Old blogs never die

I've always lamented my inability to keep a regular journal of any kind.

Then, a year ago, I stumbled on to the very regular journal that I'd kept faithfully and vigorously for almost a decade and then completely forgot about.

It was disconcerting.

The main subject of the last entries was about the slow, soft death of my cat.  In her final months she wanted to be held constantly, so we held her constantly.  Within two weeks after her death I found I couldn't remember her.  I could remember facts about her, but I couldn't remember the smell and sound and sight of her.  A couple months after her death, I was dancing to live music in Jerusalem, and a window opened.  I was able to feel the empty space where she had been a weight in my arms, and to cry.  Within hours, the window closed.

Four years later, I stumbled into my old journal.  

I had forgotten that we'd had a cat.

According to Blogger's Dashboard, a couple times a year since then I recognize a great developing theme or project in my life and go to journal it.  For weeks I cherish the egg of an idea until I reach a window of calm where I can pull out all the stops, staying up at night, hiding out in the bathroom, inching the careful design along, setting up an initial framework of what's it all about, launching the first passionate posts...

And, then the next emergency hits and I forget it exists, until I hitch my wagon to the next star and go back to Dashboard and find the remains.

Sometimes I haven't noticed even then. 

Of all the things I've loved and lost, I miss my hair the most, because the portion of my mind that has departed clearly includes any capacity to evaluate how much of my mind has departed. 

It's taken five years for me to put together that this is a regular pattern happening.

Apparently I have an unstoppable need to get things out of my head but once I've made the initial hole for the words to fall out they fall all the way and get lost.

It's kind of like discovering that your life's been one of those time loop stories where the mad scientist keeps starting the same project over and over without realizing it.

I've started scooping up the bits of brain I've dropped all over the Internet and piling them here, both to be responsible for cleaning up after my messes and to try to gather enough for good reflection so I'm a little less "not gone but forgotten" in my own eyes.

Old blogs never die.  I guess I'm trying to track them down and eat them and regain my lost power.

Wedgewood QFC

The Milk Run: 

Five days of trying to coordinate the time and energy, bus ran early and missed us, half an hour walking to keep the little one warm waiting for the next bus, reaching there at dusk with dark coming on fast, temper tantrum because with ten minutes to get in stock up and get back to the bus stop there's no time to play games, and I'm at check-out doing double-damage control between keeping my very small child out of the candy on one side and explaining the need to have the milk and cream repacked carefully all into the single insulated bag I'd handed over instead of spread out into pay-for bags when the cashiers call over the store manager to be the one to explain to me that their system for processing food assistance is down and they have no way to take my payment-

-at which point he wrote off our entire week's worth of milk and cream and wished me happy new year.

My Most Embarrassing Moment of Motherhood

Okay, I am having a *horrible* day [nothing tragic, just exhausting] and am therefore going to make yours better by sharing my Most Embarrassing Moment of Motherhood.

Boy of Joy started substituting his own words to familiar songs a few months after he started speaking, which was no huge surprise since I'd been doing it around him from wombhood.

The pinnacle moment of this was when he was two and we were in the large neighborhood thrift store, where we are on a first name basis with most of the staff as they have watched the Boy of Joy grow from bump to juggernaut, largely because he thinks the place is a children's museum with rotating stock and it is his favorite place on earth.

This time, I needed to try on a new-to-me swimsuit.  Indeed, our logistics went swimmingly as I went through the process of acquiring an adequately distracting toy, acquiring a cart, strapping my toddler into the cart to eliminate any chance of him dashing under the dressing room door and away, scoring the one large dressing room that a cart can fit in, and undressing.

At which point my mini-Mixalot raised his arms above his head and belted out at the absolute top of his lungs *and in tune^

"I LIKE BIG BOOBS AND I CANNOT LIE!"

Then, since apparently that wasn't far enough, he crowed with only slightly less volume, "I like NAKED boobs and I cannot lie!"

And then, some torturous amount of time later, we needed to leave that dressing room...

Walker on Wheels

Walker on Wheels

I have lived my life by the power of my feet.

I was a child who couldn't learn to ride a bike.  It was one of the endless ways that my body, and my command of my body, seemed so different than that of other children.  I didn't learn how to balance a bike until I was at the edge of my teens.   Out alone, on my seventh ride, I collided with a car on a high speed arterial and limped away with a broken tailbone that I hid from my family and a cold-sweat shaking case of bike-triggered PTSD that I couldn't hide.  Over the next twenty years I would manage to get on a bike maybe four times.

