I found this article in the New York Times Magazine, and the accompanying comments, fascinating. As the mother of a child with autism, I've often found myself feeling similar to how I imagine the parents of Alex -- the "gender-fluid" little boy -- felt when they sent an email to his classmates' parents, advising them to take it in stride when Alex wore a dress to preschool. But beyond what I imagine to be our shared emotions, the similarities end. Alex's parents can smooth their son's way by alerting the other children and adults in his path to his differences, and encouraging them to accept them. In a society that is becoming increasingly conscious of behavior that transcends gender norms, and increasingly open to experimenting in the gray area outside of those norms, Alex is sure to find his own milieu of open-minded friends and teachers who will write off his non-normative behavior as quirky.
As the mother of a child with autism, however, it has never occurred to me to send around a note about the possibility of my son being unusually difficult and disruptive if his expectations are thwarted in some way, if a slight change has been made to the day's anticipated plans, or if he makes a mistake in something he's writing, drawing, or playing on the violin. That's because children on the autism spectrum are expected to conform to certain norms of behavior. If a child has a diagnosis and an I.E.P., chances are that he will be assisted as he strives to meet those norms. But there's no equivalent, for autistic children, of "gender-variant" camp, where gray-area-gendered children are encouraged to dress up and play as the opposite sex. Certainly there are autism camps, but they tend to be of the intensive-training-to-enable-you-to-pass-for-neurotypical-and-thus-minimize-the-odds-of-having-a-miserable-life variety -- that is, not places where "neurologically-variant" children are encouraged to let all their autistic traits hang out, so to speak, in all the chaotic -- and disturbing -- glory such a thing would entail.
It is difficult for my son, as it is for all spectrum children, to conform to those norms. Like the parents of the gender-fluid kids, I worry about his future, and pray that he will have friends. But I know that it's not up to me, no matter how much I wish it were, to try to persuade other people to accept him as he is. I know, instead, that there is a balance that he will have to learn to strike for himself between conforming to the world's standards and being himself a standard bearer for neuro-atypicality and the very real gifts that it conveys. There is no autistic equivalent of a boy in a dress, nor even a "We're here, we're autistic, get used to it" t-shirt. While some of the people in Alex's world will find him adorable for wearing a dress in public, no one will find my truly adorable six-year-old so for having an atomic-level tantrum in public because McDonald's was all out of the mix for their vanilla shakes and he was compelled to choose something else.
So, on the one hand, I think, go on with yourselves, Alex and your parents. No one should care what you do; I certainly don't. But on the other hand, I'm not convinced that any attempts should be made to establish gender-fluid behavior as normative. Alex's parents should, rather, make it clear to their son that the world is not going to cut him slack as he gets older, and that, if he chooses to flout gender-normative behavior, things will be difficult for him. This is not cause for despair; it's acceptance of the way things are, and if Alex chooses to continue to cross-dress in public, he will undoubtedly develop an admirably strong character. After all, the world doesn't cut autistic kids -- or adults -- much slack, and it's up to us as parents to let our children know that they will have to control their impulses or pay the price. I don't see why the parents of gender-fluid children shouldn't do the same.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Interests and Talents That Do Not Involve You
I was surprised to see this blog mentioned favorably in a recent post on motherhood by Dartmouth undergraduate Clare Coffey in the "On the Square" section of First Things. Coffey, who discloses in the second paragraph that she has no personal or quantifiable experience in her subject, nonetheless attempts in the piece to unpack certain cultural constructs of what we might call "the new motherhood," and to offer her ideas for remaking it along more humane lines. In case the reader should question her credentials, however, she lightly suggests that "if anything I say seems presumptuous, unrealistic, or stupid," the reader should "just chuckle."
It appears that more readers scratched their heads than chuckled, wondering why First Things would publish such a facile sort of piece that gets so much wrong by an admitted non-expert. Sally Thomas addressed these concerns in detail at Castle in the Sea, focusing in particular on Coffey's assertion to the actual mothers out there that "[it] is perfectly acceptable to say 'No, you’re not doing trombone camp this year, because I have interests and talents that do not involve you, and spending my life in the car prevents me from pursuing them.'” "Only a sociopathic narcissist," Sally counters,
would declare aloud, to her child's face, that he isn't going to get to do something because frankly she has better things to do with her life than drive him around. I don't think there's anything remotely, let alone perfectly, acceptable about saying that sort of thing to a child, who in any case is naturally going to think, "Who said we were talking about you? The subject of this conversation is me and trombone camp."
I have to conclude that the reason Coffey recommended my blog along with the excellent blogs of some of my esteemed friends is that this one (which does NOT, by implication, extend to theirs) has historically been heavy on the "interests and talents that do not involve you." The idea that this blog might be paradigmatic of some sort of platonic ideal of rightly-engaged motherhood has led me to consider, with some chagrin, the course of my own attempts to maintain my activities as a scholar and performing artist while trying to be a good-enough mother.
There was a time a few years ago when this blog had some very active detractors who, in the interest, I think, of correcting me on my evidently bad course, left hurtful and even vicious messages in the comboxes (must I mention that these trolls generally self-identified as orthodox Catholics?). One, after I had written something in a comment about one's art, if one is a mother, being able to flourish more readily when one has cash in hand for child care, helpfully sought to remind me that the arts were for "people with TALENT," which is to say not for poor schlubs like me, international performing credits, scholarly publications, and at-that-time A.B.D. in music notwithstanding. Another real-life former friend, a self-styled apologist with a strong internet presence, incensed by something I had written here on a different topic, similarly blasted me for my "unsuccess" at everything I'd endeavored, from music to marriage to motherhood (this same erstwhile friend, before he started hating me quite so much, had asked me to sing at his father's wake and funeral, which I did, taking a cab from the Bronx twice to another far-off outer borough of the City of New York, vomiting from morning sickness much of the way), and, further, suggested that I wickedly blamed this unsuccess on my children, both living and dead. You have a happy life too, buddy!
But there is enough fodder for a mommy war waged by me against myself right here in the present. I was asked recently to translate some academic-musicological essays from the Italian for a prestigious forthcoming publication from a major publisher. I felt I couldn't say no to a well-paid gig of this nature, which could potentially generate similar money-earning opportunities, and was being overseen by a scholar I respect. As it turns out, though, I've already had to renegotiate the deadline, because I'm fairly fried from my current nighttime parenting duties, and I'm recalling a woman I used to know who also did freelance translating but concluded, after the birth of her second child, that she just couldn't do it anymore.
Then there's The Magic Flute. While it's an opera I've never done, the only roles for my voice type are ensemble roles, so it seemed like a low risk to agree to cover those two roles (Second and Third Lady), especially when the chance that I would go onstage in one of them was miniscule and the conductor welcomed my children at rehearsal. But as it happened, I took him at his word. I brought my children to rehearsal. While the conductor continued to be supportive, saying it was "a delight" to see them there (the fact is that, out of the entire cast and production staff, he was the only other parent; such is opera), the stage director and his staff begged to differ. It seems that Maestro had asked the stage director not to curse in front of the wee ones, and the stage director made it clear that that was "how he worked," and that children were not an appropriate ancillary to his method (in all honesty, Maestro needn't have been sensitive on my behalf; I curse like a truck-driver, though I try to remove myself to another room when I feel like I have to, or else do so in Italian, though I know neither of those tactics are exactly praiseworthy). This has meant that, because of the sudden and unexpected need for child care, I've been to attend only a few rehearsals, and that, as a result, I wouldn't be able to execute the staging in any kind of admirable fashion if I happened to get a last-minute call that one of the mainstage singers was sick. I've done covers before, but this is the first time in my life that I haven't been prepared for the eventuality of going onstage, and it's a very uncomfortable feeling, not just because of that eventuality, but also because it's in violation of my own strict work ethic. I am grateful to the conductor for making accommodations on my behalf, but the truth is that few other people would have done so.
When my older son was an infant, I was asked to chair a panel at an international conference on British music being held that summer in Vermont. I explained that I would need to bring him along, as he would be seven months old and couldn't be away from me. The conference organizers -- all men, fathers and grandfathers -- were happy to oblige, and so were most of my male colleagues. But I was not prepared for the reaction of the other women at the conference, who looked at me and my baby, whom I wore in a wrap, as if we were the shit on their shoes. I asked a colleague if it would be all right if I brought my son to his panel, and I sat on the floor in the back of the room with him to minimize any disruption he might cause, and to have easy access to the exit. Luckily my baby was fine, only making a few baby sounds here and there, and no one seemed to mind. The keynote address was scheduled for later that day, and I was eager to hear it, as it was given by a scholar whose work interested me keenly. When I entered the hall, however, with my son in his wrap, another scholar, an up-and-coming young Englishwoman, fairly snarled, "If you're sitting there, I'm moving. I heard your baby in that panel discussion," and she swept up her things and flounced to another seat far from us. I got up and left the hall with my son and burst into tears, and ended up spending the keynote sitting under a tree with him and crying. Ironically, one of the conference organizers, a gay man who had recently adopted an infant with his partner, brought his own baby in on the last day, and father and son were swarmed and cooed over by the same women who had shunned me. My contribution to this love-fest was to give the dad a copy of Mothering that I had brought with me and finished. I won't take the time now to unpack this whole experience. but any conclusions you might draw are probably fairly accurate. Just trust me when I say that the world of academia is no more child-friendly -- if you're a mother, that is -- than the world of opera.
I was also a little embarrassed recently when I had to contact an editor who's involved in my own book project about a deadline missed because of my new son's baptism. If I were a man, this would never need have been mentioned.
