Life. Motherhood. Vermont. (Not necessarily in that order.)
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Author: Faith
There are nine of us now in the Pickle Patch: Erick, Faith, Fiona, Campbell, Georgia, Abigail, Levi, Hermes the cat, and Gracie the labradoodle. In June 2011, after spending most of our lives in major urban centers, we moved across the country to a small town in the middle of Vermont. This blog is about Vermont, and motherhood, and life -- three things that are often fun, frequently hilarious, and sometimes difficult.
Every Friday this winter, my husband woke up early, put on warm layers, ate a huge breakfast, and went target shooting before work with a friend’s grandfather, a 70-something hunter and biathlete. Right before Christmas, they invited me to join them. So, I went target shooting, too. Three times.
To say that we live in the woods is accurate enough, but after a couple of years in Vermont you learn that there are “woods” and there are WOODS. Behind our house is a long stretch of “woods” that rises up to a rocky ridge, and then slopes down to a small local road. Our official property encompasses 1.25 acres. In contrast, we know people who own 350 acres of WOODS, making our own woodsy setting seem tame and suburban by comparison.
Nevertheless, the woods back there are relatively unspoiled. Beyond our own property line the woods are protected land, which means no hunting or logging allowed. No trails, just pure forest.
Here’s what I’ve learned about trails during my time in Vermont: it takes BACKBREAKING labor to make them. Somebody — most likely our house’s previous owner — created two trails running from our backyard to our property line (where the trail-less forest starts), and it’s all I can do during the warmer months to keep these trails marginally clear of brush and saplings.
This past summer, I blazed my own trail. Because our dog is best friends with the neighbors’ dog, and our girls are best friends with both dogs, someone is always having to tromp through the woods that separate our house from our neighbors’. To make the going easier, I cleared a 40-foot path between the trees. After that, I declared my work done for the summer. Ever since, in order to enjoy trail hikes through the woods, I have to force myself NOT to obsess about how much work it took to create the trail.
On the other hand, whenever I hike a trail these days I appreciate the fact of there BEING a trail. As difficult as it is to create trails, it’s also extremely difficult to walk through the woods without them. Once our little backyard trails drop us off in untouched forest, it’s tough going. There are roots and sticks to trip you up, piles of leaves to slow you down, rocks cropping up every few feet, and branches smacking you across the face. Each time we decide to hike in “our” woods, we set off with the highest of family-bonding expectations. By the time we start heading for home, usually about 10 minutes later, 2/3 of the girls are being carried, 3/3 of the girls are whining about something (cold hands, sore feet, impending starvation), and Erick is cursing under his breath.
This winter, Vermont is doing its job and giving us some lovely snow; between Christmas and New Year’s, over a foot of powder was laid down in our woods. As we eagerly strapped on the snowshoes that we never got to use last year, I expected that snow would make our woodland trek much easier by leveling the terrain and making a path clear. It turns out that, NO: Snow only gives the illusion of level terrain and clear paths; once your snowshoe sinks into that powder, you’re just as likely to slip on a rock or get tangled in a root as when the ground is clear.
Trail-less hiking always makes me think of The Last of the Mohicans — the Daniel Day Lewis movie, not the book. Somebody in my college dorm owned this movie, and during the winter of my freshman year I watched it about 28 times. If you’ve seen this movie even once, you’ll probably recall that it includes numerous scenes of Mr. Day Lewis and his Native American counterparts running through the woods. Not stumbling, never falling flat on their faces, but RUNNING full speed ahead, gracefully dodging trees, in complete silence (save for the swelling music of the score).
Now that I’ve had my direct experience with trail-less woods, I wonder: HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?!? I’m sure that the actual Native Americans who once populated Northeastern forests were amazing and knew the woods like the back of their hands, but I still can’t fathom silent, graceful running through the woods, no matter how much practice you have. For that matter, how did they even film those scenes in The Last of the Mohicans? The movie was made in 1992, which, as far as I know, was before post-production technology that allowed digital addition of trees. I can only assume that Daniel Day Lewis had to undergo months of tree-evasion training to prepare for his role.
