The Anger of Lovingkindness

I'd already told Beth that I could make her Tuesday morning class, on living the lessons of Torah of Lovingkindness, when I walked in on her in the copy room.  If I hadn't already told her, if I'd just kept that to myself and planned to show up, then upon seeing the topic of the sheet she was copying there in the copy room before class began, I would have finished up my own office business and quietly bolted from the building as fast as I could go.  

The topic was Anger.Two sharply divergent insights have come out of that class for me.  The predominant theme we kept circling back to was, when and how is anger useful?  The answer is, not much and for not long.  At an animal level, anger sends a clear message of "back off".  There's a famous account of a fawn driving off a pack of wolves, rearing up on its hindlegs with its little forefeet boxing.  The wolves decided that this kind of crazy wasn't worth dealing with.  Then X-- spoke of a great teacher telling a victim of violence that they weren't yet ready to forgive... and I remembered the Linns' work _Don't Forgive too Soon_, on how all forgiveness is a miniature grief process, and it has to be worked through.  I found myself wondering, astonishing idea-- what if it is not just that anger is part of the grief process, what if *all* anger signals a need to process?  Anger comes when there is a break between the world as it is and as we think it should be.  What if, a human level, the first job of anger is to say "Step back, I need to process this"?  Anger is useful, extremely useful, as a signal to one's self from one's self.  Counselors and relationship guides have written about this topic endlessly: the individual walking through the world slamming things and shouting but completely unaware of their anger, even vociferously denying their anger.  These are people who have reached a point where they are acting in anger without feeling it; they are not getting the signal. They are deadly.  Caregiver's rage, of course, comes because there is no way to step back, no room to process, an unfathomable need to grieve and no way to work though it-- the pot is kept at a perpetual simmer and the slightest bump in heat will boil it over every time. But that is almost beside this point of anger as a signal, a spectacular signal to one's self to stop everything and pay attention to how you are feeling.  The Chinese invented synthetic explosives, and what they used it for was fireworks.  If healthy anger is a firework, the mistake comes when the explosion is pointed at somebody.

The second insight relates to Torah, and how we read it... especially so close to the deluge of Noach.  We speak a lot of the Divine being angry; we don't speak of the Divine being hurt.  Isn't that odd?  When we speak of anger amongst ourselves, it is with a clear understanding that anger and a sense of injury go hand in hand.  What if we were to read Divine anger, as as expression of Divine injury?  What if the Almighty on Sinai telling Moses of the sin of the Golden Calf is telling us of how hurt the Almighty is?  If we were to take it for granted that any damage to creation is an agony to the Creator-- if we were to truly take that to heart, to assume it at all times, we bring ourselves to a place where we read the Creator threatening violence as an expression of the Creator in extremis.  How does that change how we read? If these words in the text are meant to be a fireworks show, to last through generations... 
And of course it is all more complicated than that... but nonetheless there is a strange and deep reconciliation to realize that, yes, a loving deity who wishes to be loved and even more that people should love one another, is going to be an angry deity.

Eat. Rage. Love.

Eat. Pray. Love.

My lament that I need three of me-- for my family's physical needs, for my family's emotional needs, and for my own needs-- sounds a lot like eat, pray, love.

Only: Eat, Love, Pray.

The Sim Shalom siddur reads, in the Shabbat prayer for peace, that we are brought into being "To praise, to labor, and to love."

Pray, Eat, Love.

But I don't get beyond Eat.  Everything I've got to give is going into the physical needs, and falling short.

Not Eat, Pray, Love.

Just Cook, Clean, Clothe.

And I know the great spiritual answer on this one. 
I know the examples of the Benedictine and Zen Buddhist monks in making the physical labor the primary expression of all else. 
I know, "I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I woke and saw that life is work, I worked and found that work is joy."

What I have instead is this bottomless toxic resentful rage...

And I think it is because the spiritual practices that elevate labor, labor side by side.  Not necessarily doing the same tasks at the same time, but nevertheless, side by side.

I feel no one by my side.

Resource List: New Jew Views

On living up to being "the Rabbi's Wife" when you are both professional women...
https://jwa.org/blog/reimagining-rebbetzin-on-being-feminist-rabbinic-partner

Resource List: How to Nurture

Kinetic sand and letting go
https://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/giving-it-away.html#.WNEmScYbPIk.facebook

Resource List: Important Warnings

Fluoroquinolones antibiotics destroy tendons.
https://mountainsandmustardseedssite.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/this-antibiotic-will-ruin-you/

Resource List: Gender Oppression

Comic on the mental load: "You Should Have Asked"
https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

Resource List: Class Has Always Been In Session

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/06/advice_on_how_to_talk_to_the_white_working_class.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

Resource List: The Situation

http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-peace-talks-between-israelis-and-palestinians-keep-failing/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/the-arab-world-has-never-recovered-from-the-loss-of-1967/

https://www.facebook.com/harold.feld/posts/10155132322066293?match=aGFyb2xkIGZlbGQsaGFyb2xkLGZlbGQs

This picture

If anyone can find me the artist and origin of this picture, I want to know.  The earliest I have been able to trace it to so far is 2015 out of Malaysia.