Although I have no evidence, I'm fairly certain that the long-ago combox troll who reminded me that the arts are for people with TALENT was neither a mother nor an artist, and I would pretty much bet my life that she wasn't both those things at the same time. And while his scathing email ended my friendship with the "friend" who had suddenly become a self-appointed music critic and, though unmarried and childless himself, a marriage-and-parenting authority (this friend also helpfully brought up the "unspeakable crime" I'd committed against my unborn child years before he knew me, and years after being absolved), and while I no longer follow him nor his fairly prolific work for various online outlets, I would be willing to bet that he has remained unmarried and childless, because, seriously, with a personality like that what are the chances?
But I digress. My point, I suppose, is that, pace Clare Coffey (and thanks for the shout-out, Clare; it's a nice difference from the haters of yore), I'm hardly a paragon of, well, anything. But nonetheless (and this is probably what riled up said haters), I firmly believe that if you give up your whole prior life when you have children -- if, that is, your whole prior life contained anything that you found beautiful, nurturing, or salutary for your soul -- it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. I don't believe in what you might call "professional" motherhood, unless that's a life you've been trained for and have always wanted, which is undoubtedly the case for many mothers. And on a related note, I'm convinced, whatever lurking trolls and former friends might think, that the only way to maintain some sort of culturally-defined "success" -- the flip side, that is, of my troll-former-friend's concept of "unsuccess," the kind of "success" that the other arts-critic commenter seems to have imagined is the natural outcome of being a talented person in the arts -- is to have access to some kind of reliable child care, in which someone other than you, the artist-mother, cares for your children for certain periods of time during which you practice your art. And the cultural imagination notwithstanding (I have it from someone who knows that Angelina Jolie has six nannies, one for each child!), not a lot of artist-mothers have this access, so a lot of artist-mothers stop practicing their art. If you, dear reader, have any thoughts that suggest otherwise -- and generally the thoughts I give credence to are those that can be backed up, if not by quantifiable evidence, then by anecdotal experience; they are generally not, that is to say, wild guesses about what motherhood must be like, made by non-mothers -- then kindly let me know, in an un-troll-like fashion if you can manage it.
It appears that more readers scratched their heads than chuckled, wondering why First Things would publish such a facile sort of piece that gets so much wrong by an admitted non-expert. Sally Thomas addressed these concerns in detail at Castle in the Sea, focusing in particular on Coffey's assertion to the actual mothers out there that "[it] is perfectly acceptable to say 'No, you’re not doing trombone camp this year, because I have interests and talents that do not involve you, and spending my life in the car prevents me from pursuing them.'” "Only a sociopathic narcissist," Sally counters,
would declare aloud, to her child's face, that he isn't going to get to do something because frankly she has better things to do with her life than drive him around. I don't think there's anything remotely, let alone perfectly, acceptable about saying that sort of thing to a child, who in any case is naturally going to think, "Who said we were talking about you? The subject of this conversation is me and trombone camp."
I have to conclude that the reason Coffey recommended my blog along with the excellent blogs of some of my esteemed friends is that this one (which does NOT, by implication, extend to theirs) has historically been heavy on the "interests and talents that do not involve you." The idea that this blog might be paradigmatic of some sort of platonic ideal of rightly-engaged motherhood has led me to consider, with some chagrin, the course of my own attempts to maintain my activities as a scholar and performing artist while trying to be a good-enough mother.
There was a time a few years ago when this blog had some very active detractors who, in the interest, I think, of correcting me on my evidently bad course, left hurtful and even vicious messages in the comboxes (must I mention that these trolls generally self-identified as orthodox Catholics?). One, after I had written something in a comment about one's art, if one is a mother, being able to flourish more readily when one has cash in hand for child care, helpfully sought to remind me that the arts were for "people with TALENT," which is to say not for poor schlubs like me, international performing credits, scholarly publications, and at-that-time A.B.D. in music notwithstanding. Another real-life former friend, a self-styled apologist with a strong internet presence, incensed by something I had written here on a different topic, similarly blasted me for my "unsuccess" at everything I'd endeavored, from music to marriage to motherhood (this same erstwhile friend, before he started hating me quite so much, had asked me to sing at his father's wake and funeral, which I did, taking a cab from the Bronx twice to another far-off outer borough of the City of New York, vomiting from morning sickness much of the way), and, further, suggested that I wickedly blamed this unsuccess on my children, both living and dead. You have a happy life too, buddy!
But there is enough fodder for a mommy war waged by me against myself right here in the present. I was asked recently to translate some academic-musicological essays from the Italian for a prestigious forthcoming publication from a major publisher. I felt I couldn't say no to a well-paid gig of this nature, which could potentially generate similar money-earning opportunities, and was being overseen by a scholar I respect. As it turns out, though, I've already had to renegotiate the deadline, because I'm fairly fried from my current nighttime parenting duties, and I'm recalling a woman I used to know who also did freelance translating but concluded, after the birth of her second child, that she just couldn't do it anymore.
Then there's The Magic Flute. While it's an opera I've never done, the only roles for my voice type are ensemble roles, so it seemed like a low risk to agree to cover those two roles (Second and Third Lady), especially when the chance that I would go onstage in one of them was miniscule and the conductor welcomed my children at rehearsal. But as it happened, I took him at his word. I brought my children to rehearsal. While the conductor continued to be supportive, saying it was "a delight" to see them there (the fact is that, out of the entire cast and production staff, he was the only other parent; such is opera), the stage director and his staff begged to differ. It seems that Maestro had asked the stage director not to curse in front of the wee ones, and the stage director made it clear that that was "how he worked," and that children were not an appropriate ancillary to his method (in all honesty, Maestro needn't have been sensitive on my behalf; I curse like a truck-driver, though I try to remove myself to another room when I feel like I have to, or else do so in Italian, though I know neither of those tactics are exactly praiseworthy). This has meant that, because of the sudden and unexpected need for child care, I've been to attend only a few rehearsals, and that, as a result, I wouldn't be able to execute the staging in any kind of admirable fashion if I happened to get a last-minute call that one of the mainstage singers was sick. I've done covers before, but this is the first time in my life that I haven't been prepared for the eventuality of going onstage, and it's a very uncomfortable feeling, not just because of that eventuality, but also because it's in violation of my own strict work ethic. I am grateful to the conductor for making accommodations on my behalf, but the truth is that few other people would have done so.
When my older son was an infant, I was asked to chair a panel at an international conference on British music being held that summer in Vermont. I explained that I would need to bring him along, as he would be seven months old and couldn't be away from me. The conference organizers -- all men, fathers and grandfathers -- were happy to oblige, and so were most of my male colleagues. But I was not prepared for the reaction of the other women at the conference, who looked at me and my baby, whom I wore in a wrap, as if we were the shit on their shoes. I asked a colleague if it would be all right if I brought my son to his panel, and I sat on the floor in the back of the room with him to minimize any disruption he might cause, and to have easy access to the exit. Luckily my baby was fine, only making a few baby sounds here and there, and no one seemed to mind. The keynote address was scheduled for later that day, and I was eager to hear it, as it was given by a scholar whose work interested me keenly. When I entered the hall, however, with my son in his wrap, another scholar, an up-and-coming young Englishwoman, fairly snarled, "If you're sitting there, I'm moving. I heard your baby in that panel discussion," and she swept up her things and flounced to another seat far from us. I got up and left the hall with my son and burst into tears, and ended up spending the keynote sitting under a tree with him and crying. Ironically, one of the conference organizers, a gay man who had recently adopted an infant with his partner, brought his own baby in on the last day, and father and son were swarmed and cooed over by the same women who had shunned me. My contribution to this love-fest was to give the dad a copy of Mothering that I had brought with me and finished. I won't take the time now to unpack this whole experience. but any conclusions you might draw are probably fairly accurate. Just trust me when I say that the world of academia is no more child-friendly -- if you're a mother, that is -- than the world of opera.
I was also a little embarrassed recently when I had to contact an editor who's involved in my own book project about a deadline missed because of my new son's baptism. If I were a man, this would never need have been mentioned.
Although I have no evidence, I'm fairly certain that the long-ago combox troll who reminded me that the arts are for people with TALENT was neither a mother nor an artist, and I would pretty much bet my life that she wasn't both those things at the same time. And while his scathing email ended my friendship with the "friend" who had suddenly become a self-appointed music critic and, though unmarried and childless himself, a marriage-and-parenting authority (this friend also helpfully brought up the "unspeakable crime" I'd committed against my unborn child years before he knew me, and years after being absolved), and while I no longer follow him nor his fairly prolific work for various online outlets, I would be willing to bet that he has remained unmarried and childless, because, seriously, with a personality like that what are the chances?
But I digress. My point, I suppose, is that, pace Clare Coffey (and thanks for the shout-out, Clare; it's a nice difference from the haters of yore), I'm hardly a paragon of, well, anything. But nonetheless (and this is probably what riled up said haters), I firmly believe that if you give up your whole prior life when you have children -- if, that is, your whole prior life contained anything that you found beautiful, nurturing, or salutary for your soul -- it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. I don't believe in what you might call "professional" motherhood, unless that's a life you've been trained for and have always wanted, which is undoubtedly the case for many mothers. And on a related note, I'm convinced, whatever lurking trolls and former friends might think, that the only way to maintain some sort of culturally-defined "success" -- the flip side, that is, of my troll-former-friend's concept of "unsuccess," the kind of "success" that the other arts-critic commenter seems to have imagined is the natural outcome of being a talented person in the arts -- is to have access to some kind of reliable child care, in which someone other than you, the artist-mother, cares for your children for certain periods of time during which you practice your art. And the cultural imagination notwithstanding (I have it from someone who knows that Angelina Jolie has six nannies, one for each child!), not a lot of artist-mothers have this access, so a lot of artist-mothers stop practicing their art. If you, dear reader, have any thoughts that suggest otherwise -- and generally the thoughts I give credence to are those that can be backed up, if not by quantifiable evidence, then by anecdotal experience; they are generally not, that is to say, wild guesses about what motherhood must be like, made by non-mothers -- then kindly let me know, in an un-troll-like fashion if you can manage it.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
After the Airport
I followed a God into this story who heals and redeems, who restores
wasted years and mends broken places. This God specializes in the
Destroyed. I've seen it. I've been a part of it. . . . He sticks with us long after it is convenient or interesting.
