On Vacation
We’ll be in Yellowstone August 16-22. Needless to say I don’t plan to spend it near a computer. Have a great end of August everyone!
Senior Space Cadet
I hardly know the lady. We’ve been working together off an on for a big project for a couple months. It became clear when the project started in earnest that she wasn’t quite there. I might have called her a space cadet except she is over 50. Even stranger, she is a senior civil servant, a grade GS-15, one grade higher than I am and as high as one can get in the civil servant system without becoming an executive.
She dresses immaculately and drives herself to work every morning. She parks on the street but seems oblivious to the tickets that accumulate on her car because she has forgotten how to feed a meter. She can find her way home well enough and on the surface seems to be doing her job quite well. But she will interrupt conversations with completely inane remarks. She attends meetings but rarely contributes anything. Originally not knowing any better we gave her plenty of action items. But they rarely got done. We do her action items now. She seems to have the ability to find her way to our meetings if they show up on her calendar. But she is there in body only.
She can be very lucid on certain topics like her daughter, but new information coming in does not seem to get processed. She can stop in the middle of a hallway and just stay there like a zombie. Her speech is often halting and she will repeat the same things over and over again.
She is more than likely mentally ill. I have been told it wasn’t that long ago that she was another high charging senior employee, fully earning her pay that likely tops $100,000 a year. Now I’m not sure she does anything resembling productivity. And it doesn’t appear that she has any idea that her behavior has changed.
If she leaves through a different entrance and needs to get back in she can’t find her way to the entrance. The guards take her by the hand and escort her to the main entrance. She couldn’t navigate her way to the building across the street to attend a meeting. When these events happen she doesn’t appear upset or anything. She just stops where she is at and if she stands there long enough she may turn around and go back to her office.
I hear she is divorced and lives alone. We all know about her college age daughter since that is her one topic of conversation. Much of the time she seems lucid and in the present. And then an inanity will come out of her mouth or she will stop where she is like a deer looking into the headlights of an oncoming car.
Presumably her supervisor has observed her behavior but it doesn’t appear that anyone is doing anything about it. It’s hard to know what to do in a situation like this. Employee actions and grievances are a laborious process that requires utmost respect for the employee and frequent redundant notices. But it’s not clear whether if her boss called these issues to her attention they would even register. Short term memory seems to be gone. I’m not sure she could add two numbers together.
The only thing I know is that I am covering a lot of her slack. At first I resented it and now I am sympathetic. She makes me feel the fragility of our species. In her case though she is clearly mentally ill but she doesn’t seem to know it.
How did it happen? I have no idea. One person suggested she might have had a mini-stroke that destroyed some part of her brain. It seems plausible. I am more concerned about what should be done about her problem. Right now those of us around her simply choose to note and not do anything about the problem. But one of these days the law of averages will catch up on her, and she will be hurt by someone, or herself, because she has lost a fair amount of her wits and her common sense.
There are lots of mentally ill people out there. I’m wondering if she is some sort of future street person. Hopefully her daughter has noticed her symptoms and is thinking through her issues. But if she doesn’t see parking tickets she probably is also ignoring creditors. Perhaps one day she will come home to find all her stuff on the street corner.
I have no lessons to derive from this. But it makes me aware of the fragility of life, and how I will be lucky if I can escape one of these common mental or physical impairments and keep my wits into my doddering senior years. I wish there was someone who could do something for this woman. I just don’t know who, nor do I know exactly what it is she needs.
The Rest of the Story
I try to keep this web log focused on my what I hope are interesting and perhaps even profound observations. I try not to put in it all the trivialities of life that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. But I thought maybe for a change I should fill in some of the gaps so you know just what it is I DO during the days and why this web log stays blank for days at a time.
I’ve been especially busy this week, although I did manage to take yesterday off as a day of much needed leave. But even on my day of leave I was busy keeping doctor’s appointments, shuffling my daughter to summer school, buying bulk items at the superstore and picking her up at a remote friend’s houses. I just didn’t have as many distractions, and for that I felt blessed.
My workdays start at 5:20 a.m. when the alarm clock goes off. I dress in the dark while my wife snoozes, eat a hurried breakfast and I am out the door by 5:53. I need to be at the Reston South Park and Ride commuter lot by 6 AM to catch a vanpool that takes me to work. We sail down the Dulles Toll Road and with luck and the wind at our back I am in my office at 6:45 AM.
This week though I had to relocate to a new office. We were abruptly moved to another building in February 2002 and since then we’ve been gypsies. For three months due to lack of space I shared office space with another guy. When a small office (no door) opened up I pressed my case and with some politicking I was able to inhabit it as long as the lady whose office it was (she was on a long term detail) wasn’t inhabiting it. It was a neat little office: I had a commanding view of the National Archives. I’m unlikely ever to get a better view in the remainder of my career.
But the lady is moving back and I had to relocate. The division that I work is currently scattered over three floors. Once upon a time we were all together in one place – imagine that! We were promised that we would be brought back together again, but strings of promises went unfulfilled. Now I hear that in about three months we’ll be consolidated back in the same area I just vacated.