We Are All Living History

So, yesterday, I was teaching boichik his tunnel stops (Westlake is the monorail, University is Hammering Man...). 
 An Asian American student who was pure effervescence overheard us and launched our section into a rollicking conversation about the public transit experiences no one talks about. (Like when the person sitting next to you has fallen asleep, and you don't know if letting them stay asleep it is the best thing you could possibly do, or if they are going to be totally screwed by missing their stop if you don't do something…)
Then I said to boichik, "And International District means-"
And he said, "Mochi! Mochi!"
And I said, "Daifuku mochi!"
And he said, "Daifuku mochi!"
And our bubbling student *squealed*, "Daifuku mochi! You have made me homesick! I grew up with my grandmother making daifuku mochi for me!"
And as we pulled into the station, she added, "They lived right here-- before the internment camp."

-------

Being a citizen is like... it is like being born into a collective body. And to live well in that body, you need to know its triumphs and its injuries, what it has overcome and what it is struggling with.

You have to know what you are a part of now, and what is a part of you-- the monorail, Hammering Man, daifuku mochi, the internment camps.

It's not trivia. It's a difference in consciousness. And differences in consciousness are what make differences in conscience.

"Ooo, Eema, here's an elevator that no one has peed in!"

- Yesterday, downtown

Shame on You, Rabbi.

"But issues like slavery and civil rights are very rare, once in a generation, and invoking them for everything from social welfare policy to Dodd-Frank to the methods of vetting immigrants is both dishonest and cheapening a great moral legacy. If you are using the march on Selma to religiously validate your views on the minimum wage, shame on you."

One of the best loved and generally most thoughtful rabbis of our time wrote these words.

They are a shattering, clarion indictment of the level of privilege, comfort, and blissful ignorance taken for granted in much of the American Jewish world.

In point of historical fact, when slavery was the leading issue of the day, synagogues were overwhelmingly silent. When Rabbi Herschel marched by Rev.Dr.King, he was ostracized and roundly criticized by his peers. The priority of the rabbinic pulpits of the day was to be polite and quiet and avoid rocking the boat. The most obscene and obvious of injustices were normal in their day.

The very statement that such issues come along once in a generation is a statement of faith in the status quo, of confidence and complicity in the current normal. It is not a statement rooted in social analysis, historical aptitude, or moral or intellectual rigor; it is a statement rooted in comfort, and a desire to keep things comfortable.

It is not acceptable for a professional who has never had to choose betweeen food and heat, who leads a community that take for granted the ability to own their own home and eat regularly in restaurants, to wish shame upon those speaking for the lives warped and lost to the travesty of working poverty. It is not acceptable for a parent who does not live knowing their child has double, triple, quadruple the chance of dying of violence to dismiss current identity issues as special interest politics.

It is not acceptable for spokesperson of an ethos whose single most emphasized commandment is to welcome the stranger-- to actively consider and care for the well-being of the outsider-- to advocate for "The Gentleman's Agreement" of valuing the camaraderie of the complacent above the inclusion of the marginalized.

Brain Fog Log

I am trying to sit with myself, and watching thoughts fly apart. 

There's a fine line between self – awareness and self – analysis, like the fine line between medicine and poison. Quantum physics introduced the concept that observation itself is an action that impacts the phenomena observed. I heard that for the first time at 10 or 12 years old and understood it instantly; I have known that truth throughout the duration of my emerging and mature adult lives.

And yet, we cannot stop looking.

------

This quote came across my feed today:

"To explain – there was a talk at the SohoCreate festival in London, in which artist Yinka Shonibare was in conversation with other leading figures from art and architecture. The panel discussed what they understood creativity to mean, and how it can survive in an increasingly cut-throat and capitalist London. Somebody then asked how the panel spent their days. At which point Shonibare mentioned, dead casually, that he only works three days a week "because I need at least one day a week to just stare into space and achieve absolutely nothing". At this point, everyone went a bit quiet.

Here we were, at the heart of a hungry, competitive city, finding out that one of its power players, who has been awarded an MBE, an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art, and been made a member of the Royal Academy, was all for having a bit of a rest. It stopped me in my tracks."

The quote is from a Guardian article, the rest of which is not worth quoting because the author goes on to make fun of the concept and herself in an oh so British fashion. Can you say white Anglo-Saxon Protestant work ethic?

The part she missed, and misunderstood, is that "rest" is not the same as doing whatever you want to. To "do nothing", you first need to know how to do nothing. Which is why so many detailed proscriptions come with Shabbat.

But then, I don't know how to do nothing either.

------

At Girl Scout hiking camp, we found ourselves the sole users of a small valley campsite. After half the day had passed with no sign of any other groups, one of my counselors took off all her clothes.

Within 10 minutes, a set of 20-something young men hiked into the valley on the path that took them within 15 feet of where she was trying to take a nap on a log.

They asked if she was Swedish.

It took me years to figure out why anyone would ask my olive-skinned, bucktoothed counselor with the butch brunette hair chop if she was Swedish. Truth be told, I am still not quite sure.

She raised both eyebrows at them, succintly and clearly said, "No", and put her head back down on the log and closed her eyes.

