Hey Kid,
This Friday Dav came home early with the beginnings of a bad cold. He doesn't like store bought cans of chicken soup (I do) so I told him I'd try to make a homemade batch, which I've never done before.
The recipe I used was pretty simple, but it took around two hours to make from start to finish, starting with a whole raw chicken. As I made it I was thinking of you, I was imagining one winter day making homemade chicken noodle soup for you, with the flu creeping up on you. I don't know if you'll know that that's special, that not all moms do that, and you might even hate it, maybe start associating it with being sick. And maybe it won't be special to me by then, maybe it'll just be the chore I choose to do. But this was my first time, and from start to finish I put my love in it for Dav, and a little bit in it for you, and it tasted wonderful.
I'm really looking forward to being able to be the kind of mom who makes you soup, and chocolate chip cookies (the way my mom used to at the start of every school year), and takes you to the botanical gardens to look at flowers and trees and herbs. I'm looking forward to taking you out to see the Geminids fall through the night sky, making picnics to eat in the park, and giving you the books I read when I was your age.
I know that if I do all of this that it won't seem like much to you, it'll just seem obvious, the thing moms are supposed to do. But I hope this record of this one moment when it wasn't obvious will somehow show you that these things come out of love I have for you years before I even know you. I desire to do these things for you, to be this kind of mom for you. These dreams are deeply precious to me, and I'm trying to teach myself to make them real for you, even now.
It's not pathetic. My life is more than living for the future, or living for you.
I just love you, right now, is all,
C.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Anger
Hey Kid,
I was going to write you about drugs, because drugs are supposed to be one of those things parents are afraid of discussing openly with their children, but, honestly, we can do that any time. Later. What I'm really having a hard time talking about is anger. Anger's something I've been dealing with lately, and my inability to face it and my antagonists is part of why I've been too unhappy to write you lately.
Anger is not something I was raised to feel. I suspect this is a temptation for a lot of parents, to kill their kid's anger as soon as possible, convince them that it's not okay to be angry. When I was fifteen, and my emotions were officially going out of control, I told my mom over the tomato patch that I was freaked out because sometimes I felt so very, very angry.
She looked up from the garden hose, "Are you ever angry at us?" she said, meaning herself and my dad.
"Sometimes," I said. She looked so sad.
"You know," she said, "God doesn't want you to hold anger in your heart toward your parents. It grieves Him mightily."
"But God gets angry all the time in the Bible," I said.
"That's righteous anger," she said. "That's different."
A year later I was hospitalized for suicidal depression. Gosh, I guess I haven't mentioned that before. This is definitely something I haven't wanted to talk about. There's not much to say, unless you want to get into the grim details, but, to be brief, my parents drove me out to Colorado on the pretense of visiting relatives. And then, late on the second night of driving, led a sleepy, pillow-clutching me into what I thought was a Motel 6, and left me there. That place was my first mental hospital. I was admitted into the Christian program to deal with suicidal depression. I was depressed because I had begun to question my family's Christianity and they were treating me badly as a result, which naturally made me very angry. However, I'd been taught from childhood that I wasn't allowed to be angry with them.
The classic line from therapy goes like this: "Depression is anger turned inward."
I had a lot of anger--but I didn't know it, because I had been taught very well not to acknowledge it.
It's been eight years since that time, as of this writing. I've learned to get angry, but I still don't always know how to deal with it. Sometimes it spirals out of control and I take it out on the wrong people. Sometimes I get very sick from holding it in, and there's bile in my mouth all the time Sometimes I pretend I'm not angry, and then I feel ashamed.
Lately, I've been angry because some people were insulting and rude to me, and I tried to placate them instead of telling them that they had to stop. Worry about how to save those friendships was making me very sick, and I knew I had a problem, but I didn't know what to do about it. I began to think that maybe I was wrong to think of having you, because how can I handle the stress of having a kid who will, inevitably, have conflicts with me, if I can't handle the stress of these petty conflicts now? And what kind of anger management skills could I possibly teach you? Wouldn't I just doom you to a life of headaches and stomach ulcers?
And, kid, thinking of you was enough to make me do something about it. I went back to the people I'd first tried to placate, and I told them off, and then I told them I did not need them in my life anymore--because why would I? You might think someone's a good friend, but if you argue, (and arguing is normal and fine and usually it just means there's been a misunderstanding that needs to be worked through), they'll show you their true characters. If someone's true character is a person who thinks it's okay to be insulting, vicious, and condescending, then they're idiots and bad people and you don't need to keep them in your life. And if you're in a group of friends who see what's happening, and they don't care enough about you to point out that it's wrong for friends to be insulting and vicious and condescending to each other, then they're not really your friends either. Just go ahead and tell them where to get off--and do yourself a favor and refuse to be insulting and rude when you do it, so that you can walk away knowing you're the better person. You see, I always skipped over that part where you explain why you're angry and why what the other person did or said was wrong. I thought, why bother? You're going to walk away anyway, why risk further flaring tempers? I'll tell you why: self-respect.
Self-respect may sound like a buzzword, but it turns out life really is better when you think you're worthy of basic courtesy and love.
Now, there are people you can't simply tell off and walk away from forever, and one of those people, at least until you're 18, is me. To you I can only say: it's fine if we argue, but let's both behave like good people when we do it. It's normal and healthy to disagree. But I want to show you by my own actions that I respect your point of view and that I'll admit it when I'm wrong. My parents never did that for me, so I never learned it was okay to respect my own point of view. Now, granted, I was a teenager and sometimes my point of view was totally wrong, because I didn't know that much about life. Like it or not, you'll be wrong a lot too. But not all the time. Sometimes I'll be wrong or unjust, and I hope we'll be able to work through those times. I hope you'll feel like you can stick up for yourself. That's why I write these things to you, though, to remind myself of things parents seem to forget, so I won't be unjust as often, and so that I'll remember to respect your point of view, so you'll know how to respect yourself.
You know, you should totally feel free to make me re-read parts of this, if you think I've forgotten.
I love you so much, Kid,
C.
I was going to write you about drugs, because drugs are supposed to be one of those things parents are afraid of discussing openly with their children, but, honestly, we can do that any time. Later. What I'm really having a hard time talking about is anger. Anger's something I've been dealing with lately, and my inability to face it and my antagonists is part of why I've been too unhappy to write you lately.
Anger is not something I was raised to feel. I suspect this is a temptation for a lot of parents, to kill their kid's anger as soon as possible, convince them that it's not okay to be angry. When I was fifteen, and my emotions were officially going out of control, I told my mom over the tomato patch that I was freaked out because sometimes I felt so very, very angry.
She looked up from the garden hose, "Are you ever angry at us?" she said, meaning herself and my dad.
"Sometimes," I said. She looked so sad.
"You know," she said, "God doesn't want you to hold anger in your heart toward your parents. It grieves Him mightily."
"But God gets angry all the time in the Bible," I said.
"That's righteous anger," she said. "That's different."
A year later I was hospitalized for suicidal depression. Gosh, I guess I haven't mentioned that before. This is definitely something I haven't wanted to talk about. There's not much to say, unless you want to get into the grim details, but, to be brief, my parents drove me out to Colorado on the pretense of visiting relatives. And then, late on the second night of driving, led a sleepy, pillow-clutching me into what I thought was a Motel 6, and left me there. That place was my first mental hospital. I was admitted into the Christian program to deal with suicidal depression. I was depressed because I had begun to question my family's Christianity and they were treating me badly as a result, which naturally made me very angry. However, I'd been taught from childhood that I wasn't allowed to be angry with them.
The classic line from therapy goes like this: "Depression is anger turned inward."