But I elected to move upstairs to a nice cube along a window that had been long vacated and it seemed I had all the permissions. So Tuesday morning I moved up there only to discover someone else had plans for that cube. So I was shuffled to another larger area, with no window, that is pretty nice. But I also know it will be a transient place.
But if that weren’t enough no sooner had I moved into THAT space when I learned that my move was causing inter office political ripples of some sort. My boss wanted to know if I wanted to move back down to the sixth floor: several offices were vacant. I asked: if we’re moving back there permanently pretty soon would this be my permanent space? Well, no. So I opted to stay where I am and I’m still not even sure this space is semi permanent. But at least I am with my own kind. Room 702 is full of IT (Information Technology) folk. And knowing the way things work in our agency I could be where I am now for years so I might well be in my new permanent space, I just don’t know it yet. Clearly space management is not one of our organization’s strong suits.
As a project manager I shuffle a lot of projects. With a recent degree in Software Systems Engineering it would be nice if I did some of it. But no, my main task at the moment is honchoing an IT opportunity fair for the Department of Health and Human Services. So about 70% of my otherwise busy day is clogged with that: questions from vendors, watching our appointment and registration systems book up, attending meetings, holding conference calls and basically just trying to get other people to do things in a timely basis. What I really do is manage chaos (yes, I know that is an oxymoron but it fits). Ideally I like to get some exercise time during my lunch. But there was no chance for that on either Monday or Tuesday. And no chance to do it at home either.
Meanwhile, other projects are coming due. A long overdue assessment of some enterprise reporting solutions needs to come to a conclusion. So I spend time meeting with the testers and going over issues, pros and cons, and working on PowerPoint slides for my presentation on Monday. While trying to do that email streams in and the phone (once it was reconnected on Wednesday) starts ringing often. Usually phone calls are from vendors with questions about the IT Opportunity Fair. I am the casualty of the moment of the profit motive. As the new outreach coordinator (a position to which I did not aspire) every vendor smelling profits wants to talk with me. I really wish I wasn’t paid to talk to them because I got other crap to do which seems a lot more pressing.
In short there is almost no time for a respite. It’s go from the moment I get in to the moment I leave. And every day I have to sit and judge what I’m working on. What is really important today and what can I safely slack off on? I decided this week I can slack off on finishing the quotes I need to renew some service and support contracts. But that will hit the fan soon too.
The van comes by and picks me up about 4:30 p.m. I am usually home about 5:30. (And on Thursday I was drafted to drive the van; that meant long walks to and from the Department of Agriculture, where the van resides during the day.) But no rest for the weary for this parent. It’s usually something. One night it was take Rosie to see a doctor. The other night it was take her to church (both directions) where she is participating in a play. This usually means I grab a quick dinner by myself after I get home.
So when there is free time it is an hour or so in the evening to catch my breath. You’ll forgive me if I am not up to blogging; at that point I just need to veg a little.
Now I hope I don’t sound like I am whining. I am paid very good money and my days may be long but I have a good job and I tend to work pretty close to 40-hour weeks (although add on commutes and it is more like 60 hour weeks). I have time to attend to both my daughter and my wife and I’m grateful for this too.
Still, as busy as these weeks get sometimes, there is something about the awful franticness of it that invigorates me. I got home from work on Thursday close to exhausted but exhilarated in some sense. I wonder if a juggler gets the same thill when thrown one more ball and still managing to keep them all in the air. It is better to feel exhilarated I guess, than annoyed. Much of this sort of work is boring but if it comes fast enough I don’t have time to notice it.
So I’m recharging this weekend, or trying to. I will leave shortly to go running, but I have already spent close to two hours taking my daughter to the orthodontist and now she is at church again practicing for the play.
And that, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.
Happily ever after
It’s been a busy three-day weekend but at least I wasn’t at work. Work has not been terribly inspiring lately, but the last time it has truly inspiring was about three years ago so no surprise there.
Still it was weekend with the chance to catch up with friends. As Lisa reported on her blog we finally managed to get together at our usual spot, the Barnes & Noble halfway between our respective houses, and spent 90 minutes or so just chatting about life. We are not as accessible to each other as we used to be. Her new job means she no longer has much time to chat on the job. She has actual work to do all the time now. Mine never allowed much time for chat and after my desktop gets converted to Windows 2000 minus chat clients there will be no opportunity for that either. But now that I know she’s usually off work at 2 PM, I plan to snare her some Friday afternoon when I am off too. Weekends always seem busy: she and hubby are running off somewhere and my wife, daughter and I have a fairly extensive laundry list of things to do. Anyhow it was great to catch up with Lisa. Now I have a list of FDA unapproved “supplements” to try to add more pep to my life and help me sleep better. The “natural” sleeping pill I had Terri try last night had her barfing up the contents of her stomach two hours later. So I don’t think she’ll be trying that one again. But I slept well with one tablet of GABA I picked up at the GNC store. But I was tired anyhow.