. . . . Oh let us be a community who loves each other well. Because someone is always struggling through the "after the airport" phase.
Amazing post by an adoptive mother about parenting traumatized children.
. . . . Oh let us be a community who loves each other well. Because someone is always struggling through the "after the airport" phase.
Amazing post by an adoptive mother about parenting traumatized children.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Rupture
As we wait and wait to adopt little Jude (our application is currently under review by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and I got a letter from them yesterday which said that our social worker at Catholic Charites had forgotten to sign our home study, and could I please send another, signed copy), I have been thinking a lot about what it might be like for him to leave behind everything that he's ever known to join our family. I have been considering the grief this rupture will engender in him, and how he won't be able to explain that grief to us in words. And I think about all the other children who he will leave behind; do they grieve, too, for their companions of the orphanage? And do the orphanage workers who care for the little ones grieve to see them go?
I think about the unimaginable Middle Passage, and the millions of Africans who perished on the journey to new, unsought-for lives as slaves in the Americas, lives that were foisted on them by force. Does the sense of that sundering, that rupture, live on in subsequent generations? Is there a shadowy cultural memory of a trauma shared by millions that resonates in the blood and the bones, that cannot be shaken or denied?
In a small and very different way, the break with the past, the rupture from all that is known and loved (even if to love it was a compromised kind of love), is an ethos familiar to me from long experience. Does Jude love his friends, his caretakers, his orphanage? They are family and homeland to him. Will he have a better life in America with a family who will love him (and perhaps, in some small, particular way, with a mother who knows a little about rupture and grief), with people who can give him opportunities to form secure attachments and to learn how to trust? Objectively speaking, yes, of course. As for me, I have a better life now than I had when I was bereft, lonely, and overwhelmed by sin, but this doesn't mean that I don't sometimes grieve the provisional home, family, and friends I have left behind -- a leave-taking that is inseparable from my conversion.
My father often notes that life is loss, and, well, it is. Real love is inextricably bound up with the painful losses and diminishments of every day. I hope, in spite of all that little Jude will lose in joining our family, that, like me (and even if, like me, he is unable to forget), he will gain much more.
I think about the unimaginable Middle Passage, and the millions of Africans who perished on the journey to new, unsought-for lives as slaves in the Americas, lives that were foisted on them by force. Does the sense of that sundering, that rupture, live on in subsequent generations? Is there a shadowy cultural memory of a trauma shared by millions that resonates in the blood and the bones, that cannot be shaken or denied?
In a small and very different way, the break with the past, the rupture from all that is known and loved (even if to love it was a compromised kind of love), is an ethos familiar to me from long experience. Does Jude love his friends, his caretakers, his orphanage? They are family and homeland to him. Will he have a better life in America with a family who will love him (and perhaps, in some small, particular way, with a mother who knows a little about rupture and grief), with people who can give him opportunities to form secure attachments and to learn how to trust? Objectively speaking, yes, of course. As for me, I have a better life now than I had when I was bereft, lonely, and overwhelmed by sin, but this doesn't mean that I don't sometimes grieve the provisional home, family, and friends I have left behind -- a leave-taking that is inseparable from my conversion.
My father often notes that life is loss, and, well, it is. Real love is inextricably bound up with the painful losses and diminishments of every day. I hope, in spite of all that little Jude will lose in joining our family, that, like me (and even if, like me, he is unable to forget), he will gain much more.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
"Brothers, love is a teacher, but a hard one to obtain . . ."
Gerard Nadal, bioethicist and father of an autistic son, asks:
[Why] so many autistic children?
I believe that in His infinite Love and Mercy God is permitting this . . . as a means of rescuing us from ourselves.
. . . . Autistic children are Love’s answer to our designer approach for offspring, especially as there are no clear genetic markers or physical attributes to pick up in pre-natal testing. We are being given one last chance as a civilization to get it right, to learn the meaning of sacrificial love through a condition that strikes at the very heart of social communication, to walk ourselves back from the precipice of the abyss of narcissistic annihilation. We are being given the chance to learn the true meaning of human dignity and marital love, a love that creates new life and is large enough to swallow any imperfection that comes with that new life.
Such capacity results from . . . having allowed ourselves to be the recipients of God the Father’s healing love. If we haven’t, we must begin there . . . . This may be our last chance.
[Why] so many autistic children?
I believe that in His infinite Love and Mercy God is permitting this . . . as a means of rescuing us from ourselves.
. . . . Autistic children are Love’s answer to our designer approach for offspring, especially as there are no clear genetic markers or physical attributes to pick up in pre-natal testing. We are being given one last chance as a civilization to get it right, to learn the meaning of sacrificial love through a condition that strikes at the very heart of social communication, to walk ourselves back from the precipice of the abyss of narcissistic annihilation. We are being given the chance to learn the true meaning of human dignity and marital love, a love that creates new life and is large enough to swallow any imperfection that comes with that new life.
Such capacity results from . . . having allowed ourselves to be the recipients of God the Father’s healing love. If we haven’t, we must begin there . . . . This may be our last chance.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Coffee Break with God
I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, because I know from long experience that they tend to be swept out with the eggshells and coffee grounds sometime around the end of the first week of January, and I like to save myself the embarrassment that my own broken resolutions cause me. Sometimes I toy with various resolutions, however, trying them on and then, more often than not, rejecting them. Here are a few that I'm idly considering this year:
1. No longer swearing like a truck-driver, if only inside the echo-chamber of my own head. I almost never swear in front of my son (not in English, anyway, though I have to admit to having said some really gutter things in Italian at times, when I've stepped on a Lego, say, or given myself a paper cut), and I've been very relieved that he's never yet, to my knowledge, said a curse-word (at least not in English). And yet, we now know that swearing is much more effective at relieving pain and frustration than consciously resorting to blithe euphemisms; the real words just seem to work, and are so much more satisfying emotionally, perhaps because of their taboo status. I often take myself into another room alone so I can swear out loud in English, but mostly those four-letter bombs are just dropping in the quiet of my mind as I face the frustrations of the average day. And yet, for all the silence of my cursing, it still doesn't seem . . . seemly to even think those words. So perhaps I'll silently substitute some corny-sounding euphemisms in my inner monologue in 2011. Or perhaps not.
2. Giving up coffee. I consider undertaking this heroic feat every so often, and even went so far as to make it my Lenten sacrifice a couple of years ago, an intention which lasted one solid day. The truth is, I sometimes go for whole weeks without drinking coffee, but I have no wish to put it away from me forever. Not only do I love the taste -- it's one of my favorite flavors, the darker and bitterer the better (no sugar, and lightened with half-and-half or cream; if only milk is available, I will forgo the coffee altogether) -- but I also love the idea of coffee. There is something so companionable about it. Two mothers having coffee together while their children play are engaging in a kind of conspiracy of community, it seems to me. Tea, though I drink it, seems insubstantial and a bit fey in comparison, and herbal tea is something I dislike and generally avoid unless there's a medicinal reason for taking it. (It's crossed my mind once or twice that if I gave up coffee, perhaps I would be able to conceive again; I've heard the anecdotal notion that coffee suppresses fertility. But the truth is that I was drinking coffee all the other times I conceived; I believe God intends for us to add children to our family through adoption; and the possibility seems strong that conception wouldn't occur, and then I would have . . . given up coffee. Is this a foolish, fetishistic, fatalistic line of reasoning? Perhaps. Maybe I will give up coffee after all, though it will be with great reluctance.)
3. Being more patient. My son, who's quite advanced in some ways, is quite delayed in others. He doesn't draw (though he is very specific in directing his parents and teachers to draw according to his designs), partially because of his fine-motor delays, and partially because he's intensely perfectionistic, and melts down completely when he attempts to draw something that doesn't come out as he'd envisioned. Today I was helping him draw a tugboat puffing smoke. He was trying to draw circles for the smoke, but, as he said, his circles had tails. He flung himself down in tears, and didn't want to continue. This brought me to tears too, because I felt that he had to. The ability to practice a skill until it virtually becomes ingrained into the sinews of the heart, and the ability to love that relentless practice, are probably the most important capacities I've cultivated in my life. But how can I teach a volatile, neurologically-puzzling preschool boy to love practice, to love discipline? I was stymied. With him, I realize that I will have to take many deep breaths and work very slowly on the same basic skills over and over again, when I want him to dance, to leap, to fly, as the ethos of intense practice has allowed me to do. He is the sort of child who, I believe, will fly eventually; he is very bright, musical, and imaginative. But I am so attached to the idea of self-discipline as the means to becoming skilled and independent, and to the notion of becoming skilled and independent as the means to intellectual and artistic freedom. I suppose that, in 2011, I should resolve to learn how to slow down my own wild thinking and imagining.