But what do I know? Not a whole lot, as it turns out. One of the neatest things about snowshoeing in the woods is that you can see the deer tracks in the snow. And let me tell you: those deer and I are not on the same wavelength. Whenever I cross their tracks, I cross their tracks; I think I’m choosing the obvious, easiest route, and they’re going in a completely different direction. Granted, deer are created to know things about the woods that I never will. Granted, the deer were not also lugging Georgia behind them in her baby sled (as I was). But it got me thinking.
The next time I go snowshoeing out in our woods, I’m going to take a closer look at the deer trails. It could be that what I consider to be the path of least resistance isn’t the best choice after all. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere….
It sits on the kitchen counter next to my “desk” (and yes, that’s leftover Halloween candy in the background, and also a pile of cookbooks opened to recipes I intend to make…someday).
You may have something similar.
The Fix-It Pile, as its name suggests, is a collection of broken things that need fixing. When our girls break something and want it repaired, they add it to the Fix-It pile. Once the Fix-It Pile reaches a size that I can no longer ignore, I plug in my magic hot glue gun (what did I EVER do without a hot glue gun?) and get to work.
The Fix-It Pile in the photo above is obviously seasonal, since it features a beard-less Nutcracker and an angel ornament with broken wings. Usually, the Fix-It Pile includes a rotating selection of the same items: animal figurines with missing limbs, wingless fairies, and headless Barbies. (My girls went through a “Barbie Hospital” phase; Barbie Hospital apparently specialized in head transplants).
I was staring at my Fix-It Pile the other day (in lieu of actually fixing anything), and thinking how it’s an example of something I didn’t expect when I became a parent: I never expected that parenting would require me to spend so much time fixing broken things. In truth, like most parents, I didn’t give much advance thought to what parenting would require of me — but if you’d asked me five years ago, I probably would’ve mentioned quality time with my children: going on outings, doing crafts together, reading to them, and generally shaping them into independent adults.
I do all of those things as a parent — but much less than I expected. I have to squeeze in the quality time between fixing things. Once I set down the hot-glue gun, I pick up the packing tape and become “Book Doctor.” As Book Doctor, I repair the torn pages and broken spines of countless books that have either been well-loved by three children over time, or ill-loved by our youngest daughter. And when THAT’S done, I pick up a rag and a bottle of Kids & Pets (what did I EVER do without a bottle of Kids & Pets?) to clean up bodily fluids. Not to be gross, but as Erick told an acquaintance recently: with three young children and a dog in the house, “there’s always a bodily fluid SOMEWHERE that it shouldn’t be.”
And those are just the physical things that I have to fix. Because here’s the thing: I love my children very much, but they weren’t born knowing how to share, or knowing how to speak politely, or with any desire to think about others. They were born broken. We all were.
So every day, I also get out my spiritual hot glue gun, my psychological packing tape, and I try my best to repair broken relationships and mend fragile egos. I’d like to say that my invisible work lasts longer than my Fix-It Pile efforts — but it doesn’t. Just as the same toys and books keep coming back for fixing, the same hurts and injuries keep opening up in our family. I’ve already said numerous times to Fiona — who’s only five: “WHY do we keep having the same conversation over and over again?!” It’s the same question I ask Erick. And my own parents. And myself. Also, God.
Parenting is a relationship, and it occurs to me that all relationships — at least the real, meaningful ones — ARE essentially about having the same conversation over and over again. And that conversation boils down to the soul-cry: Why can’t you love me the way I want to be loved? We’re all waiting on the Fix-It Pile with our broken hearts, and sometimes a parent or friend or spouse will paste us together for a time. Sometimes we gather the tools and strength to repair our own cracks. But in my experience there’s never a permanent fix — not in this life, at least. We keep breaking, and having the same conversations over and over again. I’m unaware of a single person who’s made it to the end of their life, and who couldn’t have used another dab of glue or piece of tape.