But Lisa wasn’t the only old friend I caught up with this weekend. On Friday I ventured into the wilds of the Virginia Piedmont to locate Cyndi at her new location seven or so miles past Warrenton. I haven’t mentioned Cyndi before so an explanation is in order. Cyndi came briefly into our lives in 1987-1988 when Terri and I, married but childless, thought foster parenting might be something to try. I was 30 at the time and Terri was 27. We had been touched by a news story on TV about Vietnamese boat people and had in mind to be a foster parent to one of these orphaned children. We were surprised to find out after we had gotten training that instead of a Vietnamese boy or girl we were offered Cyndi instead. She was 13, appeared to be sexually active, and came with had a very bad case of juvenile diabetes and bad parenting issues up the wazoo. She was instantly popular because of her good looks. She projected a come-hither attitude that reached the radar of every older boy of dubious character within five miles. What self worth she had at the time appeared to be vested in her ability to attract men.
We had her for five months before we had to ask her to leave. She was 13 when she arrived, wasn’t used to following rules and I wasn’t used to coming home to find boys camped out all over my house. I felt like a failure in the foster parenting business. Cyndi got shuffled from one group home to another group home and consequently one school to another school. While her personal life appeared to be a wreck from my perspective, we kept in touch. I occasionally would meet her at a McDonalds to see how she was doing and leave feeling disheartened. She had frequent problems managing her diabetes. She turned an adult with no health insurance. I recall once coming to her rescue to buy some high priced medicine she couldn’t afford but needed for some sort of infection. Although far behind in her school work she did manage to graduate on time with her class, which surprised both Terri and I. We attended her graduation and felt hopeful for a time.
But then it was more of the same. She’d meet some man of dubious moral character, live with him for a while and get dumped. She’d pop into our lives, usually with a phone call, at bad moments in her life. I recall two phone calls while she was in the hospital. If I remember correctly the last one was when she was pregnant (out of wedlock) with her daughter Kelsey and going through some sort of diabetic shock. Through it all I tried to be loving and supportive and told her that I loved her. On the inside though I was appalled. Getting off the phone I felt depressed and wanted to cry. Cyndi meanwhile kept going through men and kept bouncing from job to job. Among her mini careers included work in real estate and sitting behind the counter of a tanning salon.
One day her Fairy Godmother must have paid a long overdue visit. Either while she was pregnant with Kelsey, or shortly thereafter, she met Chris, who subsequently married her and adopted her daughter. Unlike the other men Chris seemed to be a man of character who genuinely loved her. They’ve been living happily every after since then. Until a year ago they were living in a townhouse in Centreville. We saw Cyndi very infrequently: every 3 to 5 years. In 2000 they all came out to the house for a Memorial Day cookout. And Cyndi and I traded sporadic emails that were of the Christmas card type.
Cyndi is now 30. Chris must be doing very well indeed in the plumbing and landscaping business because I was surprised when I finally found her house in the Virginia Piedmont. It’s in a new development in the middle of nowhere but which, given the inexorable growth of the population and Virginia’s wholesale lack of any land use planning, will doubtless turn into a large community of people. Within years there will be traffic jams just driving into nearby Warrenton.
I don’t know what they paid for their new house but it would be considered a McMansion in our neighborhood, except she has a real lawn, not one of these postage stamp lawns you see around here. It would be a $750,000 house in my neighborhood. Cyndi is a stay at home Mom and has a more than full time job maintaining the property and looking after her daughter. The downside is that husband Chris, who works in Northern Virginia has long commutes, long days and often works on the weekends.
While the house is new it is clean an impeccably furnished. While I have little appreciation for interior decorating I was pretty wowed: I bet Martha Stewart would have given it her seal of approval. There was a large SUV in the driveway, next to which my comparatively puny and 12 year old Toyota Camry looked out of place.
So she seems to be doing quite well. We chatted for a couple hours, I inspected almost every part of her house, and we talked about her daughter, husband and life in general. I’m hoping that since I am out that way about twice a year anyhow that I can keep in more regular touch with her. From all appearances she is living the “happily ever after” lifestyle now. And while as a teen her morals left much to be desired now she clearly has her head together. I find much to admire about Cyndi now as an adult. Her stubbornness that I observed as a teenager is now something of a virtue. She has the time, energy and determination to turn her house in the middle of nowhere into a showcase home. Her diabetes is under control. She’s an American success story. No Las Vegas gambler would have bet a nickel on her in 1987. She seemed destined for an express ticket to Hell.
My challenge seeing her again was to respect and appreciate her as a fully-grown adult and to not appear condescending. Much of our relationship has been has been me in the father figure role, and I see her infrequently enough where I tend to see her in the prism of her teenage years and not as a fully matured and capable adult. Thankfully I think I succeeded. It was a meeting of equals. And I hope our two families can continue to enjoy each other’s company for many years to come.
Our next car
Ah car shopping. Ack! Car shopping! My wife and I hate it. That’s why for years we’ve talked about replacing one of our aging cars and haven’t done anything about it. But the law of diminishing returns hasn’t been repealed. Last year we spent big bucks to continually fix up our aging cars.
Nonetheless we continued to dawdle. That’s what we do. My wife Terri has a 9-5 job and works five days a week. Until recently I taught a class on Saturday mornings in addition to my day job. That left almost no time to actually go out and look for another car, which frankly suited both of us quite well. Terri believes weekends are for relaxing and doing much of nothing; the last thing she wants is to do something she loathes like buy a car. I wanted to avoid it too. If there is anything less fun than a root canal it is being harassed by over eager car salesmen.