Which, to sum up, is why I love this ad from the 1980s. It suggests that, when you're hitting the wall in your ethos of relentless practicing, and especially if you're a musician whose work is starting to sound like sh--, you need . . . coffee. I guess the shadowy forces of the coffee-industrial complex figured, back in those pre-Starbucks days, that Americans just weren't drinking enough of it.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Parenting as Path
There's an interesting discussion about attachment parenting (commonly known by the acronym AP) on Erin Manning's blog, with a lot going on in the combox. When my son was born I joined a hard-core group of AP moms in New York City (everything undertaken by New Yorkers ends up being hardcore), but I became disenchanted when the group leaders began insisting that the only true AP was UP -- i.e., Unconditional Parenting, the vague and somewhat kooky parenting philosophy promulgated by non-doctor, non-psychologist, non-scientist, and non-teacher Alfie Kohn -- and that to say no to one's child was an act of aggression. There was a prevailing ideology in the group that by AP-ing your baby, you would create kind, compassionate, loving, empathetic children, and would thus change society, but I began to question that premise. And then there was this guy who joined the group and would complain on our email listserv about how he believed firmly in AP, but his wife did not, and why weren't we all just hooking up with each other anyway? Although I met my best friend, Really Rosie, in that group, the whole thing was over for me before very long.
I also used to go to La Leche League meetings in the Bronx, and that was the group I really preferred. The LLL meetings on the Upper West Side that many of my AP confrères attended were full of the subtle judgment and oneupmanship that are endemic to every style of parenting in New York City, but submerged, here, in the crunchy ethos of groovy, conscious mothering. My Bronx meetings, on the other hand, were full of relaxed, funky Orthodox Jewish moms of many children from Riverdale who would tell the new black and Latina moms not to worry if they had to supplement with formula, that even trying to breastfeed once in a while counted -- rather unorthodox advice, pun intended, for La Leche League, but suited to the reality of very low breastfeeding rates in the nation's poorest urban county.
My own sister is becoming something of a Buddhist parenting guru. She writes articles on parenthood for a Buddhist publication, and has started a blog about parenting as a tool toward enlightenment.
As for me, in the end, however, I suppose that all parenting philosophies, like all ideologies, are bids that we put our faith in in the hope of not completely breaking down and flying off into a million pieces in the face of the entropy that is both parenting and life. Back where I come from, there is a very strong and compelling illusion that hangs over everything and permeates the very atmosphere like a sort of noxious gas, which encourages us to believe we can make things happen, that we can do it, that we can get it -- in short, that we are in control of our lives (this may not be a notion peculiar to New Yorkers, but I suspect it's more pronounced there than elsewhere, because of the concentration of highly capable people in the city siphoned off from other locales). It seemed to me when I was in my AP-NYC group that attachment parenting was being wielded as a kind of talisman in the face of chaos, with the devoutly-believed-in premise that if a mother AP-ed, her kids would be okay. When other people's kids were not okay, it was because they were not attachment parents. And when Really Rosie's son started to exhibit challenging behavior consistent with neurological difference, her own commitment to attachment parenting was questioned by her friends: did she really baby-wear? Because if she did, surely her son would be kind and gentle, not difficult and challenging (and, in fact, a fellow AP group member had seen Rosie on her way to an audition pushing her child in a stroller, and had shunned her, admitting later that she just couldn't talk to those moms who used strollers).
Now my own son has been classified as a preschool child with a disability, though the nature of that disability has not been clearly defined. He's going to see a developmental pediatrician in October; we have to go more than a hundred miles away because there are none in our area, and we couldn't get an appointment any sooner. My son is smart, happy, and deeply empathetic, with a prodigious memory and some striking musical gifts which, I believe, go beyond the genetic and are probably neurological in basis; he is also difficult, challenging, deflective, avoidant, hyperactive, and displays repetitive motor movements when he's excited or happy, which is a lot of the time. He seemed to be developing fairly typically until we moved here just before his third birthday, and now I torment myself, wondering if his problems are the result of toxic chemical residue in the environment, left over from the time when this town was a manufacturing center (in fact, I found out that my area is a "hotspot" for autism spectrum disorders; one in 55 boys here are diagnosed on the spectrum, as opposed to one in 70 nationwide). Perhaps moving here was a mistake. But how can we know? How can one ever know?
Erin Manning suggests that humility is the most necessary parenting tool, one that trumps ideology. I believe she is right. I don't know what I'm doing, as a mother or in any other area of my life. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and don't know where I am, both literally and figuratively. But I keep asking -- no, demanding of, shouting and raging at -- God to at least give me one tiny little clue each day to let me know what I'm supposed to do next.
I also used to go to La Leche League meetings in the Bronx, and that was the group I really preferred. The LLL meetings on the Upper West Side that many of my AP confrères attended were full of the subtle judgment and oneupmanship that are endemic to every style of parenting in New York City, but submerged, here, in the crunchy ethos of groovy, conscious mothering. My Bronx meetings, on the other hand, were full of relaxed, funky Orthodox Jewish moms of many children from Riverdale who would tell the new black and Latina moms not to worry if they had to supplement with formula, that even trying to breastfeed once in a while counted -- rather unorthodox advice, pun intended, for La Leche League, but suited to the reality of very low breastfeeding rates in the nation's poorest urban county.
My own sister is becoming something of a Buddhist parenting guru. She writes articles on parenthood for a Buddhist publication, and has started a blog about parenting as a tool toward enlightenment.
As for me, in the end, however, I suppose that all parenting philosophies, like all ideologies, are bids that we put our faith in in the hope of not completely breaking down and flying off into a million pieces in the face of the entropy that is both parenting and life. Back where I come from, there is a very strong and compelling illusion that hangs over everything and permeates the very atmosphere like a sort of noxious gas, which encourages us to believe we can make things happen, that we can do it, that we can get it -- in short, that we are in control of our lives (this may not be a notion peculiar to New Yorkers, but I suspect it's more pronounced there than elsewhere, because of the concentration of highly capable people in the city siphoned off from other locales). It seemed to me when I was in my AP-NYC group that attachment parenting was being wielded as a kind of talisman in the face of chaos, with the devoutly-believed-in premise that if a mother AP-ed, her kids would be okay. When other people's kids were not okay, it was because they were not attachment parents. And when Really Rosie's son started to exhibit challenging behavior consistent with neurological difference, her own commitment to attachment parenting was questioned by her friends: did she really baby-wear? Because if she did, surely her son would be kind and gentle, not difficult and challenging (and, in fact, a fellow AP group member had seen Rosie on her way to an audition pushing her child in a stroller, and had shunned her, admitting later that she just couldn't talk to those moms who used strollers).
Now my own son has been classified as a preschool child with a disability, though the nature of that disability has not been clearly defined. He's going to see a developmental pediatrician in October; we have to go more than a hundred miles away because there are none in our area, and we couldn't get an appointment any sooner. My son is smart, happy, and deeply empathetic, with a prodigious memory and some striking musical gifts which, I believe, go beyond the genetic and are probably neurological in basis; he is also difficult, challenging, deflective, avoidant, hyperactive, and displays repetitive motor movements when he's excited or happy, which is a lot of the time. He seemed to be developing fairly typically until we moved here just before his third birthday, and now I torment myself, wondering if his problems are the result of toxic chemical residue in the environment, left over from the time when this town was a manufacturing center (in fact, I found out that my area is a "hotspot" for autism spectrum disorders; one in 55 boys here are diagnosed on the spectrum, as opposed to one in 70 nationwide). Perhaps moving here was a mistake. But how can we know? How can one ever know?
Erin Manning suggests that humility is the most necessary parenting tool, one that trumps ideology. I believe she is right. I don't know what I'm doing, as a mother or in any other area of my life. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and don't know where I am, both literally and figuratively. But I keep asking -- no, demanding of, shouting and raging at -- God to at least give me one tiny little clue each day to let me know what I'm supposed to do next.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Waiting Confoundedly
It's been hard for me to make new friends in my new home town. One of the reasons is that I'm relatively isolated by my lack of license-able driving skills. It takes extra effort to go anywhere, and it usually involves strollers and bus schedules, and the sort of planning that no one I know really does here; they just throw their kids and stuff in the car and take off, while I mostly just stay at home. But it's not just that, and it's not just that the people I meet here come from such different backgrounds from mine. Another reason, I think, is that it's hard to find other mothers here who share my essentially pessimistic philosophy of life. (It's not at all hard to find such mothers in New York, since it's really not hard to find anything at all you're looking for there.)
Now, those readers who know me personally will tell you that I'm actually not quite so much of a downer as you might think in real life. I laugh all the time, and I truly enjoy things (I also cry every day; there's just so much to cry about. It's hard to say how much of this is neurosis, how much is justifiable compunction, and how much is culture and genetics; it seems to me sometimes, having been like this since childhood, that I must be the logical heir of a tragic Mediterranean worldview). Nonetheless, I have to keep reminding myself that I no longer live in New York City. I live in America now, the land of positivism. I feel that I cannot talk about the things that preoccupy me with the other mothers I know where I live now, lest I intrude upon their deeply-held conviction -- one that seems to be a bedrock of our culture -- that everything is, or will be, all right, and that, if you are an essentially good person, you deserve to be happy. While I believe that everything will be all right in the eschatological sense, the rest of this point of view utterly confounds me. Does this mean that I suffer from depression? Or just that I need to go back to New York more often, or perhaps back to my ancestral village in the mountains of Campania?
We are still in the throes of adoption paperwork, and it's taking longer than we expected, because Catholic Charities, our agency, is woefully understaffed and -funded. It occurred to me recently that most Americans (and also most New Yorkers) in our position do IVF, and, indeed, IVF seems like a typically American-positivist response to an intractable problem. I'm quite sure, however, that even if I had not had a dramatic reconversion to the Catholic faith, IVF is not something I would have ever undertaken. It's not just the ethical problems that give me the creeps about it, but also the philosophy of positivism on which it's based -- the philosophy of everything-will-be-all-right-and-I-deserve-to-be-happy -- that I reject all the way down to my bones. IVF strikes me as a salient example of the American tendency to marshal all the resources at one's disposal to try to force a desired outcome, and, even if I weren't a Catholic revert, I would think (and in fact know from bitter experience) that to base one's actions on this shaky philosophy can only lead to bad ends.