I don’t mean this to sound completely hopeless, because I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s liberating. There are fairy figurines in this house whose wings I will NEVER permanently affix to their bodies; there are cracks in my children that I can NEVER mend. But in parenting, as with the rest of life, I think we get points for trying. And trying again.
Apparently I’m starting off the new year by making “Top 5” lists, since this is the second such list I’ve posted this week. But this is EXCITING, a FIRST! Here’s the story:
Annie is a friend from college: inspiring high school English teacher, gifted writer, hip Brooklynite, long-suffering wife (of another college friend), and mother to two bright and creative daughters (with a son due very soon). Somehow, in her “spare time,” she and her aunt created a wonderful blog about children’s and young adult literature, Annie and Aunt. Her blog has given me many great book tips over the years, and this month she asked me to be a guest blogger!
When we found out that we were expecting a fourth child, we had to cancel our planned trip to California. Yes, we’d booked airline tickets to California almost a year in advance. This has NOTHING to do with our own organizational skills, and everything to do with the generosity of Erick’s father, who had given us his airline miles for the trip. We had to book tickets with those miles by a certain time, so we went ahead and scheduled a 2-week visit to California in June 2013.
Then we found out I was pregnant, due in early June. Obviously, California wasn’t happening this summer.
Traveling anywhere from Vermont isn’t easy. Since we moved here in summer 2011, we’ve taken two out-of-state trips as a family: a two-hour jaunt to Lake George in upstate New York, and a four-hour drive to the Maine coast. Traveling to California requires a one-hour drive to the airport, at which point we’d pack onto a teeny-tiny plane bound for Chicago or D.C. or Detroit, where we’d transfer to a San Francisco-bound flight. (And that’s the best-case, single transfer scenario; there are no direct flights between Vermont and California).
To be honest, I don’t relish the idea of traveling with three (never mind FOUR) young children, so most days I’m grateful that the logistical challenge of leaving Vermont forces those less burdened by dependents — like our parents — to come to US.
But I’m sad that we’ll have to postpone our trip to California. Here’s my dirty little secret why:
I really, really miss our friends and family in California.
There! I said it!
The thing is, I’ve moved so much in my adult life: from Virginia to Massachusetts to Connecticut to New York to California to Vermont. Like most Americans, I have leaving in my genes; I’m descended from leave-rs. My ancestors left England and Scotland and Italy, bound for the farms and factories of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So, I’m a pretty good leave-r; I say goodbye to places and people I love, and I don’t look back. I’ve prided myself on this adaptive skill. Somehow, I got the idea that missing people was wimpy, and would get in the way of embracing the life of whichever new place I’d settled. I’ve loved every place I’ve lived, but when it comes time to say goodbye I take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. I just move on. I’m horrible at keeping in touch.
But Fiona taught me a little something about missing this year. One night when Erick was out and I was putting the girls to bed, she said, in her understated way, “Mommy, I really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY miss Daddy!”
And I said, “I know, honey, but you’ll see him tomorrow. And there’s me; I’m here now!”
To which she replied, “Mommy, I love you, too. But the thing is: you’re not gone.”
Just like that, I saw that I’d gotten missing completely wrong. Here I was, trying to convince my daughter not to miss her father because she’d see him soon, dangling the carrot of my own presence to distract her from his absence. Teaching her how to adopt my own “out of sight, out of mind” coping strategy. And Fiona showed me that NO, it’s okay to just MISS someone. Missing doesn’t have to get in the way of loving where you are or who you’re with; sometimes you miss someone just because they’re not there.
So (deep breath): I MISS the people we left behind in California. This includes Erick’s extended family: aunts and uncles and cousins whom we haven’t seen in almost 2 years. And it includes our friends in the East Bay, a community the likes of which we’ll never experience again. These were the people with whom we had our first children, all of us struggling through the exhaustion and confusion and elation of first-time parenting: celebrating new births, bringing meals, watching each others’ babies so we could have date nights, mourning challenges and losses, organizing a home-based co-op preschool so that we could afford to give our kids an early education. It saddens me that I won’t see these people who shaped me as a mother, who played such a significant role in our daughters’ early years.
