Crimeless Punishment

I am going to get in trouble for writing this. I know this already.

There is going to be fall out and anger around this, and the dual voices that modulate much of my behavior argue furiously about the words that I am typing.

This pattern of pre-emptive punishment is something I am intimately familiar with, as I spend alot of my time punishing myself for the decisions I make. Even when I know they are right. Punish, Punish, Punish.

Why, asks my new therapist. Why do you punish yourself Dawn? Why do you pick fights with people you love before birthdays or other events? Why?

I stare at her sullenly. My mouth draws into the tight lipped O that forms when I am biting back my words.

Because. Because if I punish myself first, then no one else can do anything worse to me. I have already done my best to make me suffer, so when the other shoe drops, it is a small annoyance rather than a cataclysm. No one can disappoint me.

She write notes, furiously. I am a unique beast in her life, I dare to believe. The self aware crazy. The smart crazy. The occasionally witty crazy.

For years, I have hidden one of the many things I do as punishment to myself, for my punishments are not purely emotional. For years I have done these things and carefully pushed them out of my mind as habits. It was only through the Envisage project that I started becoming aware of them, as I photographed some of the instances. I am a picker. I am a scratcher and a digger.

I do not bite my nails. I do not smoke. But when in private and nervous, I start to scratch. Usually my chest first, or my feet. If it is a very bad time, it will be my face. I will pick at skin, at toe nails, at imagined bumps or warts until the skin dissolves under my non-bitten nails. I have ripped off toenails in my compulsive worrying at my body later having to lie to pedicurists that I caught the nail on something. Because what is the alternative? the truth? That I pick,pick, pick at things until bleeding? That I scratch the hell out of my breasts where the world can't see them, often while under very hot showers?

I mean, I know this is not an acceptable habit. I know it has a big whiff of the crazy about it, so I hide it. There are whole after school specials about the cousins to this little compulsion - the cutters, so in my skating the edge between full blown and charmingly crazy, I hide it.

About three weeks ago my 25 year old sister drank antifreeze in an effort to punish herself. According to her, it was not her intent to kill herself, as she very nearly did having stopped breathing and having to be airlifted to a larger hospital with her organs failing rapidly. It was her intent to punish herself.

Magic words, those. Punish herself. Oh, I know this well.

We were raised in a house of secret keeping. Don't tell what goes on here. Don't betray, don't reveal.The consequences of stepping over the rules was punishment. Not physical punishments - no, that would be too gauche. Too obvious. Our punishments happened long after the event, when you least expected it. They got maximum benefit that way. Your guard was down, and the knife went deeper. As children of my mother, we learned to punish ourselves first. In this way, we deadened the later punishment that was coming - and it was coming, I assure you.

It is the super power of the narcissistic parent, this self punishment. Rather clever, don't you think? Get them to do it, so all you have to do is look at them? Get your children so hyper attuned to your ever changing moods that they begin the punishment without a word? And then deny that anything ever happened? Tell them they imagined it all?

And even now, writing this, I begin to pick at the skin around my nails. There will be trouble from this. I am not supposed to talk about these things, you know. Then people will know. Know the depth of the crazy. And what will they think then?

My sister is out of the locked ward, and back on her meds and doing well. We talk as much as I can get her on the phone. Survivors, I told her. Soldiers on the same field of battle like Madge said in her comment. During one of the talks while she was still in the ward, I told her that it wasn't her job to worry about our mother - to worry what she would think or say or do. Not your job, I told her. Her job? Get better. Start uncovering her triggers for the need to punish herself - and work to defuse those. I know I am.

Consequences

My past week has pushed the tenuous push and pull of choices and consequences in the forefront of my brain.

Beyond my three person family, some heavy shit has been happening in my family of origin. So heavy, in fact, that I have had to wade into that quagmire and start to pull out the debris of decades and figure out what the hell to do.

As always, I go to my adult place. It is, after all, what keeps me sane. Calm rational Dawn. You all may not be as familiar with this manifestation of myself, but she - Like Professional Dawn - is amazingly well put together.

After many, many months of my well orchestrated avoidance, my mother has burst through the citadel and reintroduced herself into my life. Yeah. There was a 7:30 am phone call today. Seven thirty in the MORN-ING. She even said "Is there something the matter" to me when I did not greet her with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm? Verve? Whatever people who are awake and alert at 7:30 in the morning possess?

Seeing me move, Coco assumed that it was time for nose rubbing and salad.

"What mom?"

rub-rub-rub, scratch, rub, nose bump, more rubbing

"oh. Ok. That sounds good"

Rub, rub, rub, rub, nose bump to demand more rubbing. Now staring, with the one unblinking rabbit eye.

"Ok. Yep. All right. Hmm? Yes. Ok. Bye"

There is stirring from the other rooms as Emily comes in to lay on top of me. This is her morning greeting. Laying directly on top of me....preferably on top of my inevitably full bladder.

"Were you on the PHONE?" she asks. She is unbelieving too. The mother she knows barely speaks to the people to whom she lives prior to 8 a.m., let alone on the dreaded phone.

In this side family drama not related to the entropy of my marriage, many things are fading in and out of focus. Who is the keeper of truth in a family? What roles do we play as adults to our siblings? Where is the line between helpful and overbearing? I am walking this line with my sister as she sorts through the consequences of her actions - and we all sort out the consequences of my mothers actions or lack thereof.

And here is the sticking point, not so much who is at fault - but who will tell the truth? Who will verify in a family of secret keepers and master chameleons? Who will be the adult?

Me. I am the adult - and not in a martyred poor me way, I get enough of that rained down on me by my mother that I don't need to replicate it. I choose to be the adult and take responsibility for my actions...or my choice to be silent.

In the utter terribleness of the last week, I am being given a way to a relationship with my sister. For that I am immensely grateful.

Oil and Water

The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out - as we figure out what to do and how to proceed.

The odd euphoric calm that has come over each of us was unexpected. We're working better as a team than we have since the days of Emily's birth.

There are many things, in hindsight, always in hindsight, that were indicators that we would not be together forever.

My need for a nest, for a home, for roots...juxtaposed with his need to wander, to travel, to GO. Our oil and water combination could only be shaken so many times until we refused to merge.

My wait and see approach to the world next to his hypervigilance. My occasional retreats into the world of crazy and his baffled watching from outside my cave. My inability to bring what he found important to the forefront of my brain and his inability to give me the things I needed, even as he believed he WAS in fact giving me everything.

To me, the dishes could wait if a book was waiting to be read. The tub could stay funky for another day if the day was a good one to garden. The other things weren't as important as the now.

There were, of course, many other things that remain in our shared locked closet of the marriage.
They are not yet available for public consumption. I am not sure if they ever will be, and this is one of the reasons I am so sure that I can never know what goes on in anyone elses marriage.

And as I cried in the garden, sobbing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry that it didn't turn out the way we hoped"...and he held me patting my back soothing me, we try to spin the ending so that we can both pick up and move on as whole people. A bit bruised, but not broken.

I hope I will be able to write about something else - wish for it. I apologize to any of you who read this for being so one note and kind of fucking depressing. Pushing this out of my head I hope to make room for the other things, and helps to keep the fear at bay.

Can you go back once you know?

The humor comes in short bursts, in funny places. Emily's laughter triggers my own laughter, this little not quite carbon copy of me finding the absurd funny.

Last week, it came when she expected my arm to curl around her in the morning...and it was my foot, stretch out and over her side. Oh, the belly laugh as she realized it was my foot she was trying to hold hands with...which then crawled into my throat and echoed her laugh.

In some ways, this space feels not unlike the weeks before childbirth. It is quiet, and watching. I also feel able to say things - things because I simply don't care about the consequences. I mean, whats the worst he can do? Divorce me?

Gallows humor, I'll be here all week.

The temperature in the house warmed with a talk on Friday, but bedrooms remain separate.

"I don't want to get to the point where I hate you so much that I want to fuck you over for the joy of it", I said. And I don't. I really don't. For I do love him. He is the father of my child, and as such we are bound forever.

There are many things we do well together, but living isn't one of them. We are the married version of the Odd couple - and my nesting messiness irks him beyond belief, making his blood pressure rise to nose bleed levels. For me, his incessant need to clean and straighten feels like criticism - plunging a knife into the cocoon I am trying to build around myself.

I ignore. He pushes back. I ignore harder and he reacts by trying to control my options. While that gets my attention, it can not be said that it gets it in a good way. No. No, sir. If there is one thing that will get me to rise out of my lair, it is the perception that I am being bullied. Good god. Don't bully me. Don't give me ultimatums and for fucks sake, DO NOT touch my stuff.