I had a lot of anger--but I didn't know it, because I had been taught very well not to acknowledge it.
It's been eight years since that time, as of this writing. I've learned to get angry, but I still don't always know how to deal with it. Sometimes it spirals out of control and I take it out on the wrong people. Sometimes I get very sick from holding it in, and there's bile in my mouth all the time Sometimes I pretend I'm not angry, and then I feel ashamed.
Lately, I've been angry because some people were insulting and rude to me, and I tried to placate them instead of telling them that they had to stop. Worry about how to save those friendships was making me very sick, and I knew I had a problem, but I didn't know what to do about it. I began to think that maybe I was wrong to think of having you, because how can I handle the stress of having a kid who will, inevitably, have conflicts with me, if I can't handle the stress of these petty conflicts now? And what kind of anger management skills could I possibly teach you? Wouldn't I just doom you to a life of headaches and stomach ulcers?
And, kid, thinking of you was enough to make me do something about it. I went back to the people I'd first tried to placate, and I told them off, and then I told them I did not need them in my life anymore--because why would I? You might think someone's a good friend, but if you argue, (and arguing is normal and fine and usually it just means there's been a misunderstanding that needs to be worked through), they'll show you their true characters. If someone's true character is a person who thinks it's okay to be insulting, vicious, and condescending, then they're idiots and bad people and you don't need to keep them in your life. And if you're in a group of friends who see what's happening, and they don't care enough about you to point out that it's wrong for friends to be insulting and vicious and condescending to each other, then they're not really your friends either. Just go ahead and tell them where to get off--and do yourself a favor and refuse to be insulting and rude when you do it, so that you can walk away knowing you're the better person. You see, I always skipped over that part where you explain why you're angry and why what the other person did or said was wrong. I thought, why bother? You're going to walk away anyway, why risk further flaring tempers? I'll tell you why: self-respect.
Self-respect may sound like a buzzword, but it turns out life really is better when you think you're worthy of basic courtesy and love.
Now, there are people you can't simply tell off and walk away from forever, and one of those people, at least until you're 18, is me. To you I can only say: it's fine if we argue, but let's both behave like good people when we do it. It's normal and healthy to disagree. But I want to show you by my own actions that I respect your point of view and that I'll admit it when I'm wrong. My parents never did that for me, so I never learned it was okay to respect my own point of view. Now, granted, I was a teenager and sometimes my point of view was totally wrong, because I didn't know that much about life. Like it or not, you'll be wrong a lot too. But not all the time. Sometimes I'll be wrong or unjust, and I hope we'll be able to work through those times. I hope you'll feel like you can stick up for yourself. That's why I write these things to you, though, to remind myself of things parents seem to forget, so I won't be unjust as often, and so that I'll remember to respect your point of view, so you'll know how to respect yourself.
You know, you should totally feel free to make me re-read parts of this, if you think I've forgotten.
I love you so much, Kid,
C.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Why We Don't Commit Suicide In This Family
Hey Kid,
I realize that the only acceptable follow-up to my last letter is to explain exactly how life ISN'T miserable and pointless, but I'll tell you what--it's tricky. I can tell you that, so far, I haven't offed myself because I don't want to make other people's lives even more miserable and pointless than they already are. And since that seems to be the most convincing argument for me, I'll try to explain it to you.
Suicide makes other people's lives, (not to mention your own life), more miserable and pointless because:
I) If they love you, your suicide points out in no uncertain terms that their love wasn't interesting, useful, or beautiful enough to keep you around, which is another way of saying you never really loved them back. And while life may be pointless and frequently miserable, it has not extended the courtesy of rendering us heartless.
II) If they don't love you, your suicide points out:
All of which to say, there probably isn't a reason for being here, and your life probably won't mean much in the end, since 150,000 people die every single day and what do you care? But suicide is easily the whiniest way to die, as well as the most self-pitying, and the most snivelling, especially if you live in Western Civilization, and so we don't kill ourselves if we respect two things:
The only trick there is to making meaning in your life, as far as I can see, is figuring out what you love and focusing on that. It may only be meaningful to you, but that's all you need to know. Never lose sight of what you love. Religious people, for example, are often more purposeful because they've decided to brainwash themselves into perpetual focus on what they're told they love. Now, I'm not saying I know what love is, as I've mentioned earlier, but I am saying that you can know WHAT you love, because it's whatever's worth staying alive for. If you're smart, you'll sit down right now and start a list.
Every other good thing that happens to you after that is just gravy. Delicious creamy gravy.
And by the way, kid, I'm saying these things to you, in this calculating manner, because I don't want to guilt you into living life. Mothers are very good at the emotional appeal, the whole "you'd rip out my heart?" business. But for now, while you don't sit in either my uterus or on my couch, I can still occasionally think rationally about you and about life. This is the rational appeal for life, to life, for you and for me, because unfortunately if you're anything like me you'll probably be a moody son of a bitch (ha ha! true on so many levels!). At any rate, if you're anything like most of Western Civilization, adolescence will be hell, so I imagine these thoughts might come in handy. Although I'll grant you, Dav, if he becomes your father, is one of those lucky few who sailed through adolescence like a prince on a shining schooner of light, so maybe you'll get lucky.
I love you.
C.
I realize that the only acceptable follow-up to my last letter is to explain exactly how life ISN'T miserable and pointless, but I'll tell you what--it's tricky. I can tell you that, so far, I haven't offed myself because I don't want to make other people's lives even more miserable and pointless than they already are. And since that seems to be the most convincing argument for me, I'll try to explain it to you.
Suicide makes other people's lives, (not to mention your own life), more miserable and pointless because:
I) If they love you, your suicide points out in no uncertain terms that their love wasn't interesting, useful, or beautiful enough to keep you around, which is another way of saying you never really loved them back. And while life may be pointless and frequently miserable, it has not extended the courtesy of rendering us heartless.
II) If they don't love you, your suicide points out:
A) They weren't important enough to you for you to try to acquire their love. Of course, why should they be? The heartless bastards.
B) Life, at least to you, was miserable and pointless enough to end. Suicide, in my opinion, is a fairly convincing argument for your own perspective. However, don't let the cheerful prospect of finally driving your point home lead you to believe suicide is The Answer, because even if your suicide were to hit the morning papers:1) Most people don't read the papers anymore.
2) If they do, suicide has long since become the most boring headline in section B, page 13. The fact that this is absolutely true ought to validate your point that life is miserable and pointless but:
3) Even if they do read about your boring suicide in section B, page 13, most people have the all the perspective, compassion, and capacity for reason of a dense cloud of gnats. And that brings us, finally, to:
4) If they do have a whit of feeling or thought for your little act, if it does occur to them what a convincing argument you've just penned, if for a second they feel the morose weight of their empty lives, they will assume the smug, sorrowful expression of news readers everywhere, turn to their families who wait around the breakfast table and either:
a) Say, "Let's go to Disneyland, everybody! Disneyland!" That's because they think they can halt the niggling sense of meaninglessness with an abnormally Good Time. What a legacy for you!
b) Mix a Paxil and vodka tonic. Or,
c) Go, "Tsk tsk, isn't this sad?" And everyone will agree that it's sad and say aren't they lucky to be so happy and healthy and religious?, and then they will forget all about you and study the Family Circus, possibly for minutes.
All of which to say, there probably isn't a reason for being here, and your life probably won't mean much in the end, since 150,000 people die every single day and what do you care? But suicide is easily the whiniest way to die, as well as the most self-pitying, and the most snivelling, especially if you live in Western Civilization, and so we don't kill ourselves if we respect two things:
1) Our intelligence. And if you're smart enough to figure out that life is meaningless, surely you're smart enough to figure out how thoroughly you insult yourself by ending it.