For months we sporadically debated what we wanted in another car. New or used? New is always more fun, of course, but dropping $25K and doing the car payment thing is no fun. I like to pay cash, if possible, and skip the car payment thing altogether and we have the cash for a decent used car. Our last car, a 92 Corolla station wagon was our first used car. We avoided the badly dressed car salesman by buying it from a private seller via an advertisement in the newspaper. But the penalty was the huge hassle getting a registration and transferring titles. It’s been a good car but it is time for it to be retired. It can’t get above 60 mph without doing the shake, rattle and roll thing and more mysterious and loud noises seem to be coming from it every day.
Which car to replace? The other car is a 91 Toyota Camry sedan, my principle car, and I was sort of hoping to replace it, perhaps with something new like a hybrid (we try to be sensitive to the ecology and besides, we are cheap). But with new valve seals it is running better than it has in years and unlike the Corolla it is a solid car. So replacing the station wagon seemed the way to go.
But we still needed a station wagon. We simply won’t do the SUV thing: we hate them and we resent every one of those suckers we see on the road. A Camry wagon was our first choice, so we fired up our web browser. We quickly ascertained that finding a used Camry wagon was next to impossible. There are acceptable station wagons out there including Suburu Legacy and Loyale wagons but they were like the Corolla wagon: a wagon in theory but not one in practice, unable to store much of anything. Maybe this is why people buy SUVs. It’s plain people don’t buy them to go up gravel roads along the sides of mountains. In our neighborhood they are used to pick up kids at day care and bring home food from the Giant and that’s about it.
Minivans were the next option. Neither of us are wild about minivans. We are a family of three, not of six and it seemed obscene to have all that extra room and to not use it. Mileage was better than a SUV but not great. And they seemed so tall and boxy … we don’t like boxy.
Cars come in two types from my perspective: real cars and SUVs. SUVs aren’t real cars. They get half the gas mileage of a real car, they pollute disproportionately and they don’t have bumpers. Because they aren’t a real car they have a high center of gravity and tend to turn over a lot. Real cars usually have bumpers, and air bags and don’t require a ladder to get in the cab. They have to meet auto safety requirements.
Mostly I don’t notice cars. Fortunately Terri does and the 1997 Honda Odyssey impressed her. Until 1999 when the Odyssey became a real minivan it was something between a small minivan and a station wagon. It had doors on latches, not sliding doors. We did an Internet search and looked at Consumer Reports, which gave it thumbs up. On Cars.com we found two for sale down in Falls Church. We looked at one by a private seller over the weekend and liked it, but it was a bit too used and overpriced. We also stopped by a lot in Falls Church where another one was for sale that looked nicer and had fewer miles on it. The lot was closed so we couldn’t take it for a spin. We did take the first car for a spin and it was a good driving experience. It has a modest four-cylinder engine and will never be the first out the starting gate, but we could live with that. It also seats 7 but the seats easily disappear and lo and behold there is this really nice cargo space for that hauling. And it gets decent gas mileage.
Last night we went down to the Falls Church car lot and test-drove the other van. We put a deposit on it. I will take it to our mechanic to get it checked out on Friday. Perhaps by Saturday we can take possession of the car. There will still be “minor” matters like getting a permanent registration and selling the Corolla wagon. But hey, it’s a step. After dithering for a couple years we at least made a decision.
The place we bought it from too was kind of interesting too. No weird car salesmen to deal with. Just two guys and a lot at one of Falls Church’s Seven Corners. Low overhead, low key, reasonable markup, nothing to haggle over. Drive the car. If you like it let’s talk. The price was very fair based on our research and this car was clean off a lease and drove well. Clear title; free car fax history. We got good vibes from both the car and the car lot … Vantage Auto Imports, if you are interested: corner of Route 7 and Route 50.
The Camry will have to be replaced in a couple years. A smaller car to replace it will be appropriate. Perhaps then I will buy that Toyota Prius I had my eye on. If only it were available today as a station wagon…
Home Alone
It’s not often that I get a chance to be home alone for any extended period of time. Oh there are a few hours every now and then when the “girls” (wife Terri and daughter Rosie) go out shopping. And I confess I do enjoy my alternate Fridays off when Terri is at work and Rosie is at school. On those days I get up to seven hours at a stretch. But these are short duration experiences. And alternate Fridays are padded with stuff I have to do, like hit the supermarket, wait in inspection lines or get my locks trimmed.
This weekend was different though because I had more than 24 hours home alone. My wife Terri was at ConneXions, a convention for slash writers in Baltimore. My daughter Rosie was invited to a Unitarian Universalist church youth retreat in Chincoteague, Maryland. So for 24 hours or so there was just me, two cats (who thankfully largely left me alone), and Rosie’s pet fish.
It’s a weird but certainly not unpleasant experience to be home alone. After so many years of marriage though I feel a little bit like fish out of water. I don’t know really what to do. The complete freedom to do things on my schedule and have no pressing responsibilities makes me a bit giddy. But then I can’t seem to enjoy the experience. Even 24 hours is ephemeral. It would take a week or two to really see if I could enjoy it, or whether I would feel disturbed by it, or both.
