or even just agree to disagree? Then DO NOT DO IT.

What does winning look like?

Think about someone/something you disagree with. What is your ultimate goal? Is your ultimate goal to change something, or is your goal just to feel like you’ve won? Because, spoiler alert: If you feel like you’ve won, you actually haven’t. 

No matter what anyone says, there IS NO SUCH THING AS WINNING AN ARGUMENT. There is helping someone to see your point of view. There is helping someone else to think through THEIR point of view. There is working together to make change, or even compromise. But if your goal is proving yourself right without actually doing the work of trying to understand where someone else is coming from, you’ve actually lost. 

Yep— that’s right. Even though you schooled Grandpa, you didn’t change him. Your goal in speaking to other human beings should not be to humiliate them. It should be to find common ground.

How do you find common ground when it seems like there is none?

People who say things that are offensive to you often have a reason for their beliefs. It may not make rational sense to you, but there is a reason that they cling to it. Whether it’s just habitual thinking, whether it’s based on a misunderstanding of facts, whether it is a distortion of facts to fit their own story in their head… we ALL have emotional investment in our own point of view. 

When people say things that are hurtful to us and/or that we think are misleading, one of the most potent things to do is ask that person

HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

Whether you agree with them or not is not the point— the point is trying to understand what emotions are running the show. Without knowing what emotions are running the show, you are missing key information which will help you identify the facts, opinions and arguments which THIS PERSON needs to hear.

One of the most potent ways to get someone to see another perspective is by asking them to look at the opposite opinion. To, in a sense, play devil’s advocate to their own argument. Ask them to put themselves in the other side's shoes. 

Take, for example, that you have a friend who is a really picky eater, and they drive you nuts with their critique of your food. Ask that person to have a chat with you. Start by showing compassion. “I know you have stomach issues. I really try to imagine how hard that must be for you. But yet, it's really hard for me, too. How do you think I feel when you tell me that you can't eat anything I make?"

Give someone the benefit of the doubt

I know, this is a hard one. Let’s face it— there are lots of buttfaces out there who don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Yet I think the actual number of those people is probably a lot less than we would all assume. I will say this to you, just as I say it to myself: YES, THERE ARE DEFECTIVE HUMANS. BUT MOST HUMANS ARE NOT IRREPARABLY DEFECTIVE. Many humans have bad coping systems. Many humans have erroneous beliefs which fuel their disdain for other humans. But most humans are not evil. Most humans are not only capable of finding human connection, but they actually crave it. 

I’m not saying it’s all going to work ALL of the time. But I really want us to consider how we speak to one another… even (or perhaps especially) the people we disagree with. If we actually want to BE the change we wish to see in the world, that’s going to take some tough listening, and doing the emotional work. 

It’s ok to say “I can’t right now,” or to disengage. It’s also ok to re-engage. It’s ok to talk to those with whom you disagree and say, “Can we set up some ground rules about how we talk to each other? I really would like to hear your opinion, and I would like to have a conversation with you.You need to feel that I am respecting you, and it’s important to know I am being respected as well.

Go forth and engage in meaningful conversation. Or, sit on the sidelines, and add a word of support for someone else while they’re having a tough conversation. Be a force for positive engagement. Lord knows, we all need more of that!

Take it Down a Notch!

This year has been a real whopper. My anxiety about the state of the world has been through the roof. Even more so, my anxiety about the way we treat each other on the internet, and how that bleeds over into how we treat each other in real life. 

Because, actually, many of us interact MORE with each other on the internet than we do with people in the flesh.

I try to practice good media hygiene. I try to only engage when I have something clear and effective to say. I think about another person’s perspective when I am trying to convince them of mine. I try to shy away from ad hominem attacks. 

(Though sometimes I have to write out the attacks and then erase them. Calling someone a buttfaced douchecanoe can be eminently pleasing and rewarding. It rarely, however, has the desired effects.)

I decided to make a list for myself of things that I can do to help manage my anxiety about the world because, let’s face it, when the anxiety strikes, it’s good to have an easy list of things which will help us cope.

Paper, pens

There’s a reason I’m not saying ‘laptop’ or telephone. Anxiety thrives on disconnection. Believe me when I say to you that you need to connect with something PHYSICAL. Pushing a pen over paper (whether it’s to write out your feelings or to doodle or draw) can be greatly cathartic. 

Connecting with your inner flow, your inner thoughts, can help you shift attention positively inward. TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS ON YOUR DEVICES. Tell people who need to reach you how to contact you. Everyone else can wait. 

