Noise Reduction
quiet reflections on life in a loud worldPanetta, Katrina, A Road Trip
I had an occasion to drive up to Sacramento and back by myself the other day. How nice it was to be able to listen with unbroken attention to National Public Radio. And to have time to reflect. And to have time to do some writing in my head. I listened to a report about Leon Panetta’s naming to be the next head of the CIA. In case you missed it, there was a brief storm of controversy about the proposed apointment earlier in the week. Why the controversy? Because he’s not a CIA man – he’s an outsider – and because the Obama transition team, either accidentally or intentionally, neglected to let Senator Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, know about the selection of Panetta before they spilled the news to the press. Anyhow, as I listened to the experts talk about the pros and cons of a Panettal directorship, my mind wandered back to the natural, human and administrative catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina.
Back when Katrina hit, the husband and I were living in London. As we read the stories coming out of the U.S., especially those about FEMA’s total failure to manage the situation, we talked a lot about what it revealed about the Bush Administration generally. I remember well the husband giving credit to the Bush Administration for making him realize that yes, it is difficult to run the United States of America. Before George W came into office, we realized, the government had basically worked the way it was supposed to and consequently, we’d taken it for granted. In running it so badly however, Bush gave us a wake up call and an incentive to give some thought to just what it takes to run it well.
I suspect we weren’t alone in experiencing this awakening. Too, I suspect that awakenings of this sort, happening as often as they did over the last 8 years, had quite a lot to do with the energy, the involvement, the hope and the outcome of the Obama campagin and election. From the disputed election of 2000 right through the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration worried us and underscored the importance of choosing someone who we think can actually do the job.
Which leads me back to Panetta, Leon, who, by all accounts, is an intelligent, thoughtful, experienced person of integrity. And the NPR conversation about the CIA and its workings. What was most exciting to me was being engaged with the conversation. It wasn’t just an abstract report about abstract happenings in Washington.
Confessions of a Mad Mom
I have a lot of good times with the Hobbit, but not every day is filed with bliss. Some days, like this one, are downright unpleasant. Nothing goes smoothly. He fights everything. He insists on doing annoying things like putting lotion all over the table and rubbing sausage in his hair. He lies on the floor asking to have his diaper changed about a half hour after I just changed it, shouts when I suggest we wait a little while, then gets up after I’ve removed the diaper but before I’ve replaced it, thus risking an “accident”, which I dread, not only because I’ll have to clean it up, but also because lately the Hobbit becomes hysterical over messes.
On days like these, I’m increasingly filled with self-doubt. I flip flop. One minute I say to myself, Fine, whatever, let him run around without a diaper, what’s the big deal. But then I envision him standing before a puddle of his own pee crying, “MESS! MOMMA! MESS!” And I know the shouting will get on my nerves more quickly than it should. And I worry not just about a set back in potty training, but also about the onset of some neuroses about the potty in general. And I think about my own total lack of interest in cleaning pee off the floor and I say to myself, Dammit! Who’s in charge here? Put the stupid diaper on already! And to the Hobbit I say, Listen! We need to put the diaper on because I don’t want a mess and neither do you. And my voice is too stern, and the crying and kicking and shouting begin. And my temper flares. And I grow afraid of the difference between my strength and his. So I take deep breaths until the diaper is on. And I find a calm voice. And the Hobbit finds some calm within his little self, too. Then I lift him gently and he says to me, “Hug, Momma? Hug?” And we hug. And then we move on to something else, a bit weary, a bit worn.
Days like these are days like these because of an accumulation of moments like these. Because of an accumulation of battles and encounters that feel like failures. After the diaper incident, I say to myself, What we need is to get out of the house. Recognizing that we are not feeling our best, I decide we should go for a drive to the supermarket – something we generally enjoy. But when I try to get him dressed, another fight ensues, this time over putting on his jeans. Then, when we go to the garage, I find that I can’t access his carseat with the car parked the way it is. So I set him free in the car so I can safely back out. But then we have a fight over putting him in his carseat. He kicks, he screams, he cries; he makes his body rigid as a post while I push and struggle and want to scream myself. I try to keep cool, but at this point – I’ll admit it – I want to shake him. I want to really exert some of that disproportionate strength of mine. It’s an ugly feeling, and luckily, I don’t pursue it.
