Dear Manese: A Letter I Won't Send to my Sponsored Child

Dear Manese,

I got my first letter from you the other day--scrawling cursive Haitian Creole (helpfully translated by a someone else into English at the bottom). I couldn't tell, reading it, whether you'd written it before or after getting your first letter from me.  It wasn't dated.  It was a lovely letter, though.  You thanked me for helping you stay in school.  You wrote "God bless you," and I noticed that the Creole word for God, Bondye, actually comes from the French bon Dieu, which translates not as "God" but as "good God."

I thought of what I would write to you next.  I also thought of the things I could never say.  Such as: we're going to Hawaii over spring break.  Or, I need to lose a few pounds.  Or, we've been so busy this winter we haven't had time to visit our mountain house at all. 

I ate fresh blueberries on my breakfast cereal today, even though it isn't blueberry season.  It's too cold to ride my horse.  Yesterday I watched my daughter play her second match for her high school tennis team; the coach surprised them by handing out long-sleeved shirts, in the team colors, embroidered with 'Viking Tennis,' beforehand.  To go with the two short-sleeved shirts, two skorts, tennis dress, and warmups she'd already received.   When I wondered out loud why the county schools didn't have stronger tennis teams, my son said, casually, "Tennis is a rich kid's sport."  I'd truly never thought of it that way.

Manese, you are exactly my daughter's age.   I know.  It's one of the reasons I chose you out of the children awaiting sponsorship at Help One Now.  I also liked your photograph, the way you stood with one hand on your hip, chin lifted, unsmiling, as though really, you had more important things to do.  My daughter might have posed the same way, felt the same awkwardness I imagined you were feeling at the time.

I know that you go to school at the orphanage at Drouin, but are not yourself an orphan.  I know that Help One Now started out only sponsoring the orphans there, but that one day, when a Help One Now staffer was visiting the school, a small child fainted in one of the classrooms.  Why?  Because her parents were only able to feed her every other day.  And that the teacher told the HON staffer that the girl would probably become an orphan in a month or two--not because her parents would die, but because, in desperation, they would abandon her at the orphanage so that she might eat every day.  Good God.  The staff member walked out into the fields and sobbed, and later flew back to the United States and rewrote the sponsorship program so that children could get schooling and meals and still stay with their families.

I know that Haitians are supposed to get free education but fewer than 10% actually do.  I know that most Haitian teachers themselves have not gotten through high school, and that the standards of education there are woefully inadequate.  I know that education is a way out of poverty.

Manese, I have such hope for you.  You are strong and tough.  My daughter, too, is strong and tough.  I see parallels between you that neither of you might ever see:  a black Haitian girl and a white Tennessean.  For starters, you both are loved equally by a very good God.

That, and you both have terrible handwriting.

Love,
Kim

Raising them Right, Raising them Safely

I have no idea what I'm going to say.

This week, the internet--at least, the parts I read--is a-swirl.  On the one hand, Kristen Howerton made a plea to her children's schools and the world at large to quit using every random calendar holiday as a reason to smother kids with candy and gifts.  Somehow her children had gotten the idea that St. Patrick's day was always celebrated with leprechaun traps, green glitter, and gold coins, and when that didn't happen in their home they were disgruntled in the extreme.

Kristen's post generated over a thousand comments and was reprinted in the Huffington Post.  Oddly, at least to me, a lot of the comments were from crafty mothers outraged that she'd dissed the Elf-on-a-Shelf.

Meanwhile, CNN  infamously decided to feel sorry for the Steubenville rapists, two 16-year-old boys who were convicted of repeatedly assaulting a 16-year-old girl by the photos of the assault that they and their friends posted online.  Because, you know, it's funny to put rape photos on Twitter.

If you're wondering what sort of scars are caused by sexual abuse--if you're still uncertain whether or not it's that big of a deal--I suggest you head over to Rachel Held Evans's blog.  She's running a week-long series on recovering from sexual abuse; there are already several excellent posts there.  Spoiler alert:  it is that big of a deal.