The other night, I had a vivid dream which is going to sound cheesy but which I promise was very real. Erick and I were standing outside a pub with our pastor from California (those of you who know our pastors from California realize that it’s not at all incongruous to find a pastor in a pub — or maybe this was just my subconscious mid-pregnancy desire for a stiff drink). All of a sudden, various friends whom we hadn’t seen in years started gathering with us. They didn’t all look great; as I recall, almost everyone needed a haircut, and a few had clearly had a bit to drink already. But it was a reunion of pure joy. In my dream, I was sobbing with happiness. When I woke up, there was still a lump in my throat.
There is no doubt in my mind that my dream was about Heaven: a place where you don’t have to miss anybody anymore.
I love Vermont, and our life here, and our friends here. But the thing is: they’re not gone.
This is about fresh starts, new beginnings, and healing.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a few months, you’ll recall that earlier this fall, two neighborhood dogs broke into our chicken coop and killed all of our chickens. Our next-door neighbor notified the dogs’ owner, who called and was very apologetic and offered to help in any way possible. But really, what can you do?
I received some responses to that post, written and verbal, that were ANGRY with the dogs’ owners. Things like: They should do more! and Did you report the dogs to the police?!
I’d like to say that Erick and I maintained only peaceful, loving thoughts towards those neighbors, but I’ll be honest: not always. Especially when the dogs CONTINUED to escape their fence and run through our yard, we went grumble grumble.
And then, one afternoon in early December, the dogs’ owner showed up at our front door, carrying an ENORMOUS basket of doggie treats. She’d somehow gotten word that we had a new puppy, and wanted to welcome our “new addition.” Attached to the basket was a note, including another apology for the chicken massacre. This was the first time I’d met her in person; we chatted a few minutes, and she was just lovely.
From the note attached to the gift basket, we learned that the dogs’ names are Chloe and Kylie. My two oldest girls were fascinated by that fact, and the day after the basket arrived they showed me a little something about healing.
It started as they were getting dressed in the morning. “Hey, Campbell,” said Fiona, “want to pretend to be Chloe and Kylie?”
“What’re you going to play?” I asked, in my always wise, mature mothering style, “Chloe and Kylie Kill the Chickens?”
“YES!!!!!!” screamed my girls in unison. And for the next 30 minutes, they alternately pretended that their stuffed animals and Georgia were chickens. They chased, and bit, and ate. The game included lines like, “Hey, I just threw up a whole bunch of feathers!”
My girls are weird, yes, but they are also resilient. Over the course of a few months, they were able to take the sight of their chickens torn apart, and turn it into a game. They LAUGHED.
I mention this to give us all closure, especially those of you who shared in our grumbling. And also, as we start a New Year, to give us all hope: that fresh starts are possible, that healing happens, and that most people, when you get right down to it, are pretty freakin’ great.
Because Christmas is really more about the outtakes….
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Dashing through the snow? All is calm? Peace on Earth, goodwill to men?
Is that how your Christmas is looking this year?
Mine, either.
I have a little piece over at On the Willows today about our expectations for Christmas, and how they’re never quite realized. A version of something I published here last year, but I like the new one better. Click here to read.
This may not be apparent to anybody but me, since new samples of my writing continue to show up regularly on websites and blogs and your inbox. I still appear to be a productive writer, because I was a productive writer…about three months ago. I woke up at 5:30 every morning, which gave me a solid hour to write and edit before the girls came crashing out of their room. I wrote again for another solid hour during the girls’ afternoon nap. In this way, I built up enough volume to be able to schedule my essays for publication two or three months in advance.
In other words, much of what you’ve been reading from me lately was written back in September.
But no longer. As of 2013, I have only a smattering of pieces scheduled to publish, with long gaps in between.