People

Not people who you know are self-centered, or people who are going to push your buttons. SAFE people. People who are there for you, just as you are there for them. 

A friend of mine told me about her two-minute dumps (and no, we’re not talking about poop). She has a group of friends with whom she has a pact: when they are feeling ovewhelmed, they can call each other and do a two minute emotional dump. Set a timer, get it all out as quickly as possible. Don’t leave anything in there. It’s like a colon cleanse for your brain. 

Often it gets pretty comical by the end because we realize that we’re trying to do too much, process too much, solve too much, and our minds are like magpies, picking up any shiny emotional thing that crosses our path. Then, let your friend do her 2-minute dump. Sometimes listening to someone else’s problems actually gives you perspective on your own. 

Exercise

First— don’t throw things at me for mentioning this. OR, go outside and DO throw things. My favorite way to exercise is kickboxing, where in my mind I beat up on all the villains of the world and of my thoughts. 

The first rule of emotional exercise is that if you don’t feel like doing it, that’s usually a sign that you NEED to do it. 

If you’re not a regular exerciser, go for a walk. Make yourself concentrate on certain things— maybe it’s sounds; maybe it’s colors, or textures (yes, I’m telling you to go feel things). There’s a practice called ‘grounding’ which sounds kind of weird, but I’ve tried it before and it’s super helpful. Take off your shoes. Go outside and walk in the grass. If you feel so moved, lay in the grass, or in the sand, or in the snow. Get contact with the ground. Try and concentrate on feeling gravity in your limbs. 

Crafting, cooking, coffee

Drink a beverage of your choice. Pull out some crafting materials. Don’t have materials? Steal some from the kids. Fold paper fans. Do some knitting. Work on your kitten drawing skills. 

Cook up a huge batch of something which you can share with someone else (there’s always someone not feeling well, stressed, busy, struggling. Share your food with other people. They will be thankful, and you get the emotional boost from compassion). 

Do something which takes some concentration, but is enjoyable. Aren’t crafty? Take your own advice and TRY something new.

Salon, spa, or at home relaxation

One of my favorite things is having my hair shampooed at the hairdresser. I get my hair colored every three weeks, and I’m pretty sure that it’s only 1/2 because I’m 50% grey. The other half is having someone rub my head. 

But, you don’t have to spend money to take care of yourself or your body. Take some time to do your own toenails, or to rub lotion in your hands. Do it with intention. 

Volunteer

Go for the low-hanging fruit. Something you can do easily. I know that we all are over-committed these days. But maybe it’s because we’re over-committed to things that don’t feed our souls. Ask ME to bake something for a fundraiser, and I’ll do it grumblingly. Ask me to submit images for your Instagram account, or to proofread your flyer, and I’ll have it done in two shakes of a baby goat’s tail. 

Do what comes easy to you, and what you enjoy. If things lose meaning for you, or you’re ready to move on, the move on. You don’t have to be the energizer bunny, and you don't have to do ALL THE THINGS. But doing SOME of the things can help you to feel connected and grounded.

Whatever you choose to do— realize it doesn’t all help all of the time, and if something isn’t working for you, try something new. Of course, if you feel like your anxiety is unmanageable, it is probably time to speak with your primary care provider and find a path for dealing with it. There’s no shame in anxiety disorders or panic attacks. But know that there ARE treatments which are helpful and effective, and that you don’t have to feel frightened and alone with it.

First Person

Things that I expect in my mailbox (in no order):

Spiders

Dust

The Shopper Stopper

Special offers for AAA members

'or Current Resident'

Solicitations for Money

The New Yorker

AARP applications

The magazine I work for

COUPONS 

Things I do not expect in my mailbox:

Actual correspondence from the next president of the United States, addressed to my 7-year-old daughter.

I wrote Hillary Clinton on a lark. 

My daughter, a few months ago, declared at the dinner table, "I want to change my name to LILLARY." Me: "Why, hon?" Her: "So I can be president of the United States." 

Both of my kids are seriously thoughtful, funny kids. (I know, I'm biased). But as a writer, I do think that the way their minds work is fascinating. The words they choose to express their thinking, surprising. Their sense of justice and fairness, admirable. 

I mostly thought what the heck-- I thought this was funny, why wouldn't a Hillary staffer? Poor things. It's probably some intern who is sitting in a windowless basement, forced to read all the crazy pants stuff that people write to Hillary from her web site. Maybe I could give them a chuckle. Or maybe they could feel inspired, as my daughter obviously did, by this woman who is the first female major party nominee for President of the United States.