2) The people we love and who love us. Because they'd care if we were gone. And we'd care if they were gone. So we stick it out and think about them until we stop thinking about ourselves. And when you stop thinking about yourself, for some reason, life gets a hell of a lot better. I guess, to be honest, that's the main reason I keep writing you.
2) The people we love and who love us. Because they'd care if we were gone. And we'd care if they were gone. So we stick it out and think about them until we stop thinking about ourselves. And when you stop thinking about yourself, for some reason, life gets a hell of a lot better. I guess, to be honest, that's the main reason I keep writing you.
The only trick there is to making meaning in your life, as far as I can see, is figuring out what you love and focusing on that. It may only be meaningful to you, but that's all you need to know. Never lose sight of what you love. Religious people, for example, are often more purposeful because they've decided to brainwash themselves into perpetual focus on what they're told they love. Now, I'm not saying I know what love is, as I've mentioned earlier, but I am saying that you can know WHAT you love, because it's whatever's worth staying alive for. If you're smart, you'll sit down right now and start a list.
Every other good thing that happens to you after that is just gravy. Delicious creamy gravy.
And by the way, kid, I'm saying these things to you, in this calculating manner, because I don't want to guilt you into living life. Mothers are very good at the emotional appeal, the whole "you'd rip out my heart?" business. But for now, while you don't sit in either my uterus or on my couch, I can still occasionally think rationally about you and about life. This is the rational appeal for life, to life, for you and for me, because unfortunately if you're anything like me you'll probably be a moody son of a bitch (ha ha! true on so many levels!). At any rate, if you're anything like most of Western Civilization, adolescence will be hell, so I imagine these thoughts might come in handy. Although I'll grant you, Dav, if he becomes your father, is one of those lucky few who sailed through adolescence like a prince on a shining schooner of light, so maybe you'll get lucky.
I love you.
C.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Damn Unlikely
Hey Kid,
I just don't know, kid. I just don't know.
There are so many good reasons why I shouldn't be a parent. Jesus, I can't believe I'm saying this to YOU, of all people. Hello ammo!
I look at this journal and it seems so terribly neurotic. Here: maybe if we analyze everything RIGHT NOW--and I mean EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD--maybe you'll live better and I'll be a better parent and maybe, maybe just maybe, NOTHING BAD WILL EVER HAPPEN. It's not just neurotic, it's a power trip, and as power trips go it's exceedingly naive, which is exactly how I don't want to be.
This week I began to feel that maybe staying alive really is pointless. That certainly makes having YOU pointless.
A lot of different shitty things happened this week, and if you're sitting there reading this then they clearly weren't that bad, but I'll tell you the kicker. On the road between Kingston and Montreal, there's a detour to a little town in the plains called Merrickville. Merrickville was the kicker. Merrickville made me want to kill myself.
I took the detour because I'd been told it was a nice place to have lunch. It turned out to be nothing but a tourist trap: a few little shops with arty beaded necklaces and crystals for sale, a painting studio or three, flavored fudge, and a restaurant, as advertised. I sat down alone in a dark dining room half-full with other tourists, all significantly older than me, and while I waited for my food I eavesdropped. I always eavesdrop--is that a crushing blow to your idealized view of me? Probably not.
They were all deep in conversation, table by table, "chatting" I suppose. They talked about the things they'd bought from the arty little shops, and what they might want to buy later, someday, and about other people's problems. They wore sweatshirts, bulged out of their chairs, swiped fronds of greasy over-processed hair out of their pasty faces, and they just talked and talked and talked about nothing at all.
Do you realize, once upon a time, those people were just like you?
Once, at SOME POINT, the majority of them had to have been bright eyed and healthy and maybe even attractive, or at least wanted to be. The majority of them, considering the bourgeois circumstances, probably went to college at some point, and certainly all must have had some kind of dreams for their lives. They probably wondered if there was a god, perhaps asked themselves in despair if they'd ever find love, perhaps laid awake every night when they were twelve, thinking about death. Did they realize that one day they'd wake up and say to themselves, "Hey, let's go to Merrickville today! Yes, Merrickville will be a GOOD TIME"?
Probably not. One hopes not. I certainly never said that to myself. Merrickville, for me, was an accident.
I sat there and realized that this is what life becomes, for most of us. We become used to the mundane swing of events, the fact that life is not as romantic or exciting as we hoped, that we will work at jobs that bear very little resemblance to our hopes, and may never bring meaning to our lives. Or to anyone's life, for that matter. Worst of all, we get used to it. We stop caring. Or they stopped caring. Me? I'd rather die now and save myself the trouble of faking a life.
Today Dav and I went to the World Press Photo exhibit down the street, all the winners of international news photo contests, lit up and lined around the edges of the room. I saw pictures of bloated humans face down in filthy streets, little children with ragged nubs for arms, very few smiling faces, mostly starvation. Reasons why we don't read newspapers anymore. What can I say? You laugh or you cry. I cried.
Life looks like nothing but a simple brutal choice: either we suffer horribly, or we choose to feel nothing at all.
Yes, there's always drugs and spending to excess if you'd rather be abnormally happy.
But here's me, writing furiously to you, trying to... what? Stop it all from happening to you? Better I should never have you at all, then believe I have that kind of power. Maybe I'm just trying to lie to myself, weave a magical incantation over us with the power of my mind, believing that if I write enough down, it'll all be better--at least better. We'll stand up on the blasting bow of a white boat and wave silk handkerchiefs into warm wind and orange sunset skies. You and me, kid, me in my fluttering linen dress, you in yellow dungerees. Every single day, breathing salt and clean sky, the rest of the world nothing but a blue dream in the mist behind us. Each wave, nothing but a buoy into a perfect life.
Oh, god, I doubt it, kid. At any rate, I doubt it would be all that satisfying after a week or two.
I really don't know what to tell you.
I love you.
C.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Look
Hey Kid,
Recently I read about the scientific variants for determining human beauty. It turns out that beauty isn't really just a social mindgame, but can be objectively measured and understood.
Attractiveness, I learned, is three things:
1) Bilateral Symmetry. No big surprise here. If your face shows lateral symmetry, (that is, the right side more or less perfectly mirrors the left), you're more attractive. This has to do with not looking diseased.
2) Secondary Sexual Characteristics. Again, no surprise. The more your face exhibits the qualities of virility or fecundity common to your gender, the more sexy you appear. It's so obvious, you can't even describe it without being redundant. But the third one fascinates me:
3) Facial Averageness. The more closely your facial features display the average size and shape of all others in your cultural net, the more attractive you are. Apparently this has to do with looking as though you are a composite of as many different parts of the gene pool as possible. Heterogenity is good for offspring.
I love this. I find myself looking at everyone through the lens of averageness. I LOVE the opportunity to momentarily wrench my brain away from my subconscious and just LOOK at what's in front of my eyes as an objective series of facts, devoid of intrinsic meaning.
It's also made me feel better about how I look. I can look at myself in the mirror and use a series of vague mathematic estimates that PROVE there's not much that's particularly deformed about my face. More importantly, what this means is that "pretty" is not about being SPECIAL, (which is a terrifying thing to have to be), it's about being absolutely mundane.
The best part is that even if you DON'T think you're attractive on any given day, that may well mean you have one of the universe's ever-slimming chances of actually being unique. And if you can hack being unique, that means you're also very brave, and if you're brave, that means you might have the opportunity to actually contribute something new and good to this world.
But all of this starts with being able to see what's in front of your eyes. That's really the point of this letter.