There are several reasons — good ones — for why my writing has spluttered and stalled. The major culprit was my discovery, in late September, that I was pregnant with our fourth child, followed by the roughest first trimester I’ve experienced. You’d think this would give me all sorts of new subject matter, but most people don’t consider three months of, “Here I am, nauseous on the couch AGAIN,” very interesting. Add the fact that this unexpected pregnancy had the effect of a blender on my world and my plans, and there’s another reason why my writing hasn’t flowed: I’ve spent a few months trying to get my mind around a future that doesn’t look the way I’d expected.
In the midst of this, a new puppy joined our family, which shifted our schedule just enough to be disruptive. We also had both sets of grandparents visit us for a total of three weeks during a five-week period. While this was a huge help and welcome respite during my most nauseous, exhausted, and shell-shocked months, it further altered our routine.
And then there’s the holidays. Don’t even get me started on the holidays.
All of these factors combined to make me feel off, confused, not with our regularly scheduled program. Aside from touching-up previously-written essays, I couldn’t find the inspiration or time to produce anything new.
I felt scared. I felt like I was letting people down. I realize that the world will continue turning whether or not I write, but I do have commitments to bothThe Addison Independent and On the Willows. I felt like I was letting myself down, too; just as serious runners feel gross and cranky when they miss a run, I was missing my regular creative exercise.
Then, this morning, I realized that I was allowed to write about having trouble writing. Because even if you’re not a pregnant writer with a puppy, visiting family, and three young children, I bet you can still relate. We all go through seasons of life in which we struggle to get back to our regularly scheduled program, when even the most basic daily routines seem challenging or meaningless.
Here’s what I think: If we’ve lost our regular program, it’s usually because we’re in the middle of switching channels. We’re caught in that grey static fuzz, and it feels like we’ll be trapped there forever, but we won’t. Eventually we’ll find ourselves in a new program, or a new season of the old program. And odds are, it’ll be a better fit.
If the T.V. metaphor isn’t working for you, maybe you can take a lesson from Bond. James Bond. Last month, during one of the grandparent visits, Erick and I went to see a movie. We sat though an entire movie, in a theater; this was a Very Big Deal. The movie was Skyfall, the latest James Bond film.
The most consistent comment I hear about James Bond films is that you have to “suspend your disbelief” while watching them. To which I say, OF COURSE you have to suspend your disbelief! Isn’t that the point of going to see movies? If I wanted reality, I’d just stay home. But it’s true that James Bond films take suspension of disbelief to a whole new level. In Skyfall, Bond survives underwater twice, hangs from the bottom of a skyscraper elevator, dodges thousands of bullets and a runaway subway train, and single-handedly fights off a small militia and a HELICOPTER using only a hunting rifle. The man is impossible to kill. The film’s recurring theme is summed up in the scene where Bond, asked by the villain (wonderfully played by Javier Bardem), “What’s your hobby?” responds, “Resurrection.”
I wonder if, on a spiritual level, we really do have to suspend our disbelief when it comes to James Bond. Perhaps the Bond franchise has resonated with so many people, for over half a century, because we relate to Bond’s recurring survival. After all, resurrection isn’t really so improbable; it seems to me that resurrection is a necessary “hobby” in order to get through life. We often find ourselves underwater, or under attack — not in the literal James Bond sense, but none the less real. Sometimes resurrection means getting out of bed in the morning to face a new day. Or persevering through a season when everything feels off. Maybe we even have to disappear for a while, like Bond does, taking time off to get refreshed through whatever means necessary.
Then, sooner or later, we’re back, ready for our next assignment.
Yesterday afternoon, during nap time at our house, I decided to log in to my computer and check on the world before heading upstairs to wrap Christmas presents. Like so many of you, that’s when I was first confronted by news of the unimaginable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. For the next two hours, I sat glued to my computer screen, refreshing my Google news feed every few minutes. As if more FACTS could somehow help me make sense of this thing.
On the one hand, it feels like there’s nothing to say, especially when others are saying so much, so eloquently. On the other hand, it feels wrong to NOT say anything. So I’m going to re-post something I wrote back in April, in response to other unimaginable tragedies. I think it still stands; you can add Sandy Hook to the list of bad news, Adam Lanza to the list of bullies, and replace Easter with Christmas.