Nonetheless, the world of adoption is equally confounding to me. I recently read a parent testimony in an adoption book about a couple who rejected a Chinese adoption placement because the little girl they had initially accepted had become seriously, perhaps fatally, ill. "We chose to accept a new referral," wrote the adoptive mother, which seemed to me a rather cagey way to put it. After adopting a different girl -- "the daughter I am sure was always meant to be ours" -- this mother was relieved to find that another couple had chosen to adopt the first, sick little girl as a special-needs placement. And yet the mother made a point that this sick little girl, the girl she and her husband had decided not to adopt, "will always be ther first daughter of our hearts."
I found this attitude absolutely confounding, and vaguely troubling. The adoptive mother's rejection of the sick child cannot be compared to terminating a pregnancy with a poor prenatal prognosis, the major difference being that the child rejected on account of illness survived and was adopted by someone else. But what if she hadn't been?
I am hardly in a position to judge this mother or anyone else, or to speculate about the nature of the girl's undisclosed illness. Perhaps the first adoptive couple did not have the means to care for a child who might be very ill for the rest of her life, or who might not live very long. But the rejected placement did make me wonder how the parents would have reacted if it had been found that their biological child was gravely ill. Call me a Mediterranean fatalist, but it's not part of my worldview that anyone deserves to be happy. I do believe, though, that we are called to love and to serve, and in some cases that means loving and serving children who are less than perfect, and who God gives us as a gift, one that will transform us and conform us, in His service, more closely to His will.
UPDATE: Karen Edmisten writes (in a recent blog post about parenthood) that, "when a gift is given, it is worth the sacrifice it takes to accept it." That sentiment articulates my feelings about the rejected adoption placement better than I did; but, again, it's hard to know all the variables in that situation.
Now, those readers who know me personally will tell you that I'm actually not quite so much of a downer as you might think in real life. I laugh all the time, and I truly enjoy things (I also cry every day; there's just so much to cry about. It's hard to say how much of this is neurosis, how much is justifiable compunction, and how much is culture and genetics; it seems to me sometimes, having been like this since childhood, that I must be the logical heir of a tragic Mediterranean worldview). Nonetheless, I have to keep reminding myself that I no longer live in New York City. I live in America now, the land of positivism. I feel that I cannot talk about the things that preoccupy me with the other mothers I know where I live now, lest I intrude upon their deeply-held conviction -- one that seems to be a bedrock of our culture -- that everything is, or will be, all right, and that, if you are an essentially good person, you deserve to be happy. While I believe that everything will be all right in the eschatological sense, the rest of this point of view utterly confounds me. Does this mean that I suffer from depression? Or just that I need to go back to New York more often, or perhaps back to my ancestral village in the mountains of Campania?
We are still in the throes of adoption paperwork, and it's taking longer than we expected, because Catholic Charities, our agency, is woefully understaffed and -funded. It occurred to me recently that most Americans (and also most New Yorkers) in our position do IVF, and, indeed, IVF seems like a typically American-positivist response to an intractable problem. I'm quite sure, however, that even if I had not had a dramatic reconversion to the Catholic faith, IVF is not something I would have ever undertaken. It's not just the ethical problems that give me the creeps about it, but also the philosophy of positivism on which it's based -- the philosophy of everything-will-be-all-right-and-I-deserve-to-be-happy -- that I reject all the way down to my bones. IVF strikes me as a salient example of the American tendency to marshal all the resources at one's disposal to try to force a desired outcome, and, even if I weren't a Catholic revert, I would think (and in fact know from bitter experience) that to base one's actions on this shaky philosophy can only lead to bad ends.
Nonetheless, the world of adoption is equally confounding to me. I recently read a parent testimony in an adoption book about a couple who rejected a Chinese adoption placement because the little girl they had initially accepted had become seriously, perhaps fatally, ill. "We chose to accept a new referral," wrote the adoptive mother, which seemed to me a rather cagey way to put it. After adopting a different girl -- "the daughter I am sure was always meant to be ours" -- this mother was relieved to find that another couple had chosen to adopt the first, sick little girl as a special-needs placement. And yet the mother made a point that this sick little girl, the girl she and her husband had decided not to adopt, "will always be ther first daughter of our hearts."
I found this attitude absolutely confounding, and vaguely troubling. The adoptive mother's rejection of the sick child cannot be compared to terminating a pregnancy with a poor prenatal prognosis, the major difference being that the child rejected on account of illness survived and was adopted by someone else. But what if she hadn't been?
I am hardly in a position to judge this mother or anyone else, or to speculate about the nature of the girl's undisclosed illness. Perhaps the first adoptive couple did not have the means to care for a child who might be very ill for the rest of her life, or who might not live very long. But the rejected placement did make me wonder how the parents would have reacted if it had been found that their biological child was gravely ill. Call me a Mediterranean fatalist, but it's not part of my worldview that anyone deserves to be happy. I do believe, though, that we are called to love and to serve, and in some cases that means loving and serving children who are less than perfect, and who God gives us as a gift, one that will transform us and conform us, in His service, more closely to His will.
UPDATE: Karen Edmisten writes (in a recent blog post about parenthood) that, "when a gift is given, it is worth the sacrifice it takes to accept it." That sentiment articulates my feelings about the rejected adoption placement better than I did; but, again, it's hard to know all the variables in that situation.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Down in the Valley
I was practicing my métier today, allowing myself to sink into the morass of nostalgia, and found myself thinking about the final exam I gave to my first voice class of non-music majors, three years ago right around this time. I had started teaching part-time as an adjunct at my university just after my son turned one -- shortly, in fact, before I began writing this blog -- and it was the end of my first semester. I had twenty-three students, from wildly divergent backgrounds: one, an art major from Queens, was the great-great-granddaughter of Mikhail Fokine; another, S., was the Canarsie-bred child of civil servants, who spoke French and Japanese and was teaching herself Urdu (I later designed a one-on-one tutorial for this student, funded by a grant designed, perhaps wrongheadedly, to attract minority students into the field of academic musicology).
It turned out to be an eventful semester. In March, I had to be hospitalized briefly for an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, costing me not only the baby but also one ovary (I was pregnant again the next month, but lost that baby over the summer). Then one of my students, a waifish Chinese-American girl whom I'll call K., disappeared from sight. I was planning to give her an unofficial withdrawal from the class, which is tantamount to an F, when suddenly she showed up in tears one day after class had ended and confided in me that she had had an abortion and was not functioning well in its aftermath. Another student, a young Orthodox Jewish girl, was in the last trimester of her own first pregnancy, and K., post-abortion, could not bear to be in class with her. This was sort of my territory, and I tried to comfort K., and cast around for ways to help her. K. had told me she was a Christian, and so I totally overstepped the boundaries of the student-teacher relationship in a secular public institution by talking to her about God's mercy; a friend of mine even offered to pay for K. to attend a Rachel's Vineyard retreat, but K. never followed through.
Then another student, a beautiful, upper-class West Indian girl, had a psychotic episode that kept her out for many classes. I didn't know the cause of her absences, and I was about to fail her too, when the Office of Disability intervened. Then we had torrential rain in April, which resulted in school closings throughout the New York metropolitan area -- except at my university, which never closes, the theory being that the subways keep running through rain and sun and sleet and hail, so everyone had better suck it up and get there on time. My babysitter, however, assumed that the university was in fact closed, since every other school within twenty-five miles was, and so she didn't show up, which led to the realization of one of my worst fears when I had to plough my stroller through the five-inch-deep puddles to the train and take my toddler to class with me. The girls went crazy for him, but I had to end the class after just twenty minutes, because, after a few minutes of running around in bewilderment while I sat at the piano and tried to teach, he began crying inconsolably. I didn't want to nurse him in class, and it didn't seem fair to designate one of my students babysitter. And then one of my favorite students, a mature, compassionate graduating psychology major whom everyone loved and respected, plagiarized his final paper.
I had assigned each of my students two pieces that semester. Everyone got his own individual piece, and then they all got "An die Musik," Schubert's famous paean to music itself:
(Oh lovely Art, in how many grey hours,
When life's fierce orbit ensnared me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
Carried me away into a better world!
How often has a sigh escaping from your harp,
A sweet, sacred chord of yours
Opened up for me the heaven of better times,
Oh lovely Art, for that I thank you!)
I also assigned each student a singer to study and listen to throughout the semester. I picked the singers based on my students' voice types, but also tried to suit them to the inclinations the students seemed to demonstrate. S., for instance, was curious about twentieth-century music, so I assigned her Jan DeGaetani. Some of the students ended up feeling profoundly connected to their study singers: Jimmy, a lanky, ponytailed Puerto Rican bass-baritone, took to signing his papers "Hans," after Hans Hotter, his assigned singer.
For the final exam, my students had the choice of singing either their assigned individual piece or "An die Musik." For extra credit, they could sing Brahms's setting of the folksong "Da unten im Tale" -- Down in the valley -- in English (though it may sound like it, I didn't assign only German Lieder; their individual songs spanned styles and languages, from Handel to Irving Berlin. I just thought that they needed to know some Schubert and Brahms in order to know what was truly beautiful in this world).
Although food and drink were forbidden in the classroom, I spent the night before exam day making dozens of sandwiches and chocolate-chip cookies, since the exam period was two hours long and spanned lunchtime, and I picked up bottled water and coffee on my way to the university. I had arranged for the music department to hire my friend and colleague J, a Korean-born monster pianist and vocal collaborator, to accompany, so I could focus on my students' performances. I let students who were unhappy with their performance start over, and everyone encouraged each other. At the end, I got up and sang "An die Musik" for them myself. I will never forget how touching it was to hear Jimmy (a.k.a. Hans) and S. sing "Da unten im Tale" as a duet, like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau did on their legendary 1966 recording of Brahms's folksong settings. The text:
Down in the valley there
the water flows so sadly,
and I can't tell you
that I love you so.