I have learned that I don’t have a family so much as a wife and a daughter happily engaged in their own pursuits. Yes, we do love each other and are very much connected to each other’s lives. Terri and Rosie often seem to be best friends: they share a love of writing and Slash. Rosie and I have a bond that is more than a father and daughter sort of bond. We share passions for theater and the arts, and can have deep and meaningful conversations about life. But in what passes for our free time we are more apt to spend it doing things that interest us. Terri has her slash writing and her online slash friends. Rosie has her little coterie of girl friends, her writing, her interest in Wicca, and spells to try. And I have teaching (I teach web page design) in addition to my full time job to fill the hours. In addition I run a couple Internet domains including The Potomac Tavern.
So there are three of us, but when two of us leave the home becomes very quickly just a house. Our two elderly cats seem to sense the absence of excitement and find some remote spots and sleep. And I don’t want them in my face. They sense something is different and leave me alone.
The possibilities of how to spend my free time were rather endless. There were movies I could see that Terri wouldn’t want to see. I could venture into the city, or climb a mountain or two. But I didn’t. I don’t quite remember what I used to do when I was single and by myself. I wasn’t the bar hopping type. I was shy. There was work and the weekends.
I didn’t end up in some strip bar. I don’t know where they are and frankly, I don’t care. I’ve seen enough naked females and if I want to see more there is plenty of pornography on the Internet that is free and much more accessible. I didn’t see a movie either. Instead I was doing pretty much the same things I always do. I teach Saturday mornings so I taught, stayed late and tutored a student. I hit the grocery store because I’d have to anyhow. I did wander down to the Barnes & Noble. It would have been nice if my pal Lisa could have made it, but she wasn’t available. But I had just been there last week. Even the books looked stale.
So I stayed mostly at home, looked out the window, ran a couple miles, worked on stuff for my class, and then tried not to let it feel too weird to go to bed in a big house all by myself.
They’re back. Both are recharged. Terri communed with her friends. Rosie had a good time in Chincoteague and read to us her list of beliefs, an output from their workshop. And the cats are moving around and are in our faces again.
I wonder what I would do if I had a week or two all to myself. Am I still someone wholly apart, or am I now so integrated into something larger that I can’t really distinguish myself apart from it? Am I a fish out of water without intimates in my life? I don’t really know.
Doubtless I will find out again in time. Rosie is less than five years from college. Slash conventions will come and go and I expect my wife will attend more as opportunities and time allow. I will have to relearn how to be my best friend again.
Sincerely Unitarian
I attend the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia. My wife and I were married there in 1985. We were shopping around for a place to get married and it was a tough task because I was an extremely estranged Catholic and she was just a nothing with no particular religious beliefs and no interest in practicing them.
From reading Sinclair Lewis’s book “Elmer Gantry” I got the impression that Unitarians were a kind of neat and unorthodox religion. If I had to get married in a church I figured it could only be in a Unitarian Universalist church. Terri’s Mom was anxious for us to have a church wedding. So we attended some services, seemed comfortable there, met the minister, rented the hall, paid a couple hundred bucks and got married. Ours was a small wedding with only a couple dozen attendees, mostly from out of town. I liked the church but married life kept us busy and Terri liked to sleep in on Sundays. So although I had some inclination to go back I didn’t want to go back by myself. So I learned to sleep in Sundays and enjoy leisurely readings of The Washington Post instead.
Twelve years passed. We created a daughter named Rosie. I tried to explain Catholicism to her, but had no desire to get her involved in that sort of experience. Better to be an unbaptized heathen, I thought, that spend ones days wondering if some trangression was a mortal or a venial sin. There reached a time in early grade school though when she started to do things she shouldn’t. I realized then that we had been a bit lax in her moral upbringing, mainly because we were pretty wishy-washy ourselves. We felt she needed some exposure to churches and religious communities. Maybe a little Sunday school was just what she needed.
We started at the local Methodist Church. Terri taught Sunday school at a Methodist Church when she was still single and thought it was fairly benign. But it was still Christian with a capital C and as an agnostic I wasn’t excited being associated with anything Christian, however benign. I did think it was neat that they had a lady minister, but the suits after services anxious to talk to us over coffee left me leery. Rosie attended Sunday school there for a while but neither Terri nor I could get up the energy to actually attend services regularly. Terri went back to sleeping in late on Sundays. I got stuck shuffling her to and from Sunday school. After a couple months though I realized it just wasn’t a good fit. It was too Christian for me. I would be insincere to profess a belief in Jesus’s divinity when I didn’t believe it.
So I drifted back to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston with Rosie by my side and my wife still sleeping in on Sundays, as was her sacred religious custom. Our first service was a celebration of humor. Now THAT was pretty odd. And the minister was a lesbian. THAT was even odder, although it didn’t bother me in the least. It felt a bit weird but I felt a lot more at home than I did at the Methodist church. It would take many years of shuffling Rosie to and from Sunday school there and sitting through services before I would warm up to the place. I had a lot of bad Catholic baggage to deal with. I wanted to enjoy the experience, throw a few bucks in the plate when it went by, but feel no sense of commitment.