One of the things I want to try to teach you as we go is to stop and really look at what you're seeing. The first thing a good teacher tells any young artist is to draw what they really see. You grow up drawing trees like lumps of mashed potatoes on sticks, but there's never been a tree in the world like that. Every time you draw a tree that way, it's like pulling on blinders. Once you know you've been brainwashed by easy labels like "tree = mashed potatoes on sticks" or "beautiful = that tingly feeling in my crotch" you're completely blind. Since it's unlikely that you will give yourself a tingly feeling in the crotch, you may think you're not beautiful. You begin to separate all experience into crotch-tingle and not-crotch-tingle. You can't see the point of portraiture galleries, or old people.
Hopefully you're not like this. But enormous swathes of the population really see the world this way. Maybe they separate everyone into other kinds of categories: "Useful" vs. "Not," or "Exciting" vs. "Boring," "Me" vs. "Everything else," or anything else you can think of. But, as with any labels, as soon as you start relying on them you stop being able to see a thing. And then you miss out. You start to hate and fear people at random, and desire them at random too.
I want you to be able to see the truth. I hope you'll really look at the world around you. Carry a camera to school, put frames around every wonderful thing. Expand your definition of "wonderful" until you can see the unique personality in a blade of grass, until the cornices on a bank fill you with awe. Look and look and look until you can see everything in everyone. It's all there. I swear to God, it's all there.
I love you,
C.
Recently I read about the scientific variants for determining human beauty. It turns out that beauty isn't really just a social mindgame, but can be objectively measured and understood.
Attractiveness, I learned, is three things:
1) Bilateral Symmetry. No big surprise here. If your face shows lateral symmetry, (that is, the right side more or less perfectly mirrors the left), you're more attractive. This has to do with not looking diseased.
2) Secondary Sexual Characteristics. Again, no surprise. The more your face exhibits the qualities of virility or fecundity common to your gender, the more sexy you appear. It's so obvious, you can't even describe it without being redundant. But the third one fascinates me:
3) Facial Averageness. The more closely your facial features display the average size and shape of all others in your cultural net, the more attractive you are. Apparently this has to do with looking as though you are a composite of as many different parts of the gene pool as possible. Heterogenity is good for offspring.
I love this. I find myself looking at everyone through the lens of averageness. I LOVE the opportunity to momentarily wrench my brain away from my subconscious and just LOOK at what's in front of my eyes as an objective series of facts, devoid of intrinsic meaning.
It's also made me feel better about how I look. I can look at myself in the mirror and use a series of vague mathematic estimates that PROVE there's not much that's particularly deformed about my face. More importantly, what this means is that "pretty" is not about being SPECIAL, (which is a terrifying thing to have to be), it's about being absolutely mundane.
The best part is that even if you DON'T think you're attractive on any given day, that may well mean you have one of the universe's ever-slimming chances of actually being unique. And if you can hack being unique, that means you're also very brave, and if you're brave, that means you might have the opportunity to actually contribute something new and good to this world.
But all of this starts with being able to see what's in front of your eyes. That's really the point of this letter.
One of the things I want to try to teach you as we go is to stop and really look at what you're seeing. The first thing a good teacher tells any young artist is to draw what they really see. You grow up drawing trees like lumps of mashed potatoes on sticks, but there's never been a tree in the world like that. Every time you draw a tree that way, it's like pulling on blinders. Once you know you've been brainwashed by easy labels like "tree = mashed potatoes on sticks" or "beautiful = that tingly feeling in my crotch" you're completely blind. Since it's unlikely that you will give yourself a tingly feeling in the crotch, you may think you're not beautiful. You begin to separate all experience into crotch-tingle and not-crotch-tingle. You can't see the point of portraiture galleries, or old people.
Hopefully you're not like this. But enormous swathes of the population really see the world this way. Maybe they separate everyone into other kinds of categories: "Useful" vs. "Not," or "Exciting" vs. "Boring," "Me" vs. "Everything else," or anything else you can think of. But, as with any labels, as soon as you start relying on them you stop being able to see a thing. And then you miss out. You start to hate and fear people at random, and desire them at random too.
I want you to be able to see the truth. I hope you'll really look at the world around you. Carry a camera to school, put frames around every wonderful thing. Expand your definition of "wonderful" until you can see the unique personality in a blade of grass, until the cornices on a bank fill you with awe. Look and look and look until you can see everything in everyone. It's all there. I swear to God, it's all there.
I love you,
C.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Friday, September 15, 2006
Liiiiiiiiiive!
Hey Kid,
Today I made myself throw up with nothing but the power of my mind.
You know, sometimes I ask myself if you'll be proud of my choices, proud I'm your mom. In this case, today, I'll let you off the hook.
I should amend: I threw up with nothing but the power of my mind and my overwhelming fear of swallowing toothpaste. I HATE toothpaste. I still use it, but I rinse and rinse and rinse and if I even suspect I might have swallowed the TINIEST wisp of minty paste, I usually dry heave until the stomach acid burns the flavor out of my mouth. This doesn't exempt you from using toothpaste, though. Sorry.
What's so disturbing about this, though, is that I don't actually know if I'm swallowing toothpaste or just minty spit, so sometimes, when I throw up like this, it's probably entirely in my mind.
The reason why I tell you this is because it's worthwhile for you to know that everything that happens to you, happens within your mind, and more importantly that I believe this idea and will probably warp your mind with it. While there may be an indifferent (or, as they say, "objective") reality, practicing outside your mind, you will never know it. Which is why you have to take care about the things you let yourself think. At a certain level, any assertion becomes a superstition, and people who believe in superstitions too hard can really freak themselves out.
Or vomit using nothing but the power of their minds.
One of the things I worry about, (AND I DON'T JUST WORRY BECAUSE I'M CRAZY, BELIEVE ME, WE'RE ALL FAIRLY NEUROTIC, ESPECIALLY MOMS), is that something awful will happen in my parts and I'll never have you. Or you'll be stillborn. Or brain damaged and never be able to read this. And what I worry after I worry that, is that the power of my mind has just reached into the future and created a dead baby.
But I don't write these letters to a dead baby, I write them to you. I can picture you in my mind: 15 years old, gangly, smart. If you've bothered to read this at all you're probably smirking or freaked out or both. I'm afraid you're a bit androgynous in my mind, because I'm trying hard to write these letters for either a boy or a girl. Hopefully you won't come out looking like a Hanson kid (look it up).
I just want you to know that I believe in you. You're going to be okay, because every one of these letters is a story I'm telling the universe inside my head, about how great you are.
I hope you believe in yourself too, but that's another letter.
I love you,
C.
Today I made myself throw up with nothing but the power of my mind.
You know, sometimes I ask myself if you'll be proud of my choices, proud I'm your mom. In this case, today, I'll let you off the hook.
I should amend: I threw up with nothing but the power of my mind and my overwhelming fear of swallowing toothpaste. I HATE toothpaste. I still use it, but I rinse and rinse and rinse and if I even suspect I might have swallowed the TINIEST wisp of minty paste, I usually dry heave until the stomach acid burns the flavor out of my mouth. This doesn't exempt you from using toothpaste, though. Sorry.
What's so disturbing about this, though, is that I don't actually know if I'm swallowing toothpaste or just minty spit, so sometimes, when I throw up like this, it's probably entirely in my mind.
The reason why I tell you this is because it's worthwhile for you to know that everything that happens to you, happens within your mind, and more importantly that I believe this idea and will probably warp your mind with it. While there may be an indifferent (or, as they say, "objective") reality, practicing outside your mind, you will never know it. Which is why you have to take care about the things you let yourself think. At a certain level, any assertion becomes a superstition, and people who believe in superstitions too hard can really freak themselves out.
Or vomit using nothing but the power of their minds.