Instead, I step away and close the door. I look up at the sky while the Hobbit rages inside the car’s back seat, and I try to think of what do to. Then I tell myself not to think, to just be, and I force myself to inhale and exhale deeply. Eventually, the Hobbit stops screaming, and I open the door and pick him up. We hug as I carry him down to his room and, having decided that what he needs is sleep, I get him ready for bed. He starts to fight again but I put him in bed anyway and over his crying I tell him I love him. I kiss his forehead and tell him to get some sleep. I shut the door, and come upstairs. And as I force myself to write, feeling rage at just the sound of his whiny cry, I hope, hope, hope that he stops soon.
He does, and soon after that he falls alseep. It is a small reward for both of us, and I’m grateful. But I tell ya, I sure wish we could just bypass days like these.
Babies and Bonsais
Tuesdays are my babysitting days. At nine o’clock, Ana comes. “Ana bus!” the Hobbit calls her, because when she comes, he gets to take the bus with her out to the library for some story-telling, dancing, singing and bubble-blowing fun. Meanwhile, I have a few hours to myself in which I can engage as an adult with the world. The point is to feel free for a little while, to stimulate my mind and my imagination, to find a little inspiration. So, I go to cafes and people watch and eavesdrop on conversations; I read newspapers or magazines I don’t usually have time for then sit back and process what I’ve just read; I wander in open space – on the beach, in a park, at the zoo – or read a novel, or head downtown to wade through the sea of working people. I buy a hot dog and sit eating it in a sunny spot while watching bike messengers kill time between assignments, professional women walking fast in skirts and running shoes, homeless men and women organizing their possessions in shopping carts or asking passers-by for spare change. I do any of these things and usually, by the end of my babysitting hours, I not only feel more aware of being alive, I also feel ready, excited even, to face the blank page.
Last Tuesday I started my Ana hours with a drive to the beach. It was a spectacularly clear day – the sky was a pale blue, the Pacific was sparkling, the temperature was mild and autumnal – and I thought some sea air might clear my head. A few blocks from the beach though, spotting a large garden center that I’d forgot existed, I changed my plan, pulled over, parked, and went in. (Ah, the spontaneity of the Ana hours!) I’d been thinking about getting some house plants and thought a little interaction with nature, tame as it would be in a garden center, might be refreshing.
Refreshing it was, and enlightening. Especially when I got to the bonsai section. It was a small section, befitting its subject, and when I spotted it, my heart fluttered with excitement. Bonsais! I thought, and I walked over, thinking maybe there was something of destiny in my happening on the garden center that day: I have long loved the tiny beauty of bonsais, and have, on a few occasions, thought of investing in one.
Hoping to find a variety of bonsais to behold, I was a bit confused if not disappointed to find the section contained tools I’d never seen before, and gloves, and seed packets and books. Where are the tiny trees? I wondered. I want to see some tiny trees! Figuring there might be some answer in one of the books, I picked up a guide to bonsai cultivation, and as I began to read, it dawned on me that the idea of walking into a garden center and buying a bonsai was pretty much at odds with the bonsai tradition. Bonsai cultivation is an art, I read. Bonsai cultivation is a centuries-old tradition based on Chinese ideas about the relationship between humans and nature. It is a meditation, a spiritual practice, part of a long, steady journey toward enlightenment. Honestly, it sounded wonderful and rewarding. But pretty quickly, I lost all interest in taking on the practice myself, because as I read about the planting, pruning, fertilizing and repotting of bonsais, I realized that I already have a bonsai of my own: the Hobbit. Every day, I’m cultivating a person. From delivering him into the world, through all those long, long nights in the early days when he’d wake two or three times, I’ve been cultivating him. And the ongoing cultivation – the feeding of him, dressing of him, bathing of him and putting him to bed; the playing with him, reading with him, and laughing with him; the establishment of an environment in which he can grow and become his best self, the introduction of other people into his life, the letting go and the being there with extra care during the harsh winters of his life – has rich rewards. The Hobbit blossoms. I blossom.