You always speak of love,
you always speak of faithfulness,
but a little bit of falsehood
is always there too.
And if I tell you ten times
that I love you,
and you do not want to understand,
then I will have to move on.
For the time that you have loved me,
I thank you kindly,
and I wish that somewhere else
things might go better for you.
Jimmy and S, like Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau, sang the song as a conversation, trading off the verses in a he-said-she-said dialogue, which gives the song a rather different feeling from the solo piece that Brahms had originally conceived -- less gallant, more resigned, and more moving. Here is the excellent German tenor Werner Güra singing it.
And here is a less-polished but heartfelt and lovely performance by a group that calls itself Tre Sorelle -- I assume they are indeed three sisters.
At the end of the semester, I picked up my packet of anonymous student evaluations. Some students were unhappy with the fact that I didn't dedicate the entire class to teaching vocal technique, but tried to present the art of singing in the context of music and social history, and also made them write two papers. Some felt they didn't belong in the class at all (this was not my feeling; it was a beginning voice class, and was open to everybody). But some students were genuinely excited by what they had learned -- S. switched her major from English to music, is graduating this month, and hopes to continue on to her Ph.D. in musicology (the grant bore its intended fruit in her case) -- and I'll never forget the one evaluation that contained the highest praise I've ever received as a teacher, or perhaps as anything else: "She's cool."
It turned out to be an eventful semester. In March, I had to be hospitalized briefly for an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, costing me not only the baby but also one ovary (I was pregnant again the next month, but lost that baby over the summer). Then one of my students, a waifish Chinese-American girl whom I'll call K., disappeared from sight. I was planning to give her an unofficial withdrawal from the class, which is tantamount to an F, when suddenly she showed up in tears one day after class had ended and confided in me that she had had an abortion and was not functioning well in its aftermath. Another student, a young Orthodox Jewish girl, was in the last trimester of her own first pregnancy, and K., post-abortion, could not bear to be in class with her. This was sort of my territory, and I tried to comfort K., and cast around for ways to help her. K. had told me she was a Christian, and so I totally overstepped the boundaries of the student-teacher relationship in a secular public institution by talking to her about God's mercy; a friend of mine even offered to pay for K. to attend a Rachel's Vineyard retreat, but K. never followed through.
Then another student, a beautiful, upper-class West Indian girl, had a psychotic episode that kept her out for many classes. I didn't know the cause of her absences, and I was about to fail her too, when the Office of Disability intervened. Then we had torrential rain in April, which resulted in school closings throughout the New York metropolitan area -- except at my university, which never closes, the theory being that the subways keep running through rain and sun and sleet and hail, so everyone had better suck it up and get there on time. My babysitter, however, assumed that the university was in fact closed, since every other school within twenty-five miles was, and so she didn't show up, which led to the realization of one of my worst fears when I had to plough my stroller through the five-inch-deep puddles to the train and take my toddler to class with me. The girls went crazy for him, but I had to end the class after just twenty minutes, because, after a few minutes of running around in bewilderment while I sat at the piano and tried to teach, he began crying inconsolably. I didn't want to nurse him in class, and it didn't seem fair to designate one of my students babysitter. And then one of my favorite students, a mature, compassionate graduating psychology major whom everyone loved and respected, plagiarized his final paper.
I had assigned each of my students two pieces that semester. Everyone got his own individual piece, and then they all got "An die Musik," Schubert's famous paean to music itself:
(Oh lovely Art, in how many grey hours,
When life's fierce orbit ensnared me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
Carried me away into a better world!
How often has a sigh escaping from your harp,
A sweet, sacred chord of yours
Opened up for me the heaven of better times,
Oh lovely Art, for that I thank you!)
I also assigned each student a singer to study and listen to throughout the semester. I picked the singers based on my students' voice types, but also tried to suit them to the inclinations the students seemed to demonstrate. S., for instance, was curious about twentieth-century music, so I assigned her Jan DeGaetani. Some of the students ended up feeling profoundly connected to their study singers: Jimmy, a lanky, ponytailed Puerto Rican bass-baritone, took to signing his papers "Hans," after Hans Hotter, his assigned singer.
For the final exam, my students had the choice of singing either their assigned individual piece or "An die Musik." For extra credit, they could sing Brahms's setting of the folksong "Da unten im Tale" -- Down in the valley -- in English (though it may sound like it, I didn't assign only German Lieder; their individual songs spanned styles and languages, from Handel to Irving Berlin. I just thought that they needed to know some Schubert and Brahms in order to know what was truly beautiful in this world).
Although food and drink were forbidden in the classroom, I spent the night before exam day making dozens of sandwiches and chocolate-chip cookies, since the exam period was two hours long and spanned lunchtime, and I picked up bottled water and coffee on my way to the university. I had arranged for the music department to hire my friend and colleague J, a Korean-born monster pianist and vocal collaborator, to accompany, so I could focus on my students' performances. I let students who were unhappy with their performance start over, and everyone encouraged each other. At the end, I got up and sang "An die Musik" for them myself. I will never forget how touching it was to hear Jimmy (a.k.a. Hans) and S. sing "Da unten im Tale" as a duet, like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau did on their legendary 1966 recording of Brahms's folksong settings. The text:
Down in the valley there
the water flows so sadly,
and I can't tell you
that I love you so.
You always speak of love,
you always speak of faithfulness,
but a little bit of falsehood
is always there too.
And if I tell you ten times
that I love you,
and you do not want to understand,
then I will have to move on.
For the time that you have loved me,
I thank you kindly,
and I wish that somewhere else
things might go better for you.
Jimmy and S, like Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau, sang the song as a conversation, trading off the verses in a he-said-she-said dialogue, which gives the song a rather different feeling from the solo piece that Brahms had originally conceived -- less gallant, more resigned, and more moving. Here is the excellent German tenor Werner Güra singing it.
And here is a less-polished but heartfelt and lovely performance by a group that calls itself Tre Sorelle -- I assume they are indeed three sisters.
At the end of the semester, I picked up my packet of anonymous student evaluations. Some students were unhappy with the fact that I didn't dedicate the entire class to teaching vocal technique, but tried to present the art of singing in the context of music and social history, and also made them write two papers. Some felt they didn't belong in the class at all (this was not my feeling; it was a beginning voice class, and was open to everybody). But some students were genuinely excited by what they had learned -- S. switched her major from English to music, is graduating this month, and hopes to continue on to her Ph.D. in musicology (the grant bore its intended fruit in her case) -- and I'll never forget the one evaluation that contained the highest praise I've ever received as a teacher, or perhaps as anything else: "She's cool."
Friday, April 30, 2010
Pastoral
I filched this wonderful poem from Sally's blog.
Pastoral
Crouched in the yard,
he brings his dirty hands up to his mouth.
No, No, I say. Yuck. Hurt.
These are sounds he will recognize.
I say them when he takes an orange
with its hidden seeds and allergenic juice.
No. Yuck. Bad orange. Or reaming
from his mouth a wad of bread,
a lump of odorous cheese.
The fire will hurt.
The stick will break and stab you
in the heart. The reckless wheel,
the cool suggestive music of the pond.
Overhead, summer spreads its blue scarf;
a light wind bends the hollyhocks;
birds, trees --
everything the way I might have dreamed it,
he stands in the grass,
weighing a handful of berries,
a handful of stones.
(Ellen Bryant Voigt, The Forces of Plenty (c) W.W. Norton and Co., 1983)
Pastoral
Crouched in the yard,
he brings his dirty hands up to his mouth.
No, No, I say. Yuck. Hurt.
These are sounds he will recognize.
I say them when he takes an orange
with its hidden seeds and allergenic juice.
No. Yuck. Bad orange. Or reaming
from his mouth a wad of bread,
a lump of odorous cheese.
The fire will hurt.
The stick will break and stab you
in the heart. The reckless wheel,
the cool suggestive music of the pond.
Overhead, summer spreads its blue scarf;
a light wind bends the hollyhocks;
birds, trees --
everything the way I might have dreamed it,
he stands in the grass,
weighing a handful of berries,
a handful of stones.
(Ellen Bryant Voigt, The Forces of Plenty (c) W.W. Norton and Co., 1983)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Down the One-Eared Rabbit Hole
The first few months of an adoption are taken up with what's called a home study, which involves compiling many pages of personal documents, writing autobiographical essays, getting background-checked and fingerprinted, and being interviewed on diverse occasions by the social worker overseeing the adoption process. It's a little disconcerting, especially when you remember how relatively easy it is to get a baby in the usual way, should you be able to swing it.
I like the social worker who's handling our adoption. She is soft-spoken and kindly, and she lived in New York for a time, which is enough to endear anyone to me around here (I almost started bawling at Mass the other day, at a parish in my town's old Italian neighborhood, when the old man behind me began intoning the responses in the cadences of the Bronx). But I felt at a loss in our meeting the other day, when she was probing me about my relationship with my husband, and wanted to know what had drawn me to him when we first met. His kindness, I answered truthfully, his masculinity, his qualities of strength and steadiness, the beauty of his voice. Were these the qualities I had been looking for in a man? she asked. Well, I answered, I didn't have a checklist. And it was true; I didn't. Nor did I plan on marrying him, no more than I had ever planned on doing anything. It's usually been the pattern that I'm not sure what to do, but something appears to present itself as a logical option, and I investigate the option and see where it leads. I don't believe in a dream spouse (I doubt that anyone who's had some of the experiences I've had ever could), and I don't believe we have very much control over the things that happen in our lives or in the lives of those around us, though I do believe we can influence those lives for good or ill (and that, perhaps, more than we know). For the most part, however, I think that it's probably more realistic to wake up every day with open hands and abandon ourselves completely to the will of God, though I didn't tell this to the social worker.