Fast forward to last Thursday. Mailbox open. No spiders (thank GOD! I mean, I appreciate them eating bugs and all, but I don't really want to touch one). Shopper Stopper? Check. And nestled into its nest of newspaper-print want ads and offers, a slim envelope with a red arrow. A letter. A letter addressed to Lilly.

I'm kind of a ninny and, at 42, I really don't care who knows it. I'm the person who signs petitions about endangered animals. I care deeply about issues, and about fairness, about the poor, the underserved, I care about gun sense laws that we can all agree on. So I get a fair number of form letters from my legislators about the issues I've written that I was a bit skeptical that this was something real.

But OH MY GOD. It was real. It was realer than real. And it was written for my daughter. Very specifically my daughter. 

If you're reading this, you probably know most of the rest of the story. I'm not here to retell it. What I am here to do is to say THANK YOU in this day of trolls and cynicism and sexism and racism and anxiety for reading those words in the letter. If you feel unhinged (like I feel right now), read them. Replace my daughter's name with your daughter's name, or your OWN name. 

We need to hear these words, and we need to speak them. As one of my idols, Glennon Doyle Melton says, "There is no such thing as other people's children." We are all a part of this one thing-- this life, and we need to show up and stand up for each other. We need to encourage each other's voices, we need to hold each other's hands. We need to read and write each other's stories, and our OWN stories. 

Let's write our own history. Together. Now. Forget the haters. Come sit by us. There's room on the bench right here. There's room for humanity, there's room for love and respect. We make it. 

"If the space you're in doesn't have room for your voice, don't be afraid to carve out a space of your own."

With love and peace, 

Jennifer

Ironing Naked

Read at the 2011 Madison Listen to Your Mother performance 
(click here to view)

The week before Mother’s Day it seems everywhere you turn, someone is sharing some great piece of wisdom their mother has bestowed upon them.

Well, ladies, today I will share with you one of the greatest pieces of wisdom my mom has shared with me.  Are you ready for it?

NEVER IRON NAKED.

The first thing I thought after she told me was, “YOU iron?”  And second, had she tried ironing naked before, with “consequences”?  Or maybe this it just a piece of bizarre-- though well thought-out, you gotta give it to the woman-- advice?

To give you some perspective, let us view my first memory of my mom.  It is the blizzard of 1978-- the snow up to the lids of the garbage cans.  Everyone and everything stops.  And my mom decides to walk outside into our backyard naked. 

I watch her in disbelief (already at four years old I know it’s strange for someone to go outside naked, let alone into waist-deep snow.)  She is out there for three or four minutes-- it seems like an eternity-- just looking around, as my father and I watch from the kitchen window.

When she comes inside, I ask her why.  She shrugs her shoulders, “I wanted to feel what it was like.”  “Why did you come in?” I ask.  “My feet got cold.  Otherwise I would have stayed out there.  It was wonderful.”

As a child, you sort of think of your mom as normal, because you have nothing to compare her to.  As you get older (especially as a teenager), you think of all the reasons why your mother is abnormal (or obnoxious, or embarrassing).  Because she’s your mom.  Somehow her very being seems a reflection on your being.

It is not until recently, as an adult and as a mom myself, that I’ve been able to put together some of the pieces-- start to understand who she was-- the quirky, but emotionally and intellectually present mom-- with who she has become.

Who she has become.  Unreliable, for a start.  At times emotionally irretrievable.   

She and her common-law husband, in the past years, bought a fixer-upper to start a B&B.  She has spent all of her savings, her retirement.  She has racked up credit card debt.  The business failed.  Her health has been up and down.  When I talk with her on the phone, she monologues.  She hasn’t seen me or my children in two years.

And, as my sister found out one day, she’s growing pot.  Not just a little pot, A LOT OF POT.  Yes, kids, Granny grows weed.  She’s got an A-1 grow operation in her basement.  $25,000 worth of the best hydroponic growing equipment and exhaust systems.  Granted, it’s “medicinal marijuana”: Somewhere between illegal and legal, but still.  When I confronted her, I could hear her partner in the background yelling, excitedly, “We’ve even been featured in High Times!”