So the cycle continues. If you threaten to divorce me for 14 years, one day I will look at you and say "Do it."

We are tangled in a foreign country, with me in school and not working, bound by the conditions of my visa that I am a student, and that we are here together because I am a student. Financially bound together in a way that feels stifling - don't want to stay together but can't extricate ourselves from one another....until I get my doctorate and a job. Nothing like a little pressure to make that writing go smoothly, right?

Can't go back. Can't go forward. Just have to wait. Staring at the bear with the cheesecake in my hand. Waiting for it all to pass.

Embers

At the risk of sounding like a complete and utter bummer, its been a hard week.

Things that have been laying like embers in the charcoal of my marriage have flared up, and words were said.

Not untrue words, but ones that indicate a change must take place - for the sake of everyone.

And so I mourn...and swing to relief....and mourn some more...and then remember when I fell in love with Terrance and think that I want to change - I want that back...and then I realize that those moments were seen with the eyes of a 21 year old girl who was willing to forgive anything, and that I am now a 39 year old woman who must care for her daughter first, and then herself.

Like anything that nears the end of its life, there can be fingers pointed, blame assigned, scorecards tallied. There is no defined winner, no TKO. Neither of us gets our victory lap, and that is disconcerting. We win or we lose - so this middle space is unfamiliar - separated by doors in different bedrooms, and polite conversation on the phone or over dinner about our shared child.

We harden our shells in preparation for the next stage, trying to remain civil, while having to stay in place for the foreseeable future.

Second Hour

So I came back for another round. Almost a month after our first time together.

“It’s been awhile” you said as I sat down. You knew that I had weighed and balanced you in my mind. My need to be in therapy with my expectation that I will never find a therapist who will challenge me.

I almost started to giggle then, you know. I am not accustomed to having others see through me so transparently. I mean, I shield most things from my husband and he sees me every damn day. I shield everything from nearly everybody. I am a chameleon. I can be whatever you want me to be or not be there at all.

To walk in and have you see me so clearly is still new. Like a scab that is still itchy.

So I sat down and began to unravel the tangled mess of yarn that is my story. You wrote nothing down this time. You remembered it all.

I became so absorbed in my self pity and justifications that I didn’t even dodge the first punch. But I felt it. And stopped talking. I looked at you. You looked back, waiting.

“You are an active author in the script that disappoints you, Dawn. Why do you keep doing that? I know you are an incredibly smart woman so it makes no sense that you are acting so helpless in the very thing that is making you so angry….”

Well. I’ll be dammed. I may have even cocked my head at you, like a puppy when their owner does something unique and unexpected.

“You’re right.” It was all I could say. You ARE right. And the first person to really call me on it. In three years, you are the first therapist that has laid it out. It IS my script and I make sure that the patterns never deviate from my expectations. Which we all know are expectations of disappointment and failure. Not my own failure, of course – but that of the other people in my life to meet my needs – or not, as the more accurate case may be. I, after all , survive. I overcome. I deal with the shitty hand that I have been made sure that I will be dealt and power through it.

To do this, though, to be able to maintain this part of my identity, I keep my eyes shut until the last possible moment. And as the point of the knife is at my neck, cutting, I scream and rage and fight back. Until that point, I freeze in place – a willing victim. An open and inviting victim. What I have categorized as patience is nothing like patience. It is the stillness of the trap being laid.

You praise me for not being defensive as you detail the façade that has taken me 39 years to cultivate. No, not defensive. Illuminated. Shaken up a bit, but not defensive. Never defensive. I know myself too well to deny a truth when it is presented to me in such a way.

“Next week?” you ask at the end of the session.

Yes. I am coming back.

The first hour

We've only spent an hour together, so I know it may be too soon to be hopeful.

But I liked you. I liked having that hour with you.

But more than that, I felt like maybe you could help me find a way out of this forest of shit I am dealing with at the moment.

I'm not entirely sure what it was - the way you kept track of the names I used, the way you did not look phased at some of the more shocking things I prance out at a first therapy meeting, the way you gently chided me for an action I deserved to be chided for and did not back down when I glared at you.

I mean - lets face it. I am a hell of an intimidating subject to take on. When you asked about my "history" and I started to laugh - finally saying "Do you want from birth - or simply the last three years?" - You took me head on. "Start with now" you said "and we'll work our way back." I've been in therapy for 19 years - that alone makes me more knowledgeable and self aware than some of the therapists I have interviewed.

You are tiny. I towered over you in my three inch heels. I also decided I hated your shoes and purse moments after you called me into your office. I can be a miserable judgemental bitch, you know. A pretentious snob, I believe is the name used.

Maybe it was when you nodded as I talked about my post partum experiences. Maybe it was when I talked about how I actively planned to kill my baby - but only held back because I didn't want to go to jail, not because I considered infanticide wrong and you didn't even lower your eyes.

Maybe it was when you asked why I had terminated the other three therapists and I told you - one didn't listen to me and was pushing lithium - one didn't challenge me enough - and one was all right, until I felt judged by him. He was the last one. Who had the good grace to at least look a little bashful when he saw me today.

I don't know. When you asked me at the end if I felt we could work well together....I was pleased. First - not a one of the others had asked that. You clearly respected my ability to judge what I needed as a patient...and it isn't a mother. I need a partner in this next part of my soul journey. It is going to be a hell of a rugged road - my resistance to going back to therapy coupled with my weird quirk of picking at spots on my skin until I am raw and bleeding which have kicked into high gear - indicate that I am ready - if not entirely willing to leap into this .

This next part is hard...and I know from hard. So when I say Hard I mean that while I want to work, I will most likely fight you - kicking and screaming - as you help me drag my sorry ass to the next level.

So I called for another appointment today, after three weeks of thinking about it. It was wise of you to leave it up to me to seek you out. I hope you're ready.

Slow Burn

I wrote this reflection after reading the book , "The Burn Journals" by Brent Runyon. It is part of my thinking about this line between childhood and adulthood , what drives adults to "forget" the experiences of being a teen. As Emily walks - no, runs - into this stage of her life, I struggle with my fears. As a parent, I use these reflections to remind me to Watch. Really watch. Not assume that no news is good news, or that her physical body in the house = everything is fine. My family is rife with depression (and other more exciting mental illnesses) and to ignore the clinical evidence that most depressions begin with the onset of puberty would be foolish.

Yes, Teenagers are kind of alien. I think it is something built into the human transitional phase that is kind of healthy. We need to experience this metamorphosis in order to emerge on the other side. It is my role as a "Guide" that I ponder. I do not want to throw up my hands and say "Oh, Teenagers - You Know How they Are!". I struggle with the distance to maintain, while never abandoning her to the durm and strang of being a teen.

One of the intriguing ideas that I have been grappling with following the Thursday evening discussion of The Burn Journals is my awareness of which “voice” I am reading.

Like many others in the group, I found myself frustrated at times with Brent's subtle refusal to look inwards as to why he attempted suicide, as well as his non-cooperative attitude towards the therapists who were attempting to draw these reasons out into the open. In my “adult reader” voice, I felt annoyed that Brent had so clearly cried out for help through the suicide attempt, and yet seemed to actively resist the help that he had finally attracted. Towards both his family members and his doctors, Brents inability to be honest about his motivations – while simultaneously taking pleasure in the attention he drawn to himself strikes my “adult reader” as incredibly self centered and solipsist.

However, once I have recognized that my irritation is coming from my reaction as an adult and parent, I must step back and look further into the source of that anger.

What is it about this young man and his internal dialogue that is rubbing me the wrong way?

If I examine Brent's story from the reading perspective of “teen Dawn”, I must admit some uncomfortable similarities in thinking. I, like Brent, believed that my events and tribulations were all encompassing and ever lasting. No mean comment, no heartbreak, no bad grade was ever going to be able to be overcome. Everything was all or nothing.

In fact, while preparing for the Picture Essay, I re-read my high school journals and was struck by the rollercoaster of my emotions. While the 38 year old woman wanted to reach through those pages and soothe the 17 year old girl, tell her that things aren't that bad, and that she IS lovely and talented and smart....I couldn't. In reading those entries in my own journal, I could once again acutely feel the turmoil of my feelings.

Frankly, the adult in me didn't like it very much. I didn't like looking backwards into that space and feeling so powerless, so out of control, and so self isolated. Upon taking up the mantle of adult, I have prided myself on my problem solving skills, my calm and my ability to weather storms. Seeing my inner teenage self laid so bare was viserally uncomfortable. I had left that person behind, and Brents' story brought her back into the spotlight of my gaze.