I find it hard to apply my own logic here to the Sandy Hook situation, but love IS hard. I post this to remind myself that, although it’s important to discuss things like gun laws and the mental health system, the root cause of senseless violence is US: broken people. And also to remind myself that love always, ALWAYS wins out over fear and hate in the very end.
This photo, and all photos in this post, were taken by my friend and amazing photographer, Zoe Reyes.
I feel like there’s been a lot of bad news this year, and we’re only four months in. I suppose most years are like this, but we have such short-term memories that the world seems to be crashing down…again. (I think I have to stop blaming pregnancy hormones for my poor memory, since I’ve now been un-pregnant for over a year. SO I’m going to assume that everybody has no long-term memory, just like me).
Here’s a little run-down of some bad news that comes to mind: daily news of Syria’s violence against its own people; US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of massacring 17 innocent civilians in Afghanistan; unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is shot and killed amid unclear but disturbing circumstances in Florida; Mohamed Merah kills 7 people in France, including students at a Jewish school; Dharun Ravi is convicted of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy for using a webcam to spy on Tyler Clementi, his college roommate, who committed suicide after learning that Ravi had watched his romantic encounter with another man; the “Kony 2012” video goes viral with the story of LRA atrocities in Uganda; and in Oakland, CA (birthplace of all 3 Gong Girls) One Goh shoots and kills 7 students at Oikos University. And that’s just in the past month.
Even here in Vermont, where a typical police blotter item runs something like: “Woman called police to report hearing footsteps downstairs. Police arrived on the scene to find that her husband had returned home earlier than usual.” (I’m not kidding — that was an actual item), there’s been violent news. Melissa Jenkins, a popular science teacher in St. Johnsbury, answered a call for car help from a couple who used to plow her driveway; when she arrived on the scene, the couple attacked her in front of her 2-year-old son, killed her, and dumped her body in a shallow pond.
I hear these things, and my soul screams. Because EVERY DAY I tell my kids some version of: “You have to be kind to people. Especially people who are smaller or weaker than you — you have to look out for them, help them.” I’m pretty sure that most people tell their kids something like this; isn’t it the best way to function as a family? Isn’t it the best way to function as part of the HUMAN FAMILY? So, when do we start forgetting this?
The answer, of course, is that we forget as soon as we hear it. The reason I keep reminding my kids to be kind to those smaller and weaker than themselves is because their default setting is to grab toys from their baby sister, or hit their other sister, or fight with their friends. Violent emotions begin at birth and are universal. Being kind is so easy to say, and so hard to do.
So how do we process the bad, soul-screaming news? The news that keeps us awake at night with questions of “What if?” and “How could they?”
I’m working out some answers after a little thing that happened to Fiona at preschool this month. One day, when I went to pick her up, Nick, one of her teachers, pulled me aside and said that a new boy at school — let’s call him Billy — who’d been having some “behavioral issues,” had gone up to Fiona during naptime and, completely unprovoked, hit her across the face. Fiona had apparently been “great about it” — she hadn’t cried or retaliated — but Nick wanted to let me know in case she mentioned it.
I don’t care if you’re Gandhi, if somebody hurts your kid your immediate gut instinct is to go after them with a tire iron. But I decided to put on my “grown-up face,” and on the drive home I casually said to Fiona, “Gee, honey, I’m sorry to hear that Billy hit you today.”
She said, “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s okay if he hits me.”
Now there’s a response to make your blood run cold; “It’s okay if he hits me,” is something that you NEVER want to hear coming out of your daughter’s mouth.
But, holding my grown-up face verrrry tightly in place, here’s what I said: “Actually, Fiona, it’s NOT okay if he hits you. NOBODY’S saying that’s okay. You shouldn’t EVER hit another person, and if you do then there has to be a consequence, just like there was for Billy today. So if he ever does that again, you need to tell a grown-up. But if he hit you like that for no reason, then he must be really mad or afraid about something, so I think the best thing for us to do is to be really kind to him, and to pray for him.”