I have made enough progress, in the 30 years intervening, to be in awe of that young woman's "don't give a damn" self-possession. At the time, it was just incomprehensible, the sort of thing a kid can't even think about.

I still remember that valley. I go back there every time I'm put through another useless meditation that tells me to remember being a child in a place where I felt at peace.

There was a tree branch there big enough for me to stretch out my legs on, and I was hidden alone on it for about 40 minutes.

No one among us was supposed to leave sight of the other girls. I did it twice.
The first time, I just went walking and got lost. It could've been bad. I knew how bad it could've been. I found my way back on my own before I was missed.
So, the second time, I went for a destination. I went for the tree we had found the day before as a group.
I got myself up on that branch.
And, for about 40 minutes of my young life, I was unaccounted for with no danger or consequences.

So that's where I go, when someone wants me to try going to "a safe place I remember being." Because they sure don't want me to visualize being drunk, which is the other option.

Visible Disability / Invisible Disability

I have this comic idea stuck in my head, because I can't draw right now.
First frame is labeled, Visible Disability, and shows a person in a wheelchair facing flight of steps and saying, "I can not do this."
 There's a group of cheerleaders on the steps chanting, "Yes you can!"
 An onlooker is staring up at the cheerleaders with a thought bubble that reads: "Jerks".

The second frame is labeled, Invisible Disability.
It shows a person standing facing a flight of steps and saying, "I can not do this."
There's a group of cheerleaders on the steps chanting, "Yes you can!"
And the onlooker is staring over at the disabled person with a thought bubble that reads: "Jerk".

It is a bad day for anxiety-related brain fog. A significant anxiety attack kept me out of shul Saturday morning.

The last time I was forced to go in to DSHS, I saw an immigrant mother with an actual Stars and Stripes hijabi, like the famous picture, only a much larger pattern.

That's the image I'm hanging on to right now.

Ashkenonsense

I give up.
 Folks, there is already an established sociological term for the weird place position Ashkenazi Jews hold in American race relations. That term is "Ethnic Whites". It includes other groups, such as the Roma (aka "Gypsies", which by the way is a racial slur).

And I know, I know-- there are a whole heaping lot of very good people just starting learn about race in America since BLM and Pantsuit Nation who cannot be expected to know these terms. (Except for everybody old enough to remember, we used to routinely specify WASP instead of just saying "white".)

BUT-- the fact that the people being paid to write up their opinions on this matter aren't familiar with the term?
Is just plain *embarrassing.*
Irrelevant of the position they are presenting or how many cherry-picked historical facts they trot out, it means their interest in what race is and how it works is narrow, shallow, and gadawful johnny-come-lately.

Reading, Persistence, & Trauma-- Stack Attack Against the Poor

Three articles linked by three different friends on three ostensibly different subjects-- reading, persistence, and trauma-- that actually fit together like three jigsaw puzzle pieces.

http://www.booksourcebanter.com/…/…/reading-achievement-gap/ from Nancy O'Leary Pew talks about low income kids not reading over the summer from a simple lack of access to books. YES, and… this is one of those places where "low income", term that seems so objective and unbiased, is incredibly misleading, because it points the mind toward the old idea that poverty is a simple lack of money, instead of grappling with the reality that poverty is a complex lack of resources. Such kids don't just have fewer books, but also thinner walls, greater stress, less space and more people packed into it. These kids are not going off for the summer to an intact nuclear family in a freestanding house with a treehouse in the yard and a well-recommended babysitter on call. Less reading happens if you are keeping your younger sibs out of trouble, if you are scratching together mac & cheese so your mama has a meal ready to eat in between her two shifts, if your time is not your own. Nobody's pulling the flashlight under the covers trick with an aunt and uncle crashed out on the floor beside their bed after a long day of looking for work. Let's not get into the sirens wailing down the street, the bottles smashing in the back alley, the grown-ups pushing to a window to check if that was a real scream or a play scream. Is this a reading environment? Poverty means less security, fewer options, less peace and less quiet. Not even getting into the issues for kids who need glasses. Not even getting into the social issues, the way having your head down in a book makes you literally physically more vulnerable to bullies of every kind.

That heads straight in to this powerful article on persistence from Julie Shusterman https://www.theatlantic.com/…/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/… . The capacity of schoolchildren to lead and succeed is being judged from strictly white-collar assumptions about what "grit" should look like. Even more, it is not only that kids in poverty may be using their persistence in ways that are academically invisible... it is vital to understand the very specific way in which poverty works against persistence, period. Poverty teaches you not to put the few resources you have into anything that is not a *sure* thing. Trying new things in a way that is healthy "experimenting" if you are middle-class is flat-out dangerous **gambling** if you are poor. Even trying to cook a different kind of food is a whole new level of risk when you understand, there is not going to be anything else to eat if this does not turn out. Recently I wrote about watching myself actively teaching our four-year-old *not* to persist, because the ability to give up and move on quickly is key to our very survival. https://m.facebook.com/story.php…

And that brings us to this heartbreakingly indepth examination of how in depth children process from Kristie Walker
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/run-gunfire-on-a-school-pl…/ . The critical, huge take-away here is that trauma impacts kids in completely unpredictable ways. I am going to spell out what "trauma" is here, from the work of Peter Levine: trauma is the mind-body break that happens when you are simultaneously aware that what you truly need most is in immediate jeopardy and that there is nothing you can do about it.