That whole combo of way-high anxiety plus way-low physical co-ordination?  I don't drive, either.  (You wouldn't like me driving.)

And bus fare hereabouts costs way too much to spend it on trips within five miles..  

So throughout my decades of adult life, when there was somewhere I needed to go, or somewhere I needed to get away from, I've walked.

This means, as a newcomer to bike use, I am not coming from the same place as someone whose normal transportation is a car.

While the rest of bicycling America is raving about the inherent serenity, the increased mindfulness, the greater sense of connection between self and environment that happens on a bike, I'm pretty much all WAAAA-OOOO HOUSTON DO WE HAVE LIFT-OFF LOOK OUT HERE I COME TEN MILES AN HOUR LET'S EASE OFF THE WORLD IT IS *FLYING* BY NOTHING'S GONNA STAND IN MY WAY BORN TO BE WIIIIIILD DOO DOODOO DOOOOO DOODOO-

I am intoxicated with the power of being my own vehicle.  I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and never for one second forget it.

Transcendence is mine.  The way in which I connect to the world, the possibility of my place in it, and my relationship to myself are all transformed.

And I never want to take that for granted.

Transformaintenance

I took a poll from a bike advocacy group looking for an evocative catchphrase to pitch the idea of cities repurposing cheap basic municipal maintenance materials to quickly transform how we move-- i.e. positioning cement planters to slow traffic on a school street with chronic speeding problems. 

All their suggestions sucked so I wrote in "transformational maintenance".  

Isn't it funny how we can produce for others what we can't get for ourselves?  As soon as I'd articulated it, I realized I've needed this concept for years.  Everyone knows you can't regain your balance and change directions at the same time.  First balance, then turn.  First stabilize, then stretch.  First sharpen the ax, then chop the wood.  Except that has never worked in my life.  It is an approach that can't work where crisis is chronic.  If your unmet needs lie in complicated layers, the "first, then" approach forces you to be your own saboteur, perpetually pitting your short-term self against your long-term self.

Like a city, I don't have to operate exclusively through major undertakings and dedicated budgets.  Like a city, I can look for new ways of using the resources I already have, so that small shifts in how I go about my immediate self-care produce big, fast results that move me in the directions of my goals.

And then an online friend condensed it to "transformaintenance".  

So now we just need neon green silicone bracelets.

Privilege & Hope

Child-Friendly Transit by Andres Salomon

That was incredibly well thought out and carefully written... so why am I so depressed by it?  And why do I get more depressed every time I read it?

The truth is, this is an idealistic, visionary list perfect for the BRT planning stage... 

and that's a vision so far from my daily reality that reading this is like scrounging garbage cans for food while listening to someone chatter about optimal nutrition.

This is the big picture, the long view, and the immediate challenges I and my toddler face SURVIVING north-end metro are so intense that I can't afford to think in terms of the long view.

*Right now* I need bus drivers who are trained to regard toddlers, babies, and pregnant women as vulnerable passengers like people who are elderly and people who have physical impairments.  Because when developing brains, or developing spines, or developing fetuses get slammed to the floor there are life-altering and life-threatening consequences.

I have sat with both arms around my own toddler praying madly with my eyes locked on the father forced to surf a full bus, with one arm holding his baby against his chest and his other hand holding his toddler's hand and nothing left to hold a strap or bar.  

This should never, ever happen, but I have seen it more than once, like it should never happen that the bus takes off while the heavily pregnant woman is still making her way back to her seat, and it should never happen that the baby should be shaken from side to side in the half-secured stroller because the fumbling parent could only figure out one of the wheelchair seatbelts.  It should never happen, and it happens all the time.

It should never happen that the bus stop *at the library*-- I understand that we're not at the point where we can have perfect sidewalks on all streets everywhere but seriously, *the library*!?!-- should open its doors on to a cratered cavern of broken-up tarmac that becomes a lake with hidden reefs every rain storm, but that is exactly what the 65 bus stop at the Lake City Library opens its doors to.  And that is why nobody ever buses to the Lake City Library with a stroller or a wheelchair or walker or shoes other than hiking boots.  And nobody buses the 45 to the Lake City Library at this time of year because, people don't want to die.  There's no marked crosswalk, the cars coming off Lake City in one direction and down the steep hill in the other are both speeding through the wet winter dark, and you'd die.  But, hey! that's the official announced "Lake City Library" stop.