I'm trying to decide whether I think all these things are related.  I'm not sure.  The homeschooling moms who so hotly defended their right to celebrate everything with their own craftiness would be appalled, I'm sure.  But isn't the overwhelming theme one of entitlement?  I'm entitled to candy.  I'm entitled to--rape?  to treat a classmate with such overwhelming contempt, such non-humanness?  It's a big leap--but to me not an unthinkable one, as the CNN reporter laments not that these boys and their companions were able to act with such callousness, but that their "promising" futures were going to be compromised by felony convictions.

Hey--you don't want your future compromised by a felony conviction?  Don't commit a felony.  You don't want to be on the sex offenders list?  Don't commit a sex offense.  It speaks volumes that these children didn't get it to the point that they not only committed the crime, they publicized it.  They took their unconscious victim around to several different parties--parties with alcohol and parents who were willing to look the other way.

I promise, I'm really not trying to say that if you give your children too many presents they'll turn into rapists.  But I do think that at some point we've got to make life less about indulging the little darlings and more about expecting things from them.  Expecting moral behavior.  Expecting them to suffer consequences--when they're still tiny, when the stakes are low.  Expecting them to be disappointed, and whine, and get over it, because the universe doesn't actually revolve around them, and life isn't going to shower them with glitter all the time.

Am I making any sense at all?

Sarah Vs. Lizard Brain

Strike that.  Reverse it.  (Bonus points if you get the reference.)

Sarah is still not Gully, of course; she never will be.   After Saturday's superlative foxhunt I'm more appreciative of her wonderful qualities and the partnership we've developed so far.  I've also developed some insight into my Lizard Brain. 

Yes, I said foxhunt.  You can stop that about the poor foxes.  Of course we don't kill them.  If we killed them, what would we chase next time?  In this particular hunt, hounds ran one fox to earth (translate, "into his underground den, where we left him alone") early, then ran a coyote off the property we're allowed to hunt over, then may or may not have found another scent, but didn't find another quarry. 

Between family commitments, bad weather, and spending 2 weeks in Florida, I hadn't ridden to hounds since late December, and this was my last chance this season.  I went out first flight--that means fast and jumping--and we had the most ridiculously fun run, across open fields, up and down a few wooded ravines, a quick canter down a paved road, more open fields, a few bogs--flying.  Flying.  Sarah was in her element, happy, sure-footed, and brave.  At a brief pause, the 13-year-old girl riding ahead of me turned to grin and say, "Good thing we have good horses," and she and I laughed, not because it was funny, but out of sheer joy.  It's a wonderful thing, to ride good horses doing what they love.

On Sunday, not surprisingly, my butt hurt.  You don't use your gluteus maximus much when you ride in a ring, but going downhill fast you have to push your hips forward to stay in balance.  Apparently I'd stayed in balance quite well.   Now, I have complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  This is related to but not quite the same as the PTSD suffered by battlefield combatants: in complex PTSD, repeated trauma actually causes physical changes to a child's developing brain.  The good news is that the changes aren't absolutely permanent, but the science behind reversing them is in its infancy. While  I've been able to make progress with some of the modern treatments, I'm still not wired like most people.

Whenever I've had a traumatic trigger, my legs cramp in specific ways.  I don't know exactly why--I'd guess either muscle memory or that my Lizard Brain (the tiny ancient brain we all have, camped out beneath our big Emotive Human Brains) thinks it's time to Flee.  You know, Flight or Fright.  The Lizard Brain--yours, mine, everyone's--is never particularly sophisticated.  Mine tends to be both stubborn and frantic.   This thing with my legs cramping is reliable enough that I use it to gauge why I'm really upset about something.  Is my husband at fault, or is he the innocent victim of a hit-and-run from my past?  (Do my legs hurt?  Why, yes.  Yes, they do.  Then it isn't his fault.)  I can't sleep when I'm triggered.  Neither could you if your Lizard Brain was skittering madly inside your skull, shrieking, "Run!  Run!  Run While You Still Can!"