If I view Brents memoir through the lens of “teen Dawn”, I recognize the confusion, the lack of ability to describe the “why” of my actions. I believe that Brent is being truthful when he states that he simply doesn't know why he lit himself on fire, beyond being the result of a series of decisions which don't make a lot of sense. I believe that the pain he caused himself, and as an extension his family, seemed like a reasonable trade off to Brent at the time he did it. He made his inner pain external. Brent made it impossible for anyone to deny that he was hurting, all the while denying it himself.

This is where my discomfort lay. My role as parent steps in to reasure my inner voice that I would always know my child, and would certainly know if she was so deeply unhappy. My “teen Dawn” voice pipes up and tells me that I would ( and did) hide the depth of my despair carefully from the adults in my life. As an adult, I want to believe that I have control over my world and the people in it.

Brent's memoir, and it's connection with the inner voice of the teenage Dawn, reminds me that I don't have control, nor are there always concrete reasons for individuals behaviors.

Rethinking Yoko

I was a huge Beatles fan as a child and teen. Partially it was because I was born in 1970, to a young mom who came of age during the British invasion. I grew up handling the real vinyl albums that she had bought when they came out, pouring over the liner notes and staring at the pictures. The four men who changed from album cover to album cover were a solid fixture in my life.

When I began to come of age, I started collecting my own Beatles paraphernalia. My collection grew to include rare copies of Quarrymen tapes, and first editions of 45's (the complete set) and a first printing of Lennon's "Spaniard in the Works". In addition to all my adoration came the decision that it was indeed Yoko Ono who had broken the Beatles. Yep. Things were good until Yoko. She's the one. And then John moved to New York and got shot. Yep. More Yoko. Her fault.

This weekend, Terrance demanded that I come to the John and Yoko exhibit at the Museum here in Montreal. He had taken Emily a week or so prior and was genuinely taken with the experience.

Fine, I said. I'll go. Because it is Sunday and we should do a family thing. But I didn't promise to love it. I didn't tell him of my long history with Yoko. It was between she and I, after all.

Walking into the exhibit is a sign. Take pictures, Touch things, it exhorts. You make the art.
I parted the black velvet curtains and entered.

"John?" a voice floats out. "Yoko?", another voice responds. "John", the voice calls again - sweeter. "Yoko", the other voice responds, and sounds deeply content.

Pictures of each of them, John and Yoko as children are blown up and one the walls. Their voices surround you as they call to each other from 30 years ago.

A shift happens inside me. I know the tone of these voices. These are voices in love. These are the voices that call from the bed when you wake and wonder where the man has gone, so you call out. He mimics the tone because he doesn't realize that you are looking for him...and then crawls back into the warm bed and slides up next you you. You say his name again, happy for him to return. And He says your name, folding his arms around you.

Oh.

I move into the next gallery, where the exhibit that John met Yoko is re-created. I hammer a nail into the wall, and climb the ladder to see the word printed in tiny font on the paper.




Yes.



We move to the next installation, where the bed is revealed. The bed where they staged their protest in Montreal after their wedding. Their voices roll from the bed and ceilings - talking about peace and love. Laughing. You see John cuddling Yoko from one side of the bed. I lay down with Emily and hold her.



The exhibit moves you to New York, which became their cultural home for the rest of their lives together. The piano on which Imagine was composed is there. It asks you to sit and play.



Oh.

The hall opens and invites you to leave your own mark. I laugh when I see the sign the museum has put up "Please don't use stamps on the walls". Which have been roundly ignored and laughed at by the people seeing this exhibit. The stamps are everywhere. I ignore the stamp and use my thumb as a marker. I will leave my thumbprint. My unique and distinct stamp. One and only. I wonder if Yoko will see what has been done to the walls and laugh the same way I did.








And then we are at the end. Yoko invites us to make a wish and leave it in the wish trees.



My wish? For Bravery and Strength. Compassion and Persistence. The ability to do what is right and not just what is easy. Courage to Love and be Loved. And forgiveness.


I understand Yoko. I understand it all. Thank you for being brave enough to love and be loved regardless of opinions or what was easy. Thank you for reminding me that these rich feelings of life are not convenient or neat, and that pain is as much a part of this tapestry as the joy.

Yes.

Red Triangle

Because there is never great sadness in life without absurd silliness, I give this little vignette from my week.

After dropping La Chatte off at the vet's on that morning, I was scheduled for my "wax". Ahem. and eyebrow maintenance. That is actually how it is printed on the appointment slip.

9:30 a.m. Brazilian Wax
10:00 a.m. Eyebrows

The day before, the spa had called to say my regular esthetician was unavailable. Could they offer me an appointment with someone else?

Sure. Why not. There was no way I was missing an appointment again after my little episode this past winter where I'd missed nearly two months and the wax following that hiatus was how-shall-we-say? Bracing. If they started using Brazilian waxing as an interrogation method, we might get a lot more information.

So I show up for my appointment and am met by a small, round, grandmotherly looking woman. She is, it turns out, Russian.

And she does not care about my modesty. Nope. Not at all. Tells me to take off my undies - no attempt to give me a paper thong. She's here to do a job dammit and fiddling around with side to side thong moving only gets in her way.

Instead of being put off, I am comforted by this can-do attitude. I like a woman who has a job to do and is focused on it.

I zone out while she does her thing - and she does a good job. If one can consider themselves an "old hand" at the pubic waxing, I feel entitled. Very thorough.

But here is the moment when I crossed into new territory. We finish. She does the last "post lotion" application and asked me to take a look to make sure I am pleased.
This is, I thought, a type of polite moment - just like when the hair stylist is trying to show me the back side of my hair and I can't really see - but I am going to make noises like I am excited or pleased. You know. Social niceties.

What I didn't expect was the mirror in a place where I said "No thank you" to a mirror when I was pushing Emily out on the day of her birth.

Why hello, Labia. Long time, no see. You look.....Good? Nice? Hair free?

"Oh!", I say. "Looks Great" - as the mirror hangs over my nether region.

She moves the mirror so I can get a new angle. Dear Christ.

"You did a Great Job!", I say with as much enthusiasm I can muster.

I sit up, smiling and nodding and begin to get myself reassembled. She smiles and nods and begins to tidy up.

Perastroyka, bitches.

Au revoir, La Chatte

When she spotted us, in July of 2006, she knew an easy mark. Since her last owner had abandoned her, she'd been savvy enough to hang out in the same middle class neighborhood. Someone would feed her, she was sure.

Watching us move in, she played it cool. She would watch us from under the tree, a gray smudge in a shadow. She was friendly, but not overly so. She did not approach us to be caressed, nor did she meow to gain our attention. She simply stayed. And Watched. And Waited.

She made her initial move about a week later. We were at the back door and we were in her former home. She walked up and looked at the door. Looked at us. Looked at the door. I opened it and she walked in. Emily picked her up like a sack of potatos and she waited. Didn't fight. Didn't scratch. Didn't Meow. Just waited to be put down, then took off to find a good hiding place under a bed.

She resisted a name. We tried out lots of names. None of them ever fit. She became simply La Chatte over time as our ability to figure out her personality increased. It suited her. La Chatte. The Cat. Our Cat? I think not. She lived with us, but was not a lovey dovey lap cat. She would tolerate some rubbing, some under the chin scratching, but too much and she would stalk away, looking for a quieter room.

The shaves, oh God how she hated the winter shaves....but winter time in Montreal is hard on a cat and a long haired cat who mats makes it doubly hard. Her fur, when wet, would dread up into clumps and spread like wildfire in her fur. This would leave her doubly irritable - hating to be touched where the mats were tied to her skin.

The indignity of the shaves was only second to the appearance of the rabbit. A Rabbit. In the House. In the Bed where she slept. A Lapin meal was booting her out of her rightful place as ruler of the Human Bed. What was a cat to do? Ignore it. Maybe lick the rabbit occasionally when she was sure no human was watching.

The man was her favorite. She was crazy about him. She slept on top of him when she could get away with it, and on his feet when he got wiggly. The woman - meh, shes Ok and cleans the winter litterbox and the child should be avoided at all costs...but the Man. That one was her beloved. Her chosen. They regarded each other from opposite ends of the couch.

Just as Spring comes to Montreal, just as the days grow longer and warm enough to be outside to watch the birds and bask in the sun....She gets sick. Suddenly. On a rainy Sunday, her people watch her...thinking that she is awfully quiet..but it IS rainy and she is a mysterious cat. By Monday, the man says something to the woman. There is something wrong, he says. The woman finds vomit next to the rabbit maze, and agrees. Something is wrong. To the Vets in the morning, the woman decrees, for she thinks that La Chatte has been eating things that maybe were no good, poisoned things or dead things. Things that show up in the spring when the snow melts.