We need people like Andres Salomon who have the vigor and hope to envision a better future.  Those of us who have lost our hope and vigor need visions such as these most of all.  

But, I've got to tell you, with what I experience as a disabled low income north end mother, I am not aiming this high.  I am not looking for amenities.  I'm not looking for a positive and fulfilling relationship with Metro.  

I just don't want our bus system killing my baby.

Westlake Monorail

Westlake, Sunday morning. Too early for the mall to be open and the monorail has just started running when we buy the ticket for our once-a-year ride. Hardly anyone else is waiting and I am SO stoked to be in position to get my train-crazy Boy of Joy on and forward fast to that one narrow front seat where he can watch the train coast on its single rail. We have been so lucky to have everything line up to give us a chance at the front this one time that he might be just old enough to remember... and I'll remember for sure.
And the train pulls in and everybody gets off except one mother and one small boy, who have bought round trip tickets from the other end for the sole purpose of waiting for that moment when everyone else was off the train and before anyone else could get on to run to the narrow front seat so that small boy could watch the train coast on its single rail.
Then the doors open and that mother turns and sees me and my boy.
And she gets up.
She squeezes her small son's shoulder and whispers something in his ear and he stays sitting and she gets up.
And she moves to the seat behind him, and smiles at me.
And I seat my even smaller son on the narrow bench beside her small son and I sit beside her.
My boy is too little. He pops up like a jack-in-the-box and runs for my lap. She meets my eyes. "You sit there." Her words are few, clear, her accent rich.
I hold my child on my lap and perch on the narrow bench next to another mother's son, who looks at me uncertainly, looks back to his mother, and then look forward.
And together our children watch the train coast on its own rail.
At the Center I try to explain what this has meant to us-- "We only get to ride once a year..."
But there's no way to explain, and no need. She smiles, I smile, her son is in her arms, mine is in mine. I will remember, for sure.

Happy Humanity, everybody.

Truth is Funny.

Truth is funny.

---

Parent 1: Would you like grape juice?  We also have V8.

Guest: I'd love some V8.

Teen Child: You know, maybe I should try that.  What's it like?

Parent 1: It 's a juice blend, but of all different kind of vegetable juices instead of fruit.

Parent 2: It's a sort of health drink, like they'd make you at a juice bar.

Guest: it's like drinking cold spaghetti sauce, only thinner.

[Silence.]

Teen Child: ...seriously?

Parents 1 & 2: Yes.

Lightening Rod

Let me explain what we really know about autoimmune disorders.

Our language has this goofy magic-mystic separation between "mental" and "physical".  Reality doesn't.  The chemistry and electricity and neurology of you is every bit as physical as your blood and bones and it's all intertwined and all of you from the neck down participates in what's happening from the neck up just like everything from the neck up participates all the way down to your toes.

An autoimmune disease means your body has tried to kill you.

And autoimmune disorders are most crazy-common in people who are survivors of trauma currently living under conditions of stress.  

Y'know, the same people at highest risk of their brains trying to kill them.  (Which isn't actually that surprising if one understands that everything is physical and intertwined and that the leading current evidence is that depression itself is just another trauma-catalyzed immune disorder.)

And what we're pretty consistently seeing--

which, again, makes perfect sense when one thinks about it--

is, if you survive that particular disease, and keep on trucking with your trauma and your stress...

...sooner or later your body is going to try to kill you again.

By middle age, I had survived two life-threatening autoimmune conditions... so far.  Three if they are right about depression.  

This isn't freakish, or bad luck, or even unlikely.  

What is unlikely is that I will get through the next ten years without it happening again.

Heard in My Hiome

"Thank you for understanding.  And, there's a chicken puppet behind you."

Ice-picks Can Kill

What if, instead of asking new people "What do you do?"

--which actually means, "How do you make your money?" and "Where do you rank on the status pole?" and boils down to a really bad way of trying to find out "What can you do for me?" and is a really inaccurate way of trying to find out "How much should I care about saying the wrong thing to you?"

--what if, instead, we asked new people "What are your interests?"

Frankly, finding out whether and how well someone can talk about what they care about, and what values we may have in common with them, seems like a *much* more useful and safer way to break the ice.

My friend Solomon calls this, "Asking people what they *love* to do."

Neuro-diversity Is...