We have a neurotic elderly dog who panics and pees inappropriately during thunderstorms.  For awhile we tried him in a Thundershirt, a tight swaddling band that was supposed to reduce his anxiety.  It didn't seem to do a damn bit of good.  However, at the same time I was taking some medicine (prednisone, for asthma) which caused a huge and wholly predicable surge in my anxiety levels.  My Lizard Brain was tap-dancing, and I couldn't sleep.  So when I saw the dog walk by in a Thundershirt, I thought, I need a Thundershirt.  So I went online.

They actually make things very like Thundershirts for humans, mostly for autistic children.  They also make weighted blankets.  My Lizard Brain licked its lips.  Mmmmm.  Heavy blanket.   MMmmm.  I ordered one immediately.  It's the size of a zipped sleeping bag and weighs 25 pounds.  I don't sleep with it every night, in part because to my husband it seems like I'm locked away in a cloth sarcophagus, and in part because since I can't travel with it I don't want to become too dependent on it.  But it's fabulous, I tell you.  Supposedly it helps the body's proprioception, which is to say awareness of itself in space (gymnasts have very good proprioception) and also activates deep pressure sensors, which in turn causes a release of serotonin.  In any case, it has the effect of slapping my Lizard Brain into a little tiny jar and screwing on the lid.

Which is good, because it turns out the leg thing works both ways:  when I'm triggered, my legs hurt, but also, when my legs hurt, I'm triggered.  And the glutes must be close enough to the legs.  I lay awake last night, perfectly content with my day, my life, even my past, and my Lizard Brain went running up and down the hall, yelling, "Her legs hurt!  It must be worse than we thought!  Run!"

"No, you idiot," I told my Lizard Brain.  "I went foxhunting.  It was fabulous."

Lizard Brains must be preverbal.  Mine ran in circles and wailed.  I stretched my legs, futilely, watched the ceiling, thought about Sarah jumping the coop.  Thought about Sarah's perfect happiness; about the way she came up to me when I went out to feed on Sunday, thought about how she said, quite clearly, (when horses know you well they speak to you), "Wasn't that fun, Mom?  Can we do it again?  Wasn't that fun?" 

Sleep was nowhere.  Lizard Brain rampant.  Then I remembered the heavy blanket.  I fetched it and tucked it all around me.  Ohhhh.  Lizard Brain sighed in relief.  It curled itself up neatly, at the base of my head where it belongs, and within moments we were both sound asleep.

Not Gully

Yesterday I had to talk myself into going out to ride.  I had plenty of time for it, I'd done quite a bit of good work on my novel, the sun was shining and my horse needed exercise.  On the other hand, I've still got this cough I can't quite lose, it was cold and windy, and it was a day when I was acutely aware that the horse I'd be riding was Not Gully.

I could have ridden Gully, my beloved brown pony.  He was out in the front field.  If I'd groomed him and saddled him and climbed aboard, he would have been very pleased.  He also would have limped.  He's limped more or less constantly for a year now, despite everything the vets have tried; I know what the basic problem is, and I know he's unlikely to ever be sound again.  It breaks my heart.

Sarah, my new mare, is the bomb.  She's bright and smart and willing and sweet.  She comes running when I call her.  She's implacable in the hunt field, she loves to jump, and she tries hard to please me.  Even her occasional 1200-lb hissy fits are mostly amusing.

But she is not Gully.  She's not Botswana, either.  I very nearly bought a horse named Botswana, once I'd faced the truth about Gully, but the deal fell through.  When I went to try Sarah, I kept comparing her to Botswana.  We were spending the night near the farm where Sarah'd been raised, so that I could ride her again in the morning, and at dinner I kept ruminating to my daughter how Sarah was or was not like Botswana.  Finally my daughter had had enough.  "Mom," she said firmly, "Botswana is off.  The.  Table.  Please quit comparing a horse you can buy to one that you can't."