So, where does trauma come into it? The article illustrates trauma at its most recognizable: the single, obscene disruption to otherwise safe and comfortable lives. But that is not the whole picture of trauma. The question of how much strain one's muscles are under while holding a container of water depends not only on how heavy the container is but also on how long one must hold it. Research such as the CDC's ACE studies are confirming that trauma, like every other kind of damage, comes not only from the horrible sudden shock but also the wear and tear of the ever-present danger. "A two year old can't wait when hungry," says a friend at synagogue, and I stare in shock at words that would have been a joke in my neighborhood. Oh, yes, a two-year-old can wait when hungry, an 18-month-old can wait while hungry-- all it takes it regularly being in a position where you cannot feed your child and your child knows it. My synagogue hosted a workshop on how to buffer our children from our own fears at a time when current events have so many adults in a state of alarm. The key, according to the invited expert, was to make sure your children feel like you, the parent, have the power to take good care of them no matter what. My child has known better since 18 months old.

What one must keep in mind reading all this, is that from all indications, the college-educated parents of the rising (millennial) generation are raising their children in a level of density and unpredictability and daily compromise that the receding generation (boomers) would have considered low-end blue collar circumstances.
 The class privileges a larger upper-middle class set in cement ( https://mobile.nytimes.com/…/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich… from Rachel Jacobson ) are now posed to crush their grandchildren.

And all I can think is, my dear lord, NOTHING else is so important for the longterm than more parks and more libraries and safer streets for free-range children to be out on.

The other day: horrified to discover evidence of how long it has been since I properly cleaned my bellybutton.

Today: having to deal with an over-cleaned and chafing bellybutton.

NO ONE TOLD ME ADULTHOOD WAS LIKE THIS.

This morning I woke from a nightmare in which two assailants had me on the floor, kneeling on my chest and trying to choke me while I tried to fend them off with one hand while pushing away the hand gun pointed at my head with the other.

Woke up and found my lungs spasming with asthma.

On a directly related note, I love making mental health professionals laugh like today.

Hallelujah!!!

My endowments are finally getting smaller, and lighter, again.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Lord.

It Was Warm Today

Before I was a parent, I thought parents tweaked out about naked people in public because of some superstition about their children being instantly traumatized by the sight of human genitalia.

Now that I am a parent, I understand, we are just looking to get back home with all of the articles of clothing that we left with, and every time our child encounters naked people in public, the odds of that happening decreases exponentially and permanently.

Gave up sleep last night to finally see Zootopia.
Am never going to bother reading another critique on whether Frozen is truly feminist again.

Maggot-Slug

OK, we have hit our first real snag with the "go ahead and let our home go to hell while staying away and healing" plan.

Maggot-slug.

Because hell hath abundant insect life.

Horrified Child: "How did this happen?!?"
Calm Adult: "This is just a normal part of life."
Tweaking Adult: "Not in clean homes, it isn't!"
Calm Adult [wisely switching horses midstream]: "And that's why we all need to work together to keep things clean."

Calm Adult: "Now that you've pointed it out, how about leaving it there and I'll see if I can figure out a way to deal with it sometime later?"
Tweaking Adult: "... That is so not even an option."

Calm Adult [leaning in the kitchen doorway]: "So, how has the rest of your day gone?"
Tweaking Adult [in the middle of dealing with maggot-slug]: "This is not the time."
[Sixty seconds later]
Child: "Could you please-?"
Calm Adult: "Learn from my mistakes, son. Don't go in there right now."
Tweaking Adult [scrubbing frantically]: "Maggot-slug! Not the time!"

Epilogue:
Calm Adult: "So, what do you think it was feeding on?"
Still-tweaking Adult: "NEGLECT."

I did not know there was an evacuation drill at the preschool today. (No reason I should know).

Anyway, the alarms go off, I come boiling out of the family room to find solid steel double doors auto-closing all around me and boichick on the other side of them, and I've got to tell you, for the next few seconds there, I turned into Indiana Jones.

The One Word Pain Scale

The 1 to 10 pain scale has meant a brilliant breakthrough for medical treatment because it allows us to quantify, track, study, and thus appropriately respond to pain...

as long as the person who has the pain can deal with translating their visceral experience into abstract numbers in a consistent and meaningful manner.

This is actually pretty difficult, especially if you are not used to talking to medical professionals about your pain.

Therefore, out of my own abundance of experience, I give you the 1 to 10 pain scale in 10 keywords.

1. What
2. That
3. Crud
4. Crap
5. Sh*t
6. Dammit
7. Fuuuck
8. Hissss
9. Aieeee
10. BAM

Now, in actual practice, there's only six points that matter. "What" and "That" don't provide much medical information, and "Aieeee" and "BAM" are self-explanatory.
 It's the middle range of "Crud" through "Hisss" that it's really essential to be clear on.
 But, for the sake of a solid understanding, I'm going to go through the whole scale one by one.