Nonetheless if you keep coming people start to recognize your face. Rosie seemed to enjoy Sunday school most of the time and soon she was participating in the Christmas pageant and ringing the bell at the start of service. Then she was going to the church Christmas party, and we were buying toys for tots for Christmas. After every service she and her maw could be found at the snack table. (Food can be a very bonding experience.) I taught a Sunday school class. Without quite realizing it I was getting integrated into a church. It took many years before I realized I was there as much for me as I was for her. Because there were aspects of Catholicism that I missed and mainly I missed a good sermon. It was nice to have a good sermon once a week. It was even better to have a sermon stripped of all the spiritual nonsense that constitutes most services. I began to look around more and realized I had found a sort of spiritual home: a nice religious, albeit wonder bread sort of place, with liberal spiritual values where you could be who you want to be, believe or not believe what you want, and no one gives you a hard time about it. In fact your diversity is something that is celebrated.
This was weird stuff for someone raised in a very Catholic family where rigid conformity to Catholicism was the ideal. I didn’t have to worry about whether some minor transgression totally POed God anymore. Increasingly it felt good to be in a place with my own kind. Virginia is a vast domain of strident right wing Protestantism. I often felt estranged and alone merely for voting Democratic. But this church made me realize I was not alone and there were plenty of us freethinkers out there. Now I had a place to commune with my own kind. It was kind of neat.
So I’m still there six years later and this year I quietly became a member of the church. It is now my major charity and I am throwing in large bucks into a building drive to expand the sanctuary. It is by no means a large church. Altogether there are about two hundred members. Since 9/11 membership is going up. The church is getting quite crowded some Sundays.
Terri still sleeps in Sundays for the most part, and probably always will. Rosie is a bit more scattershot at age 13 about attending religious education, but she does enjoy being in the church choir. About half the time I end up going to services by myself. But now I feel sort of integrated into the place. It is not too big a place where I can’t associate names and faces. It’s just right for me: not too big and not too small.
During my declining days of Catholicism in the early 70s, the Catholic Church added a portion to the Mass that struck me as rather strange. It was a sort of Kumbaya moment when you were supposed to greet your neighbor and wish them the peace of Christ or some such silliness. It was always awkward and I hated it, and it was apparent that most of the people I shook hands with felt the same way. (“For crying out loud, this is taking too long anyhow!”) As much as most Catholics will deny it, most Catholics don’t actually want to be at church. They don’t wake up on Sunday mornings and think “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to spend an hour or two hearing the same words over and over again?” No, I believe most go out of a sense of duty and obligation, because they have always done it and it’s part of the cost of being a Catholic. Catholicism isn’t so much a religion as it is a culture one is thrown into at birth without your consent. Curiously I’ve found Unitarian churches filled with disgruntled ex-Catholics totally pissed off about the religion.
But my church also has a Kumbaya moment at the end of each service. We all hold hands and sing a song (“From you I receive; to you I give; together we share; and for this we live.”) And while it still seems a little hokey, it’s okay. Why? Because it is sincere. These are people I’ve grown to care about. I know them as individuals. During the Joys and Sorrows part of each service the braver ones come up and discuss their life challenges, and we provide support to them. That’s not to say we always get along perfectly. It’s like an extended family. Many of us are squeaky wheels and prefer to live our lives that way. But somehow we manage to care for each other.
No, it is not a church to learn doctrine, nor hear sermons on hell fire and damnation. Arguably Unitarians Universalists are not Christian, and it would probably be technically correct to admit we don’t really have a church, but a meeting place for services. But it is a comfortable and caring space for people like me. Whatever it is, it has a quite real feeling of true community. I hope it never becomes a mega church. Unitarians are a small enough congregation where this is not likely to happen. It’s a good place. It’s a little secret. I don’t want the word to get out that I have a spiritual home. The place might become too crowded and popular. I mean if people find true fellowship and spirituality in a place where a fair number of congregants won’t even profess a belief in God … what is the world coming to?
I hope others find true joy and happiness in going to their place of worship. I’m glad to finally be some place where I don’t have to go through the motions. I am as home spiritually as I am ever likely to be.
Is Mediocrity Okay?
This is a discussion I’ve been having a lot with my daughter and my wife lately. What we’re trying to figure out is whether it is okay for our daughter Rosie to skate by through life or whether we should push her to excel. Rosie, by the way, is 13 years old and currently in the eighth grade. For years she has been “getting by” in school with a mixture of A’s, B’s and C’s, and the occasional D, but mostly she has been a high C sort of student. She came very close to going to summer school last summer.
It’s not that we haven’t been doing everything we could think of to motivate her. We’ve tried it all from bribes, threats, hands off, cajoling, networking, lengthy discussions with her teachers, punishments, incentives. She’s been tested for ADD (negative). Her teachers say over and over again what a bright, intelligent and interesting girl she is. But her pattern is the same. She starts off the year well then seems to lose interest in about half her subjects. We play the paper chase and try to keep on top of her homework but it’s impossible. She forgets to bring stuff home, or deliberately doesn’t do things. To her studying might be looking through her notes, if she has any, a few minutes before the class. But mostly she can’t stay organized so assignments aren’t turned in or are never even started.