One of the things I worry about, (AND I DON'T JUST WORRY BECAUSE I'M CRAZY, BELIEVE ME, WE'RE ALL FAIRLY NEUROTIC, ESPECIALLY MOMS), is that something awful will happen in my parts and I'll never have you. Or you'll be stillborn. Or brain damaged and never be able to read this. And what I worry after I worry that, is that the power of my mind has just reached into the future and created a dead baby.
But I don't write these letters to a dead baby, I write them to you. I can picture you in my mind: 15 years old, gangly, smart. If you've bothered to read this at all you're probably smirking or freaked out or both. I'm afraid you're a bit androgynous in my mind, because I'm trying hard to write these letters for either a boy or a girl. Hopefully you won't come out looking like a Hanson kid (look it up).
I just want you to know that I believe in you. You're going to be okay, because every one of these letters is a story I'm telling the universe inside my head, about how great you are.
I hope you believe in yourself too, but that's another letter.
I love you,
C.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Snowmen Built on the Heads of Volcanoes
Hey Kid,
Enthusiasm is tricky. The way I see it, most kids, if they're not horribly squashed, come out totally enthusiastic about life: they've never been here before, they've never done anything before, and by god they're ready for all of it! Hooray!
This behavior pattern is, at best, known as ADD--at worst, we call it "childhood."
I say "at best," because it seems to me that those diagnosed with ADD have a lingering excuse throughout adulthood to be eccentric, enthusiastic, and wildly themselves. The reason why "childhood" is the worst, is because there is only a limited number of years where that excuse will apply. I do encourage you to use that excuse well, by the way, although that might be the wine talking.
What happens after childhood is, of course, adulthood, and that, as I say, is where enthusiasm becomes tricky.
Adulthood beats the enthusiasm out of you. Years of drudgery, whether in school or work, teach you that the easiest way to get through life is to tune out of it. This syndrome of disillusionment and apathy is frequently referred to as "maturity." I don't mean to imply that there's no such thing as maturity, or that maturity is not a good thing to have, but I want to emphasize that disillusionment and apathy ARE NOT IT.
And yet, this is what the majority of adults will model for you as you grow up: that to be a mature grown-up you have to stop being so enthusiastic, stop bursting into tears over terrific songs, stop running to the ocean because a great paragraph filled you with the need to leap in, stop loving quite so hard--it's embarrassing. Your only excuse for enthusiasm is to ingest heavy doses of narcotics and hope you don't either A) die, or B) get interventioned.
If you want to fit in the adult world, if you want to make money and be taken seriously, in general, that is what you have to do. What I am experiencing right now, on the cusp of full adulthood, is the terrible feeling of wearing a mask almost all the time. It's a mask like a cup, that carries my raging, bouncy, boingy heart within its white interior, smooth, like the surface of an egg.
It's very hard to both love life and be like the other adults.
I don't know if I've found a good balance yet. The main reason I'm writing this is to remind me how it feels, and to tell you what's going on here. I hope it helps, someday. Both of us, I mean.
I love you.
C.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Love
Hey Kid,
I tried to write you a letter, a long, long letter about what love is, or at least how it looks, or at least what I've seen of it so far, and by the time I got to the end of page after page of writing, I realized I had no idea what love was. And no one knows what love is. I suppose I just didn't want your heart to be broken too badly. But it will be broken. It will happen. And you'll find yourself giving up a lot of precious little fantasies in the end, so that you don't end up with a broken heart every single goddamn day of your life.
But maybe that won't happen to you. Maybe you'll figure out the solution. So I don't have any right to try to deprive you of those fantasies, as much as they will probably hurt you in the end. I think having that hope, the hope of living all your dreams, is part of what being young is about, and it's why the rest of the world envies youth and why they worship it as well.
I love you,
C.
I tried to write you a letter, a long, long letter about what love is, or at least how it looks, or at least what I've seen of it so far, and by the time I got to the end of page after page of writing, I realized I had no idea what love was. And no one knows what love is. I suppose I just didn't want your heart to be broken too badly. But it will be broken. It will happen. And you'll find yourself giving up a lot of precious little fantasies in the end, so that you don't end up with a broken heart every single goddamn day of your life.
But maybe that won't happen to you. Maybe you'll figure out the solution. So I don't have any right to try to deprive you of those fantasies, as much as they will probably hurt you in the end. I think having that hope, the hope of living all your dreams, is part of what being young is about, and it's why the rest of the world envies youth and why they worship it as well.
I love you,
C.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
In Which I am Sarcastic
Hey Kid,
So I was cleaning out my shelf in the closet today, so as to make things a little more accessible and grown-uppy looking (HA), and, as I dug through the clothes I realized that with every old piece I pulled out I was thinking, "Yeah THAT one never worked either SIGH." Actually, that wasn't what I realized. What I realized was that what I MEANT by that, somewhere inside, was: THIS SHIRT DID NOT SUCCEED IN TRANSFORMING ME INTO SOMETHING OTHER THAN MYSELF.
Son of a bitch. WHAT A DAMN SHAME.
My dear kid, CLOTHING IS JUST ANOTHER THING THE GOVERNMENT MAKES YOU DO. Like wearing a bicycle helmet, or elementary school. It has nothing to do with who you are. In case I forget to mention this later: don't take it too seriously.
I love you,
C.
So I was cleaning out my shelf in the closet today, so as to make things a little more accessible and grown-uppy looking (HA), and, as I dug through the clothes I realized that with every old piece I pulled out I was thinking, "Yeah THAT one never worked either SIGH." Actually, that wasn't what I realized. What I realized was that what I MEANT by that, somewhere inside, was: THIS SHIRT DID NOT SUCCEED IN TRANSFORMING ME INTO SOMETHING OTHER THAN MYSELF.
Son of a bitch. WHAT A DAMN SHAME.
My dear kid, CLOTHING IS JUST ANOTHER THING THE GOVERNMENT MAKES YOU DO. Like wearing a bicycle helmet, or elementary school. It has nothing to do with who you are. In case I forget to mention this later: don't take it too seriously.
I love you,
C.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Our Nation
Hey Kid,
I've just come from weeping over a buttered bagel. Not that it helps, but I've got greasy cheeks from pushing tears off my face with each new internal wave of telling you how sorry I am, so fucking sorry.
I shouldn't be allowed to read the newspaper.
So the governments of here and there announced yesterday that they have foiled (so they claim, so they claim--can you hear the weariness of that refrain?) another massive terrorist plot, which of course did nothing to foil the actual terror that was intended all along. Our privacy will be compromised a little bit more, "temporarily," they say, and we'll go along with it like the Jews at the start of the Third Reich, agreeing with the logic of it, waiting it out for better times, unable to imagine where it all would lead.
I am so angry that you will grow up not knowing what it's like to believe in the irrelevance of a phone tap on your wire. I am furious that your first plane ride will be like an incarceration. I hate that you will grow up in an America that has capitulated to evil, where every purchase you make, whatever job you take, will ultimately contribute to funding this nightmare of corruption and self-congratulation and greed.
I don't know how to stop it. I don't know how to stop it.
Forty years ago, in the sixties, the youth weren't afraid like we are. Their protests were born out of anger, and you hear it reflected in their music: Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, music wild with joy and fury, unvanquished. But my generation lives in fear. The most-lauded sub-culture musicians of my time are Iron and Wine and Death Cab for Cutie, musicians with one note, one tone, whose greatest quality is their utter inoffensiveness. We are a generation crying out for lullabies and nightlights, a numb fuzzy blanket to cuddle us to sleep.
What I want this morning is to be able to be optimistic for you, but nothing seems more dangerous or willfully ignorant at this moment than optimism. I reject these fuzzy blankets to keep my outrage strong, for you.