La Chatte barely moves when the woman picks her up from her sleeping spot at the feet of the man in the morning. She is responsive...but slow and musters an elusive purr as the woman rubs her body over feeling for injuries and assessing her skin. She protests - weakly - as the woman puts her in the carrier. The rabbit, though, knows something. The rabbit begins to thump - over and over again. Staring at the cat.

At the vet, the woman opens the door and gives her rubs as she describes the symptoms. She tries to purr....but doesn't quite make it. Too much energy. She dies before the end of the day.

And breaks our hearts

Mommy's Dirty Little Secret

Its a more than a little embarrassing to admit this. I've never been too much of a fan girl in many respects. Sure - funky Asian Horror films, or translated Swedish Vampire stories - Who Doesn't like these?

No - This is somehow much worse.

Much ....dirtier.

Emily caught me about a week ago. ( and no - it wasn't the "adult toys" I move those around once a month to keep from ever having her pull one out and asking "WHATS THIS!" again)

"What are ya doin'", she asked.

"Hmm? what? Oh nothing - sit down and I'll brush your hair."

"Why are you watching that show?"

"Well I wasn't really watching it - it was just on."

"You were watching it. I just saw you. Watching it."

"Oh (nervous laugh) well, I don't know. I think that the guy there reminds me of someone I used to go out with."

"What? Which one? Did you go out with him?"

"Oh, no - honey. No. But he Looks an awful lot like the guy I used to date - even down to the little soul patch on his chin."

"Do you think he's cute?"

"Huh? Ummm." Long Pause "Actually - yes. I do. I find myself strangely attracted to him"

And in this way, my daughter outed my crush on Scott from the Imagination Movers.

Tweens, Teens and Social Cognition

(Firstly - thanks to Jennifer who made a comment on the Vygotsky post which made me think about this - and flesh out some of the whys and hows, at least the way I think - which, lets face it, is always some sort of magic carpet ride)

So. You've gotten my base view on Vygotsky and why I think the concept of self talk is important. You've also had a bit of the other theories of Lev - Scaffolding, Zone of Proximal Development... Jennifer asked a question about how this theory may expand to fit high school/teens.

Now really, my Partner-in-PhD-Angst Maija should write this part. Youth culture is her forte and I've been her TA/partner for two very good literature classes. So I am blatantly ripping off some of the ideas she and I have talked about as I cobble together this "response".

Would this work in high school? Would we see a decrease of cliques and bullying behavior if kids were kept in stable groupings - with the first priority being the fluidity of their social interactions? Honestly, I don't know. I also don't think you could plop kids who had been schooled in "traditional" ways into 9-12th grade multiage classrooms and expect this could work. The children for whom this would be beneficial would have to be "grown" with the program, insomuch as they would be socialized to perform in a group learning environment. Most schools now are so Individual achievement oriented that the children who are invested in those systems would be thrown for a huge loop of we took them out of that. I am, and not a shocker here, very much in favor of starting the reforms with our youngest children as these children and families are less resistant to change and the school socialization pattern is less deeply imprinted on their learning behaviors.

Last year, Maija started the Young Adult Lit course talking about the metaphor of Teen as Alien. It remains, I think, an apt description. In addition to increase Learning demands (oh my god - get good grades or you'll never get to university...)you've got the whole physical and emotional changes that are kicking in full delta force. They are HYPER aware of themselves socially....but not in an integrated way. By this I mean, we each have an internal image of ourselves. This sharpened into focus as we transitioned into young adulthood - but it isn't a full picture of who we are. By rights, it CAN'T be, as we don't possess the full prefrontal cortex ability to see beyond the immediate. Our Teen Hurts are Whole Body and Mind Hurts. This means that when adults around us discount our pain, our loves , our thoughts as "not real", it can be intensely insulting and dismissive.

The other thing that intrigued me was the discomfort that I saw in some of the YA Lit students (mostly student teachers) when asking them to authentically remember what it was like to be a Teen themselves. For many, that door was locked and there was no way in hell they were opening it up to be vulnerable again. They'd crossed the line into adult hood and defended that beachhead like it was the last safe haven on earth.

And that is the crux of it. Vulnerability. As teens - and later as teachers - we worry about being vulnerable, about showing vulnerability. We assume it is weakness and will be judged as such. Would these worries be the same for kids who had been in the type of "social cognition" first classrooms I imagine?

As the Mom of a "tween", I can attest that this negotiation of roles is a painful thing to watch. I want to protect her...but I know she knows lots of things already. I want to keep her from knowledge of the messiness of life with its sexuality and desire and anger and depression and feelings. I don't want her to know that I - ME, her Mother - am participating in all of those things I don't want her to know about.

So we hide these parts of ourselves to our children at home, or in the classroom, because they make us uneasy. So the circle perpetuates. We are babies. We are Children, not babies. We are Teens and not children. We are Not Teens, we are Adults.

We burn down each bridge we cross so no one else can use it and pretend like we were always here, right now.

It seems like there has to be a better way.

Teacher Thoughts

My brain is full of teacher things.

This is what happens when I am immersed in this reading and research. I revert back to teacher brain, which is not a bad thing - but it means that I am thinking, thinking, thinking - all the time, trying to integrate what I know, what I have seen, what I feel - and all the bits and pieces that don't fit anywhere else. It is why I know that Academia and Research are right for me, this constant whirring in my brain.

Here are random things that have emerged as this flood gate is barely controlled.

I hate lining up. I hate asking children to line up. What an asinine policy. I stopped asking kids to "get in line" about 12 years ago, because really - what was the point? All it did was cause fights between kids as to who was standing where and wasted my time as I waited for people to get into line. As long as we all got to where we were going safely, what the hell difference did it make what formation we took? Every time I see an adult yell at kids to get into a line - or yell at them that they are waiting for a better line, or a quieter line....It makes me want to smack the adult. This isn't how kids respect you - by asking them to do stupid, pointless shit that we all know is stupid and pointless.

Emily had a parent teacher conference last week. She had told Terrance and I that she has remained on her 3's multiplication tables for months because she hasn't gotten 100% three weeks in a row. What? What kind of policy is this?

Terrance is in "charge" of Emily's math homework , and we all know that she knows her multiplication tables. She can write you out her entire thought process and problem solving. She is, however, not FAST at this. She freezes up when she thinks she is under pressure. She sometimes needs manipulatives to help her work through her problem using her tactile senses. It is just who she is.


There we were. Sitting across from the Math teacher. Who was explaining that she wants the kids to be able to simply recite their math facts, so she gives them these timed tests. Which Em sucks at. So I finally asked "What is the pedagogical reason for these tests", to which she finally admitted that there wasn't one. Its just the way that math had been taught before she was there and she adopted the same methods.

Oh My Fucking Head. All this stress, all this worry - for nothing. Who gives a rats ass if my kid needs additional time to finish a test - or needs to write the problem DOWN on paper? This kind of ridiculous repetition of teaching methods that make no sense makes me CRAZY. The idea that we have to prepare kids for some future by inflicting them with pressurized testing is absurd. An educational mentor once said to me "We don't prepare for famine by starving ourselves, Dawn" in countering the argument that we needed to "prepare" our kindergartners for something other than the process oriented curriculum that we fostered at the center.

As we left the meeting and walked to the car, I leaned in and said "It doesn't matter - she's doing fine" to Terrance. He agreed. But really? Do we really need to do this to kids? To parents?

As I once answered a student teacher is a class when he wondered if a little embarrassment might not be good for a child - make them WANT to do better in front of their peers:

"Nobody performs better when they feel unsafe. If we know that children learn best in environments where they can trust the adults, have stable routines and expectations - why would we EVER do anything to a child which would teach them that the adult CAN'T be trusted?

Make your own captions ( and a written answer!)

As part of the Envisage 365 project, I take LOTS of pictures. I try to take pictures of everything - mundane, funny, interesting, or simply there when I need to take a picture.













5. No - it can never take the place of a parent/child dialog - as this is where we initially gain all of our cultural clues as to How to communicate to another person. Our very survival depends on being competent at communicating with that primary adult. Now, children in child care have to expand or change some of their coping skills in order to be able to communicate with new adults effectively. I don't think this gives an advantage or disadvantage to the child - it simply is what it is and children are really resilient.

Does is differ between girls and boys? Usually - yes. But not in a dramatic cognitive way - by that I mean that it will differ in content the same way that boys and girls solve problems, which does have some socialized gender based tendencies but rests - I think- more in base personality style. Some of this has to do with gender based differences in our brain development, which is another thing that we have no control over or about.