So, who knows. Maybe there’s a bonsai or two in my future. But for now, I’m more than satisfied with the challenge of being fully present in my life with the little guy. Especially when I have those Ana hours to balance things out.
Happy Birthday, Hobbit!
Two years ago, at this moment, I was getting out of a taxi, nauseated and in serious pain as my husband helped me into the hospital. The hobbit was well on his way into this world, and five hours later, he had arrived. We called him a little red devil from the start because he came out bright red and a little furry. But o, was he cute, with the funniest little facial expressions I’d ever seen. I remember the first night in the hospital, after everyone was gone and I was there alone, with him in his plastic hospital-issued bassinet beside me – I just cried and cried. I couldn’t believe the pregnancy was over and my little creature was on the outside now, in the world with the rest of us. Wow. And now he’s two. And he’s excellent. I’m so glad he was born. For me and for the world. Yay, hobbit. Happy birthday!
August Dispatch
While the hobbit naps, I type. It’s been many weeks since I posted anything to the site and even now I don’t have much to add. I try to write, I do, but most often I end up reading instead. I figure this has to be good in long run. After all, “Read everything” is age-old advice for aspiring writers. But dare I admit here that I don’t even feel like an aspiring writer any more? I feel like a mom, a woman, a human being. An observer of nature – this morning, for example, I watched as my mom’s cat pawed and pawed at the baby squirrel she’d caught. The poor little squirrel was dying slowly, burrowing its head into a pile of fallen leaves, while the cat just kept poking at it – and a consumer of food, the written word, red wine and the Olympics. I just visited the blog sites of several writer friends and even as I felt proud of them and longed for their company, I felt 100% like a nonwriter. Funny thing is though, I felt only moderately upset by this. Mostly I didn’t really care. I like my life at the moment. I’m doing the best I can to participate in the world. I laugh more with the hobbit than I’ve ever laughed in my life. Russia and Georgia are at war, but what can I do about it? I mean, just the other night I saw George Bush and Vladimir Putin sitting three seats away from each other at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, laughing it up together. Surely, if the problem was going to be solved quickly, they could have solved it. No?
But I digress. I just wanted to log in and say hello to anyone who still takes time to visit the site. (blog stats reveal that just yesterday two nice people stopped by) I wanted to say I think about writing all the time and even have a few ideas, I’m just not in a position to compose at the moment. I think my point of view is still a little blurry and my time too limited to filter anything but the essential. The light where I am is so different from the light in London, the horizon so far away, the happenings so new to me. I’d like to write about rural life but I’m not going to be living rurally much longer. In a few weeks I’ll be relocating to San Francisco and maybe then I’ll have more to say. In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to read, I can report that The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon is one darned good and powerful piece of literature.
Muddling Through
Once, about a decade ago, I babysat my nieces and nephews while my sister and brother-in-law went for a much-needed dinner date. Around eight o’clock, probably an hour after my sister left, the youngest, a girl, began to tell me that she missed her parents. Holding her on my lap at the top of the stairs (at the bottom of which was the front door), I tried to reassure her that her parents would be home soon. Then, with all the drama a three year-old could muster, she frowned and clarified, “But I weally, weally miss them. I mean, I weally, weally, weally miss my pawents.”
I thought of her yesterday when the hobbit was whining and banging on the table (as he recently has taken to doing way too often for my taste) and I became aware of a weally, weally, weally big wave of my own missing swelling inside me – that of missing my Life Before Hobbit. As he banged and whined, I removed myself to the sink and began to wash dishes aggressively while his dinner warmed on the stove. I was wobbling between asking him politely to stop banging and ignoring him, between scolding him sternly and walking right over to the table to bang bang bang it until my fist could bang it no more. Various tips from various parenting books flitted around inside my head like flies and all at once I was feeling terribly annoyed and terribly guilty for feeling annoyed. I was feeling a lot of things actually, and all of them seemed to be boiling boiling in the great pot of my stomach. I thought of clicking my heels three times, but then I realized I didn’t in that moment believe there was “no place like home”. (After all, where is home anyway? And is it really so great?)