I recognize how childish it is that I should insist on the privilege of keeping America isolated from the bloodshed and terror that it has inflicted on the rest of the world for so many years. We can no longer ignore the fact that we are directly engaged in injustice and terror. Maybe this is how a nation grows up. We are finally being stripped of our illusions.
Then, too, this is not the worst point to be born in human history. The Napoleonic wars were probably a bit worse. Hygiene was definitely worse. We can give thanks for clean armpits.
What else is good about the world I still fully intend to bring you into? There are more opportunities now than ever before for writers, artists, and storytellers of all kinds to create and have their voices heard. The internet has created a world community that allows the individual to contribute to something greater than herself. And with that pronoun shift, I can also say that little girls grow up now believing they have options for their lives. And, with the world now united by our experiences of terror, we can no longer pretend or be forced to believe that we are alone.
I do not want you to be raised sustaining your sense of community on terror. But I am just as determined that you will not grow up believing you are alone. There is another world not in the newspapers, where people plant backyard gardens and have long conversations on lawn chairs and do not capitulate to the fears of what they are told is inevitable.
They are a secret nation, and they are still free. We'll find each other. I'll find them for you.
I love you,
C.
I've just come from weeping over a buttered bagel. Not that it helps, but I've got greasy cheeks from pushing tears off my face with each new internal wave of telling you how sorry I am, so fucking sorry.
I shouldn't be allowed to read the newspaper.
So the governments of here and there announced yesterday that they have foiled (so they claim, so they claim--can you hear the weariness of that refrain?) another massive terrorist plot, which of course did nothing to foil the actual terror that was intended all along. Our privacy will be compromised a little bit more, "temporarily," they say, and we'll go along with it like the Jews at the start of the Third Reich, agreeing with the logic of it, waiting it out for better times, unable to imagine where it all would lead.
I am so angry that you will grow up not knowing what it's like to believe in the irrelevance of a phone tap on your wire. I am furious that your first plane ride will be like an incarceration. I hate that you will grow up in an America that has capitulated to evil, where every purchase you make, whatever job you take, will ultimately contribute to funding this nightmare of corruption and self-congratulation and greed.
I don't know how to stop it. I don't know how to stop it.
Forty years ago, in the sixties, the youth weren't afraid like we are. Their protests were born out of anger, and you hear it reflected in their music: Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, music wild with joy and fury, unvanquished. But my generation lives in fear. The most-lauded sub-culture musicians of my time are Iron and Wine and Death Cab for Cutie, musicians with one note, one tone, whose greatest quality is their utter inoffensiveness. We are a generation crying out for lullabies and nightlights, a numb fuzzy blanket to cuddle us to sleep.
What I want this morning is to be able to be optimistic for you, but nothing seems more dangerous or willfully ignorant at this moment than optimism. I reject these fuzzy blankets to keep my outrage strong, for you.
I recognize how childish it is that I should insist on the privilege of keeping America isolated from the bloodshed and terror that it has inflicted on the rest of the world for so many years. We can no longer ignore the fact that we are directly engaged in injustice and terror. Maybe this is how a nation grows up. We are finally being stripped of our illusions.
Then, too, this is not the worst point to be born in human history. The Napoleonic wars were probably a bit worse. Hygiene was definitely worse. We can give thanks for clean armpits.
What else is good about the world I still fully intend to bring you into? There are more opportunities now than ever before for writers, artists, and storytellers of all kinds to create and have their voices heard. The internet has created a world community that allows the individual to contribute to something greater than herself. And with that pronoun shift, I can also say that little girls grow up now believing they have options for their lives. And, with the world now united by our experiences of terror, we can no longer pretend or be forced to believe that we are alone.
I do not want you to be raised sustaining your sense of community on terror. But I am just as determined that you will not grow up believing you are alone. There is another world not in the newspapers, where people plant backyard gardens and have long conversations on lawn chairs and do not capitulate to the fears of what they are told is inevitable.
They are a secret nation, and they are still free. We'll find each other. I'll find them for you.
I love you,
C.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
My Wish
Hey Kid,Every parent has dreams for their kid. I've been trying to keep mine to a minimum, just to keep you freed up for your own dreams. But yesterday I decided I could make one wish for you. Just one big wish, my main priority, and this is it: I want you to be yourself, unashamedly, so long as you're loving.
That sounds like hippie nonsense until you understand how far I'm willing to go.
It's got to be hard to be a parent. Hell, a person's only on her own for a couple of years, already plagued with her own failures, and suddenly she's got a fresh new person to fuck up. Why wouldn't you want your kid to somehow succeed where you failed? That's what I want. That would certainly prove I figured it out after all, wouldn't it?
My own parents played that game. My mom had a self-destructive period when she was a teenager and all she wanted was to save me from repeating her mistakes. She wanted me to be a good Christian who thinks the right way, because I know she felt that being a good Christian would have saved her from herself. But the funny thing is, the "right" thoughts weren't right for me. In fact, if I had kept on making myself think the "right" thoughts, I probably would have killed myself, because they didn't make sense to me. I don't know if they've figured that out yet. That would be hard for them to do.Truth is, I really don't think you can keep from fucking up your kid. You just need to give them to tools to get past it once you're done.
But fucked up is fine for now. The world needs people who don't think RIGHT. It needs those people to shake things up, keep everyone from goose-stepping right over their own private cliffs. I don't just mean that the world needs non-conformists or artists or crazy people, although it does, but that the world also needs fundamentalists and policemen and politicians and schoolteachers and war-mongerers and people who pierce their penises and Swiss guards and little children who run around all day long screaming their heads off and women who sweat a lot and fat guys who watch too much TV and people who invent useless crap and it also needs me. And you.
Most of all, the world needs people who are willing to be themselves, because that's a brave thing, and we are full up with cowardice. It needs the kind of people who make up their own songs and sing them all by themselves in their own voices, who paint pictures that nobody else likes, who chase around a ball for no apparent reason, or who just lay down with no TV and nothing pre-recorded and dream up something that no one's ever thought of, just for fun. And I want YOU to be able to do any of those things if you want to--or just about anything else--which is why I plan to teach you that it's wonderful and goddamn miraculous to be yourself. If I can offer you any one thing to aid that, you will know what love feels like--including the hard parts of love--because I think then you'll be okay. I ask myself, what if, in an extreme, you grow up and become a drag queen? What if I watch you face mockery at all sides, suffer alienation, perhaps die alone, perhaps of AIDS? If that day comes, I will tear at my face and wail and scream. But if I know you lived and died knowing who you are, acting on who you are, radiating love in whatever quiet way, then I'll have peace, knowing that your life made the world a better place.
I hope I have the strength to live these words down.
The world still wants its war-mongerers--I don't know why, but apparently it has decided that it does, because it keeps making them--and they change the world. But their deeds pale in comparison to those that love unashamedly. It's rare, but they do exist. I hope I can help you be one.
That's my one big wish.
I love you.
C.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
You Don't Have to be Beautiful
Hey Kid,
Something alarming started happening a few years ago. I'd be out on one of my little body-hating sprees, complaining about my waist or my chin or my ass, looking for a little spritzing of compliments, and some implacable Buddha-type would invariably raise her doughnut eyes and lisp, "Everyone is beautiful." You know where that leaves a girl fresh out of self-validation? Out in the unenlightened cold, that's where.
I'd smile and say nothing but inside I'd get so mad. No, everyone is NOT beautiful! Saying so doesn't actually HELP anything. Why the hell should we believe you just because your version of, "All politicians are crooks," or, "All homosexuals are scary," makes a nice New Age soundbite? "All people are beautiful"?! We'd get a lot closer to understanding how you experience reality if you just said, "I am indifferent to my subtle reactions to the unique qualities of things."