Officially, it isn't a two way dialogue. BUT ( and here is where the basis of my dissertation rests) - I think it IS a way to broadcast information to peers. Both Vygotsky AND Piaget said that it was only cognitive in nature, whereas I posit that it is also social - it HAS to be social. In fact I think it is the way that children assist each other in the difficult and long journey of learning to communicate with a wide variety of people. I think they drop this when they have gained enough skill as communicators and thinkers to be able to do it without this "scaffold" from one another. And Yes, they are documented to do this much, much more when they are with other people - children in particular. When they isolate in lab situations, children don't self talk nearly at all....which is another reason I think that it has an important social function.

Stealing is not cool

A long time ago, when the blog world was young, a girl had an idea for a blog.

The girl decided to sit down one Sunday afternoon and create this blog. She then sent out emails to her blog friends to say "Hey, get a load of this idea...". The blog friends seemed excited and supportive. The girl was pleased, for she enjoyed making others happy with her ideas.

As things like this tend to go, the internet decided that this idea had some kind of merit. That this blog seemed to touch some kind of general truth in the world. The girl was pleased. The girl was flattered. The girl was a bit overwhelmed.

Within four months, the blog had grown exponentially and the notice was growing too. People with important sounding titles called the girl and asked for her content. These people said they were fans of her blog and wanted to put it on a bigger, better known uber blog. The girl, while flattered and a little bit awed, held back. She didn't want to give away her baby and the person with the impressive title wanted her to give it away for free. When it became apparent that the girl and her blog weren't so impressed with the important name of the publication and title as to let someone else absorb her blog, the negotiations stopped and the offer was dropped. The girl saved all these emails detailing how the person was a fan of her blog.

The girl fell into one of her depressions and withdrew into herself. She fell out of touch with the bloggy world in many ways. The Blog(s) she created survived and thrived despite her own condition. She crawled out of her funk long enough to attend a party and meeting of other bloggers like her in the summer of her following year. She woke one morning to find that there was a door hanger on her hotel room. Promoting a Blog with a name very very similar - all but one word similar - to the name of her own blog. She was angry. She was confused and she was hurt.

She got onto the email and wrote a pointed email to the address listed on the door hanger. Within minutes there was a response. It was from the same person from the big name publication who had claimed to be such a fan merely eight months prior. Who further claimed in a print interview to thinking up the idea and name all on her own. Phone calls were made. Angry words exchanged. The girl asserted that her idea had clearly been stolen. The other person disagreed.
The girl hung up on her.

The girl then withdrew into the hotel room for the remainder of the meeting. She was very, very hurt. Old blog friends divided into camps - those who saw the girls point of view that her core idea had been lifted and duplicated and those who did not. The girl withdrew from the blog world even more.

The girl considered legal action. Considered it hard. But she lived in a different country ... and she just didn't have enough money to sustain it. She was back in school full time, after all.

The girl tried hard to keep her playgirl mouth shut. She tried very, very hard.And she did, for a long time. Her blog continued and grew. She continued to receive attention and kudos. She refused any further offers by any entity for any piece of her blog(s) - no matter who. She refused offers to turn her blog into television shows or movie scripts. She protected her blog(s).

She tried hard to forget about the other person and the patently derivative blog. Usually she succeeded. Until an old blog friend, one who had been at that party and seen the situation unfold, an old blog friend who had been unfailing in her support for the girl sent the girl an email announcing the launch of a book by the other person. The friend told the girl "I sent an email saying fuck you and the idea you stole and take me off of your fucking mailing list." Which made the girl smile. Because in any world, day to day or internet, a friend who does that on your behalf is priceless indeed.

And then the girl decided to write this all down as a cautionary tale for the internet. With a reminder that stealing is not cool. No matter how you try to pretend the idea is yours.

The girl still believes that the karma of the internet and larger world will sort this out. Naive perhaps, but the girl has to believe.

VygotskY!

Vygotsky. If you have been around education for any length of time, it is one of the names that gets kicked around in conversations about the philosophy and pedagogy of education. Usually filed under "names I can say that show I know something about the foundational origins of education" along with Piaget, Erickson, Pavlov, Skinner, Freud, Dewey, Montessori, Waldorf, Bruner...and many, many more. Prior to my decision to devote my academic life to him, I knew the same cursory information. A few of his main concepts. Enough lingo to get me by sounding like I knew of what I spoke.

So, at the request of E, I am going to give you a quick and dirty thumbnail of Lev Vygotsky. Maybe I can even communicate why I think he is/was so brilliant and my part in moving his theories forward. But no promises there.

Facts:
So who was this guy? A Russian Jew, born at the turn of the last century. Not the most progressive place to be born a Jew, let alone a smart Jew who wanted to further his education. He was lucky. He worked hard. He was chosen for one of the token spaces in University for a Russian Jew, but denied his first field of study because of his religion. And he was around during the Russian Revolution, which clearly influenced some of his writings...but mostly, he was incredibly smart. And forward thinking. And observant. Died in 1934 of tuberuloisis. He was 38.
Most of his writings were locked up - first banned by Stalin, then shielded by the Iron Curtain from the rest of the world. It wasn't until his texts started to wander out of Russia - rough translations in the early 60's and better ones in the mid 80's - that the rest of the world started to realize what had been sitting in front of them.

Now, you have to remember when Lev was writing and thinking, the world was coming to grips with some of the first theories of why we do what we do - Freud was at his heyday, Jung was right behind him. Piaget was studying mollusks and psychoanalysis and Pavlov was figuring out that dogs can be conditioned to salivate.

Much of what was being discussed and written concerned the Individual. The effects on One. Person as Island. We humans like to believe that we are each uniquely special - that we can control our own destinies and desire to learn. It still resonates in the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideology that any person can achieve anything at any time - if he or she WANTS it enough. It emerges from the "Tabla Rasa" idea of a child - a blank slate upon which anything can be written, from this Watson quote: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist... doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years" (Watson, Behaviorism, 1924, p. 82; 1930, p. 104).

But not Lev. He started to formulate theories on how Humans cognitively work in groups - How we use symbols (including language) to share information with one another. How those symbols are then taken and expanded or changed by other groups of other humans. How intelligence can not be defined by giving the correct answers on any given standardized test...but must be defined by how that individual navigates in his/her culture of origin with the symbols that are valued by that social structure. Further beyond this, Vygotsky suspected that we could never truly gauge the IQ of a person as a static fixable number (Like Binet and Piaget) , but that we should rather look at the individual in a continuum of learning, assuming that we all go through stages of apprenticeship and expertise. He called these fluid stages the zones of proximal development.

Vygotsky then went on to say that he suspected that we learned better Together. He posited that humans learn better when we have access to other humans - that we model for one another. He first looked at Mother/Child pairs. He noticed that these mother and child pairs seemed to work in a unique manner. He called it scaffolding. In essence, the expert (mother) provides a variety of tactics and techniques for the apprentice (child) to learn any given task ( language, feeding oneself) and that the scaffold/support is expanded, deconstructed and reconstucted in fluid movement with the growth of apprentice (Child). Vygtosky only had time to really look at this in a uni-directional way - Adult to child. I also think it moves from child to child as a matter of course.

Because Lev was thinking and writing at the same time as Jean Piaget, one would have to know that they observed something similar about children at work/play. They both noticed that they talk to themselves. However, they came to very different reasons as to what the purpose of this "self-talk" was in the cognitive development of children.

Piaget saw it as a sign of the immature thinker. The child had not yet developed the skills to think internally ( without speaking) and so talked out loud to problem solve. Piaget decided that this tendancy disappeared when the brain and problem solving had matured. Piaget liked nice linear things.

Vygotsky noticed the same "self-talk" but viewed it very differently. He viewed it as the accelerant for cognitive development. It was not an immature mind at all. It was evidence of the child acquiring the tools of the culture (as well as self regulation) and allowed the observer a window into the mind of the child - before the child internalized that information and no longer spoke it out loud.

My favorite Vygotsky quote is "From the Social, comes the individual". In this, he sums up something fundamental about how I believe humans learn. We are first and foremost products of a specific social group ( usually our family of origin). We then go forth and use the tools that we have learned and apply them successfully ( or unsuccessfully) to other social groups - usually child care or school situations for most western children. Children - as apprentice thinkers in our culture - have to form and reform LOTS of information to be able to function in each of these groups.

For instance, if you have a Preschool classroom of 14 children and 2 teachers -that individual child must (mediate) learn bits and pieces of 15 OTHER already formed cultural worlds. Those 16 people have to then teach or share enough of those worlds between each other to be able to agree on a Symbol system that will work in THAT space for THOSE individuals. Every time a child - or worse a Teacher - enters or exits that whole balance is disrupted and the process begins again.