Now, no, I have never seen the TV series Weeds.  I don’t really feel like I need to.  My mother satisfies any need I might have for crackpot entertainment.  And aside from that, I was honestly upset at first. Upset about the bad decisions that led to her precarious situation. But also, as someone who loves and adores my mom, I somehow feel threatened.  (Might I lose my grip, too?  Could I go from intellectual, creative-type to crackpot in my old age?) 

And laughter aside, I do worry about my mom.  I don’t want her to end up eating cat food.  I don’t want to have to strip her of her independence, move her into my basement with my misbehaving tomcat.  But every time in the past four years my sister and I have staged an intervention, helped her along with advice, she hasn’t followed through.  She’s indignant, or she has cleaned up her act just enough to keep going. 

I can’t help but think that there’s some middle ground to find here between laughter and horror.  There is nothing at the moment that I, my sister, or anyone else can do to “solve” my mom or her problems.  She doesn’t want us to; she doesn’t see them as problematic. 

So here is my decision.  I’ve decided to accept our relationship for what it is.  She is allowed to be the caring mom she wasand the absent mother and grandmother that she is.  She is allowed to be her past (and MY past) as well as her present.  Mom doesn’t have to be perfect.  I don’t need her to be perfect.  And just because I am a mom myself, that doesn’t mean that I have to solve her problems.  I can love her and shake my head.

There are a shitload of things in life I learned from my mom.  How to think, how to love-- even, perhaps, how to mother.  And apparently, how to iron.  Or not iron.  And how to accept her and myself for who we are.  Really.  It’s good.

Epilogue

This piece was read at the American Family Dream Bank on Thursday, May 26, 2016, as a part of the DREAM BIG series: "Listening to Our Stories, Realizing Our Dreams" with Listen to Your Mother. It is a follow up/partner piece to my original piece "Ironing Naked" from the 2011 Madison cast of Listen to Your Mother.

*

“Hi mom, how’s it going?”
Mom (tentative): “Good, I think. Better than it has been. My memory is getting better.”

“Hi mom, how are you?”
Mom: “I’m getting much better. It seems that I had some big event, and it was causing me to not remember things. But now I realize, wow, I was really out of it.”

“Hey mom, it’s Jenny. How are you?”
Mom: “Okaaaay. Jim tells me I was having issues with my memory. But I can’t remember them. It’s very strange.”

After years of worry, of cajoling, of schlepping my mom to memory clinics where she was pronounced “very intelligent,” and showing little or no cognitive deficits, the bottom dropped out. One night she collapsed in a seizure, and wasn’t coming out of it. Airlifted to the next big medical center, we received a diagnosis. 

The MRI showed, along with anecdotal evidence, that she had been having seizures without us knowing it, probably for years. This time, though, the seizure had knocked the needle off the record, and her brain was having trouble booting back up because of dementia. This was the word that had been the terrible centerpiece of conversations about my mom for at least the past decade, with no medical corroboration until that point.

But see, here’s the rub. When you get a diagnosis, you say OF COURSE and at the same time you feel guilty, even when you did everything you could.

I went to a neurologist’s appointment with her shortly after her diagnosis, and she got really agitated and upset by us talking about her, and she put her hand on her hips and said, “Well, I’m not STUPID. Everyone is talking about me like I’m stupid and I don’t understand. I have a very well-developed vocabulary. You aren’t stupid if you have a master’s of fine arts and are the recipient of a national endowment for the arts individual artist grant.”

And she’s right, I remind her. She’s not stupid. No one is saying she’s stupid. We’re just saying she can’t remember shit. 

It sounds almost cruel to say it that way, but it ALWAYS makes her laugh. Then she snipes something back at me about me not being a piece of cake either. 

Today, she is no longer having seizures, but the medicines have taken away much of her independence. She feels unsteady on her feet, she’ll never be able to drive. I guess the good thing about having memory problems is that the bar is re-set every day. Every day you’re winning that race. Every night, like sisyphus, the rock rolls down the hill again.

Last year, we moved my mom and her partner to Grand Junction, so that they could be closer to their doctors. Most of the boxes were labeled “living room- books” or “decor” (that really could be anything— believe me). 

One box had a sticky note on it that read “No idea” in a shaky hand. And as I opened the box, the lifted flap revealed a perfect pizza. I mean, the most perfect pizza you could imagine. And I thought HOW COULD THERE BE A DAMN PIZZA IN THIS BOX? As soon as more light hit the surface, I realized… this is not a pizza. This is a perfectly felted, life-sized facsimile of a pizza.

