Innocence, whose? Changed, what?

On this tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, I feel sad when I remember that day; the sorrow, the horror, the confusion about what it meant for the future.

I remember the contrast between the sweetness of life with a first grader: lost teeth, Legos, learning to read, and the rage and fear and sorrow from all sides that were wrapped up in the attacks.

I also feel cranky; alienated and at odds about two phrases that were used often at that time and have returned as news media remembers.

There was a loss of innocence.

Whose innocence? About what? No one really said.
I assume this refers to a sense some folks had, before 9/11, that the United States was invulnerable to outside attacks.

But that kind of innocence only seems possible if one identifies so strongly with one's own country and point in history that the suffering of people from other parts of the world, or in this country at other times, never made any impression.
How can anyone have felt "innocent" if they knew about slavery and Jim Crow, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, apartheid, rape as a tool of war? The Oklahoma City bombing? I could go on, but...duh.
I think of myself as a positive, cheerful person, and I've lived a privilege life, but honey, my "innocence" was lost a long time ago.

Nothing will ever be the same.

Again, I wonder, for whom? And from what? This statement strikes me as histrionic.

On Sept. 12, 2001, we went to pick up kitty #2 from the Animal Shelter.
Gotta tell you, things were the same there. Animals in cages, needing homes.
At my son's school, there were happy kids at recess.
The traffic on I-5 was still bad.
I didn't have direct information about this, but am 100% sure that women in abusive relationships had been living a nightmare and continued to after 9/11.
If "the same" meant life had had a certain glow and security, life hadn't been "the same" for lots of people for a long time.

True, I had a stronger emotional response to the 9/11/01 attacks than I have to other terrorist attacks in other parts of the country. But I consider this due to my own ignorance, U.S. chauvanism, and lack of imagination. If I paid closer attention to other attacks and thought about the people they affected, and watched news reports about them, I imagine I'd have a similar reaction.

I guess it isn't exciting and dramatic enough, doesn't make people feel important enough if we say, simply; This was a horrible loss and trauma; the shock from that and  the time it takes to recover are universal experiences. Some things will change, some things will stay the same.

That, however, is what is true for me.

The Dragonfly and the Virus

No blog posts since April. Not that I haven't had ideas. It's just that I flit. Like a dragonfly.

I've identified with dragonflies since I was 30, because I thought they modeled being patient about making my mark on the world. My BIG mark. The one for which people would remember me.

Dragonflies? Fame? Not an obvious association. Let me explain.

I caught the wish-for-fame bug early; in second grade, I dressed as Miss America for Halloween. After watching the Academy Awards for the first time, I wasn't sure about acting, but I sure did want to make an acceptance speech on t.v.

In sixth grade, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was the show everyone watched on Monday night. Tuesday mornings, at Stanford Elementary School, we regaled each other with our impersonations of Lily Tomlin. If I could do what she did, I thought, people would love me the way they love her.

Two years later, the memory I took from seeing the Stuttgart Ballet wasn't the dancing or the music, but the piles of bouquets tossed to the prima ballerina by her adoring audience.

I wanted that kind of love! Four years of ballet followed.

The reasons are many, but my subjective experience of childhood was overwhelmingly one of feeling inadequate and anxious. I perceived myself as not pretty enough, smart enough, or clever enough. My environment was full of ambitious, striving, workaholics, and it stressed me out. 

I didn't have the words for it then, but I longed for a balanced life, one in which there was such a thing as "good enough," one which had time for evenings, weekends, and vacations

At the same time, I developed an unspoken desire to "show them" by becoming famous.

Immediately after college, I began writing and performing comedy. 

I became famous enough, in an early-80s, Seattle lesbian community kind of way, to understand that I didn't like having strangers recognize me at the grocery store. Furthermore, recognition made me paranoid. Just like the comic stereotype, I made people laugh then went home alone to stew in my sorrow.

Two years later, I was out of jokes, out of money and out of a relationship that had crashed and burned,  I gave myself a geographic cure to Minneapolis where I worked with a theater and learned to distinguish gradations of below-freezing and windchill.