Someone online asked for clarity about the term "Neuro-Diverse."  The truth is NeuroDiverse is still a new term, still finding its niche, and that as it finds its way into general usage it will come to mean what the most people want it to mean.  But I have a pretty heavy stake in what I need it to mean, and a very clear understanding of the identity-experience so many of us have needed a name for for so long.

---

What Neuro-Diversity is:

We suck at internalizing Culture.

We have rely on conscious observation and analysis to try to catch up with what is tacit second nature to those around us.

We end up with rigid rules where flexibility is needed or flexibility where it is "supposed to be" unthinkable.  

We are moving through a parallel universe in which everything is happening at different volumes, different textures, different speeds, and some things aren't happening at all.

Our body language, posture, expressions, the very lines on our faces are formed from hundreds of thousands of daily physical responses that those around us don't need.

Our train of thought is a wooden roller coaster submarine monorail trolley, it does not use the standard tracks.  We may have full comprehension and verbal skills and still be unable to follow a conventional explanation or provide an explanation others can follow.

The fact that we relate differently to these *three overlapping areas*-- 

social constructions, sensory environment, and cognitive navigation

IS our common ground.  

Not our wildly diverse symptoms, diagnoses, levels of functionality. attitudes, or coping tools, but the fact that we "don't fit."  We are "out of sync."  There's "something off" about us.  We don't "read right."  We come from the Uncanny Valley and the Neuro-typical (Neuro-normative, Neuro-privileged) frequently compare what is normal for us to the actions and attitudes of critters or robots.

And because of this, those of us neurodiverse from birth grew up as the natural targets of bullies of every kind, and age, and we *always* bear the additional complications of trauma and shame.

And those of us neurodiverse from brain injury *always* bear the additional complications of grief and humiliation. 

That is what it is to be Neurodiverse.

Jerk-First Language

A gentle reminder:

We've all heard "there's no such thing as a cyclist".  

There are people on bikes, and people in cars, and people walking.

Also, bullies on bikes, and bullies in cars, and bullies walking.

The vitriolic spewed at people on bicycles, the threatening hand gestures, the deliberately dangerous driving and the criminally negligent driving, the unending excuses based on what some people on bicycles do-- 

None of that comes with being on a bicycle.  

None of that comes from bikes and cars being together.

All of that comes from having bullies in cars.  

I know this for a fact because my family vehicle isn't a bike but a car driven by a person with disabilities, with slow reaction time.  We achieve the speed limit only under ideal conditions.  We keep a giant buffer zone.  We go slower in circumstances involving any degree of darkness, weirdness,  uncertainty, or weather.  We are rigorous about pulling over when a couple-three cars stack up behind us.

And every trip is a lesson in the worst of humanity.  Every trip we are hated, screamed at, physically threatened, and endangered by bullies in cars who will go as far as scraping and bumping our vehicle.  My husband's body is very fragile; a bad pothole can leave him barely able to get home and then incapacitated for several days.   He lives with serious PTSD, some of which comes straight from the life-changing car accidents he has survived (pedestrian-in-crosswalk, car-rear-ended-at-red-light).  It is positively common for him to have to pull over to wait until he can stop shaking enough to safely continue... and this is on known routes within ten minutes of home.

Now, this is not a big pity party-- this is a reminder that those same bullies in cars who verbally and physically threaten people on bikes are also spewing hate and violence at people who drive slowly.  It's not about the bikes.  Whatever excuses they make for the way they behave to you, or me, or my husband; are all just the bully telling the victim "you have this coming."

And no amount of bike-education is going to get through that, because it's not about the bike, it's about the bully who wants what they want when they want it without having to care what the cost is to others.  

Bike-education is for people in cars who actually want to be good drivers and need help.  Reflective gear and sharrows and clear signaling are all for people in cars who want to be good drivers and need help.  Being a good representative is about strengthening communication with people in cars who want to be good drivers.  

All of these are really important tools for the majority of people in cars, but for the situations that scare us most, those people who actively threaten us, who don't want to act responsibly, don't want to pay attention, and above all don't want to slow down, we need an entirely different toolbox.

For them, we need asshole-education.

That means sharing strategies for behaving in asshole-resiliant ways and building asshole-resistant infrastructure and strengthening  asshole-retardant law enforcement.

It also means powering that infrastructure and law enforcement by pulling in solidarity from our communal experience with people in cars who may not know jack about what it is like to travel on a bike but who have an extensive understanding of the dangers of bullies in cars.  