She had given me some adoption magazines at our last meeting, and I had enjoyed reading them, but I felt as if they created the expectation of a fairy-tale ending around every adoption story, and I told her so. The editorial thrust seemed to be that you wait and wait for your child, and you finally bring your child home, and everyone is henceforth happy all the time (not, come to think of it, unlike the tone of most books and magazines directed towards bearing, bringing home, and parenting one's biological children; if there were less of that around, there would probably be less post-partum depression). The social worker agreed that the magazines were very glass-half-full, which is not a bad thing; nor is presenting adoption in a positive light a bad thing at all. However, she said, most prospective adoptive parents are mourning the loss of their dream baby, the biological child they didn't have, and many have come to adoption with the attitude that it is a second-best way to become a parent, so it helps them to have the dream story reinforced.
I don't see it as second-best, and, just as I don't think there's a dream spouse, neither do I think there's a dream baby. No matter how you get your children, they will always be unplumbable, even incomprehensible, mysteries. How can we ever really know anyone else, including our own children? The people that God brings into our lives as friends, spouses, children, are, and will always be, vast, unexplored continents. "Thou has brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger."
For all of my confusion and lack of planning, and all my lack of belief in goals and dreams, I do have a memory that has remained all these years, and has given me some sense of direction. When I was a child, I loved and collected stuffed animals. I would line all my stuffed animals up around the edges of my bed at night so that none of them would feel excluded while I slept. One day, when I was about seven, I was with my father at a drugstore, where I spied a bin of little stuffed rabbits (this must have been around Easter) with coats made of real rabbit fur. One of them, I noticed, was missing an ear. I started to cry out of pity for this one, and begged my father to buy it for me. He suggested that I get a nicer one with two ears, but I stood firm: it had to be the one-eared rabbit, I said, because no one else would ever love it. So he bought it for me, and I brought it home and loved it. In fact, I may have loved it more than I loved my stuffed animals with both ears intact. The one-eared rabbit, after all, just needed more love.
I wonder if finding and loving the one-eared rabbits is my real calling in life. If it is, I have to trust that God will give me the strength I need to carry it out.
I like the social worker who's handling our adoption. She is soft-spoken and kindly, and she lived in New York for a time, which is enough to endear anyone to me around here (I almost started bawling at Mass the other day, at a parish in my town's old Italian neighborhood, when the old man behind me began intoning the responses in the cadences of the Bronx). But I felt at a loss in our meeting the other day, when she was probing me about my relationship with my husband, and wanted to know what had drawn me to him when we first met. His kindness, I answered truthfully, his masculinity, his qualities of strength and steadiness, the beauty of his voice. Were these the qualities I had been looking for in a man? she asked. Well, I answered, I didn't have a checklist. And it was true; I didn't. Nor did I plan on marrying him, no more than I had ever planned on doing anything. It's usually been the pattern that I'm not sure what to do, but something appears to present itself as a logical option, and I investigate the option and see where it leads. I don't believe in a dream spouse (I doubt that anyone who's had some of the experiences I've had ever could), and I don't believe we have very much control over the things that happen in our lives or in the lives of those around us, though I do believe we can influence those lives for good or ill (and that, perhaps, more than we know). For the most part, however, I think that it's probably more realistic to wake up every day with open hands and abandon ourselves completely to the will of God, though I didn't tell this to the social worker.
She had given me some adoption magazines at our last meeting, and I had enjoyed reading them, but I felt as if they created the expectation of a fairy-tale ending around every adoption story, and I told her so. The editorial thrust seemed to be that you wait and wait for your child, and you finally bring your child home, and everyone is henceforth happy all the time (not, come to think of it, unlike the tone of most books and magazines directed towards bearing, bringing home, and parenting one's biological children; if there were less of that around, there would probably be less post-partum depression). The social worker agreed that the magazines were very glass-half-full, which is not a bad thing; nor is presenting adoption in a positive light a bad thing at all. However, she said, most prospective adoptive parents are mourning the loss of their dream baby, the biological child they didn't have, and many have come to adoption with the attitude that it is a second-best way to become a parent, so it helps them to have the dream story reinforced.
I don't see it as second-best, and, just as I don't think there's a dream spouse, neither do I think there's a dream baby. No matter how you get your children, they will always be unplumbable, even incomprehensible, mysteries. How can we ever really know anyone else, including our own children? The people that God brings into our lives as friends, spouses, children, are, and will always be, vast, unexplored continents. "Thou has brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger."
For all of my confusion and lack of planning, and all my lack of belief in goals and dreams, I do have a memory that has remained all these years, and has given me some sense of direction. When I was a child, I loved and collected stuffed animals. I would line all my stuffed animals up around the edges of my bed at night so that none of them would feel excluded while I slept. One day, when I was about seven, I was with my father at a drugstore, where I spied a bin of little stuffed rabbits (this must have been around Easter) with coats made of real rabbit fur. One of them, I noticed, was missing an ear. I started to cry out of pity for this one, and begged my father to buy it for me. He suggested that I get a nicer one with two ears, but I stood firm: it had to be the one-eared rabbit, I said, because no one else would ever love it. So he bought it for me, and I brought it home and loved it. In fact, I may have loved it more than I loved my stuffed animals with both ears intact. The one-eared rabbit, after all, just needed more love.
I wonder if finding and loving the one-eared rabbits is my real calling in life. If it is, I have to trust that God will give me the strength I need to carry it out.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
September Songs
This record in particular seized my imagination in a way that can only be described as neurotic. I absconded with it to my room and played it over and over on my own garage-sale-gleaned record player. The dark landscape of Weill's music, and the tawdry underworld of Victorian England it evoked, worked their way into my imagination, until I dreamt of singing one of the wholly corrupt female roles (in college, I considered it both vindication and high praise when my vocal coach suggested this would be good repertoire for me).
In the decade or so following the Papp Threepenny, there was a minor vogue for Kurt Weill among hipsters. The marvelous, emotionally-fragile soprano Teresa Stratas released two wonderful albums of lesser-known Kurt Weill songs (the first one is pictured above), and artists like Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, and David Johansen took stabs at recreating the decadent Weimar/Weill ethos. One of my favorite bits of Weilliana is Tryout, a collection of studio recordings of Weill playing and singing his own show tunes for Broadway backers in a whispery, frail, intimate voice.
My father mentioned to me the other day that his favorite version of "September Song" (from Knickerbocker Holiday, a 1938 Broadway show about the Dutch in early Gotham) was Jimmy Durante's. I hadn't known Durante had even sung the iconic Weill classic, of which there are so many beautiful recordings, Sinatra's being the most famous. I found the Durante version on Youtube, naturally, and it is certainly worthy in its own way.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Sense and Sensibility
Though he hasn't been evaluated or diagnosed yet, my son's teacher at preschool recently suggested that he exhibits behaviors that may be consistent with a sensory processing disorder. I wasn't alarmed by this, since he is a bit quirky, and since I know several children who have received this diagnosis and received treatment for it. When I plunged into the waters of the primary source of all knowledge -- Google -- and found this checklist, however, I wondered if I didn't have it, too, especially in the area of hypersensitivity to sound.
As a child, I couldn't stand to watch t.v., a habit that's stuck with me, because I found the low-pitched buzz that the television made acutely disturbing. As a parent, I physically cringe and do cartoon-like double-takes at every normal-household-decibel-level whine and shout, and even at the ringing of the telephone, until, by the end of some days, I am in the blackest of noise-induced moods. When I met my husband, I was intensely drawn to him, among other reasons, for the beauty of his speaking voice, and rejected another suitor around the same time because (among other reasons) there was something about his voice that bothered me (based on his later denunciation of me, this seems not to have been a bad decision). In spite of the fact that I'm a professional musician, I often find it difficult and unpleasant to listen to music, because it absorbs my attention so completely that I feel as if I become the slave of what I'm hearing, right down to my very cells. And music of all kinds makes me weep (interestingly, my sister, the only one of us four siblings who did not become a professional musician, exhibited this same propensity as a baby). And don't get me started on the sense of smell.
My son has been telling me lately, "Mommy, we are twins," which I chalked up to your common house-and-garden Oedipal complex, but perhaps he's more right than he realizes. My friend H., disability activist and author of the now-defunct blog Retired Waif (as well as one of the most brilliant and fascinating people I know), once guffawed loudly when I referred to myself as "neurotypical," and replied, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh right, Pentimento, you are the poster girl for neurotypicality." I wonder now if I would have made entirely different choices in my life if I had been the kind of person who was not wholly unsettled by the hum of a television.
And, come to think of it, when M. gave me a copy of Remembrance of Things Past years ago, and told me that Proust had lived in a cork-lined room on coffee brewed with milk, I found myself nodding my head in total sympathy with the neurasthenic author; it sounded like a good kind of life to me.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Brother of the Stranger
When we arrived here, my husband sought in vain for a pub like any of the couple of dozen back in our old neighborhood, but none appeared. As for me, coming to a place that required driving skills when I had none gave me a unique perspective into our town, one that I have come to believe the town's boosters have missed entirely. I walked everywhere, just like in New York, and also took buses and cabs; but it was nothing like walking and taking buses and cabs in New York, which are done by everybody. In a place like this, cabs (as well as buses and hoofing it) are for those who are too poor to own cars, which, in a place like this, means very poor indeed. So, in spite of the fact that I am something I never dreamt of being -- a prominent man's small-town wife -- I have come to see some things in our new town from the perspective of the local poor, and what I see has been disturbing to me.