And then the hobbit grabbed the plate of cheerios in front of him and tossed it onto the floor.
*
Have you ever noticed how often people talk about the weather? I have. For some time now I’ve been noticing it, starting, probably, back when I was in college, and underslept, and of a mind to observe and analyze just about any human interaction in search of sincerity and meaning. A conversation would turn to the weather, and I’d think, dismissively: Don’t these people have anything better to talk about?
Now that I’m older and a wee bit wiser (she writes, hopefully), I see how short-sighted and naive I was back then. (And, yes, snooty in my dismissiveness, but please forgive me for not wanting to get into that just now.) Indeed, since those snooty days, I have weathered nearly two decades of adulthood and in that time have come to respect the weather greatly for its unfailing ability to rescue conversations from all sorts of extending silences. I’ve come to realize that whatever substance the weather lacks as a topic, it more than makes up for in goodwill. It is something all humans respond to. It bridges linguistic, cultural, political divides, and it can often lead a conversation to commonalities that might otherwise have gone undiscovered. It is evocative, the weather, and it is handy in taxis, in foreign countries, on ferries. It brings far away friends closer. It makes taciturn farmers gregarious. It is, simply, good, the weather, and I hope the next time you find yourself commenting on the cold and gray or that lovely evening last night, you revel in the connection you are making with another human being.
(Now, you are probably asking yourself what this has to do with anything. Well, the answer is not much. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately.)
(And, by the way, in case anyone is interested, the weather here today was bright, sunny and fully June-appropriate. The birds were happy, the insects were busy, and I was busy and happy.)
*
Speaking of connections, today I connected via email with an old friend who’s a reporter currently based in Iraq. According to his email, he’s spending his time getting to know soldiers, covering court martial hearings and contemplating the beginning of civilization on the banks of the Euphrates. He says it is hot where he is. Hot, and dusty, in case you were wondering. You can read one of his more recent dispatches here.
*
Speaking of dusty, the hobbit and I were stuck in traffic today. We were driving along that highway I mentioned in my last post. The one that cuts through the valley and is lined on either side by cultivated fields. Men were working in the fields, which were very, very dusty. Some were riding on the back of a big tractor like thing dropping something, presumably seeds of some sort, into the soil. Behind them, three others walked along with hoes possibly, something that was used to push the seeds in. Honestly, it was difficult for me to tell what, exactly, they were doing. (I was driving after all, and how many times do I have to admit that I really am a city kid, despite the rancher relatives? I mean, I wish I knew more about agriculture, I really do. But the fact is I know very little. Ho, hum.) Anyay, as I sat there praying that the poor, hot little hobbit could keep on happily babbling in the back there until we reached our destination, I was also watching the dust that was rising off the field where the men were working. Mixing with the heat, the dust formed a blurry band of light that stretched about ten feet into the air and looked to be the work of some special effects department somewhere. And the men – with their baseball caps and bandannas and rounding shoulders – as I watched them work, I wished I had the guts of my reporter friend. I so wanted to go into those fields, introduce myself and ask those men a few questions about their lives. I was thinking about them being immigrants, and wondering if my immigrant experiences resembled theirs in any way. I doubted it. After all, I was welcomed in England, I spoke the native language and I never made my living doing field work under the blazing sun. Still, I was hopeful we might find some common ground, and I figured that, if nothing else, we could talk about the weather. But then the traffic moved forward and I went with it.