1. What
"Something is off."
It's not zero, there's not nothing there, but whatever pain there is, is off stage.

2. That
"This part of me has some pain."
The pain is now on stage, but it's part of the background.

3. Crud
"Yeah, I'm hurting today."
The pain has now moved to the foreground.

4. Crap
"I am having to fight to stay fully functional."
The pain is front and center and in the way. All the regular things you do are taking extra time and energy and effort to do while dealing with the pain.

5. Sh*t
"I hurt too much to be fully functional." The pain is now making it impossible to get through all of the things you regularly do.

6. Dammit
"I hurt too much to think straight." The pain is so distracting it derails thoughts and interrupts conversations. Concentrating (on anything but the pain) is really hard.

7. Fuuuck
"I hurt too much to sleep."
 The pain is actually waking you up.
NOW ENTERING THE DANGER ZONE.
If you cannot *sleep*, you cannot *heal.*
If nothing else, always remember that #7 = Can't Sleep.
 Medical professionals would *like* to get the pain down to #4 Crap -- they don't really want it down to #3 Crud, because at Crud a person who is still seriously recovering is going to be pushing themselves too hard-- so they would like to get it down to Crap, but they MUST get it down below #7 Fuuuck. Fuuuck is the point at which the pain itself will actively prevent you from getting better. Above this is the point at which the pain itself will actively prevent you from communicating and cooperating with your medical team.

8. Hissss
"I hurt too much to talk with you about how much I hurt because it is taking active concentration just to deal with the pain and not scream."

9. Aieeee
"I am screaming."

10. BAM
"I am flailing, squeezing/shaking/throwing things."
The pain is so overwhelming that the logical mind is no longer in control of the body's actions.

Pain is weird. Different types of pain hurt differently: you don't bear an ache the same way as a bump on the head, you don't bear either the same way as a burn. Sometimes you get used to a pain, sometimes you get worn out by a pain. There is a world of things that influence how you feel your pain: how stressed you are, how tired you are, how happy you are, how distracted you are, how hopeful you are.

None of that is important at the moment a medical professional asks you to put your pain on the pain scale.

What is important is that, when a medical professional asks you to put your pain on the pain scale, you answer with whatever is most accurate for *this* pain, at *this* time, for *you*.

That, and that you never feel ashamed of your answer.

Boichik is telling us the adventures of his new little rabbit figures. Apparently they are both thieves. Tatee asked what their names were, and I popped off "Bunny and Chives".

My man's got to be in a lot of pain today to have found that *that* funny.

Has anyone else observed that some subconscious part of their brain apparently thinks that the Internet works as a place? Like, when you were going to a place in your house to do something there, and once you get there, you forget what it is you were coming there to do, but you know that if you just hang out in that place for a few more minutes, what you came there to do will come back to you and you will be able to do the thing and be productive there? 
There is a part of my brain that clearly expects getting on the Internet to work this way. 
Obviously, it is not a part of my brain that learns.

Hire Old Immigrant Women & They Will Save Us All

Crones and grannies make awesome stealth members of the Resistance within our institutions. They have a lifetime experience in making sure people get taken care of no matter what. Hiring immigrants is good for our country but hiring older immigrant women who have personally survived fascist regimes to fill positions of judgement and authority is spectacular for our country.

In related news, my big scary food assistance review went very well today, thank you for asking. <3

"Our body of ongoing research shows that people from working-class backgrounds tend to understand themselves as interdependent with and highly connected to others. Parents teach their children the importance of following the rules and adjusting to the needs of others, in part because there is no economic safety net to fall back on. Common sayings include “You can’t always get what you want” and “It’s not all about you”; values such as solidarity, humility, and loyalty take precedence.

In contrast, people from middle- and upper-class contexts tend to understand themselves as independent and separate from others. Parents teach kids the importance of cultivating their personal preferences, needs, and interests. Common sayings include “The world is your oyster” and “Your voice matters”; values such as uniqueness, self-expression, and influence take precedence."

I am watching this happen in the shift between how I was raised, and how we are raising boichik. Right now we are working hard with him on the art of knowing when not to ask, when not to complain, when not to express himself. That is to say, in our position, we must teach him *not* to persist... and I feel painfully aware of the potential long-term implications this could have for his chances of greater adult success.

http://trib.al/IiHkln0

When we first started becoming more observant, the surprising wisdom that I discovered in Shabbat was not that it forced me, as a homemaker, a day of the week of getting off the treadmill, but even more that it forced me, as a homemaker, to hold some energy in reserve to make an ending to the week.

I need to regain that wisdom.

This is the face of the woman who came home tired, slapped some pre-cooked mac and cheese into an oven dish, glopped some tuna and a can of button mushrooms on top of that and covered it with slices of extra cheese, heated for half an hour and called it dinner.

This is the face of a woman whose four-year-old now thinks she is the best cook in the world.

Caregiving Means Living on Stolen Time

The thing they do not realize, when they tell parents/caregivers to take time for ourselves, is that our time does not arrive to us unlabeled and unclaimed. All the time that comes to us arrives already in possession of our loved ones. In order to "take" time for ourselves, we have to wrest each minute of it away from loved ones who are holding onto it as a lifeline, because they cannot care for themselves.