Even the Tao Te Ching says that for something to be beautiful, something else, by definition, must be un-beautiful. It MIGHT be possible to say, "Every person is interesting," but then, by definition, you have to be able to point out things that are UNinteresting in the world, and then we start breaking hearts, and you feel like a jerk, and maybe we should have just kept our mouths shut, hm? Either we're willing to acknowledge that every thing has the capacity to uniquely assert its identity on our consciousness, or we shut up and drink tequila until everything looks good.
And besides, if everyone is beautiful, than I can only be incidentally beautiful, as opposed to stunningly beautiful, which is what I NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO BE OKAY.
On the other hand, this still leaves me obstinately feeling fat and ugly, which is my inalienable right as a female member of Western civilization. My mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother before her felt fat and ugly, and if any of us stops sitting around talking about how fat and ugly we feel, why, it might just REND THE VERY FABRIC OF TIME!!
But I'll tell you this, kid, it hurts like hell. Those days where you can hardly make yourself leave the house because the mirror has crushed your soul like a bug? Those aren't good days. Those are days when I'm easy to push around. The thing is, "I" is more than my appearance, but on Ugly Days I forget that. On Ugly Days I let myself start believing the rest of me is as worthless as my the way I look, and that feeling lasts. It's lasted me into brief, vicious love affairs with mean, ignorant boys who weren't worth it, because I was looking for some kind of relief from the feeling of being unlovable. It's lasted me into despair.
And that's bad enough, but then I think of those boys I slept with because I didn't love myself, or the other people who felt fatter and uglier because a fairly thin, nice-looking woman like me said she was ugly. I taught those boys that if they could get a girl when she had no self-esteem, they could get the sex they wanted, no matter how mean or ignorant they were. I taught those people who listened that they should hate themselves too, setting them up for partners who won't respect them either. And what will all these people do when they have children of their own? Will they, in modeled steps, teach their kids to loathe themselves too? Will mean, ignorant people be allowed to control the whole world?
I don't want to do that to the world. I don't want to do that to you. I want to break the chain, rend the fabric of time, so that if only in me, you can see modeled a woman who refuses to capitulate to the fear of being ugly.
Having said that, I figured it out. If I object to defining everything that is as "beautiful," I have no right to define everything that I am by saying "I am ugly." The statement is equally reductionist. That "I" is not just my face or my hips. That "I" is my mind and my spirit. That "I" is my future. And since you are my future, that "I" is you. In fact, that "I" is everyone and everything that becomes unloved when I stop loving myself.
My goal, for you, and for the world, is to stop normalizing the idea that physical beauty and skinniness are the most important things. I'm just going to shut up about it. No more complaining, no more gazing glumly at the mirror. I might still struggle, but I don't need to spread it around. I don't need to teach it to you. You'll learn it on your own. But from me, you'll see that it's possible to rise above it. And if we can do that we will be, if not stunningly beautiful, still, absolutely stunning.
That's the plan anyway.
I love you.
C.
Something alarming started happening a few years ago. I'd be out on one of my little body-hating sprees, complaining about my waist or my chin or my ass, looking for a little spritzing of compliments, and some implacable Buddha-type would invariably raise her doughnut eyes and lisp, "Everyone is beautiful." You know where that leaves a girl fresh out of self-validation? Out in the unenlightened cold, that's where.
I'd smile and say nothing but inside I'd get so mad. No, everyone is NOT beautiful! Saying so doesn't actually HELP anything. Why the hell should we believe you just because your version of, "All politicians are crooks," or, "All homosexuals are scary," makes a nice New Age soundbite? "All people are beautiful"?! We'd get a lot closer to understanding how you experience reality if you just said, "I am indifferent to my subtle reactions to the unique qualities of things."
Even the Tao Te Ching says that for something to be beautiful, something else, by definition, must be un-beautiful. It MIGHT be possible to say, "Every person is interesting," but then, by definition, you have to be able to point out things that are UNinteresting in the world, and then we start breaking hearts, and you feel like a jerk, and maybe we should have just kept our mouths shut, hm? Either we're willing to acknowledge that every thing has the capacity to uniquely assert its identity on our consciousness, or we shut up and drink tequila until everything looks good.
And besides, if everyone is beautiful, than I can only be incidentally beautiful, as opposed to stunningly beautiful, which is what I NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO BE OKAY.
On the other hand, this still leaves me obstinately feeling fat and ugly, which is my inalienable right as a female member of Western civilization. My mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother before her felt fat and ugly, and if any of us stops sitting around talking about how fat and ugly we feel, why, it might just REND THE VERY FABRIC OF TIME!!
But I'll tell you this, kid, it hurts like hell. Those days where you can hardly make yourself leave the house because the mirror has crushed your soul like a bug? Those aren't good days. Those are days when I'm easy to push around. The thing is, "I" is more than my appearance, but on Ugly Days I forget that. On Ugly Days I let myself start believing the rest of me is as worthless as my the way I look, and that feeling lasts. It's lasted me into brief, vicious love affairs with mean, ignorant boys who weren't worth it, because I was looking for some kind of relief from the feeling of being unlovable. It's lasted me into despair.
And that's bad enough, but then I think of those boys I slept with because I didn't love myself, or the other people who felt fatter and uglier because a fairly thin, nice-looking woman like me said she was ugly. I taught those boys that if they could get a girl when she had no self-esteem, they could get the sex they wanted, no matter how mean or ignorant they were. I taught those people who listened that they should hate themselves too, setting them up for partners who won't respect them either. And what will all these people do when they have children of their own? Will they, in modeled steps, teach their kids to loathe themselves too? Will mean, ignorant people be allowed to control the whole world?
I don't want to do that to the world. I don't want to do that to you. I want to break the chain, rend the fabric of time, so that if only in me, you can see modeled a woman who refuses to capitulate to the fear of being ugly.
Having said that, I figured it out. If I object to defining everything that is as "beautiful," I have no right to define everything that I am by saying "I am ugly." The statement is equally reductionist. That "I" is not just my face or my hips. That "I" is my mind and my spirit. That "I" is my future. And since you are my future, that "I" is you. In fact, that "I" is everyone and everything that becomes unloved when I stop loving myself.
My goal, for you, and for the world, is to stop normalizing the idea that physical beauty and skinniness are the most important things. I'm just going to shut up about it. No more complaining, no more gazing glumly at the mirror. I might still struggle, but I don't need to spread it around. I don't need to teach it to you. You'll learn it on your own. But from me, you'll see that it's possible to rise above it. And if we can do that we will be, if not stunningly beautiful, still, absolutely stunning.
That's the plan anyway.
I love you.
C.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Garden Metaphors
Hey Kid,I started my first grown-up garden this year, out on the balcony of this top-floor apartment Dav and I play house in. I'd always thought I had a brown thumb, but then I thought, hey, what would life be like if I stopped inventing reasons for why I can't do the things I most want to do? I mean, damn, it's only plants after all. I love plants. And all a plant wants is a few simple things: water, food, and light. I thought, if I can just give a plant what it needs and get out of its way, why shouldn't it grow?
So that's what I set out to do. I grew everything from roots and seeds, not seedlings like I'd always seen people do. I wanted to see with my own eyes that it was true, that plants want to live, you just have to make room for them to do it.
Almost everything came up. Except the parsley. I don't know what I did wrong on the parsley. But everything else was fine. Nasturtiums--those floppy orange flowers that people put on salads to be fancy--because they remind me of Santa Cruz, strawberries, raspberries, cilantro (if we still live in Montreal, you know it as coriandre), a lilac, two tomato plants, basil, and a wild columbine... Plus any number of little weeds and mosses that I ended up letting grow, at least for a while. When they first started popping up, I'll be honest, I was just so damn honored that some little seed would want to live in my dirt, like the place so much it'd move in without even asking, I didn't have the heart to tell it that it wasn't invited.