My interest lies in the social use of the private speech - the self talk of children. I do not think it is purely cognitive in nature. It has a social function. I think of it as potentially the "glue" that binds the classroom together. I think that children - as apprentice thinkers - are broadcasting information for their peers by way of this speech. I also suspect that children hear and retain this information from their peers and then use it as a way to mediate information - to rebuild their social and cognitive construct in the classroom through each other. I further suspect that when children are given LOTS of time to get to know each other ( vis a vis talking - long play sessions ( minimum of an hour as it takes kids at least 20 minutes to get a play scenerio planned in order to then go forwards with it) - staying with a stable group of classmates over 2 to 3 years, etc) that we may see less hostile activity (ie bullying) and much better overall learning because they have done the work of constucting a set of social rules and knowledge together.

If I cast my mind outwards and start to think about classrooms in which the social life - and by this I mean the cooperation and coordination of any given class towards a common goal through the shared/mediated knowledge of each others knowledge and cognition - leads the learning?
What would teaching look like? What would those children be like who came out of those schools?

Meander

I need to laugh more.

This revelation follows no particular epiphany. But rather as I was just sitting here, flossing my teeth at 2 p.m. on a Monday afternoon.

If it is not a practice you enjoy, the flossing of ones teeth can become a deeply contemplative experience. I mean, you really have to PAY ATTENTION to what you are doing when you floss, otherwise all that effort is moot. And lets be honest, if you are going to take the time to actually buy at the store ( and not use that one mini sample you got at your last cleaning when you lied about flossing daily), get out and use the floss - you might was well do it right.

The flossing session followed my inexplicable desire to sharpen all the pencils in the house. Grabbing my x-acto pencil sharpener, I gathered all the pencils I could find and sat on the bed - sharpening one after the other. I fished out all the stubby broken pencils and gave them new leases on life with fresh new points. I sorted all of Emilys colored pencils back into their holder - the newly refreshed tips all pointing in the same direction. Terrance came home to me, covered with colored pencil shavings dust, sorting out crayons from markers from twistables from fine line markers from craypas.

I do this occasionally. This overwhelming urge to put things Right in the house, with particular focus on Em. It is a strange cross of maternal instinct and teacher training. If she has all the materials, and they are in their place and ready for use... well then, it proves I am a good Mom. A Capable Mom. A Mom who provides sharpened colored pencils at a moments notice.

I am trying to notice when these internal nesting urges spring forth - they may have to do with my going inside myself to produce something else. There are conferences coming, and I have finally been coaxed to go forth and present myself to others as a Researcher. This is an oddly important step for me, the perpetual know-it-all. Placing myself out in front of the other professionals in my field and asking for acceptance and acknowledgement is difficult, as part of my internal identity as been as an "outsider". My fears of never knowing enough to be an "expert" in my field also roll into play here. My supervisor jokes with me that I probably know as much about Vygotsky as anyone in the world, and yet I get choked up when I have to articulate his theories. Me, the unstoppable talker - completely unable to speak.

And my grandmother. And My mother, and my Aunt and Me and Emily. This line of women have occupied a sizable space in my brain as I puzzle out my grandmothers death, and my place along this continuum of females. The bullet train of Emily's puberty is aiming straight at me as I struggle to remain a granddaughter. The baby. The pumpkin, the best beloved. My grandmothers death makes me feel Old - moreso than the deaths of my fathers parents. My ability to mentally distance myself from that side of the family had also extended to the whole of the Ohio Valley. If I didn't return, then I never changed. A Lost Boy of one.

I finish flossing and throw the floss away. I drink from the coffee I got this morning, but which I never finish until the afternoon. I lay down in the afternoon sunshine, my rabbit standing guard next to my bed. I pull my quilt up close around my face and smile in the sunshine as I build up my energy for Emily's homecoming.

Reviews of things You didn't ask for

I don't generally talk about the stuff I'm reading. This is for several reasons. I don't think that you would be super interested in Such titles as "Apprenticeship in Thinking" and "Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition". Nor do I suspect that you are all aching for conversations on "Situating Constructivism" or "Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research".

Well - actually, maybe you are. If that is the case, feel free to email me and I would happily drag you into the bizarre academic world that one portion of my brain now habitually inhabits. Seriously. I can now talk your face off regarding the concept of the "bricoleur" and it's place in both teacher education AND qualitative research AND how I am planning to weave this into a paper I will be writing for my first major research conference paper presentation as first author.

Nope. Not dragging you into that room. In fact, lets lock that door for the moment and put the key in this drawer.

About a month or two ago, I realized that my pleasure reading - my pleasure watching had dwindled down to nothing. This, by historical measures, does not bode well. My mind must engage on a variety of levels and when it strips away anything that I feel as "pleasurable" to only "work" or "distraction from work" there are bad things on the horizon. Possible relapses into places of coal darkness and thick mud sludge.

This time, I caught myself before submerging too deep. I made lists. This is my first line defense to feeling overwhelmed - making lists of things that I should do. Things that I feel like I need to get done to feel like I am accomplishing something. Things that I know would make me happy. Reading and Watching Movies/Shows are some of those things.

So first up: The books and graphic novels/comics:

1. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Linddqvist (book)

To tell you that this book has stayed with me in a viscerally way would be underestimating the power of this text. I had seen the movie first, and the movie - while able to stand alone as a piece of art - seemed to be missing something in my eyes. There was more to this story, I knew. Much, much more. I found it all in the book. It is beautiful in the most painful way possible. The author was able, in my estimation, to craft a story about the utter isolation and exploitation that occurs as we walk the line between child and adult. Plus, it is a vampire story. Which kicks it up a notch in my eyes.

2. Post apocalyptic Graphic Novels : The Walking Dead , Fell, Desolation Jones , The Watchmen, Area 51, Wasteland , Y: The Last Man , American Virgin , 30 Days of Night ( and it's successors) and just starting Preacher.

Most of my non-school reading time has been consumed with the graphic novel/comic genre. I like well crafted stories, with mythological and sociological contexts. I like smart shit. The Walking Dead is by far one of the most gripping series I have had the pleasure to actually FOLLOW. All right - yeah. Its a zombie apocalypse story. But so much more. It takes elements of the evolution of the zombie story genre ( Nods to Romero, I am Legend, and 28 weeks later) and makes a story of who we are, how we must evolve and survive in the midst of the failure of trusted institutions. Wasteland is another that I have deeply enjoyed and is evolving.

The others are series which completed before I discovered them, or ones which fade in and out of existence given the author/artist ability to find time for them ( I am talking to YOU Fell and Desolation Jones)

3. The True Blood Books.
Cheesy, yep. Kind of smutty sex books with vampires and werewolves? Yep. But a smart commentary on social, gendered, sexual orientation and class divisions. Actually, Yes. And Super easy to read.

Movies/TV:

First, a disclaimer. Dawn is a wicked movie snob. She goes for "foreign" films. She LIKES subtitles. The more subtitles, the better, in fact. This has driven Terrance to no longer view films with her, as she has tricked him into 3 hour Mandarin movies. While Terrance is in the living room enjoying "The Transporter 3", Dawn is pondering the depth of human experience in the bedroom with the texture and reality of Korean film.

Actually not really. Dawn has been seriously grooving on the J-Horror and K-Horror genres. Being a pretentious snob, I refuse to see American remakes of films. The grudge? No, thanks, I'll take Ju-on.

Here they are:
"Let the Right one In" - see book description. In swedish. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"The Host" - Korean. Currently winning awards. View of the US and manipulation of information through Korean eyes. Parental love and devotion.

"Hansel and Gretel" -Korean. My current fave. May have knocked out "Let the right one" in as my favorite. Dark Fairy Tales are my love.

"El Orfanato" - Spanish - Another dark fairy tale derivative. REALLY very good.

"Infection" - Japanese. This one stayed with me. Actually kept me awake.

"Reincarnation" - Japanese - also very, very good. Shades of "The Shining" but in a context of Buddhist mythology.

"Audition" - Japanese. Slow. Slow. Slow. Good, as a cultural touchstone, but a bit gratuitous.

"Tale of Two Sisters" - Korean. Remade as "The uninvited" in the US - this movie kicks ass

"Memories of Murder" - Korean. An excellent example of the changing of a culture as viewed through the detectives in a serial murder case.

"Antarctic Journal" - Korean. Watched it last night. I really loved this one. Didn't get super reviews, but I found it very textual - very rich.

"Suicide Circle" - Japanese. This one was hard to watch. There is a great many things that I didn't quite understand, as I am not Japanese. There are still things that I am puzzling out about the story.