It is not that we do not value ourselves. It is not that we do not understand that we have to take care of ourselves to be able to take care of others.

It is the obscenity of having to take away from those who have too little, in order to be able to give them anything at all.

It feels in some ways as if I have become uprooted by the memories of Jeannette's death that overwhelmed me last week.

All the reflexive, reactive responses I get trapped in are suddenly laid out on a table for me to view in contrast with how one truly devout person I knew moved through her life.

WWJD? What would Jeannette do?

Cheap is the New Black-- How Hip I Am

I'm dying here. Absolutely dying. Look-- it's the new level of chic-- decorate like poor people do! http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/a38373/simple-inexpensive-things-i-did-to-make-my-house-look-gorgeous/ Because cheap is the new black.

UPDATE: Honestly, our cultural status sytem really *needs* this kind of reboot away from wasteful toward thoughtful.
That doesn't make this any less funny from my position.

Cuddling my child on Shabbat morning, watching a spider walk across the wall, trying not to think about a friend's recent experiences (no, you *really* don't want to know) and instead pondering the thousands of years humans have spent quietly watching spiders walk across their walls and the thousands of years humans have spent wondering, how do they do that--? 

when it tripped and fell off.

Not just fell off, but fell with an audible "thud" upon landing.

Eventually it tried again, and fell again, twice-- this time it had the sense to trail a safety cord as it went so the recovery was fasting (spider learning curve!) but still, this was a really clumsy spider.

Anti-social Services

Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me twice, you're probably social services.

So E and I have been sweating all month over our housing review. Because of our disabilities, everything we do with SHA is supposed to be through email-- it's written out, it leaves a trail, it can't be lost. Nevertheless we weren't surprised to get our annual "prove you need us" review by mail, with our case worker's name and sig at the bottom. After all, this review process is largely automatic. We pulled ourselves together, tore our stuff apart, scanned all our documents and emailed them to him and asked him for a confirmation--- and kept asking him for a confirmation, by email, and by phone, for a week and a half as if falls on and off our wonky radar in between nonfunctioning limbs and passing out etc. Twice we've left messages on the main line.

So! Today we finally got a call back.
Our case worker is no longer there.
Our case worker wasn't there when the review form was mailed out. But they have a protocol, possibly required by law, that any paperwork that gets sent out lists an actual human being to contact and be accountable. And since it takes weeks... or more... to replace a case worker, the largely automatic review process is set to just keep using the name, contact, and computerized signature of the last known case worker. At the same time, the old case worker's email and vm are kept running until they have an official replacement... even though no one is checking them.

This happened to us last year. This exact same thing happened to us last year, and, we didn't remember, because-- disabilities!

"Please put the banana peel in the garage."
"Except this part."
"ALL unused parts of the banana go in the garbage now."
"I have a use for this part!"
"ALL BANANA GARBAGE NOW."
"I love you, Eema."

The Other Hierarchy of Needs

I'm thinking about the *Other* "Hierarchy of Needs". 

There's this model that seems absolutely taken for granted by mental health professionals, that to have a healthy life every person should be addressing their individual needs first, then work and family needs, and after that the needs of their community (be it friends, church, or Waterbuffalo Brotherhood), and finally tend to the needs of Society, as in Figure 1.

Note-- if this sounds all good and self-evident, please consider this is how we started out with a model of government based on the idea that wealthy white males should be in charge of all the rest of us, because they were the only ones with enough leisure to.

Now, current reality is we are raised with this huge distinction between Tangible Needs and Intangible Needs (which have to fight to be recognized as needs at all), so the model most people are carrying around in their heads of what they "should" be doing looks more like Figure 2-- Put on your own air-mask first, then your child's air-mask, then do what you are paid to do... and then the other needs prioritized by proximity.

Except for the Ego-Saviors of Figure 3, whose idea of themselves is collapsed into what gives them the best inner boost-- the people so eager to prove themselves at work and to the world that they reflexively put family last.

Then there's the Martyr-Managers of Figure 4, who are constantly juggling and judging which particular need is greatest at the moment with everything infringing on everything else and getting sacrificed in turn.

The difficulty with all these models so far is, they are very based in privilege. They are all very rooted in taking for granted a world in which what is happening at the level of Society is not going to have a direct impact on whether you can walk down the street in safety. That's not actually true. To my understanding, when African-Americans speak of "getting woke", they are speaking of a moment of realization that their personal needs and family needs depend on successful social action. I think this is why so many people of color activists I'm hearing are so frustrated by the idea of "Resistance Fatigue", because the very phrase "Resistance Fatigue" suggests someone falling back into the status quo framework of their priorities after temporarily stretching themselves out to meet a current crisis... when the very first work that is required is to recalibrate the framework entirely to reflect the interrelatedness of all needs. (Figure 5)

These are first thoughts fumbled out with one hand. What do you think? How do you want to prioritize resources and responsibilities in your life?

Adult [Holding box with new inhaler] "Wait-- did you hear--? [Shakes box, which rattles impressively.] "Do you think-- It is! It is! I know it is! There's a bag of 'Do Not Eat' in this! I've got another one!!!"