Before you roll your eyes and click over to Facebook, let me remind you that I’m not some glassy-eyed, preternaturally wise and loving sitcom mom spouting cheesy cliches. I’m a real person, and if I occasionally fail to mention here all the times I lose patience with my kids or get angry with my husband or ignore my friends, it’s because I’m still vain enough to want you to like me. So I assure you that my little speech to Fiona came from somewhere outside of me (you can call it what you want; I call it God) and took every ounce of my emotional energy.
But after I said it, I realized that it was true. We did pray for Billy that night — just that whatever was making him afraid or mad enough to hit could get better. And all of this helped me to remember that Billy is four years old, and if you’re running around with “behavioral issues,” hitting other children at four years old, then something really is going on that is bigger than you. Something is making you so afraid or mad that you’re out of control. And it’s scary to be out of control; I see this with my own girls who, whenever they throw a massive screaming fit, just want to curl up in my lap and tell me they love me for the rest of the day, because they’re terrified of themselves.
And this made me think about Joseph Kony, and Dahrun Ravi, and Robert Bales, and George Zimmerman, and Mohamed Merah, and One Goh, and all the other bullies and criminals and dictators throughout history. Because once, they were four years old. Heck, once they were somebody’s tiny baby. And if, as they saying goes, we’re all the ages we’ve ever been, then inside each of them is a mad or scared little kid — and even deeper is the baby who blinked against the first light and held every possibility in its tiny fist. Inside every single person is a spark of humanity; sometimes it’s just buried underneath years of anger and fear. And those layers make it harder to access your humanity — to remember what your mother may have told you about being kind to those weaker than you — when, to quote St. Bono, you end up “stuck in a moment you can’t get out of.”
So, where does the prayer come in? I’m really, really hesitant to write about my faith, because it’s so easy to offend people, or be misinterpreted. And I’m not a religious scholar or expert. I’m just me, and I have some things that I believe are the truth, but I’ll also defend to the death your right to believe what you think is the truth. That said, here’s what I think is true:
I think, as I try to process somebody senselessly hitting my child, and all of the world news that’s essentially telling that same story, that I can and should get angry and demand justice, but I can’t stop there. Because if you stop and sit down in your anger and fear, then you just start to fester inside. Erick’s first reaction, when he heard about Billy hitting Fiona, was to teach her how to block hits and defend herself. That’s fine and useful, but it doesn’t begin to address healing her heart. The same applies to us when we demand arrests and reparations, and install alarm systems in our homes…and then stop.
I took a yoga class last week (!! the first actual, non-video yoga class I’ve taken in two years !!), and the instructor talked about “cultivating the opposite.” This means that, when something negative happens out in the world, we should cultivate the opposite response inside ourselves. That’s a little bit like what I’m advocating here. To respond with anger or fear to an act committed out of anger or fear solves nothing; it just makes us more angry and fearful. I think that, in order for true healing to occur, we need to acknowledge that every unkind act has two victims: the person being bullied, and the person doing the bullying. This requires that we recognize the spark of humanity — no matter how tiny — flickering in the perpetrator.
But that’s nearly impossible to do. The worst thing that’s happened to any of my kids so far is a smack at preschool; I can’t imagine if my child was one of the victims mentioned in this month’s news. I get angry enough just reading about these things; how do you recognize humanity in someone who kills your child? My yoga teacher seems like she’s probably a nicer person than I am, so maybe she can just will herself into “cultivating the opposite” — but I can’t. I need a yoga teacher to show me how to bend my body, and I need another kind of teacher to show me how to bend my soul in order to process life’s horrors. The kind of teacher who gets wrongly accused and sentenced to death, and while he’s slowly dying from torture looks down on the people mocking him and killing him and says, “Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
So that’s why the prayer. And why I’m celebrating Easter this weekend.
The Pickle Patch 