She was right, of course, and the next day, when I bopped around fields and over fences on Sarah, I thought, what more do I want than this?  She's the nicest horse I've ever owned.  She's the first one I've bought for myself (as opposed to for my children) who already had knew how to jump before I got her.  She's young; we should have many happy years ahead.

When I bought Gully I didn't have a clue.  I got him untried over the internet, from 2000 miles away, because I wanted a Connemara.  He'd had six weeks of under saddle training in Western tack.  I bought him to be my first event horse, because I thought eventing looked cool.

This should have been a recipe for disaster, but I was lucky indeed.  I made mistakes, but Gully forgave them, and he loved whatever we did.  He loved to go to new places.  He loved eventing.  He loved me with a strange singular intensity.  I remain the one human in the world that he cares about.  He pours all his affection into me.

That Sarah was Not Gully was obvious from the start.  Forget that she's a 16.2 hand grey mare instead of a 15.1 hand bay gelding.  When I ask her to go, she keeps going--I don't have to kick every stride.  Her natural gallop swallows the ground.  Gully had to be made to gallop, and he never achieved the ease of Sarah's stride.  Gully liked to hang the weight of his head onto my hands; Sarah, thank God, doesn't do that.  In time she'll be a much easier horse to ride.

But when I took her down to Florida she was thrown out of her comfort zone; not entirely trusting me yet, she whinnied and fretted and bolted during lessons.  She saved her worst moments for our lessons with Angelica, which was just golden, as anytime I show up at Angelica's barn I look slightly outclassed anyhow. ("She's teaching you?" more than one person said while I was there.)  She was a big 'ol whopping pile of Not Gully; Gully'd loved our trips to Florida, and always, always behaved beautifully there.

Of course, Sarah was five years old.  When Gully was five I'd ridden him for eighteen months already, but barely taken him away from the barn where he was boarded.  He was six the first time we evented; twelve the first time we went to Florida. 

I rode Sarah 4 times at Beginner Novice, the lowest recognized level of eventing:  a starter trial last August, three weeks after I got her, in which she threw the biggest hissy fit of her life in the dressage warmup, bless her, then romped over the cross country course; a recognized trial in September, another in late October, and one at the end of our first week in Florida.  Then, the second week, I bumped her up to Novice.  It was a challenging Novice track and she did great.

I can't remember exactly how many times I rode Gully at Beginner Novice, but I know the competitions were spread out over more than two years--and only after I'd owned him two years already.  I've got Sarah on a much faster trajectory, because she and I both know much more than Gully and I did back when.  Gully did have baby horse hissy fits--I remember them--but mostly I remember all our long glorious days together, the moments when we felt in perfect partnership, the long years I felt so happy and lucky to be riding him.

Yesterday I talked myself into going out to the barn.  I rode Sarah in our ring, practicing a technique Angelica taught me for keeping my hands still and my elbows loose.  Sarah loved my hands being still and my elbows loose: before long, she was giving me the best trot she's done to date, loose and through and straight, and then she gave me a dose of the best possible canter.  Afterward I rubbed her face, which she likes, and then she laid her head gently against my chest so that I could use both hands to rub behind her ears.   Gully never did this.  But then, Sarah is not Gully.

Easter in the Osa

Well, that was exciting.  We all of us (husband, son, daughter, me) got home yesterday in time to watch the new Pope be announced, by an ancient cardinal who mumbled something in Latin no one could understand, not even the TV commentators who knew Latin, and then to watch Francis I himself come out and ask the people packed into St. Peter's square to pray for him. 

I think I'm going to like him.  Seems like a stand-up guy.  First non-European pope in over 1200 years (and the other non-Europeans came from right around the Mediterranean).  First Jesuit, and I tend to admire Jesuits.  Probably the first with a degree in chemistry, which means he and I have at least one thing in common besides being Catholic and liking red shoes.