Other Adult: "Why do I ever spend money on you?"

"One of us needs to have a brain, other than the child, because his is devious."

Dog-Apes

We're dog-apes. 
This is what I'm processing today.
Other apes suck at collaboration. 
Studies have shown a chimpanzee is never going to look at what you are looking at, a basic that humans need to master before leaving infancy.
You know who actually does collaboration? Canines. Canines collaborate for hunting and group movement. 
A scientific team recorded a hunting group of wolves return to its den to find that the mother and cubs had been hiding while a bear had come all too close to finding them. The wolves examined the bear tracks, conferred, split up into a guard-group and a second hunting group, which then tracked down the bear and killed it through coordinated attack, sacrificing one of their own in the process.
That's wolves. Dogs are not descended from wolves; dogs and wolves have a common ancestor. Wolves live *exclusively* in biological family units. There is no such thing in nature as a wolf pack-- something early scientists blew because they were studying only captive wolves (the equivalent of trying to understand human society while studying only prison populations) and because they *assumed* wolves must form packs because dogs do. But pack-forming is precisely what sets dogs apart from wolves-- the evolution of dogs took the collaborative capacity of wolves one step further: dogs are capable of choosing their families.
And we, are dog-apes.
Being like dogs is what makes us human.
Being like humans is what makes them dogs.

Learned on Metro: Bike-Shedding

When we are running late, boichik and I end up on a bus also ridden by a pair of very talkative, very young STEM professionals who have deeply male-bonded over having the same job at different companies. 

Their morning bus ride is their equivalent of a daily kaffeeklatsch... and my equivalent of watching Seinfeld. 
Today I learned about "bike-shedding." 

Imagine a white-collar neighborhood getting together to build a community bike shed. The majority of the participants have no actual building experience, so instead planning sessions dissolve into power plays in which the individuals who know the least try to maximize their personal sense of competence and control by forcing everyone else to hyper-focus on whatever trivial aspect of the project they think they understand-- like, picking the paint color. 
This, is bike-shedding. 

You're welcome.

Ripe Chestnuts for Bear Cubs

"I want out," I said to my husband.  It was one of those terrible nighttime rants he endures from me, when my own endurance is gone, my bladder wakes me up to my exhaustion, and my misery bursts loose like pus from a wound.  "I want out.  I have lost any sense of ability to make any of my dreams happen, to make life better in any way, I can not even see myself as of value to our boy anymore and that hurts the most, and any time I have time to feel anything I just want out."

And back to bed.  And on to another day of what needed to be done.

What needed to be done that day included a visit to a friend's house, time spent with two children with whom I used to spend a great deal of time.  In the middle of my visit the younger child-- the one we fear may either take over or destroy the world-- suddenly looked up at me and shouted, 

"You're a unicorn!"

At which point the older child spun and said, "Oh my gosh, T is totally a unicorn!"


Stop. All. Buses.


So at this point it is relevant to say that I grew up back before unicorns were cute.


I grew up when unicorns were serious.

Unicorns were sublime.

Unicorns were untameable, incorruptible, miraculous, and potentially deadly.

I was a hideously alienated child with no sense of ownership of my body.  I didn't think of myself as human.  My first counselor would later comment that I did not live in Reality, I visited sometimes. Throughout my formative years, where I really lived, I was, of course, a unicorn.

So suddenly being called a unicorn was kind of like walking down a hallway and falling into the ocean.  It took me a moment to get my head up out of the water enough to say,

"What?"

Then they showed me this little laminated card that had shown up at birthday, identifying all the important characteristics of unicorns.

Unicorns don't cheat.  Unicorns think of others.  Unicorns help when needed.  Unicorns aren't late.  Unicorns respect the earth.

So I'm reading this...

and I am thinking about how this is clear use of marketing techniques to incentivize mature behavior for a segment of the population that has heretofore been trained to get their kicks being self-indulgent princesses...

but I'm also thinking, "OMG THIS IS ACTUALLY ME I REALLY AM A UNICORN"...  

and at the same time, my brain is all over the direct connections between this and my struggle to reframe self-worth as valuing what is ordinary...

and I'm also standing there with the fact that this is what these two particular children with whom I have spent so much time-- these two children who have fought with me, screamed at me, ranted at me and railed against me, locked me out and lied to me ad infibium, these children with whom I have tried so hard and felt such failure-- this is what they think of me.

And, standing there with that piece of plasticized, mass-manufactured pop culture claptrap in my hand, I stopped wanting out.

I stopped thinking I was worthless.

Maybe Elwood P. Dood is right.  Maybe sometimes the necessary end to the struggle with Reality is to win out over it.

Time to remember: I am a unicorn.

The WIC Appointment

The WIC Appointment

I am too tired to help you help me.

I am too tired to remember the words that worked

for the last one of you.

I am too tired to keep up my end of the pretense

that this is a meeting between equals,

or a client being served.

I am a poor woman being bribed with a bag of food

to let the government inspect her child and her life,

and I am too tired to make a good impression.