She can’t remember her own medications, or what they’re for. She mourns her parents’ deaths every time someone tells her that they’ve passed away. But she can create— over days— a physical object out of hanks of colored wool that has an aspect of genius to it. There are moments she still seems alive in— when she tells a joke, offers advice, muses about her felting. But there are still parts of her that are (and will be) missing. 

I still don’t have the mom I had when I was a child, or a teen, or as a young woman. I don’t have the same mom I did ten years ago, or the mom I thought I had when I wrote “Ironing Naked” in 2011. 

Just like life, the box, marked “no idea”— it’s a truthful rendering of where we are at the moment. It can contain moments from the past— the waist-deep snow— almost forgotten— or a surprise. A pizza for no reason. A woman who dives down deep, and resurfaces every day the same woman, but perhaps different, when you open the box. My mother. 

**

Fear(some)

I have turned 39. Turned. Rounded the edge to 39. 39, the almost forty. The epically almost. ALMOST.

And on my 39th birthday, I got a message that I had won $650. For filling out surveys. Really. Really? Yup, really. I usually don't do that kind of thing (I won't win, so I shouldn't do it), but somehow when I filled them out I thought, shit, I've got something to say that they want to hear, so I'm gonna win that money. And I did.  The. Fuck?

And you know what I realized? I realized that all of the things I didn't enter, didn't venture do because I thought I wouldn't win... I could have won. But I never did. I never won because I stopped myself from ever trying. In my mind I had lost before I had even started.

Before this starts sounding like a motivational speech that a high school football coach might deliver to his group of rag-tag losers, let me say that none of this should be particularly epiphanic. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I can be pretty insightful sometimes. Sometimes.

How can it be that I made it all the way to 39 without calling myself out on my bullshit? WHO ELSE HASN'T BEEN CALLING ME OUT ON MY BULLSHIT, BUT SHOULD HAVE? YOU? YOU OVER THERE? Did I need more than 10 years of therapy only to NOT GET TO THIS?

Or is it true that I had to "come to it myself"... because, really, that is TOTALLY UNSATISFYING and I dare say really fucking late. I could have come to this at 29 and still had a really productive decade behind me. But no.

As much as I hate to say it, are THEY right? The people who say with age comes wisdom? I think that doesn't fully describe this scenario. I'll work on a catchy headline to try and describe my utter lack of emotional ability to, in a timely manner, recognize this easy truth...:

With Age Comes Giving Less of a Fuck About Failure

Optimism for No Good Reason Might Have Changed Life for the Past Ten Years

I've Done a Lot of Shit, But I Should Have Done a Lot More

"I like to sleep too much!"-- Local Woman Laments

Too many amazing things have happened to people around me-- random people. Now these amazing things are going to happen to me, too. (I happen to have just finished watching the last few minutes of the Muppet Movie with my son... and I may just be high on Muppet fumes), but all Muppet-related disclaimers aside,

I'm Gonna Do Some Shit. And It's Gonna Be Awesome. 

Where have all the saucers gone?

I've been loading and unloading the dishwasher a lot lately. This might sound like a strange statement, (umm, ok? Was she living with piles of dishes like an episode of Hoarders for years?) but the feeling is true. I had ankle surgery earlier this year and had been laid up for months prior with torn this, fractured that, and for God's sakes don't stand on it! So loading the dishwasher was not something I did for a long, long time. A long blissful, exquisite time.

Like many things that are blissful and exquisite, this time was finite. Ankle open, ankle closed, stand up! I can stand everybody! I'm healed! Oh, wait a minute... I don't get to walk around just being fabulous on my ankle and having people say you can WALK! I thought you'd never walk! Look at you, all walking and shit! 

Which brings me to the dishwasher. Literally. Standing. In front of the dishwasher. That big, yawning, toothless chasm to be filled with this and this and that which must stand up and that which must not under any circumstances stand up. Spoons with avocado (nature's butter, or nature's super glue?) bowls with errant kernels of rice, coffee cups with their planetary rings of dinge. 

Now, my husband actually kind of enjoys loading the dishwasher. It's like grown-up Tetris (I ask: who would ever really want to play grown-up anything?) He likes the challenge of making things fit. Optimizing. I, however, have limited powers as such. I've got some things down, and the rest of it? Enh. Enh enh enh. Shrug. Stick it in, close the door, run that sucker. Ain't nothing in life that's perfect. Some things don't deserve more than a cursory try.