It means reframing the conversation to build coalition lines along the type of personal behavior instead of the type of vehicle.   

It means acknowledging the existence of the bullies on bikes and calling out the danger they present to other people-- on bikes, on foot, and in cars.  

It means including bike-savvy specifics on how to recognize and deal with the bullies on bike.   

And it means working in our own lives, with our choices and our children, to change our culture so that the whole underlying value of "wanting to get what you want when you want it without having to care what the cost is" isn't a high-status, desirable ideal anymore.

Tis the season when the homeless ride bicycles.

Tis the season when the homeless ride bicycles.  Last time we saw our friend J, she had a yellow bike and her first boyfriend in four years, and a grin like a cat in the cream.   Third stool deli guy showed up at the deli near closing last night with a bike strapped down with bags *and a helmet*, which is unheard of.  I'm pretty sure the so-skinny bald guy with his bike outside VV yesterday was the same we saw-- well, nevermind about that.

When I first moved here I assumed there was a charity that distributed bikes to the homeless each summer.  Bicycles show up all over the streets at this time of year; some tie up bags on them and some succeed in bringing them everywhere, a temporary magical fifth limb.  Most treat them as ephemera, a summer love affair, here until they're gone.  A flirtation with freedom.  You find them left leaning against trees and fences.  There are never any locks.

And I'd like to put this up without any additional commentary or judgement.  My own double standard sends me spinning, here.  Under most circumstances, my antipathy for bicycle thieves is fanatic as a cowboy's hatred of horse thieves.  Yet I can't extend that ferocity to the first moment I saw S on a bike, standing up on the pedals coasting downhill with his long hair sailing behind him and his face lit up looking thirty years younger.  

Oh, that ability to lift up out of your body and move, and sail, and go where you want to go when you want to go there-- to feel your body working on becoming strong again, to choose your aches and pains.  I have spent a life on foot, years sick and in pain; and I have felt the delirious joy of lifting up out of that, to a bike.  So I buy another lock and I register my serial number and I look into marking my own bike with photographs of me, and I imagine the total devastation I would experience if my bike were stolen... and I still smile at every homeless person I see lit up with joy on a bicycle.

There should be a charity that passes out bicycles to the homeless in the spring.

Poem: The Busker

The Busker

When the sun shone, the grasshopper fiddled.

A reel to greet the first light and a jig as the morning grew bright.

He waltzed the afternoon away, put a promenade to the end of the day,

And fell down sleeping where he stood in the middle of a night-long ballad.

The ants worked through it all.

When the breeze blew, the grasshopper danced.

Leaping high above the corn, flashing wings among the thorns.

Spinning through the falling leaves, the grasshopper courted every breeze,

And his shadow capered over the ants as they marched like mad.

The ants worked through it all.

When the first frost came, the grasshopper crumpled.

His joints froze.  His fiddle cracked.

He lay alone on the barren ground.

Then the ants came. They surrounded him.  

They spoke as ants speak, 

In one voice.

"Music-maker who kept us moving,

Spirit of the harvest plenty, 

one gift more we ask of you.

Speak of the sun to our winterborn,

Talk of the greentime that will return.

No one else could tell it so true."

They carried him home.

Months in Planning

Today was months in planning.  Little Guy adored his two previous trips to Pike Place Market.  It seems like forever I've been jockeying to get us a full day there and Big Guy a full day to attack the hoard without us underfoot-- but the cold hard fact is it is $5 in busing for fun and everything else comes first.

So today was our big day out at long last.  Yesterday I'd double-checked all the most current online information for what we'd need to do to eat and shop.  Good ride in, then our visit started with the Hammering Man, the view of the water, the lifesized Sasquatch statue (that he remembered), the glass elevator, the midair squid, and bubblegum alley.  Got a big smile at the market office from someone who had the promised map of the few establishments that have actually succeeded in jumping through all the hoops necessary to take food assistance.

