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.

Tendrils

Tendrils.

Last week a friend came over to help me with meal-planning... a conversation that I expected to be all about more affordable, healthier, easier one-pot dinners, because I don't even think about things like breakfast. My friend gently pointed out that not thinking about breakfast is a sure way to keep one's self stuck in a state of not-thinking.

"Look," my friend said, opening my fridge, "You have cottage cheese, you have yogurt, you have good protein options here. What's stopping you from eating them?"

"I can't eat those," my brain replied, "I have to save those for my husband and son to eat if and when I get too tired to fix anything."

I stood there like a deer in the headlights, frozen with horror at my own thoughts. Three years of one of the best women's studies programs in the country, and I've been unconsciously "saving the good food for the menfolk"?

Later the same day, I realized that part of the reason I have not been making progress on Jewish liturgy (which is sung) is because I have stopped singing the songs I grew up singing, because they weren't Jewish. I have come through multiple health problems that have left me badly short of breath, and when I can sing at all I push myself for "progress"-- working on my singing while working on my Hebrew while working on my prayer life. This means I'm not rebuilding my breath and tone by drawing on the songs that go down to my bones... which is part of why I'm getting nowhere.

Today I woke up and fully recognized that one barrier to my productivity is that I have so few clothes, I need to change out of my street-worthy outfits as soon as I come home. Any little thing that requires stepping out the door also requires getting dressed.

I once watched my friend discover a place where a neighbor's morning glory vine was invading the vegetable trellis. Tendril after tendril had to be discovered and painstakingly unthreaded without damaging the fruitful vine. It would seem as though all was done and then another one would be spotted, and working on it would reveal another three...

The shift between a "Thrive" mindset and a "Survive" mindset is like that. Inspirational speakers talk about it like flipping a switch. It doesn't work that way. There are so many sacrifices that had to be made in the moment that became habits that have become invisible, like a rubber band that was popped around the wrist for a moment that has cut its way down to disappear beneath the surface of the skin. Like a hundred rubber bands all over, too many to even find them by the pain.

There is no switch to flip. Each needs to be discovered. Each needs to be unthreaded.

4yo: "I'm cold."
Adult: "And why is that?"
4yo: "That's because I took my clothes off."
Adult: "And you are covered with ice cream?"
4yo: "Yeah."

House Meme

February 27th

"I am wondering how this avocado seed got in my bag."

"SNEAKILY! By the little rascal-- ME!!!"

---

March 1st

Adult: "Wha-- and how on earth did a second avocado seed get in my bag?!"
Child: "SNEAKILY!"

---
March 2nd

Adult1: "How did my house slippers end up on the floor in here?"
Adult2: "SNEAKILY!"