Doubtless my wife and I are mirroring our own childhoods with Rosie. Terri was practically an only child, with a brother 8 years older than herself. She did well in school because she was naturally bright, but not necessarily naturally interested in everything she was taught. If the laziness gene is genetic, Rosie gets it from Terri. I mean no offense to my lovely wife but that’s just a fact. It was okay for her to be lazy. Her mother was too busy doing the single mom thing and just scraping by to care too much about her studies. Besides Terri was naturally bright. In a sea of mediocrity in the Flint Public Schools a naturally bright person working at half their ability is an A student.
I on the other hand was number five of eight siblings, and most of us were A students. I learned to compete against my brothers and sisters. My parents set high expectations. We were expected to be A students so we were, for the most part. Even so I was somewhere in the middle of my siblings. Certain siblings, Doris, Jim, Teri and Tom in particular excelled and zoomed to the top of the class. I had to work at it. I was ashamed to bring home any test that was less than a 90%; I knew I’d get a reproving look from my father. But mainly I was self-directed. I didn’t need anyone to pick up behind me. I kept up on my homework. I studied on my own. I knew life would not be handed to me. If I was going to go to college it would have to be done through hard work, both scholastically and through part time jobs. With all those siblings money for college was tight.
Fast forward to the present. I observe a lot of the characteristics of Terri and I in Rosie. She picks up on ideas and concepts very quickly. She has a unique and somewhat skewed perspective on life. She is an excellent writer, and both my wife Terri and I have considerable talent in that area. At her age I burned with writer’s fever, as does she. My writing at that age never came close to what she is producing right now. She also has considerable talents in singing and acting. Even though she doesn’t like math, she understands it.
I don’t understand why if the brass ring is right there in her grasp she won’t make the little effort to go up and grab it. But that’s continually the problem we face with Rosie. Yes she wants to go to college. Yes we explain to her that colleges are selective and if she wants to go to college now is the time to clean up her act and commit to serious studying. Yes, she knows the consequences of indulging her own apathy: “Do you want fries with that?” Even though graduation is four years away she doesn’t seem to grasp it. We try to explain that she starts high school next year, and that the pressure will double, and the kids are racing toward the finish line. Her fantasies revolve around private boarding schools far, far away where she gets to do things she likes in school all day, not tackle things that she finds boring like geometry or world history.
Is the problem too little adversity in her life? I’m not sure we spoiled her, but her life is certainly a lot easier and a lot fuller than my childhood. If there aren’t enough tough obstacles to climb over in your life, will you be conditioned not to climb over them in adulthood?
I’ve explained that growing up is all about mistakes and learning from your mistakes. I told her it is much, much easier to learn from your lessons now than to procrastinate and try to do the same as an adult. I try not to be myopic about her education, but I try to set a reasonable bar. Getting B’s or better in all her classes should be a minor matter. All she has to do is turn in all her homework. That’s it. And she is doing better than before, but she hasn’t gotten to the bar yet. She gets a couple C+ grades the last two grading periods, but the rest are an improvement on last year. But she feels under pressure, she says I in particular am obsessed with grades, and she tells me frequently there is more to life than a report card.
She is right of course. And she is wrong. It is both. One doesn’t need an abacus to figure out the consequences of her behavior. There is certainly nothing wrong with a life behind the French fry vat at McDonalds. But I also know her well enough to know she would not be happy there. That sort of life would make her miserable. She flows on the energy of music and writing and drama. She is a restless child who wants to suck the nectar out of life. She just hasn’t made the connection that it takes perseverance to get that nectar.
All this while at 13 she also needs to start making her own choices and my wife and I have to continually rethink her boundaries. Maybe she does have the right to be mediocre. Maybe she is one of these people whose greatest lessons have to be learned from failure. Maybe we have to take our hands off and let her fail before she can summon the inner strength to move persevere and grab the brass ring. Or maybe she’ll never grasp it at all, and spend her life getting by. Ultimately it is her choice.
An update on “B”
I guess people do read my blog, and not just people I know personally. Over the weekend I got an email from a lady who implored me to take in the girl “B” I referred to in this entry, and to get her away from the likely sexual abuse that was occurring in her home. She knows of wherefore she speaks, she informs me. From this I assume she was a victim of incest.
I don’t know whether her father has sexually abused the 14-year-old girl in question “B”. Her father is a drunk in denial, at least from the perspective of “C”, her mother. Anything is possible I suppose because B is a very attractive girl for her age. We know through her mother than B has been receiving sexually suggestive email from a teacher at her school. This particular teacher has apparently been put on administrative leave pending an investigation. And through our daughter we have learned that B claims to have been raped. B is somewhat fuzzy about who the person was, and it might well be a product of her imagination. It sounds like he was an older boy among her circle of friends.
But it gets stranger. Because as you may recall from this other entry, B has another friend, let’s call her M, that lives down the street and is just as messed up as she is, but in a different way. M tried to kill herself by ingesting a whole bottle of Tylenol. Now we get reports, again through our daughter, that M and B have engaged in promiscuous oral sex with other boys. Reputedly M has done it twice, and B has done it once.
All while both girls claim to be bisexual. In fact B is having a relationship with a girl about her age, let’s call her N, that is sexual. Whether B is a lesbian, a bisexual or a heterosexual using a relationship with a girl her own age as some way of expressing her feelings is unknown. My reports are all second hand.