*
Today, Thursday, was a good day. The husband woke me up early with a cheerful long-distance call and instead of going back to bed I got up, made myself a large cup of coffee and did some writing and some emailing. The hobbit woke up an hour and a half later in a good mood. We had a happy morning, free of whining and banging. And so it went. I talked to a friend who’s also momming and cherished her understanding. We laughed. The hobbit laughed. We got stuck in traffic on the way to pick up my niece and nephew and there was no whining or banging there either. For lunch we ate Mexican food with the niece and nephew and then the niece and nephew pushed the hobbit around in a shopping cart while I did errands. Later, the hobbit played in the car while I cleaned it. We had neither banging nor whining at dinner and after dinner we did the bath time dance, cracking ourselves right up. Before bed, the hobbit kissed a picture of his dad. We read a pop-up book and The Cat in the Hat. And then I fetched myself a large glass of wine, chatted with my sister while making my dinner then sat to watch the rest of the day play out over the lion’s paw in the distance. I listened to public radio via the internet. I read an email from a dear friend in London.
I wrote.
Seeking: Point-of-View
Mid-thirties, good sense of humor, creative, compassionate, reasonably sure of her place in the world……….
Ho, hum. I had intended to write about my last days in London right up to the morning of my departure. Unfortunately, darn it, life got in the way. Packing took time. Saying goodbyes took time. Sleeping, eating – these thing still had to be done – and, as always, the little hobbit needed looking after. After all, it was not as if the little guy had a clue what it meant to be moving and was sitting around encouraging me to make notes on our life so he could read them when he grows up. No, no. I mean, in the first place, he still doesn’t speak English. But more important, as far as the hobbit was concerned, in those last days, life was going on as it always had. He had stuff to do, and as he was still lacking in the ability to do most of that stuff for very long without falling on his face or into a fit of frustration, he needed my help in doing it.
Now here we are in our new, temporary location in sunny, rural California. We are staying at my parents’ house, which used to be my grandparents’ house. These are my grandparents who used to be in the ranching business, and who have been succeeded in the business by my brother, who lives down the road with his family. A little farther down the road from them is the barn. At the barn are the horses, and the saddles (plus the reins, the ropes, the brushes, the rats, the cats, the bats, etc, etc) as well as the corral where, as a child, I was taught by my grandfather how to climb up onto a fence and onto a horse.
My surroundings could hardly be more different from London. In front of me is a yellow-brown hilly horizon that looks very much like the paw of a giant lion (not that I’ve ever seen a lion, giant or otherwise). The cultivated fields in the valley between the paw and me are alternately green and brown and uniformly rectangular. There’s a two-lane highway out there, too. Highway 156, running east and west, between San Juan Bautista (my temporary home town) and Hollister – populations 1,744 and 35,690, respectively.
Given all this difference, and beauty, you might think I’d be bursting with energy to write. Unfortunately, the fact is just sitting here at the computer is requiring great effort. It’s been three weeks since we arrived, and in that time I’ve written next to nothing. This is not for lack of effort I’ll say in my defense. Probably every other day I’ve tried in some way to put thoughts on paper or on screen. But all I’ve managed is a lot of false starts, a few quasi-compelling titles and some scribbles that are about as comprehensible as the ones the hobbit has taken to making on just about any surface he can find. (The most recent victim = the edge of the tub in my bathroom. Doh!)
Wanting to make some lemonade out of these writing lemons, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about this particular block and its possible causes. I’ve stared out at the lion’s paw from the bench on my parents’ deck, sat behind the wheel of the car in various strip-mall parking lots, let half my brain go a’wandering while the hobbit and I strolled through what little there is of San Juan, and lo and behold, after all that thinking, I believe I can safely say I’ve got some lemonade. In other words, I’ve realized what the problem is and the problem is this: I’ve lost my point-of-view, darn it. I’ve become like one of those winter-scene shake toys after it’s been shaken. My identity has been undone and all the little bits of me are colliding with each other, causing confusion. I’m a mom living with my parents in the place where I spent my childhood summers. I’m a sister trying to catch up with siblings who have been living their day-to-day lives without me for four and a half years. I’m a loner who’s suddenly surrounded by people. I’m a writer who’s not writing. I’m a city kid living in the country. A Californian who actually enjoyed the London weather. I’m a mess, really. A right disaster. Yikes.