When the theater no longer wanted my questionable talents, I returned to Seattle where I could be wounded and confused among people who knew and loved me

Just before I turned thirty, I got a Masters degree in social work and believed I was a late bloomer.

Enter the dragonfly.

Sitting on a dock at Greenlake, I noticed a brown stick. It began to crack open. Then it changed color. I had no idea what I was seeing. As the brown shell fell away, a moist, fragile, gangly green thing emerged, a dragonfly nymph. It was a powerful moment which I felt privileged to witness.

A little research informed me that  dragonflies spend years underwater as larvae before emerging onto land and becoming the beauties we see flitting about.  The brilliant, darting period of their lives, the part we know and love them for, is brief-around two weeks long.

They are late bloomers, too. I found much comfort from this.

Although I'd already explored and rejected a certain type of public recognition, I still had this sense that I was destined to do something "great." As with many of the ways we cope with childhood pain,  felt less like a choice than like  a virus I'd caught and couldn't shake off.

When it became apparent that I wouldn't become famous in the field of mental health, developing groundbreaking theories which I would write about in prestigious journals, I was okay with it.

However, I still carried the virus. So when  I began writing for publicaton, my acceptance speech fantasies returned full force, unbidden, like flurries of sneezes..

(When I imagined myself receiving my Newbery, my speech wasn't very gracious; it was  always about how accolades and awards are less important than process and living with integrity. I believe that, but it just isn't what's said in an acceptance speech.).

As friends wrote books, sign contracts, and got their books published, I knew something was changing for me because I didn't feel jealous, I just thought it was really cool to get to see people's dreams come true. 

Last year, I finally expelled the last of the virus. I know I'm done with it because I don't daydream about acceptance speeches anymore.

I was sad about the dragonfly thing, though. Since I no longer aspired to  late-blooming brilliance, did I have to give up my connection to dragonflies, and all the dragonflyanalia I'd collected?

Heck no! Dragonflies flit. And flitting is something I've always done well, whether I've wanted to or not. Lately I've been flitting in my garden quite a bit, and to Seattle Mosaic Arts. I'm lucky to have a job that takes me all over a big school, where I get to flit from room to room. I flit to SCBWI events, even when I'm not writing, because I like to see my friends. I light down at home every night and gain love and stability for the next day's flitting.

It's my dream come true.

Aging Gratefully

As I was paying at Value Village this afternoon, the checker asked if I had a coupon.
Nope, forgot it.
Senior discount? she asked.
Not yet! Another three years. Or is it eight here? I'm 52.
Ten, she said.
In other words, I had just passed for 62. Ouch-ish.
I commented that since so many women color their hair now, those of us who show our grey probably look older than we are.
She was quiet. I think she was embarrassed.
This isn't the first time I've been reverse-carded, as I like to think of it. I spent the drive home pondering...do I look older than I am? Do I care?
A few lifetimes ago, in the early-80s, I spent two years pursuing, then discarding, my first career dream- as a comedian. I called myself a Feminist Comedian because my comedy reflected my feminist values, including  honoring the wisdom of elders. One of the skits I performed was a commercial for "Oil of Old Age, for the woman who's proud of her years."
However, I was in my early twenties, what did I know about how it would feel to face all the changes that we're constantly told are bad and ugly?
Ab-so-lute-ly Nuthin'!
It's not like I've ever been highly groomed  or ravishingly beautiful. Even so, accepting the spots and lines and sags has been more difficult  than I expected. Especially since inside, I am forever ten.
My mom used to talk about aging gracefully, by which I think she meant letting time take its toll without doing too much to resist it.
Every time I consider some of the costlier ways to "reverse the signs of aging" I think about women in other parts of the world who have to walk miles every day just to get water. The imbalance between my easy narcissism and the effort they must exert to meet their basic needs shakes the vanity out of me and reminds me that, like my mom, I want to age gracefully.
Even more, I want to age gratefully.
One hundred years ago, I would have already passed my expected life span; my probable longevity (my parents lived to 89 and 91) are profound gifts. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow older.
I spent many long years,  Many. Long. Years. struggling with depression and horrible feelings of inadequacy. For eleven years I've been free of those debilitating emotions, and the good times build on each other in a lovely way. I am grateful for the time to recover and continue to grow.
While my outsides are being mistaken for ten years older than they are (California childhood, sunscreen hadn't been invented yet; you do the math!) I seem to be in good health. I am grateful for a body that works.
When faced with the barrage of messages about how awful it is to look our age (or older!) it is hard to remember what growing older really means: we are still alive, we are wiser, we have a chance to do even better tommorow.
Let's be grateful for all of it.