Upon opening, (the big reveal!) warm. clean. smooth. white. And the calisthenics of bend, grasp, unfurl, place. Stack coffee cups, perfect. Tea cups, uncooperative. Their handles force them akimbo like girls with attitudes. The saucers-- do we even use saucers anymore? Who is using saucers? WHY are they using saucers? Reach to the back of the cabinet where saucers belong. One lone saucer upon which to stack. Maybe three total, tops. Out of 12. There were twelve once. Like the lost tribes of the Israelites, at some point there was fullness, there was perfection. And then dispersion. 

From what was once a complete, things have multiplied and divided and disappeared, all without any kind of realization, any kind of whole picture of the state of things. As I finish, shoving spatulas into drawers (they are best nested, with their kind), I think, well, at least I can close the cabinet doors. And no matter how much I may detest loading and unloading the dishwasher, I can do it. And I don't have to stand at the sink and wash everything by hand, like in the days before dishwashers. 

There is equilibrium, somehow. Load, unload. Short stack, tall stack. Perfect fit, precarious jostle. The balance is not in the kitchen, per se, but in the person loading and unloading. The practiced bend and reach. The movement.

Material

The "Top 10 Emailed Articles" on the New York Times web site today:

1. An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

2. In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone

3. If It Feels Right...

4. A Child's Nap Is More Complicated Than It Looks

5. The Stone: The Meaningfulness of Lives

6. The Trouble With Homework

7. In Suburb, Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students

8. An Impeccable Disaster

9. A Squirt of Insulin May Delay Alzheimer's

10. Well: Is SpongeBob SquarePants Bad for Children?

America, I think we may need to up our meds.

Pretty for you

Not to take the place of words, but sometimes you just need pretty.

This is a picture I took in 2003 in Barcelona of the floor in a house designed by Gaudi.  The shadows are cast from a lace curtain.

Old moon, new moon?

Last night, at 10:38pm, I was quite a sight to see.  Sitting on the leather couch in the basement, wrapped in blankets, a giant metal bowl which had contained my dinner-- 10 cups of popcorn dusted with nutritional yeast-- sobbing.  

Sobbing because I was tired and didn't know how to just go to sleep.  And because my husband has been gone almost a week to a conference in Poland.  And I know it shouldn't make a difference where he's gone to, but the further away he is, the harder gravity pulls the tides up within me.  

I am always shocked by this occurrence: it seems so out of character for me.  But I actually know it very well.  It's the straw widow peeking out.  The straw widow comes out only when the moon is new, and everything is quiet and dark.  

It always seemed strange to me that the new moon is called just that-- new-- because we experience it as an absence.  New suggests, somehow, presence.  

Then again, sometimes for the new to appear, room must be made.  Reminds me of the haiku by Mizuta Masahide:

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon.

Sobbing by yourself in your finished basement while watching an episode of a teenage musical drama while your two beautiful, perfect children sleep two floors above you is inane.  Yes, I was sobbing because I was tired.  And overwhelmed.  And unable to let go.  And missing my husband desperately.  

Which is actually, in a sense, redeeming.  I was crying-- stupidly, gulping for air and (though it was dark and I was alone) with a speckled, hottening face-- because in that stupid, stupid teenage love, I could feel the stupid feeling that I needed to feel.  Out of control and desperate for the love of someone I could not have (at least for the moment).  

It's embarrassing to feel you've become untethered.  It's embarrassing-- even in your own basement (perhaps especially in your own basement)-- to let go.  To sob.  

But, to my surprise-- I did just that.  I let it go.  The sobbing did something for me.  

Should that surprise me?  Actually, maybe it shouldn't.  Funny, that thing.  It's like as a baby, all you know is unravel unravel unravel and need the world to swaddle you in.  Then you become that binding for yourself; you become the binding for others. 

Sometimes that unravel unravel unravel is okay.  I really am OK.  Sad, but OK.  I can unravel sometimes, even if just to the floor.  Then I can be retrieved.  I can retrieve myself.  Weave, unweave.  Weave.

Rainbow Connection

In this blog post, MamaH exposes her bedtime tropes, which include mash-ups of AA Milne stories and the Three Stooges, as played by vegetables.  Very small vegetables.  

Baby Broccoli (whose name was a sad attempt at trying to get my son to respect vegetables) cohabits with Pooh and Piglet in the Hundred Acre wood.  Baby Broccoli's sidekick is Baby Corn, and the two little imps are always off on some adventure that Pooh and Piglet have to extricate them from.