New York is full of poor people, too, but -- or at least so it now seems to me -- the poverty in other places in America, if this place is any gauge, is its own special misery. Here, there is isolation, alienation, and a tremendous divide between the haves and have-nots in ways that just don't exist in New York, because in New York, whatever people may think, there is a high level of equity in transportation access -- though the price of subway fare recently went up to $2.25, you can still traverse the entire length of the city, going the thirty or so miles from the northern Bronx to Coney Island, or from the Hudson River piers out to Kennedy Airport, for one swipe of a Metrocard, any time of the night or day -- which allows you to literally rub shoulders with everyone else in the city. Here, on the other hand, those who have cars are in them all the time, and don't have to walk to the supermarket with a folding push-cart or take cabs home from Wal-Mart; in fact, they don't shop at Wal-Mart at all. In New York, there is a sense of energy, ambition, and life surging all around, wherever you are. In New York, there are the bad schools you've heard about, and they are in poor neighborhods; but under No Child Left Behind, the most motivated parents in poor neighborhoods can and do transfer their children to the better schools out-of-district. In New York, everyone who can works; even welfare recipients work in the black market economy, and New York is full of illegal immigrants who live in poverty and squalor and yet work a hundred hours a week and send huge sums of money home. My friend N., for example, would certainly qualify as poor by any American standard. She came from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic father and a developmentally disabled mother, didn't make it through the equivalent of the eighth grade, settled in New York illegally, is a single, unwed mother, and lives in a shelter; but she works hard at her illegal job in the salon, and has the ambition, drive, and intelligence to survive through situation after situation that would have made many a lesser person (myself included) crumble in despair.
Here, on the other hand, in my perambulations through the post-industrial landscape, I see the empty husks of many souls who seem to have been felled by despair, and by the kind of multi-generational poverty, out-of-wedlock childbearing, drugs, violence (domestic and otherwise), and welfare dependency that are supposed to be the hallmarks of the ethnic urban underclass, but seem even more entrenched in white semi-rural areas like this one. And so I walk around; I go swimming in summer at the public park where the poor, the drug-dependent, and the tattooed take their children; I take the bus to the library, a beautiful structure in the midst of crumbling tenements and abandoned shopfronts, where a little black girl once asked me, incredulous, "Don't you have a car?" when she saw me getting my son into his stroller for the walk back to the bus stop; and occasionally I even take a cab home from Wal-Mart. I see very young women with many children by different fathers, judging at least by the children's varying skin shades, and mouths full of stumps instead of teeth, which I suppose is a symptom of meth addiction. I see little boys at the playground with neck tattoos just like their fathers'. I see many people who stare at me with the same mixture of suspicion and hostility I met thousands of times when riding the subway through the South Bronx or through pre-gentrification Bedford-Stuyvesant. I suppose I'm as strange to my fellow citizens as they are to me, though I hope I'm not as unsettling to them as they are to me.
However, we are now in the process of adopting a child from our community. The child will, most likely, come from one of the broken families of the very poor among whom I have walked like a strange, observing shadow during the past year. As the small-town wife of a prominent man and the prominent man himself, we are in a rather unique position -- a position we never dreamt of being in back when we were a grad-student mom and an Irish guy who went down to the pub in the Bronx -- to open our home and our hearts to children who might be called the children of despair, and we very much want to do so (and after our string of miscarriages, it's not at all certain that we will be able to have more children on the natch).
While my family of origin has long been committed -- some in thought, some in action -- to ameliorating the lives of the poor, if not to overthrowing the structures that they believed made people poor to begin with -- the adoption will connect us in a mysterious way to the lives of the poor in our community, the lives that I find so unsettling. We feel called to parenting through adoption, and to welcoming the stranger in this way, and recognize that the threads of grace that bind us to one another, not only as parents and children, but also as neighbors, brothers, and fellow citizens, can be impossible for the human mind to entangle. Please pray for us.
As Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not.
Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.
(Above: my town.)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A Future without Down Syndrome?
Coinciding with Berenike's post about the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, a surprising (and hopeful) article introducing an unlikely new cohort of advocates for children with Down syndrome. An exceprt:
Rachel Adams, a professor of English and American studies at Columbia University, is one of the special-needs parents whose ranks may dwindle in coming decades. She was studying the history of disability in popular culture for years before she gave birth to her son Henry, now 2. Still, learning her newborn had Down syndrome was “the biggest shock of my life,” she says. “A tremendous shock.”
Adams describes herself as a pro-choice feminist, a woman who wouldn’t want to deny any other woman the choice of whether to carry a pregnancy to term. But she’s also committed to giving expectant parents a more hopeful view of what it’s like to be a mother of a child with Down syndrome. This spring, she and a friend will be giving talks to genetic counselors about how they can more sensitively deliver the news that a fetus has Down syndrome, without steering couples toward termination.
Rachel Adams, a professor of English and American studies at Columbia University, is one of the special-needs parents whose ranks may dwindle in coming decades. She was studying the history of disability in popular culture for years before she gave birth to her son Henry, now 2. Still, learning her newborn had Down syndrome was “the biggest shock of my life,” she says. “A tremendous shock.”
Adams describes herself as a pro-choice feminist, a woman who wouldn’t want to deny any other woman the choice of whether to carry a pregnancy to term. But she’s also committed to giving expectant parents a more hopeful view of what it’s like to be a mother of a child with Down syndrome. This spring, she and a friend will be giving talks to genetic counselors about how they can more sensitively deliver the news that a fetus has Down syndrome, without steering couples toward termination.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Contemplative Life with "The Smallest in the Kingdom"
A year after my re-conversion, and shortly before I met my husband, I briefly dated a moderately prominent ortho/trad Catholic journalist, who one night confessed to me his irrational horror of people with developmental disabilities, and his fear of fathering a child afflicted with them.
We remained friends for a time after our dating relationship ended and he'd begun seeing someone else, when he spoke once more about his fear of having a child with Down syndrome. His innamorata, it seems, was approaching the age at which the rate of bearing babies with Down increases to 1%. I reminded him that this statistic suggested that, should they marry and have a child, the odds were 99% in favor of the child not having Down. This did little to reassure him, however, and he was no more comforted by the ample testimony of parents of children with Down syndrome of the blessings these children bring to a family.
Today I read this remarkable story on the blog Laodicea about a contemplative order of nuns, the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, which is partially comprised of young women with Down syndrome. May God prosper this wonderful order abundantly, and may these holy women of God pray for us all. For all we know, in the mysterious economy of God's grace, they may be instrumental in my erstwhile friend's salvation.
We remained friends for a time after our dating relationship ended and he'd begun seeing someone else, when he spoke once more about his fear of having a child with Down syndrome. His innamorata, it seems, was approaching the age at which the rate of bearing babies with Down increases to 1%. I reminded him that this statistic suggested that, should they marry and have a child, the odds were 99% in favor of the child not having Down. This did little to reassure him, however, and he was no more comforted by the ample testimony of parents of children with Down syndrome of the blessings these children bring to a family.
Today I read this remarkable story on the blog Laodicea about a contemplative order of nuns, the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, which is partially comprised of young women with Down syndrome. May God prosper this wonderful order abundantly, and may these holy women of God pray for us all. For all we know, in the mysterious economy of God's grace, they may be instrumental in my erstwhile friend's salvation.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Chastisement
I started to miscarry naturally over the course of two days. It was the most pain I've ever been in. My nine-months-pregnant friend took me to the ER (she went into labor and delivered a 10-lb. baby boy at home the next evening), where I eventually had an emergency D&C in the middle of the night. I got up at 3 AM to pump and dump some breastmilk for DS so as to cycle the anaesthesia through my bodily fluids more quickly. I have been ambivalent about weaning him, but he seemed able to get to sleep fine after a bout of crying in the middle of the night. I told him we couldnt nurse, but rocked him and sang "Buckeye Jim" in my voice cracked from the anaesthesia tube.
I will never believe the "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" ethos and scenario that most people espouse around this type of event. It assumes that some -- any -- people are good, and "Why callest thou me good? No one is good but one, that is God" (Mark 10:18). Nor will I believe the new-age platitudes that people whom I respect for reasons other than their ability to reason have beeen offering, along the lines of "that soul chose its destiny (which was to gestate in me and perish at eight weeks, then be scraped out of my womb) as a service to you . . . there's no judgement; everything is perfect as it is," etc. The one thing that resonates with me is the concept of God's justice. We like to focus on His mercy, which some say trumps his justice; in fact, St. Faustina emphasized that his mercy was his greatest attribute, or so he told her in his apparitions. But there must also be balance and proportion; there must also be justice. Could be, as my confessor suggested, that I am being chastised for my many, many serious sins. Not punished, but chastised; made chaste, as it were, purified in the consuming flames of suffering. If this is the case, I pray that it will work this time.
I will never believe the "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" ethos and scenario that most people espouse around this type of event. It assumes that some -- any -- people are good, and "Why callest thou me good? No one is good but one, that is God" (Mark 10:18). Nor will I believe the new-age platitudes that people whom I respect for reasons other than their ability to reason have beeen offering, along the lines of "that soul chose its destiny (which was to gestate in me and perish at eight weeks, then be scraped out of my womb) as a service to you . . . there's no judgement; everything is perfect as it is," etc. The one thing that resonates with me is the concept of God's justice. We like to focus on His mercy, which some say trumps his justice; in fact, St. Faustina emphasized that his mercy was his greatest attribute, or so he told her in his apparitions. But there must also be balance and proportion; there must also be justice. Could be, as my confessor suggested, that I am being chastised for my many, many serious sins. Not punished, but chastised; made chaste, as it were, purified in the consuming flames of suffering. If this is the case, I pray that it will work this time.
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