The Shame-Blame TwoStep

Many years ago, I apparently passed a school bus as it let kids off. A few days later, I got a letter  telling me about my infraction and warning me not to do it again.
I was a good girl (of 32) who was supposed to know what the right thing was and do it. Always.

I felt flooded with shame; self-loathing roared through me in a frenzy of Annie-badness.
Not even a little bit fun.

Sometimes when I'm gardening with my bare hands I pick up a nice wholesome dirt clod that turns out to be something else. Like cat poo. Or a critter carcass.
My response is to scream, fling it away from me,  run around and loudly announce to Barbara what just happened.

Not especially fun, but compared to those feelings of Annie-badness, which mental health people call toxic shame, handling animal business with my bare hands is almost delightful.

My impulse with both is to distance myself from them as quickly as possible

So, within seconds of reading that letter, I engaged in some truly convoluted reasoning: my driver's ed teacher-or maybe my parents!- must not have adequately taught me that law. And how was I supposed to see that stop sign on the side of the bus? It wasn't big enough. Why were kids being let out there, anyway?
I knew it was nuts.

But I was in the clutches of toxic shame: the overriding feeling of being inadequate and unworthy, and until I mastered it, the only way out was to blame someone.

The more I understood shame, the more I saw the dynamic; someone feels shame, they look to blame. Often with no awareness, at lightning speed.
I call it the Shame-Blame two-step.

A few weeks ago, I started to pass a school bus that had its stop sign out. I leaned against my car
window and felt regret and relief: regret that I had been a distracted driver and relief that I had caught myself before hurting any kids or breaking the law.
I don't know if I've mastered shame, but I've certainly learned to decline its invitations to dance.


Tune in to my next post if you want to learn the difference between nice girls and kind women!

How writing is like sexual orientation

Remember the Kinsey Scale? If you ever took a college course in Human Sexuality, you probably learned about this widely-accepted perspective on sexual orientation; On a scale of 0-6, people who are exclusively heterosexual place at 0, and people who are exclusively homosexual place at 6. Everyone else (aka most people) places somewhere in between.

I hadn't thought about the Kinsey Scale for years until last spring, when it helped me with an identity issue of another sort. I was struggling with the kind of writer I am. Some grief occurred as I concluded that my dragonfly-like temperament (flit! flit!) makes it difficult for me to write anything longer than say, fifteen pages. Furthermore, I just don't seem to want to get a book published all that much.

However, I'd fantasized about Being a Writer for years. I've always written, and got somewhat serious about it when I was 41 and sold the first story I sent out. My Being a Writer fantasies involved solitude, avoiding outside employment, and many pots of milky black tea. Along with feeling vaguely British. And making award-acceptance speeches, humbly and with gratitude. I imagined my unconscious  billowing with images and prose that, through a mysterious process, would arrange themselves into profoundly insightful fiction.

Hmph. When I began to understand that a WRITING LIFE was not necessarily the life for me, I saw my romanticized notions differently. They reminded me of how I've heard some straight women imagine lesbian relationships; Like a 24/7 slumber party with your BFF, right? With many pots of herbal tea.
I harbored that same fantasy as a baby dyke. I remember a phone call to a more experience lesbian shortly after I came out-you mean just because she's a lesbian, I asked about a new acquaintance, doesn't mean I'm going to have anything in common with her or even like her?

I eventually learned that I could have a happy lesbian life even if it never resembled the Sapphic Nirvana of Pure Empathy and Female Connection of my dreams.

Likewise, just because I am not going to have a WRITING LIFE doesn't mean I can't have a writing life.
Which brings me back to the Kinsey Scale. Writing lives can be viewed on a similar continuum.