"Premonition" - Japanese - another good story about life choices and where we end up.

"One Missed Call" -Japanese. This was the only one that I was thinking "Save me from this muddled mess". I am hoping that "Pulse" will be better. I get the whole "Connection and lack thereof through a digital society" storyline but Lord.

"The Eye" - Chinese/Thai. Don't bother with what, by all accounts, is a Terrible remake with Jessica Alba. This was an incredibly well done movie - not graphic at all, but scary. You should also know a little something about Death traditions in Asian cultures, or many of the inferences won't make any sense.

There are other ones in my queue - "Pulse", "Phone", "Spider Forest", "Inner senses", "Cello" - The "Oldboy/Mr Vengence/Sympathy for Lady/Mr Vengence", "Silk", 13 Beloved", Paradise Murdered", "Death Bell", "Rahtree, Flower of the Night", "The Quiet Family" and "Marebito".

So - If any of you had delusions that I wasn't a super geek girl, I think I have effectively dashed these. Either that, or you inexplicably love me all the more.

Not Yet a Woman

Yes, I think you all saw where this was going, right?

The discovery of armpit hair in the dressing room of the clothing store...which led to the discussion of her breasts..and lack thereof, and the beginnings of, too. Which led to Emily's knowledge sharing of the stages of breast development.

While I sat there somewhat slackjawed taking this information in. Not actually taking it "in" so much. I was forcing the information to bounce off of me like I was wearing one of those Bio-Hazard suits and Emily was showering me with Teen Ebola.

In my mind, I was running in a circle, flapping my hands and screaming in a pitch heard only by raptors. You know where I'd leapt, right? Periods. Menstruation. Aunt Flo ...which led to the possibility that my baby could have a baby....and then to sexual knowledge and activity and the hows of the possibility of my baby having a baby....which led to the picture in my brain - searing indelibly - of my daughter as a real sexual being doing the things which could lead her to having a baby - which is worse than the horrifying picture in my brain of my own parents as sexual beings which made it's debut when I was 13 and realized that my newly pregnant mother must have had S-E-X.

Now this is the sound I associate with this ball of hellish knowledge:

AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
(which, FYI, is also the sound of the person falling from a great height in any comic/graphic novel)

But my perdition had only just begun, friends and neighbors.

When we got home, Emily dragged out her "Your Body and You" book and chose passages for me to read aloud to her. Fair enough. I can read out loud. No problemo. If there is one thing I CAN do - it is research information and read it aloud. I got that skill down pat. Cripes, it forms one of the tenets of my chosen profession, and we all know that when I revert to Professional Dawn, I do ok.

After reading, she lay in bed next to me. Thinking.
I lay in bed next to her, pointedly NOT thinking.

So while You all see this coming, I did not. Well, thats Not Entirely True. The possibility existed - but the vault of my mind had locked down and the lasers and guard dogs had deployed.

"Mom - Do you think I have any hair on my labia?"

Kill. Me. Now. Seriously. Kill me now.

I've been puked on, shit on, had an Infant Emily shove her toe up my nose, laid in rabbit piss because I was too tired to change the sheets until the morning. In the interest of Too Much Information, I even once slid a clove of garlic up my hoo-ha in an effort to kill a yeast infection without having to buy medication.

But this? No. I can't.

"Mom - can you check for me?"

I stare at her, my eyebrows knit together in consternation. She stares back at me, her face open and curious.

For her, in the past ten years, I have looked at everything. I have wiped her ass, I have washed vomit from her. I have looked at cuts and scabs and bloody gum holes. I have pulled teeth and trimmed toenails. I have applied ointments and balms to every orifice she has. I have pulled things from her nose. And suddenly I get squeamish? WTF?

Not bothering to wait for any answer from me, Emily runs over to turn on the overhead bedroom light, whipped off her undies and lay on my bed expectantly. I approach this body I know so intimately, so thoroughly, so completely with total and overwhelming fear. This body - an extension of me for the past ten years - has changed into something foreign and off limits to me in the span of three hours with the discovery of a handful of fuzzy armpit hairs.

I gather every tenet of empowering my daughter to love her body that I have ever pondered. I gather every bit of knowledge of how to raise a woman with good self esteem who loves her femininity and sexuality. I know that having open, trusting relationships and discussions with the adults in a young womans life set these foundations. I force myself to smoothe over my face, which is flashing through variations of shame, horror and panic.

I lean over her.

And confirm the transfiguation of my baby into the pupal stage of womanhood.

Still a Girl

Emily smells a bit like peaches when she sleeps.

I'm not sure why, but I woke at 3 a.m. with this thought at the forefront of my consciousness. And Emily in bed with me.

I could tell you it is because it was an especially windy night tonight and that on windy nights she sleeps in bed with me, but that wouldn't be true. She crawls in bed with me most nights. Usually between 1 and 2, when I am firmly asleep. If Terrance is in the bed ( which is about a 50-50 proposition), he will get up and wander into the other room. Most nights, I sleep the sleep of the dead. My daughter and husband are the migratory birds of our home, floating from bed to bed, while I am the Crow - One nest, thank you very much.

But that isn't what this is about. Em's sleep, or lack thereof, has been discussed ad nausuem.

No friends. What has me pacing the house, engendering strange looks from cat and rabbit as I wander from room to room, you think?

When my daughter was handed to me at 4:22 am on May 21st 1998, I did not realize I would struggle so hard to separate my SELF from her. I did not realize that her infancy and toddlerhood would be filled with my own attempts to find the "Before" Dawn. Sure, I was aware that I had just joined the line of countless women who gestate and birth babies...but so what. It is how we promulgate the species.

What I didn't quite get was that I had brought another woman into the world.

Woman. Those creatures of whom I belonged and yet, didn't quite understand. Their reindeer games freaked me out a bit, to be honest and my femininity ( or lack of) has been a tightrope I have walked with occasional success and some spectacular fails.

In each life stage with Em, I have tried hard to keep my eye on the ball. The here and now. What do you need Now and how can I get it to you. One day completed, the next one on deck. Weaning? Check. Baby food to solids? Check. Toilet skills? Check. Wean off binky? Check ( but Jesus, just barely). Ability to dress herself and do basic grooming? Check. Off the Kindergarten? Loss of first Tooth? Questions about sex and reproduction? Telling her about death? Breaking the news of me being Santa, and the Tooth Fairy AND the Easter Bunny? Navigating shitty little mean girls in school?

Yep. Did it. Sometimes better than others, but hey. A little car puking has to be expected now and again.

This weekend we began shopping for bathing suits for her. Anyone who has shopped with an almost-eleven-year-old could tell you - Ugh. I mean, I am NOT forking out 40 bucks for a bathing suit she will shred in half a season..or outgrow. And then there is the "appropriate" factor. My god. Look at some of those hoochie suits. Hell No, my kid is not wearing those. Plus, the evidence points to Em being built alot like me and while I wouldn't say I am fat...I am a brick house. Boobs...and Ass. It takes time to find a suit that fully covers her bootylicious self.

So there we were - in the store dressing room trying on a wide variety of styles and sizes. The first five rejected, I was bringing in the next round when she said this:
"Mom - I have some hairs growing under my arms!"

I looked at her, standing in the dressing room in her panties - smooshed next to the mirror staring at her smooth and hairless arm pit.

"No you don't. Let me see." I leaned in. Staring. Humph. As I thought. Nothing.
"There isn't any hair!", I said confidently holding out the next bathing suit.

"No, there IS ", she said emphatically, "Look - right HERE!" Pointing to a tiny speck of skin under her arm, I leaned in to examine again. Where there were three distinct hairs.

"Oh. You're right", I said and sat down on the dressing room floor.

I was shattered. My mind was completely empty. I held up the next bathing suit for trying on. She wiggled into it and preened in front of the mirror.

She had - for the first time in her life - rendered me completely speechless.

Layers

It goes without saying that I am still sorting through my mind after the death of my grandmother two weeks ago.

My utter fear in going back to the place of my birth was all consuming. I stopped sleeping from the moment I knew I was going to have to go back. Of course, I could have chosen to not go, and I would be lying if I said that I did not seriously consider fleeing into those options. In the best scenerio, I would face this with my brother at my side. He and I could walk through that gauntlet again - not unlike the same way we had done as children. Dawn and Donnie. I did not want my husband. And I did not want my daughter anywhere near the Ohio valley. I wanted my brother.

Life, however, does not exist to conform to my mental scenarios. My brother is a brand new father of a baby boy who looks shockingly like him. He is learning about the making of a family with his wife - and that this making of a family involves hard, exhausting work FAR past the labor and delivery episode. In fact, I told Donnie that I might kill him if he left his breastfeeding wife for five days.