So, in honor of Francis I, I thought I'd tell the story of my one experience with the church in Latin America.  This was in the most remote part of Costa Rica, the Osa peninsula.  From the capital city of St. Jose, there are two ways to get to the Osa:  twelve hours of driving on mostly unpaved roads, or prop plane.  The landing strip in the airport at Puerto Jimenez was the only paved surface there; our 12 mile trip from the airport took 45 minutes over dirt roads in the back of a pickup truck.  (Lest you imagine we were roughing it:  we were not.  We were staying at a gorgeous EcoLodge, Lapa Rios.)

Easter Sunday occurred during our stay at Lapa Rios.  I might miss Mass sometimes when traveling, but not on Easter.   The folks at the lodge assured us that there was a Catholic church in Puerto Jimenez, but they didn't know the Mass schedule.  So they made up a time, and drove us there in the back of a pickup truck, and dropped us off.

The church was a cinderblock building painted a cheerful yellow.  (It's rainforest.  If you want a building to last, build it of something insects can't eat.)  The windows and doors were wide open, fans blowing, a group of musicians playing in the corner.  We were early, but people were wandering in, and a young couple had their baby there to be baptized.

To say we stood out would be an understatement.  We'd dressed appropriately, my daughter and I in light dresses and sandals, my son in khaki shorts.  But we were rather pale-skinned compared to the rest of the congregation.  My daughter's blond hair stood out like the sun.  Puerto Jimenez is not a tourist town.  People stared. 

The priest, a man with tan skin and silver hair, came down the aisle, fully robed, pausing to shake hands and speak to people.  I saw him notice us, and I mentally girded my loins.  I'd spent the month before the trip attempting to learn some Spanish from tapes I played in the car.  I reviewed greetings in my head.  I tried to think of how to say, "We're from Tennessee."

The priest smiled at me and extended his hand.  He leaned forward.  He said, "I take it you folks are Americans."

He was from Wisconsin.

I'd brought handy-dandy Mass response cheat sheets that I'd printed off the internet:  the Mass in Spanish on one side of the page, English on the other.  Between the Easter service and the baptism those proved utterly useless.  I'd been to Mass in France, where I partially speak the language, and in Italian, where we could follow along in a book.  Here we had to just stand, sit, kneel, and listen.  Which was fine. 

At the sign of peace, the baptismal parents, holding their baby, boldly came to us and shook our hands.  After that, everyone around us was willing to shake our hands, too.  Then the priest said something I didn't understand at all, but, amazingly, my children, with their once-a-week Spanish classes in their Catholic elementary school, did.  Before I knew it both children had slipped out of the pew and were heading up the aisle, along with every other child in attendance.  The priest gathered them all around the altar, holding hands, and they prayed the Our Father together in Spanish.  My children knew it. 

Suddenly, we didn't stand out as much anymore.

Evangelical Catholicism--Oxymoron or No?

Warning:  this post will be about religion.  It's also a little bit whack.  If you're not in the mood for that sort of thing, go back to looking at the cat pictures.   There seem to be a lot of them on Facebook just now.

The other day, I asked a priest friend of mine who he hoped would be the next pope.  He replied that while he didn't have a specific cardinal in mind, he really hoped that the next pope would be evangelical.  My first thought was that it sounded like he wanted the pope to be Southern Baptist.

In further conversation, it turned out my priest friend and I had both stumbled upon the same book (I'd picked it up as part of my Lenten reading):  Forming Intentional Disciples: the Path to Knowing and Following Jesus.  I'm not sure what I expected the book to be, but it wasn't what I got, which was a careful, data-supported view of why people leave the Catholic church, where they go once they leave, and how to get them to stay.  According to the book, the biggest source of dissatisfaction most Catholics have is that they don't feel a personal relationship with Jesus.  They don't have a feeling that they are using their gifts in service to God.