Let's place people who never write and never want to write at "0."  Writing is not central to their lives and never will be.

At a "6" would be, say, Joyce Carol Oates. No, never mind, she's off the chart.

At a "6" are all those hardworking writers for whom writing is their central vocational identity; the primary work they think about and do, unrelated to publication.

The rest of us fall somewhere in between. (I think I'm a "4.")
And we can still drink as much tea, herbal or black, as we want.


Where do you place yourself on the Writing Scale?

If you want to be less quick to blame other people, tune in to my next post and learn how a famous dance step can help you!

Six Words that Could Change (part of your) Life!

Here are the words:
Actually, I'm happy with my plan.

I first discovered the potential magic of these words while working as an instructional assistant in a special education classroom. One student, Chris, never met a schedule, instruction, or assignment that he didn't want to change. Plus, he didn't have the impulse control to stop himself from sharing them with us. Frequently. Every day. For two years.

"Why do we have to...?" he'd ask. "I think we should..." he'd offer, "But last time we..." he'd remind us. It was constant. CON. STANT. My co-workers and I were exhausted.

We cajoled him that we were not teaching by committee. We provided positive reinforcement for non-disruptive behavior. We lost our patience.

"Todd and I can work together!" Chris announced that day last May. Chris and Todd were both smart, fun boys and I liked them a lot. And there were sooooo many reasons I didn't want them to work together.

"Actually," I said, "I'm happy with my plan. We'll stick to it." He kept trying, and I reiterated just how satisfied I was with my plan.

The real difference the six words made for me was at home.
My partner Barbara and I have been together since 1985. We have extremely different strengths, so it's been vital for us to learn from each other. Even after so long, however, I continued to bristle at her suggestions for how I could do things more efficiently, intentionally, or frugally. Kind of like how she doesn't always find my spontanaeity and absent-mindedness entirely charming. Imagine.

My co-workers and I were going to the school auction. We would meet on Queen Anne Hill and take a cab. Barbara had many ideas about how we could get to the Seattle waterfront, none of which involved a cab or paying for parking. They were fine ideas and I didn't want to do any of them. I remembered my earlier conversation with Chris.

"Actually, honey," I said "I'm happy with our plan."

"Oh," she said. She seemed a bit startled, but that ended of the conversation.

Wow! That's all it took? A simple, declarative statment? We had maybe one more exchange like that and 26 years of an uncomfortable dynamic disappeared like vapor in the wind.

Credit where credit's due, of course. Barbara is a willing and efficient learner.

Now, I wonder what six words out there might help me become less absent-minded?

If you use these six words or some other phrase that's made a difference in your life, I hope you'll let me know.



What does writing have in common with sexual orientation? Tune in to my next blog to find out!

Joining In

The stereo had to die before we'd get a new system, so twenty years after CD players hit the market, we bought one. Shortly afterward, iPods made their appearance, rendering our shiny new CD player close to obsolete.
Since I buy many of my clothes used, I am typically 2-5 years behind in fashion, but it works for me.
It follows that I wouldn't start a blog until the market was thoroughly saturated, everyone else had begun tweeting and blogs were on their way to becoming passe.
At least I'm consistent.
And a smidgen obsessed with wanting my actions to feel congruent with my values and beliefs. Until now I couldn't view my own incipient blogging as anything other than a plug for attention.
Not that attention's a bad thing. It's just that we have some history, Ms. Attention and I. Baggage if you will.
I had to introspect about this for a long time..
Today I finally understood; my best experiences with writing have been when I had something to say from my heart on a topic that was important to me. They weren't about getting attention or boosting my ego.
Sheesh. So simple. But isn't that true of most of the important lessons we learn? We can't rush them no matter how obvious they seem. Plus, they often sound like cheesy self-help platitudes. But to the person experiencing them, they can have great depth and value
In my little corner of the blogosphere, I'll write a lot about personal growth- 100% free of ego-enhancing-additives! (Okay, maybe 97%. On a good day.) My hope is that my words will be of use to a reader now and then.

Do you have someone in your life who likes to tell you how to do things, whether you want them to or not? Stay tuned for my next blog post, because I have six words that are just waiting to change your life!