But I'd completely forgotten the summer-crowd phenomenon-- the living wall.  Other parents using strollers like battering rams to force a way through and me side by side with an unarmored toddler who freezes under stress.  Breakfast first, I decided-- breakfast first, then come up with a new plan.  Through the press of humanity to the bakery, where we successfully fought our way around two of three counters to make a selection, wait our turn in line, get all rung up, and--

--the bakery's equipment for processing food assistance was down.  They couldn't sell to us.  Deep breath, check the map-- maybe they have some baked goods at the Mexican grocer?  Through the press of humanity to find out!  No baked goods today, just hot foods food-ass can't cover.  I used two dollars of our monthly ration to get us a fat square of homemade coconut candy and forced our way to a tiny corner bench under a stairwell so we could get something in our stomachs, but it turned out to be stale as a stone and inedible.  Little Guy tried his best, stubbornly gnawing at his long after I'd given up, then trying to hand it to me to "fix" at which point it ended up on the sidewalk and I drug him away.

Surely the big deli-grocer way down on the other end off the Market office map was set up to take food assistance?  Through the press of humanity, wait in line to ask-- the answer was no.  Back through the press of humanity looking for the special tent described on the website, the one that turns food assistance into special double-value tokens to encourage low income peeps like me to buy local produce.  There was no sign of it.  Checked the food assistance map, what can we eat? through the press of humanity to the cheesemonger.  There were no lines, no other customers, and nothing I could do caught the shopkeepers eye.  He actually left his counter, walked out the door and away with my tiny tyke and I standing there waiting for service.  A few minutes later he came back and walked right past us without saying a word, went right back to his busywork without looking at us--

and I ought to be able to cope with this in a simple, effective believing the best of people manner but I haven't eaten and I'm two days out from the woman in the PCC parking lot pretending I and my child weren't there because she assumed I was a beggar and just a few weeks out from the homeowner who actually left her house and came across the street to harangue my little family into leaving the park she lives by because we didn't look middle class enough to have a right to be in her neighborhood and I need to eat to think and can't 

and I break and bolt with my hungry child wrapped against me.

So smurf the whole local living healthy food thing, we haul smurf to smurfing TARGET.  Because, surely, every Target location is set up to take food assistance, right?  Since the working poor are their Target market?  Right?  All I have to do to find out is to wait through the line with food in my hands and my heart in my throat and my two year old little boy who has at this point been promised food is imminent four different times from for different places looking at me... and I can't do it.  I look at our reflections in the glass of the drinks coolers and see myself shake.

We'd hit crisis at this point.  I was on the verge of not being able to take care of him or myself.  The hideous part was knowing that there were solutions I was missing, other things I could be doing, IF only I could get enough food to function.

Then the sight of the Larabars at Target reminded me of the untouched emergency Larabars stashed in our big red bag.  One last two block walk to the food court in the old Borders building, past the big signs on the door that only eating customers of these fine establishments may come use the furniture, past the two security guards on duty, all the way to the farthest end of the lobby.  We hunkered on a sofa facing away from them and my little guy inhaled one bar and asked for more but I'd already eaten the other two.

Then I let the food take effect, gathered myself, and marched up to the security guards to try to pick their brains about an underground grocery store that I knew took food assistance, it used to be a couple blocks away but I could never remember just where.  They tried to send us on foot out to the Whole Foods on South Lake Union-- not.  

So I told my little guy he'd have a chance to run in Westlake Park and play in superhero fountain, but when we got there the fountain was off and all the open space filled up with cafe seating and summer projects.  

So we went up all the layers of Westlake Mall looking for the information booth in hopes they might have an idea of a downtown central place to use food assistance, but the information booth is gone because, hey, what kind of loser needs live help in these days of smartphones?

I was tired enough, hungry enough, and cracked enough to actually think of hopping the tunnel bus down to Uwaijimaya's for some food and then bouncing my boy through Pioneer Square to rescue our day, but, of course, there are no more free tunnel buses.

And that was the point at which this conversation between me and my two year old little boy happened:

"Eema, why aren't we getting food?"

"Because no one will take the kind of money we have, son."

"Eema, why don't we have real money?  Why don't we have any money, Eema?  Why don't we have any money?"

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

We went down to the tunnel and caught the next bus back to our own neighborhood, back to our little five block box where I can take care of us.  The new reduced fare pass didn't work and I stood there with my baby in my arms letting everybody else press past us while the bus driver decided whether or not to let us ride.

We got to Fred Meyer's.  We got food.  The rest of the day was a series of better-managed setbacks.  (In case of being locked out, do not hesitate to walk to your neighborhood library.  They will be happy to call your husband for you.)  The Big Guy's day was no better.

Sitting down that evening to a table full of friends, a bowl of pasta, a glass of homemade kombucha, and a wedge of the sweetest watermelon I've had in my life, I experienced this "Calgon, take me away" moment of joy and serenity in the wisdom of the Jewish tradition of ending a day at sundown.