Personal relationship with Jesus is right up there with evangelical on the list of phrases you don't often hear Catholics say.  Which is probably why, despite feeling that I DO have a personal relationship with Jesus, and DO strive to listen for a calling and use my gifts in His service, I feel fairly uncomfortable writing this blog post about it.

I'm going to tell you one of my Jesus stories.

Several years ago, a note in our parish bulletin said that Faith In Action was holding a volunteer training at a particular date and time.  FIA actually works out of a building owned by St. Anne Church, and I knew some people who worked there, but I'd never thought about working there myself.  My children were still in elementary and middle school, and I was busy.  Very busy.  But a voice in my head--let's call that voice Jesus--I told you this post would be whack--said go.

Go to the volunteer training?  Why on earth?
Go.
I asked why several more times.  I didn't really want to.  I had nothing against FIA, but it was nearly summertime, and I was very busy.
Go.

So I went to the two-hour training session.  I didn't realize it at the time, but FIA very rarely asks for new volunteers.  Right now we don't have space enough to take on any more.  This was, I believe, the last training session ever held.

Good, said the voice.  (We'll call it Jesus.)
Ok, what next?  Was I now supposed to volunteer?  In summer?  Vacation time?
No.  The voice was quiet.  I was puzzled, but relieved.

I had a nice summer with my children.  Then, once school started again, the Voice in my head suggested I give FIA a call.
Well, okay.  Turned out they did need a volunteer, they were one short on Wednesdays.  Fine.  So I came in and worked for, I think, 3 consecutive Wednesdays.  It was fine.

The next week I was sitting at my desk, working on my latest novel, when I got a phone call from a woman I'd never met.  She sounded extremely hesitant, almost embarrassed to be making the call.  Her name was Donna, and she was, she told me, the president of the board of FIA.  The director--the person who handed out the money each day--had just quit.  The director, whom I'd met 4 times, (most of the volunteers had worked there for years) had told her I was the person she should ask to be temporary director.  Clearly, Donna thought this was whack.

My very first thought was that I had longstanding commitments on Tuesdays and Thursdays I would hate to give up, even temporarily.

Before I could say so, Donna added, "of course, we're closed on Tuesdays, and Jim White has offered to work Thursdays, so I'm actually only asking you for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."

Cue creepy music.  Cue the Voice in my head--we'll call it Jesus--grinning.

"You probably are being called to do it," my husband said, "because I can't think of a single other reason why they would ever ask you."

I was the program director for eight weeks, until the board had time to hire a good replacement.  They did offer me the job.  Please say no, I said to the Voice.  Jesus.  I love doing this but I need time to write.

No worries, said Jesus.  Go back to your books.  But thanks for stepping in.

I told you it was whack.

Peeper Time

This morning, when I sat down to my desk in the post-Daylight-Savings-change darkness, I heard the happiest sound.  The peepers are back.

This is a peeper:

Truthfully, they probably never left, but they were hibernating, along our creek, and now they're awake and ready to mate, and they are LOUD.  Your standard peeper is about an inch long, and I've probably got a couple dozen in my creek.  The creek's a tenth of a mile from my house, and I have no trouble at all hearing them with all the windows shut.

Later in the spring we'll see tadpoles in the creek, especially at the place where the horses cross the water.  Then, in late summer, adult peepers will leap out of the horses' way just as the horses step into the water.  This is always exciting the first few times it happens.

I looked Peeprs up on Wikipedia just now; their formal name is "Spring Peeper," and there are two subspecies, Northern and Southern.  I've actually probably got Northern ones.  They're ubiquitous in the Eastern U.S.

I love them because they're the first real sign we have that spring is here.  Eventually the orchard will bloom.  The barn swallows will come back, and the red hawk will leave.  The grass will grow fast and high, and the horses will shed their winter coats and be sleek again.  But the peepers come first.

Hooray.