In writing circles, particularly fiction writing circles, we spend a lot of time talking about point-of-view. We usually refer to it as “POV,” and we do things like question a writer’s chosen POV, find fault with her sloppy POV shifts or his inconsistent POV. We talk about omniscient POV, first-person POV, third person distant, third person close. I’ve talked about these things. Often, confidently, perhaps even pedantically. But, honestly, it is only in the last few weeks that I’ve really begun to understand, I mean REALLY understand, the significance and the power of POV, because it’s been in my life, not in my stories, that my POV has been murky. This has been no exercise. This has been day after day of waking up and not knowing what to do other than look after the hobbit. Afternoon after afternoon of feeling lost. Evening after evening of looking back over my day and wondering how I managed to do so little and remember even less. I’ve come to understand that a clear point-of-view is no less important for an ordinary person trying to live a life as for a narrator trying to tell a story. Just as it is impossible to tell a good story if you’re not sure of your take on the events, it is impossible to feel fully engaged in life if you are not sure of how you relate to the world around you. If your identity is in bits. If you feel more liquid than solid. Truth be told, I remember feeling this way when I moved to London. I remember a day when I was asked to sign for a credit card transaction and could not for the life of me remember how to sign my name. No exaggeration. I was paralyzed. I had lost a sense of who I was, of where I began and where I ended. I was a blur to myself then and I’m a blur to myself now.
The good news for me is that in realizing this, I discovered my current point of view, and in discovering it, I was able to write this little bit. Thank goodness.
Last Days
Friday, 25 April, 8:34pm. I don’t know about you, but I have difficulty describing the sky. Especially if you deprive me of the word “beautiful.” For example, right this moment, the sky outside my window is beautiful, but that word alone doesn’t tell you anything about its softness or the calming effect of the particular shades of blue and purple I’m seeing. Nor does it say anything about the fact that right now, the sky outside my window is made more attractive by the old chestnut tree that stretches elegantly between my window and the sky. The whole scene is deeply comforting. The tree is silhouetted. It looks navy blue. And beyond the tree stand my neighbor’s houses, looking cozy, with a few windows lit up by lamplight here and there.
All of these details seem especially important right now, since all around me, on the floor inside my window, are piles and piles of possessions waiting to be packed. I’m leaving London in a few days. After living here almost five years, having a baby here, getting a master’s degree here, getting to know London and Londoners, mastering the Tube, toughening up – I’m heading home, to family and the familiar. I’d say it is hard to believe, but it’s not. It is time to go, and going home feels right. What I find hard to believe however, is the fact that in a few days time, London will no longer be where I live. That this physical environment that surrounds me right now will, in a matter of weeks, be nothing more than part of a set of vague memories. An emotional touchstone, to be sure, and permanently part of the being I call “I”. But suddenly part of my past.
Saturday, 26 April, 11:10am. The hobbit slept late this morning, which means that I slept late, which means that, instead of waking in response to the sounds of a hungry hobbit, I was able to ease from sleep listening to the sounds of the neighbors playing football with their kids out back, of birds chirping and a cat meowing. The sun was high. The sky was a washed-out shade of light blue. The tree outside my window was the color of dried mud – green-brown up where the light hit it, slate in the shadows.
I was glad for all this, and I lingered in the bed, again aware that my days in this flat are numbered. I was glad, too, when, after the hobbit finished his breakfast, the hobbit and the husband and I stood at the window together to do a little neighbor-gazing. In one yard, parents and children were busy setting up for a birthday party or baby shower, we couldn’t decide which. In another, a neighbor we call Mr. Nick was playing with his boys and sipping some hot drink from a tall Starbucks-issued cup. In a third, the shades were pulled on the upper windows where the new baby sleeps. We figured she was napping. In a fourth, we saw no people, inside or out. Just a bursting-with-color spring garden. As we stood there making our guesses, the husband and I, the hobbit babbled and babbled and tapped on the window. And the birds chirped.