Because some days just need to be declared OVER.

Speed Reader Crashes and Burns

Reading was my superpower.

I am incapable of driving decently, learning choreography, playing any musical instrument that doesn't work by pounding on it, or faking normal social interaction, but my reading speed and comprehension? Phenomenal. 

Near forty years ago I first stuck my nose into a book and pretty much never stopped unless forced.  Even when I couldn't work, even when I couldn't take care of myself, even when I couldn't move for pain-- I kept reading, voraciously, compulsively and critically.  Flash into a new 

book and out again paradigm shifting in seven gears with all the implications, applications, and connections to all of the other books I've ever read moving at full speed.  It's what I did.  It's who I was.

Can't do it now.

Vision's going.  Life's fractured.  Brain's having bad days and better ones.

Now, I am a slow reader.

I've been dropped into an alternate dimension in which my one skill, honed for a lifetime, no longer matters much.

So, I'm starting to try to make what reading I can do matter as much as possible.

Slow reading has not brought me more savored pleasure, or a deeper sense of meaning, or a more nuanced understanding.  Flat-out the opposite; there is no way in which my relationship to the written word has not been damaged and diminished.

So, my relationship to the written word can no longer be my rubric for success.

And that brings me to grapple with something even harder, and even sadder, than my loss of ability.

I'm a good listener if you're a good story-- but I'm not good at talking with people and I'm not good at writing (which is basically talking at people.)  It's been really hard for me to make myself understood by people who have not read what I've read.  So I am extremely well-educated and aware in a way that's had nearly no effect on the world. 

If I don't do anything with it, then all the marvelous learning and sacred adventures I've had from books... are nothing more than a burnt-out junkie's memories of old drug trips.

So now, I am a slow reader; but, now, I'm trying to make my reading count.

Haym Soloveitchik on Custom

"Custom is potent, but its true power is informal. It derives from the ability of habit to neutralize the implications of book knowledge. Anything learned from study that conflicts with accustomed practice cannot really be right, things simply can't be different than they are."

-- Haym Soloveitchik, "Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy" Tradition, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer 1994)  Accessed from: http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm

Poor Like Me #1: The Look

#1 The Look
For the past year I've been opening up the reality of my life to a small group of friends. This year I want to go further. Each month, I hope to share with my greater community an insider's look at the way poor people don't have the choices taken for granted in our society. In these essays, I'm not looking for help for my family, I'm looking to help good people understand how what is simple in solvency becomes layered in complications with poverty.

#1: The Look.

First impressions are real. When we look at the people we know, we "see" them through a filter of our experiences with them, and unconsciously we "see" their kindness as beauty, cruelty as ugliness. When we meet people for the very first time, our brain rushes to guide us in how to interact with them (are they safe? are they trustworthy?) based only on their appearance. Within seconds after we meet someone new, everything they say and do is coming to us through the filter of our unconscious first impression

Being poor often means shockingly little control over what one looks like... and that translates directly to less influence over how other people interact with us. For some months I've been straying perilously close to what I call "The Look"-- the one that is invisible to loved ones and shouts to everyone else.

The Look says that you are a loser at life. You are a low quality human being. In the land of opportunity, you are defective, unreliable, undesirable, trash. The Look is deadly. You not only don't get the job; you don't get the interview. Police don't believe you. Social workers don't believe you. You don't merit detailed directions when lost, or sales help when making an important purchase. Solvent parents will tell you that *nothing* is harder than negotiating good school support for a special needs child; parents with The Look don't even get a meeting. A young child with The Look is presumed neglected; an older child is presumed degenerate, and all children with The Look are presumed to have no future-- a self-fulfilling prophecy as The Look affects what programs are considered and how discipline is administered. Medically, The Look means doctors don't bother trying to explain what they are thinking, openly use threats and outright lies to try to get your compliance, and always, *always* assume you are on drugs and lying. The Look is a potent factor in why medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States