My next choice was my sister. My sister - Jessie. Nearly 14 years younger than me, it has only been in the last year that I have considered her. That sounds as awful, I think, as it should. At first I blamed the age gap. I went to college when she went to kindergarten. Later, I fell victim to my mothers ability to infuriate me with my sisters status as the only child left at home. I would get incredibly angry at what I inferred was special and different treatment of my sister. Trips to Europe? Ski Lessons? What the fuck?

My Achilles heel was my idea that I should be the most special, most beloved, most cherished. Me. If I didn't get it - whatever I perceived to be favoritism or special treatment, than I was going to be dammed if she was going to get it. I am not proud of this character trait of mine, and am still unraveling the tendrils of this poisonous vine. What I allowed this to do was to completely separate me from my sister. My assistant in this was my mother, who would fan the flames by telling me things that she knew would anger me - pushing me further back into my corner. I would never hear anything directly from my sister...but from my mother, interpreting Jessie's actions and experiences through her filter to me. When Jessie turned down a full scholarship to Bard nine years ago to live at home and attend the local state college, I was livid. Livid from afar. "Push her out!" I practically screamed from New Hampshire. "Why are you allowing this? Why do you baby her?"

What I didn't know was the price my sister would pay for staying. The price she HAD been paying for being the only female rival in the house.

It was this only past August that I finally got a clue as to that price. My sisters breakdown was fairly complete with the requisite accidental on purpose suicide attempt. Which my mother attempted to keep from me - by not calling to tell me it had happened. Although I was only 5 hours away from her...and My mother was 11 hours away. And when I did track my mother down...she tried to pretend it hadn't happened. Then she blamed my aunt for calling me. When I asked what the plan was going to be for Jessie's aftercare, she was vague. "You girls - you're both so willful. I think Jessie is going to go back to work today...She is upstairs sleeping right now...."

I decided to drive down. I wanted to try to convince my sister to come back to Montreal with me. To heal. To be quiet. To be away from everything. I did not trust my mother to be a parent to my sister. I told my mother that Jessie was NOT going to go into work that day - that I was coming to her house. That I was on my way.

I think we all know that this trip went down in flames, as it was clearly destined to from the beginning.

Driving back from that shit storm, I weighed everything I knew about my mother. Everything I knew about my sister. My final words had been with my sister at the front door.

"Please", I pleaded..."Come with me. It isn't good for you here. Come stay with me..."

But she wouldn't. Mom would be infuriated if she went with me, and she couldn't take the punishment that would be meted out after the fact. I knew the punishment, and while 38 year old Me could say that Mom really couldn't do anything....to my 25 year old sister, it felt very different.

I've tried to stay connected with Jessie. I call and leave messages on her phone. She never returns my calls. I tell her on the voice messages that I love her. That I blame myself for not being more involved. For allowing myself to be manipulated by my mother. For leaving her defenseless for the past 20 years.

I finally heard from her the day my grandmother died. We made tentative plans to travel to the funeral together. I offerred to arrange the car - or flight - or however we got there. She said she would call me after she got out of class to finalize plans. Then she didn't call back. Ever.

Was I angry? No, not really. Profoundly frightened at having to face all this alone, but not angry. Disappointed that my awkward and inept attempts to build a rickety bridge over 20 years of quicksand that is my relationship with my sister were going nowhere, Yes. But not angry.

I booked the tickets that night. I was going alone.

Unnamed Parent? May I have a word?

Two weeks ago my ten year old daughter walked into my room and said this:

"Is it true that Obama wants to kill babies living in pregnant womens bodies?"

Oh my head.

Deploying my oldest teacher technique, I responded with a question:

"What do you mean? I am not sure I understand your question."

What unfolded was an explanation offered to my daughter by a classmate of the politics of abortion, through a lens of a pro-life religious viewpoint.

Emily is an ardent supporter of President Obama. As expatriate Americans, her father and I both voted for him, and she loves the story of his parenthood which seems so familiar to her. She, too, is a biracial child, "just like the President".

This conversation occurred after Emily was talking about how much she LIKED the new President of the United States. Her peer retorted, with all the self confidence of a ten year old repeating information heard from her parent, that Emily's new hero was, in essence, a baby killer.

Because a shot of tequila was not at hand, I had to take only a deep breath and try to sort out the basic information on the tricky and personal topic of the right to choose whether or not a woman carries a fetus to term that I wanted to convey.

"You and Daddy chose to have me...", Emily offerred.

"Yes, love. Daddy and I planned to have a baby and then we found out we were having you - and we were very happy. But some people aren't ready to have a baby when they find out they are pregnant. So they have a choice whether or not to continue being pregnant. President Obama believes that people should be able to continue to have that choice - he doesn't want to take babies from Mom's who are wanting to be pregnant - he wants to make sure that the law says that people can make that choice for themselves, if they need to. Just like Mommy and Daddy think that you can't tell people who they can love, and who they can't love - we don't believe that you can tell someone that they have to have a baby if they have personal reasons for not wanting to have a baby."

I paused. I held my breath. This conversation could really tumble out of the realms of what I was already unprepared to discuss. Topics like birth control, sexuality, religion were flashing like neon signs in front of my eyes. Em has a very basic and unembellished idea of how babies are made....but it is a concept that she understands in a very non technical way. I was not ready nor eager to increase her knowledge of this topic either.

She digested this all quietly. I followed with my standard, "Do you have any other questions about what I said?"

In my head, I was strangling the mother who I knew had started this little interlude. I wanted to rake her over the coals - not for her personal viewpoint with which I disagreed, but for her decision to drag our ten year old daughters into this discussion. Her decision to make statements to HER daughter was now leaking into my bedroom forcing me to discuss issues of sexuality and contraception and the politics of pregnancy.

Emily is far more practical. "Can I tell Unnamed Child that she is wrong?"

I hesitate. "Well, perhaps you can tell her that you don't believe that her information is entirely accurate."

So unnamed Mother...Did you feel my laser beam eyes in your skull last night at the school concert? Because they were trained on you, I assure you.

Homeward Bound

As I have written before, my family is complicated.

No different, I suppose, than anyone else - old hurts and memories, resentments and things said and unsaid layered like shale.

I'd not spoken to my mother since August of last year. When she called me a pretentious snob. And uninvited me from her house. I, in turn, told her that she wasn't a very good mother. To me, my brother or my sister.

When she called and left a voicemail on our home phone on the 8th saying my grandmother was dying I was, well.....skeptical. My mother has been known to exaggerate things, spin some events to her benefit making her appear MORE - hurt, damaged, sad, or whatever emotion she is going for. I guard myself against her descriptions, holding out for the kernel of truth in whatever story I am hearing.

I emailed my Aunt to assess the accuracy of the description. According to my mother, she and my Aunt were taking turns providing care to my grandmother who was in hospice at my Aunts house in West Virginia.

The idea of my mother AND Aunt living in the same house for any length of time was enough to make my alarm bells go off. The sisters have had a real love hate relationship over the years, sometimes going for YEARS without speaking. If there is one thing you can give my family - we know how to hold a helluva grudge. Last I knew, the relationship tipped towards the "not entirely warm" scale so the news that they were living and caring for my grandmother in tandem was shocking.

But yes. My grandmother had been deteriorating for the past year, her memory fading and her heart beginning to fail. My aunt had taken her into her home after her release from the hospital. My grandfather having broken his leg in the spring, was in their home being cared for by my uncle.

Nonetheless, the email announcing my grandmothers death last Tuesday was shocking.
The implications were even more shocking. I would have to go back to the Ohio Valley. I would have to see my mother. I would have to see my grandmothers body. I would have to see my fragile grandfather, and my aging uncles. I would be in the very places I had successfully avoided for the past 25 years, resisting all invitations for family reunions and the deaths of my other set of grandparents. I would have to drive by the very house in which I was sure my father was living.

My roots were reaching out to strangle me.

Killing me softly

This morning was business as usual.

Running around - telling Em to put on her socks...did she brush her teeth? PLEASE put on her socks - stop looking at the television and PUT ON HER SOCKS!!!

In the midst of my stream of exhortations regarding her socks, she stopped looking at the television long enough to stare at me.

"I don't want to look at your naked butt", she said to me.

"Then don't sit your ass in my room while I get dressed!" and for emphasis I did a little booty wiggle and bounce.

Now,back in the day, this move brought all the boys to the yard, as my milkshake was something to behold.

Today? I get this:

"When you dance, your bum looks like two chicken nuggets."