For breakfast, I had Lucky Charms, which is ridiculous, because soon I’ll be in America, where I can buy Lucky Charms at a tiny fraction of the price they go for here. But the husband bought them for me the other day for a treat, because I love Lucky Charms. They are hard to find here in London and throughout our time here they’ve provided a taste of home. Silly, I know, but there you have it. Probably I should have had a big fry up, with black pudding and sausages, baked beans, grilled tomahtoes. But the Lucky Charms were nice. And the milk was delicious, and packed in a sensibly sized container. I’m not looking forward to the milk in the U.S. It just doesn’t taste as good. And it comes in such shockingly large jugs and boxes. The first time I went home after being in England a while, I was so stupid in supermarkets I really shouldn’t have been allowed to go on my own. There was so much of everything and everything was so HUGE. I remember my mom sent me to buy a few items one evening and when I returned over an hour later she looked at her watch and asked with shock in her voice where on earth I had been.
Sweeping Insights
Some of you are familiar with the hobbit’s love of sweeping. However, some of you might not be, so I will tell you outright: my son, AKA the hobbit, loves sweeping. He’s loved it most of his little life and as far as I can tell, sweeping’s only rival for his heart is “talking” on the “phone” (where talking = babbling enthusiastically and uttering the occasional “umm” and “bye”; and phone = anything that can be held up to the ear (e.g., mobile phones, cordless phones, fisher price phones, refrigerator magnets, ipods, pieces of chocolate, clothes, stuffed animals…) I don’t know where he picked up his phone habit, since, as friends and family will attest, I am not much of a user, and the husband, well, he does most of his telephone communication at the office. However, I am pretty sure he got the sweeping habit from me since, as it happens, the hobbit and the husband have a crumb-dropping habit in common. But I don’t love it. Not like he does.
Take the other day for example. It was a gorgeous spring day, with a blue sky, warm sunshine, chirping birds, delicate blossoms – the works. So, I was not surprised when, arriving to pick up the hobbit at nursery, I found all the children playing outside in the yard. I could hear the happy laughter, squeals and squawks even before I turned the last corner into the lane, and it was all so cheerful I started to feel quite happy myself. As I approached, I sought my hobbit among the twenty or so little people running around the yard, talking to each other, talking to themselves, laughing, skipping, and so on. Was he running with that group? No. Skipping with those? No. Swinging on the gate? No. Hiding under the picnic table? No. Bobbing up and down on the little seesaw they have there? No. Clinging to the trousers of a teacher? No. Wandering around lost and wondering when his beloved mommy was going to arrive?
No.
Sweeping?
Sweeping! Of course! Just as I started to take a second look over the scene, there was a break in the crowd and at last I saw him: my little hobbit, contentedly but with great focus, sitting in the middle of all the chaos, sweeping the ground with a dust broom. Crazy baby!
I thought of this story this morning as I read about the latest crisis news coming out of the U.S. – about the grounding of hundreds of airplanes after 8 failed FAA inspections. Or, hang on, maybe it was that other crisis news coming out of the U.S. – about the collapse of the lending industry? Or, no, it must have been the news about that other crisis – about Iraq? No? Or that absurd letter I got from the IRS the other day, describing Bush’s Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, which, as far as I can tell, is predicated on the notion that the best thing that Americans, many of whom are actually in debt, actually at risk of losing their houses, and/or actually at risk of losing their jobs, can do for their country is…spend more money.
No?
Well, anyway, something made me think back to the sight of my hobbit sitting there so contentedly, but what I couldn’t and still can’t decide is whether his sweeping was an instructive demonstration of how to keep one’s head in difficult times or a frighteningly accurate enactment of George W. Bush’s unique leadership style.
Anyone?
One Reason I Like Thanksgiving More Than The Fourth Of July
This won’t be my most coherent post ever, because it’s about feeling muddled. Sorry about that.
A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a Turkish friend at her new flat. While we were having tea and talking about life in Turkey and life in London, the CIA and torture (as one does), she thoughtfully gazed at me over the coffee table and said, “I can’t imagine what it’s like, being from a country like yours. I mean, in Turkey we have our problems. We are poor and the people, we have no hope. But to be from such a rich country like America? With so much power over everyone? I don’t think I would like that.” She went on to ask me what it felt like, and I have to admit, I was stumped. Not because I’d never thought about the U.S.’s power in the world, or about my own complicity as an American citizen in the good, bad and ugly of American foreign policies and practices. But, simply, because when she asked the question so directly, and so comparatively, all I could think (and say) was that it was strange. Strange, and, well, not something I could really like or dislike, since, after all, being American, like being Catholic, and being from a big family, and being from San Francisco, and being a woman, and being White (or pale-pink-peach, as the case really is) is inextricably part of who I am.