Usually, the stories end up in some sort of slapstick race where one unlikely thing happens after the next.  My son thinks they are hilarious.  In fact, they are so hilarious that he ends up jumping up and down in the bed, squealing at the twists and turns in the story, and waking up his little sister who had inevitably *just* settled down to sleep.

I haven't figured out exactly what these two "boys" look like-- do they look like broccoli and corn?  Because that's sort of creepy.  Anyhow, my son doesn't seem to mind. The main thing is that they are funny, single-word-with-exclamation-point-screaming boys.  They appeal.

However, they don't necessarily serve the purpose of a bedtime story to CALM and RELAX.  At the end of the story, my son is inevitably:

a) Belligerent

b) Crying

c) Shouting continuations "...and then they get in a rocket ship and go up up up to the moooooon!"

d) Crying from having laughed so hard

Tonight was "movie night", so that necessitated a shorter version of events, and preferably one that did not involve keeping up the already-past-her-experation-date sister.  

Tonight Baby Broccoli and Baby Corn witnessed a quadruple rainbow in the field across the street, and ran over to catch it.  They ran and ran, feeling like the closer they got to it, the more it receded.  Until they stopped and looked around and realized that they were actually IN the rainbow.  The rainbow enveloped the entire field and became a sort of glowing blanket that skimmed over the surface of the ground.  

The two boys found that they could run and slide on it; they could arc around as though ice skating; the slightest of pressure with their hands or feet could steer them one way or another, as if swimming, or weightless in space.

There need be no end to this story.  No closure, no resolution.  Baby Broccoli, Baby Corn, my son and the rainbow.  Sublime.

I came, I saw, I said too much

Even though my days as a poetry graduate student are far, far behind me, I still seem to have some of the self-perception issues that plagued me in the day.  You see, the job of a poet (at least as I see it) is to say something essential; say it with an economy of words-- only the right words; transmit messages that are encoded and decoded, so they are sort of an app that shows up and opens itself to the reader-- enacting, running the program. 

 

The problem is, I don't have the will to be a poet.  I have the ideas; I have the language; I have the spiritual desire to make things.  I am just afraid.  I am also inconstant.  I distract easily.  I am a magpie of ideas and images.  Oooooh!  Look at the pretty over there! And zap, moving on.

Except, recently, after a long blogging hiatus and exorbitant facebooking, I signed up to audition for "Listen to Your Mother".  LTYM was started last year by Blogstress with the Mostess and Jewish Humorista Ann Imig, who also happens to have a son with the same name as mine, and who is a parent at my son's former preschool.

Last year I did not read at LTYM.  I feared "I am woman hear me roar" or, worse, Hallmark theater.  When I dared peer into last year's video of LTYM, I was blown away.  Nothing of my fears.  But fierceness.  FIERCENESS.  And people I couldn't have imagined listening to, I listened to.  They had something to say to me.  

So when I saw the call for auditions this year for LTYM I said to myself SHIT.  I don't want to do this I do NOT WANT TO DO THIS.  But my mother self said Screw you it'll be good for you.  Mother knows best, doesn't she?  Crap.

I struggled and struggled.  What did I have to talk about?  What DIDN'T I have to talk about?  Fret fret fret frette.  Frette is a bedspread.  A yucky bedspread.  Write anything.

So, on the urging of a friend,  I wrote a poem.  I fell back on writing a sestina, because I love sestinas (I particularly love this sestina from Elizabeth Bishop called "One Art").  I love the repetition of the end words.  So, here was my sestina.  Not perfect, but not half bad:

Sestina for Six AM

I woke up at six.

Through the monitor, my daughter was having a serious word

 with the assembled animals in her bed.

 What I understood was only a fragment,

 some misbehavior.  Some laughing.  Stop!

 The wards were getting restless.  I the mom! I mom!

 Then the rankling, like a cup against metal bars.  Maaaaaaaamiiiiiiiiiiii

 as if suddenly she were reminded of my existence as the six

 o’clock alarm clicked on at five past to stop

 her machinations.  She utters THE word

 which makes all things happen; which lifts her from her bed

 into the morning which continues like a fragment

 of some conversation from the night before, not rested, but embedded

 and continued.  Even Dora calls out from the infernal talking dollhouse, “Hola, mama!”

 as if we must be surrounded by things that fragment

 our thoughts to not let us get too deep; The six

 year old slumbers on.  Sometimes I can hear the murmur of unintelligible words

 through his door, a flow that doesn’t stop

 even when it seems like all motion, all thought should stop.