In a culture that still gives lip service to Puritan ideals, it's easy to lose track of the resources poured into maintaining a "conventional" appearance. Laundry detergent, like dish soap, is a necessity food stamps don't cover; chapstick and deodorant an indulgence. We have shampoo and conditioner because my family dropped some off on their last visit. Professional hair salons and nail parlors and gyms hold the same place in my life as the Tiffany jewelry store downtown-- just another window to walk by. Whole aisles of the store become foreign territory with poverty. Obviously there will be no therapy for my thinning hair and reddening face. DSHS got us a "hygiene voucher" once and I went crazy and bought acne medication. We still have it-- I dole it out in drops like liquid gold, too little to do any good. Should have stocked up on more dish-soap and laundry detergent. Those "save the planet and save money!" list of tips friends forward me are always good for a laugh. "Your hair will clean itself if you give up shampoo!" puts me in stitches. "Use half the soap you're used to" and "cold water gets things just as clean!" Ha-ha. Try it. Try it month after month after month; try it with things you can't afford to replace. When we come back after a few days with family the first thing I have to do before my nose readjusts is go to my closet and smell my way through my "clean" clothes to find which actually pass mainstream muster and which get a vinegar soak to try to save them.

Cleanliness and clothing cease to be separate categories in poverty. Dry cleaning isn't an option, so neither are clothes that need it. Ditto for ironing (if you own one, if it's clean, if you have a safe place & time to set it up...) Oh, and just *try* getting a man's pants off him for washing when he only has one pair. My background gives me an edge in identifying cloth capable of lasting longer than the six to eight washings the fashion industry aims for, but that only helps when I've got money in my pocket and something to choose from on the thrift store rack. Thrift store shopping has changed since the Great Recession; Monday morning the shelves look like locusts descended over the weekend. I used to do well on dollar days; now good things fly out the door without ever hitting half off. With demand so high, secondhand prices have soared and the thrift giants have gotten much more picky about keeping only the top dollar donations; most of what people in my situation could use is sold to the African markets. Tailoring takes affluence. Finding a precise fit or a flattering style is like finding money on the ground. Mostly, we all end up in the same knits, pulled "one size fits most" over the same flab particular to starchy meals. Once they get stretched out of shape, our clothes don't layer, they heap.

Things end up stained faster than we can replace them. We're more likely to collect tears from our junker cars, patched-up homes, and laborious jobs... and neither mending skills nor supplies come cheap. We're always out of sync with how everyone else is walking around. We look "half-stripped" when we keep our expensive things like bras and coats tucked away for Times that Matter. We become moving lumps when we go about our business carrying *everything* we may need that day on our bodies in whatever ramshackle assortment we've patched together... because we can't afford to eat out, can't pop into a store for something like a safety pin, can't leave it all in the car if we don't have one and can't leave anything in the car if the doors or windows are still broken from the last break-in.

There's not a lot of pep in poverty. We fall into our seats. We slump. We look totally exhausted on a normal day, because we are. We are all too aware that we are not presenting our best, that our discount luck is being weighed against the sartorial taste of those who can just buy what they want. Whatever confidence we may have had gets chipped away after a hundred painful experiences with strangers assuming the worst of us. If self-disgust takes root, if an edge of desperation and defensiveness grows, then our very eyes and emotions begin to turn people away, and The Look becomes self-perpetuating.

I once watched a Greyhound bus driver kick off a pregnant woman at a locked small town station because she'd started oozing blood. She'd spent the last two days working nonstop to save what she could from eviction, and the smell of the blood on top of the scent of stress and sweat on top of the mess of her was too much for him to take, so he left her on the sidewalk in a town where she knew no one, with no money and no chance of medical attention, just the hope that in three and a half hours the next driver would let her ride. That is life with The Look.

My closest brush with The Look came as a new mother. Like most women, pregnancy and birth left me with a changed body, and my appearance the lowest priority of our new expenses. The unbelievable amount of thought and work I put into trying to "pass" middle class doesn't show. Who sees the hours checking Craigslist for free haircuts from student beauticians, only to learn the hard way they all want someone already attractive and put-together to show off a style that takes a costly ton of product to maintain? There's no visible sign that the simple black skirt that makes all my outfits "work" took four -years- of thrift store hunting to find. It's been three years since I've been in the YWCA basement where a voucher buys you thirty minutes to try to find three matching outfits a coat and a bra among the secondhand "professional" offerings in one overstuffed little room-- but I still know the rules and tricks by heart. None of these-- my persistence and hardwon skills and knowledge-- have made a big difference. Instead, I'm looking relatively good again thanks to a Hanukah gift necklace, a friend's closet purge, another friend buying me bras for my birthday last year. I am blessed with a wardrobe I can make work, because I am blessed in my Connections.

And Connections is another area of life poor people generally can't control.