Her question stuck with me though (obviously, since here it is, guiding my blog post a couple of weeks on), and has sat on my shoulder ever since, like a parrot that doesn’t parrot so much as whisper almost inaudibly in my ear while I read the news and walk through my life as an American in London. I think now that if I’d been asked such a question by such a person in such a context earlier on in life, I would have said something along the lines of “It feels awful”, or “It’s embarrassing.” Alternately, I might have said “It makes me angry and ashamed.” Now though, as I enter my wiser years, everything, including what it feels like to be from the big, rich, powerful country that is the U.S., seems far too complex to be summed up by such answers. Let me illustrate -
The other day, I read an article in the International Herald Tribune about a book by Trevor Paglen. The book is about his research on secret U.S. military programs, and I should note that the article was not a book review, but a news article about a book, the news being both the secret programs described in the book, and the book itself, which is newsworthy because of the fact that it was written at all, it being all about secret military programs and all. I found the article to be both fascinating and disturbing, as well as, ultimately, both upsetting and reassuring. It was fascinating because secret military programs of any kind fascinate me, and because Paglen did some pretty amazing sleuthing to uncover all that he did. Similarly, it was disturbing because secret military programs of any kind disturb me, and because I’ve done my own snooping around secret military programs, and I know well that more often than not they lead to budget bloat, waste, myopic thinking, bad decision-making, and significant destruction of nature and/or human life.
The article was upsetting for a few reasons. First, because from it I learned that the budget for secret military programs is $32 billion. Thirty-two billion! All classified! Second, because after thinking about it a while, I started wondering about the quality of the press. Why did it take a photographer-geographer to write a book about these programs in order for them to get covered in the news? Why aren’t there investigative reporters hammering away at the story all the time? After all, we’re talking about $32 billion in unaccounted for government funds which is, according to the article, as much as the budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA combined. At the same time, I was reassured, because, however it got there, the story was in the mainstream news, and because the book was published, and because to date, no harm has come to Paglen from writing it. Quite the contrary. He is free to publish photographs of secret bases, take his book on tour, do interviews and so on. Comparing this to, say, Turkey, where the Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk is hounded by the government for discussing unpleasant matters of Turkish history, I’d say the U.S. looks pretty good.
I chose the secret military program story, but there were other stories I could have chosen – stories that similarly triggered conflicting emotions. The contested Zimbabwe election for example – in a few ways it reminded me of the U.S. presidential election of 2000 and thus made me feel both disturbed and disgusted by what occurred in the U.S. then, and encouraged and excited by what is happening there now. The fact that President Bush was booed when he threw the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening baseball game made me feel simultaneously sad, angry, ashamed and again, reassured that people could express opposition to a sitting president without fear of arrest or punishment of any kind. News from home about my friend’s organization that works to get kids into college made me excited about the real opportunities there are for people in America. News from Germany about a friend’s deployment to Iraq made me mad about the stupidity of the war and ashamed that it was my government that not only started it but then made such a mess of it.
So then, how does it feel to be from America? Strange, I tell you. Strange. And I think that’s why I like Thanksgiving so much more than the Fourth of July. There is room for complexity at the Thanksgiving table. It is about giving thanks, for whatever it is you might be thankful for. It celebrates the confusing, turbulent, fruitful coming togethers of early English immigrants and Native Americans. And it takes place in autumn, when everything is in flux. The Fourth of July on the other hand, is all about certainty. It takes place in July. People wear clothes in colors as crisp as red, white and blue. There is bright sun, baseball and good cheer. I like it, but in all honesty, it makes me a little itchy. And why am I writing about this now? In April? Because the question’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks now, and I had to do something to answer it.