I am too tired to keep up with your questions 

and my child's questions

all hitting me at the same time

as my child climbs the foot-high child chair in your office

and you look at me in horror for my failure to intervene

because I am too tired to remember 

there is a middle-class virtue of not climbing furniture, 

not anything, not anyone, not anywhere, not ever.

I am too tired to make like a helicopter for your approval.

I am too tired to explain that with two disabled parents

and a playground once a month or less

what a blessing it is this child has learned to use

Chairs, stairs, walls, falls, tumbles, bumbles, and leaps

to embrace a sense of physical self and physical wealth

that is ever so much more important

than flashcards at this or any other age

as I know all too well from having a body that has been

too weak too slow too sick and for so long 

too tired to feel like home.

I am too tired to teach you, too tired to reach you

across the expanse of three feet, one desk, 

and more differences than you can imagine.

Just don't put me through another amateur psych eval.

Don't call CPS because my child climbed a chair.

Don't turn on me because I was too tired
to help you escape
feeling like what you are

an agent of the government

using food as a bribe

to inspect poor parents,

our children,

our lives.

Closer to Inclusion

I wanted to write this up because it is such a pointed example.

So our family qualifies for this very special program at boichik's preschool where parents actually get to come in and work one on one with a child development specialist on improving our communication as a family.

We have not yet been able to take advantage of this great opportunity because E's health and endurance are not yet up to the weekly bus ride in to the preschool and back with a long meeting in the middle.

So, the other week, a staff member greeted me with an exuberant grin and the big news to look out for an email from the child development specialist about the possibility of meeting in that specialist's home office, which they'd just realized is in our own neighborhood exclamation point.

To her visible surprise, I did not respond with enthusiasm, but only with curiousity.  "Oh," I said.  "What's the address?"

As it turns out, the office, in our neighborhood, would be a forty-five minute trek for my legs and his powerchair along poorly kept streets with no sidewalks and at least one doozy of a hill.

It would take about the same amount of time as getting to the preschool, a huge amount more energy, very much less safety, and it would actually be physically impossible for me to pull it off and then get back to a bus stop in time to get to the preschool and pick up our boichik.

Now-- it is incredibly important to me to be clear here that I am not writing this up to shame the two staff members and the child development specialist who were all so gung-ho at the wonderful realization of how "close" the office was to where we live.

Quite the opposite, my point here is that three individuals, all of whom are tremendously intelligent, deeply invested in making things work, actively employed in social justice-oriented work, and not only aware of but actually focused on my family's particular circumstances, all missed the mark here the the exact same way.

They didn't know what they didn't know.

When you drive, Closer = Faster & Easier.  This is a no-brainer.  It's self-evident.  It's the way of the world.  It does not require any kind of awareness or analysis.  Sure, if you want to be nit-picky you can come up with some exceptions-- but not between basics like someplace in your own neighborhood versus an infamously challenging address six miles away.

When you bus, there is no given relationship between closer and faster. Really.  There are places in my own city that take me longer to reach by bus than my parents' house *three counties* away.

Our brains are not built to reinvent the wheel every new situation.  Our brains are built to whip up quick, good ideas stretching out from the steady structure of what we don't have to think about.  We *need* our "no-brainers" to function, and that is why all the sensitivity training in the world cannot teach someone to think about what they don't think about.  No matter how well trained you are, you do not know what you do not know until you actually encounter it.

This is where the training pays off-- because the whole point here is that this is not the story of a sensitivity-fail.

**This is what SUCCESS looks like.**

The staff member I was talking to followed her training perfectly.
She caught that there was a difference in my perspective and her perspective as soon as I wasn't enthusiastic as she was.
Then, she listened.
She listened as long as I had something to say.
Then, she invited me to tell her more.
Once I was done, she repeated back to me what she understood, and checked in with me if she'd gotten it right.
And then, she checked in with me as to what I would like her to say to the other staff members, and where we could go from here.

At no point did she assume I wasn't catching on to the implications here, or that I must not care as much about this opportunity as she thought I did, or try to explain at me why I should be enthusiastic.  She did not move to protect her perspective or defend her ego in any way at any time.

**This is what success looks like.**

We need to hear that.  We need to remember that.
Because anyone who grows up centered, grows up told in a million ways that where *you* stand is the magic place of perfect potential from which you can be anything or understand anybody.
The very foundation of institutionalized prejudice is indoctrinating privileged children with the idea that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion.
If you believe that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion, that you are "supposed" to be able to relate to anybody and imagine anything, then you've been systematically taught that other people's life experiences don't really matter.
If you believe that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion, then every single time you face the fact that you don't understand where someone is coming from, you are going to experience it as insult and injury.
You are going to experience any evidence of your own failure to understand as an accusation that you aren't smart enough, you don't care enough, and without even meaning to you are going to start looking for reasons and ways to dismiss the person who is coming from different life experience.

It isn't just that inclusivity is a process, not a goal to be checked off after a few books or hours' training.
It is more.  It is that this healthy, necessary, vital and unending process looks exactly like "failure".
There will always be another thing that you don't know that you don't know.  Always.  Always.  Always.
Making peace with that truth is the first step out of one's own sense of centeredness.