 It’s like constant traffic, even in bed.

 Syllables being hatched and born into words.

 What is that like?  To be born into words, like mom

 came to mean ME six

 years ago (I have to count on my fingers), as though even that fragment

 of control, of time, escapes me.  I peel fragments

 of the orange and place it on the tray, in front of my daughter and stop

 in thought.  Or out of thought.  Then she counts back to me-- to six

 though she does not-- cannot-- understand numbers.  She sings No more beeeehd

 because it makes sense, doesn’t it to her? Mom

 is the beginning of word.

 Words

 are just a convenient way of taking fragments

 and making sense.  Yes, slivered, mom

 is elemental, full-stop.

 Developed or grown from seed in the world’s flower bed.

 In the beginning, God created six 

 days and rested on the seventh. Mom has a word

 for Six AM.  It is eternal.  It does not rest; it fragments.

 Stop.  Go back to bed.

But that was just what got me started.  Now I was furiously trying to find something else-- I was NOT going to read poetry in front of an audience again.  N-O-T, as in NOTHANKYOU.  Then a friend-- Jen over at the Checkered Chicken-- encouraged me to write about my relationship with my mother.  

So apparently that's how I ended up reading on Mother's Day in front of 350 people at the Barrymore Theater in Madison with 12 other amazing mothers.  I still can't believe I did it-- mostly because I can't believe what I said IN FRONT OF 350 PEOPLE, including, apparently, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.  Really?  Did I really have to clue in the Feds in front of Russ freaking Feingold?  

I guess I did.  I will post the video as soon as it is up.  In the meantime, believe me that it was great and awful and freeing.  And now I'm here doing the blog thing again because what more can happen to me if I don't try?  Nothing.  Nothing will happen if you don't try.  Things may happen TO you, but they won't happen FOR you.  

So listen to me.  Pretend I'm your mother.  I'll make you eggs.  Now get out of here.

Sweden, You Taunt Me So

Sweden has given the world IKEA and Astrid Lindgren and Meatballs.  All things that are somehow so elemental, so simple and smart you can't help but slap yourself on the head and say, "Now why didn't I think of that?!?"

Yes, Sweden is, to my mind anyway, the gateway to the collective unconscious.

It's also an absolutely absurd language which seems to at once make sense to the native-English speaker and also make total nonsense.

Exhibit A:

From the Swedish Website Barnvanligt  (If you want to see the English website, click on the British flag at the top left of the page).

Simple.  Iconic.  Functional.  Swedish.  They call it a Nyckering.  Well of course they do!  Not sure what the heck it really means (probably key ring holder, I suspect) but Nyckering really satisfies, doesn't it?

Just like all the names of products at IKEA: Malm and Halsa and Barnslig Randig.  All those umlauts dancing atop vowels like the bouncing ball in a child's sing-along video.

I guess it also doesn't hurt that Swedish maintains more than a passing resemblance to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.  To wit:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Okay, perhaps I should have rather said, "Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky maintains more than a passing resemblance to Swedish".  Still, there's truth to it.  

So yes, Sweden.  You are home to my linguistic and design unconscious.  And I deign to say, your meatballs are irresistible.

What I do when I'm trying to avoid meaning

Knit
Trim cuticles
Put too many books on my library queue that I will never have time (or energy for that matter) to read
Woot-off!
Come up with Byzantine plans for:

• The next social gathering that I am going to host because I love being around people but hate hosting but will host anyway
• An art project that will go awry, perhaps in the planning stages, but after having purchased all supplies
• The yard, including an orchard, a pagoda, 1000-lb. boulders and no weeding
• Controlling the unstoppable decay of my house, car, and everything I touch
• How I can best torture myself about some social commitment that I really don't want to fulfill but can't say no to.  Because I can't say no to it, OK?

Oooooh!  Recipes from the New York Times!  I'd LOVE to try and use pomegranite molasses again.  

People.comUsmagazine.comTMZ.com-- OK, that makes me disgusted.  There's avoiding meaning and there's gossip-porn.  Let's not go THERE.

Baby Gap.  Because your baby looks cuter in clothes that have been assembled by her contemporaries.

Doesn't it seem like it's been an awful long time since something was recalled?  I should check and see if the crib/medicines/toys/clothes/food has been recalled.  It HAS!  Oh crap.  I'm a bad mom.  I shouldn't waste time on meaningless things and I should hug my children more.  Really, what's more important than a hug?

Cereal.  In front of the computer.