So what has B been up to since she was caught cutting herself? She seems to be in the psychiatric hospital on an outpatient basis and she attends a special school for such emotionally disturbed youth. The academic demands must not be too hard. B sees it as third grade stuff. Have I mentioned that B is exceptionally bright and was in the Gifted and Talented program prior to all this starting?
B remains a presence in our life, but my daughter is finding she has to draw boundaries because between B and N she lives in a world increasingly inhabited by the seriously disturbed. The good news is that B often comes with my daughter to church (we attend a Unitarian church) where my daughter often sings in the choir. B then goes with Rosie to the religious education program. For those of you who don’t know much about Unitarian Universalism, it’s a very accepting religion full of people who don’t quite fit in conventional society. B feels a natural affinity for the place, perhaps because it seems wholesome while at the same time it is full of people from a different walk of life. I am glad to bring B to services as often as she wants to go, with or without my daughter. Last Sunday she came with us, and the cuttings she gave herself were there for all to see. She helped with the Mosaic project that was the theme of the particular service. She wanted to play with Rosie after the service, but apparently it was a bit more than Rosie could manage that particular weekend.
I don’t know if B was sexually abused by her father. I am sure I can rule her mother C out. I should also explain that C is a Wiccan, and a prominent member of a local coven, and has let B learn more about Wicca when she expressed an interest. My correspondent may be correct though that the behavior B has exhibited is an expression of one or more incidents of incest. It’s impossible to know, but certainly something like that would royally screw up any child.
B is being closely monitored by county social services, and probably a family judge. B sleeps at home every night now, gets lots and lots of therapy and continues to take lots of antidepressants. We are certainly willing to take her in for a while if it is needed. But we cannot do so unilaterally for the obvious reasons: we are not her parents and we have no permission to do so. And we would have to be mindful of how her 24/7 presence in our house would affect our daughter Rosie.
But it’s not like we haven’t been down this way before. In some future entry I will have to relate our experience as foster parents some 15 years ago, with a situation that had many parallels to this present situation.
Meanwhile we try to be as warm and accepting as we can. We offer our house as a refuge while she is here. We jokingly refer to her as “our other daughter” (since she spends so much of her time at our house, over the years) or “our emergency auxiliary daughter”. I think B feels that we care about her.
It will be interesting to see what happens to her over the years. B is so pretty and so incredibly bright and so full of spirit. She has the potential to soar very high indeed. The odds though are against her. But perhaps if we believe in her, and if all those of you out there in blog-land believe in her too, she will rise like that phoenix from the ashes. If anyone could I am sure she could.
Snow what else is news?
Just for the record, it’s back! That white stuff. You know, snow!
The foolish around here thought that maybe after the blizzard a couple weeks back we were done. Since that time we’ve actually had a couple more snowfalls. Blissfully the first two didn’t amount to very much. Then there was the last couple of days. Two inches, then another four or so in the last 24 hours. This morning looked pretty nasty actually but 6 inches DOT can deal with, 18 they can’t. So the street was reasonably well plowed (but of course they never pushed the snow to the curbs … too much bother) and the big adventure was getting out of our driveway. And the main roads were spotty in places but driveable.
But of COURSE the schools were closed the last two days. Yesterday they could well have been open but the storm moved slower than expected so the two inches or so we got would have only slowed an arthritic school bus. But Wednesday night they were thinking it would move faster than it was did, so they closed schools on an expectation. Today of course schools were closed again. Terri and I made it to work okay. On the way home the snow had stopped, the roads were mostly just wet and things were just melting in general. By this evening with the sidewalks shoveled it was hard to understand what all the fuss was about this morning.
So Rosie was out of school ALL of last week and two days this week. There have been 3 or 4 other snow days during the year. And Monday school started two hours late and they sent the kids home around noon on Wednesday due to fears about that white stuff. At this rate she may be in school in July. However, our school board consists of a bunch of weenies. They won’t let it cut much into summer vacation. They’ll petition the state and the state will say, sure, why not. Who cares if an education is cut a bit short … we want to send these kids to camp instead!
Anyhow we are weary of the stuff around here. We’re just not used to this much snow. We were getting used to global warming. Now we long for Spring the way a sailor six months at sea longs for a port and a loose woman. But I have a feeling it will arrive late. There is still a lot of snow to melt first.
Twitter- New blog post: Recipe for extinction http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/recipe_for_extinction.html
- New blog post: Our lost generation http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/our_lost_generation.html
- New blog post: The age of limits http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/the_age_of_limits.html
- Joe Bageant: consummate realist strikes again. http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/07/waltzing.html
- New blog post: Mel Gibson: behaving worse than a beast http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/mel_gibson_behaving_worse_than_a_beast.html
- Another potentially useful site for travelers: http://www.airninja.com/
- Gadget of the day for frequent travelers: http://www.gadling.com/2009/09/04/gadling-gear-review-hfield-technologies-wi-fire-high-gain-usb/
- New blog post: Review: Ondine (2009) http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/review_ondine.html
- New blog post: The beginning of the end of Microsoft http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/the_beginning_of_the_end_of_microsoft.html
- New blog post: Some lesser known travel tips http://www.occams-razor.info/2010/07/some_lesser_known_travel_tips.html
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