Right from the first, I fell in love with every inch of my little potted garden. I'd rush out three, four, five times a day to check on the seeds, hoping I might catch them in the instant of growth. I talked to them, pet their little leaves, and fed them faithfully. The instructions on the tomatoes said to trim off their dead leaves, so I did that too, with all the little plants, trying to help them be as perfect as they could possibly be.
But something sad happened. The tomatoes, well, tomatoes are fools for abuse. They loved the pruning. But as the days went by I began to see something was very not right with the nasturtiums, the ones I'd been looking forward to so much. I'd trim off a dead leaf, and then a new leaf would sicken. So I'd trim it off, and the nasturtiums just shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, until, with a heavy heart, I had to leave them alone while Dav and I went on vacation.
Which, of course, is how I learned the lesson I want to remember for you. It turned out, when I left the little nasturtiums' dead leaves alone, they flourished. God knows why, but they apparently just need to be allowed to die off a little bit at a time so they can make new leaves. When I let them do exactly what I'd told myself a plant could do, all on its own--that is, grow... given food and sunlight and water--when I stopped treating them like I knew what they needed better than they did, they were fine.
When I was in high school, my parents tried like crazy to trim off all my sick leaves, and I lived in a state of near constant anguish. I nearly killed myself then, just like my little nasturtiums almost did. I know my parents only wanted me to be the most perfect me I could be, only wanted me to stand there and let them cut away all my unsightly parts and become exactly what they imagined I could be. But it just made things so much worse. And when I finally got away, went to college where they couldn't force me to be or do anything, I began to flourish. I didn't self-destruct, I just shed what I didn't need. It took six years or so, but I got healthy again.
Whoever you turn out to be, I hope I can see you for what you are. I hope I can see what you really need, and not just treat you like some tomato. I hope I can at least have the sense to see when you're not thriving, you precious person, designed from birth to flourish with just a little food and care, and take my fool hands off so we can see what you really are.
I love you.
C.
Hello
Hey Kid,
I've been thinking about you for a long time. Even when I was nine, I was snatching my favorite books out of boxes headed to GoodWill, hoping that one day I might give them to you. You're still a figment of my imagination. The truth is, you may never exist, who knows? And, to be quite blunt, (and don't take this the wrong way), I've been trying to put off having you for as long as possible. But my reason doesn't really have that much to do with the usual business about freedom and responsibility. My real reason for not having you yet is that I don't want to screw you up.
There's a box of journals somewhere that I always meant for you to have someday. Sadly, they're boring as poop, unless you're somehow interested in your mother's teenage angst and boy problems. My thought was that it might help you to know that I wasn't perfect when I was your age, no matter how I might want to lie and pretend now. With any luck, you won't be overly-impressed by me anyway, but I hope that we'll respect each other. And so I wanted to be honest with you from the beginning, I wanted a reason to keep me honest with you. I figure that's something you can respect.
But now I feel inclined to try something even more specific. I'm 24 as of a couple weeks ago. I relocated from San Francisco to Montreal last year, accidentally, after a long, lonely road trip across America. I fell in love with the man I'm with now, Dav, and he is asleep in the other room. He's good to me, he's a kind, decent man. He turned 30 a few months ago, and he is wiser than I am. He keeps me somewhat balanced. I am not always balanced. You may have discovered this already. I'm so sorry. I have been trying to get myself under control before you come.
This is us:
The point is, he may turn out to be your Dad. He's at an age where all of his friends are starting to have kids. He has a job that's stable enough to support a family. And he loves me deeply. Since I love him very much too, I have to start thinking that we might have you in a few years.
Incidentally, if we're still in Montreal when you're reading this, please don't hate me. Could be worse. I could have moved to Phoenix. San Francisco was damn expensive.
The point of all of this is, these are letters to you, but also for me, of things that I am learning as I go, trying so hard to bear in mind for your sake. I'm going to try to write down everything I want to remember as I parent you. And I'm going to try to explain to you about my own Mom and Dad, so you know where I'm coming from. The truth is, we all learn how to be adults from our parents, for better or for worse, and despite all the pain I went through in becoming an adult, I deeply fear repeating my parent's mistakes, simply because I don't know any better. I love my parents now, at last, although with a certain level of foreboding, and I hope that nothing I say will come off as nasty. But you deserve to know.
And, of course, I'll tell you about me. Two years out of college, a degree in literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz, writing every day, some days thinking I understand so much, some days feeling like the world's greatest fool. Odd-looking, but kinda pretty, well-built, athletic, (well, who knows how you see me now). I'll post more pictures so you can see a little bit more of what I'm talking about--not just me, but my whole world.
I hope it's still a good world to live in by the time you get here.
I love you.
C.
I've been thinking about you for a long time. Even when I was nine, I was snatching my favorite books out of boxes headed to GoodWill, hoping that one day I might give them to you. You're still a figment of my imagination. The truth is, you may never exist, who knows? And, to be quite blunt, (and don't take this the wrong way), I've been trying to put off having you for as long as possible. But my reason doesn't really have that much to do with the usual business about freedom and responsibility. My real reason for not having you yet is that I don't want to screw you up.
There's a box of journals somewhere that I always meant for you to have someday. Sadly, they're boring as poop, unless you're somehow interested in your mother's teenage angst and boy problems. My thought was that it might help you to know that I wasn't perfect when I was your age, no matter how I might want to lie and pretend now. With any luck, you won't be overly-impressed by me anyway, but I hope that we'll respect each other. And so I wanted to be honest with you from the beginning, I wanted a reason to keep me honest with you. I figure that's something you can respect.
But now I feel inclined to try something even more specific. I'm 24 as of a couple weeks ago. I relocated from San Francisco to Montreal last year, accidentally, after a long, lonely road trip across America. I fell in love with the man I'm with now, Dav, and he is asleep in the other room. He's good to me, he's a kind, decent man. He turned 30 a few months ago, and he is wiser than I am. He keeps me somewhat balanced. I am not always balanced. You may have discovered this already. I'm so sorry. I have been trying to get myself under control before you come.
This is us:
The point is, he may turn out to be your Dad. He's at an age where all of his friends are starting to have kids. He has a job that's stable enough to support a family. And he loves me deeply. Since I love him very much too, I have to start thinking that we might have you in a few years.
Incidentally, if we're still in Montreal when you're reading this, please don't hate me. Could be worse. I could have moved to Phoenix. San Francisco was damn expensive.
The point of all of this is, these are letters to you, but also for me, of things that I am learning as I go, trying so hard to bear in mind for your sake. I'm going to try to write down everything I want to remember as I parent you. And I'm going to try to explain to you about my own Mom and Dad, so you know where I'm coming from. The truth is, we all learn how to be adults from our parents, for better or for worse, and despite all the pain I went through in becoming an adult, I deeply fear repeating my parent's mistakes, simply because I don't know any better. I love my parents now, at last, although with a certain level of foreboding, and I hope that nothing I say will come off as nasty. But you deserve to know.
And, of course, I'll tell you about me. Two years out of college, a degree in literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz, writing every day, some days thinking I understand so much, some days feeling like the world's greatest fool. Odd-looking, but kinda pretty, well-built, athletic, (well, who knows how you see me now). I'll post more pictures so you can see a little bit more of what I'm talking about--not just me, but my whole world.
I hope it's still a good world to live in by the time you get here.
I love you.
C.
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