My Maker Has Bent My Knees For Me

So last night at book club one of my friends said, "I read your blog.  What set you off last week?"

I couldn't remember at first, but she reminded me of my post "Who Are The Poor?"  "Oh," I said, "We had a one-time volunteer at Faith in Action who kept making snippy little asides.  Like, 'If they need help on their electric bill, how can they afford all those tattoos?'  When the person in question had gotten laid off two months ago.  It was driving me crazy."  And I did try to say something to the actual person--I'm not always passive-aggressive--but she wasn't hearing it.

A lot of us--a LOT--particularly those of us surrounded by the comforts and security of middle-class lives, with savings accounts, insurance, stable employment and decent health--get all judgy-pants about anyone needing help.  I think we convince ourselves that there is something fundamentally different between us and "those people" because we want to feel that we can never be put in that position of need. (Thanks C for the link.)  We are different.  We are okay.


A woman once sent Faith in Action. a remarkable thank-you note.  She said that she had always been the stable person in her family, the one who helped others, the one who had it all together.  "And now," she wrote, "my Maker has bent my knees for me."

Sometimes being driven to your knees is a gift.  It wasn't until I fell apart, years ago, that I realized I really could rely on others.  I had liked feeling self-sufficient and in control, except that it was also rigid, artificial, and exhausting.  How blessed to know that you are part of a community who will care for you.  And how blessed to be part of the caring.

Yep, everyone can find examples of the "undeserving" poor.  Except, I always want to know, what was their history?  What did they suffer growing up, what did they learn?  What help did they not get?  What might have made things different?  Once another middle-aged woman came in to FIA desperate because she was about to lose her home to foreclosure.  Her husband had recently died and it had taken all their savings to bury him.  This is not something we can usually help with--the amount of money was far too great--but in her specific case, because of details I won't go into, I thought there was probably another way around it.  I called her back to my computer, asked her a few more questions, did a few minutes' work on Google, and wrote down a phone number for her.  "You are automatically eligible for a six months' deferment on your mortgage," I told her.  By which point her husband's pension would be transferred over to her, and she would be fine.  "Call that number and tell them your husband died.  You might have to send in a death certificate, but they have to give you the deferment.  If they give you trouble come back here."

The woman broke into enormous heaving sobs.  She clutched the corner of my desk, bent over, gasping.  Then she said, "My father raped me every day from the time I was nine years old.  I would sit in school and all I could think of was at the end of the day I had to go back to that house, and I couldn't learn.  I just never could learn.  The teachers kept passing me because I was quiet.  I don't know how to do all that with computers, that type-type stuff.  I just never learned a thing."  And she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

As did the rest of us.  Good Lord, what a day.

Want to make a difference?  You can give a single mom Thanksgiving dinner here.

Beloved Children's Books I Really Despise

I asked my friend/mentor Jane Yolen what she thought of yesterday's blog post, and she obligingly wrote a comment, which mostly says two things:
1) All reviewers are slanted.
2) If you want to believe your good reviews, you have to also believe the bad.

Of course all reviewers are slanted.  We can't help that.  I'm a sucker for character-driven period pieces, known to many of my friends as "boring."  (My book club still hasn't gotten over my making them read Mansfield Park.  You'd have thought they were high schoolers and I was forcing them to read Tolstoy.)  Writers who are chronically, even racistly, historically inaccurate are very high on my personal shit list (Ann Rinaldi, I'm talkin' to you!).  I'm also offended by any horse book other than The Black Stallion in which any child rides or befriends a stallion.  Because there aren't that many stallions, people.  We cut the nuts early, for good reason.  I'm sure I have other idiosyncracies, too. 

And, yes, if, say, a "good" reviewer, by which I mean someone with at least modest credentials (a librarian, a teacher who reads a lot of your type of literature, a national reviewer) says something negative about your book, there's at least some chance that it's true.  If a lot of not-as-credible reviewers (random people on Goodreads, Amazon pundits) all say the same thing, you might want to start believing that, too.  But if a schoolchild says, "This is the most boring book ever, I HATE spy stories," and gives you one star, you don't need to pay a whole lot of attention to that, no more than you do to the glowing Amazon reviews written by your family members and best friends.

Jane Yolen also said she could give fifteen minutes to her dislike, not to say vehement hatred, of the best-selling children's books "Love you Forever," "The Giving Tree," and "The Rainbow Fish."  To which I say:  preach it, Sister.

"Love You Forever" has a cute cover of a baby shredding toilet paper.  The premise is that the mother loves her baby forever even when he makes a mess--though of course she should be supervising him better so that he doesn't drown in that open toilet.   Sounds cute, but it's creepy.  The mom can only tell her baby/little boy/teenager/GROWN SON that she loves him when he's asleep and she's rocking him in her special chair.  So she crawls into his room at night, heaves him onto her lap, and sings.  Then, once he's an adult, she ties a ladder to her car, drives across town, climbs through his second-story window, hauls him unconscious onto her lap, and sings to him.  WHAT?  The book ends with the man (there are no spouses shown for either character) holding a baby girl on his lap and singing to her.  Which leaves one with the icky feeling that when his daughter is sixteen he's going to be sneaking into her bedroom.  There is nothing remotely right about this book.  I've never understood its appeal.

I hated "The Giving Tree" the first time it was read to me, in kindergarten.  I mean, I hated it.  Maybe people who didn't grow up having their boundaries violated don't see it the same way, but why on earth should the tree be sacrificed so the rotten whining boy could do whatever he pleased?  Why was his search for happiness more important that the tree's integrity?  Sure she could give apples, shade--and then take a big stick and whap him upside the head.  Hate, hate, hate this book.

"The Rainbow Fish" is just such a mess.  The translation (from the original German) is clunky, so the language isn't great.  The shiny fish at the beginning acts annoying, and then the solution--everyone will love you only if you give up everything that makes you unique, and try to be exactly like them--well, isn't that a lovely lesson for our kiddies to learn?  I think this one became popular because of the shiny paper.  And because sharing.  You know.  Everyone should share.  Always, all the time, everything.  The end.

I'm off now to read some more of my book club book.  I only started it yesterday, and book club is tonight (hooray for Kindle versions!).  It's called "Breakfast with Buddha," I'm really enjoying it, and I never would have picked it up on my own.  Just so you know--I do mostly keep an open mind.

Bad Reviews are a Good Thing

I follow writer Anne Lamott on Twitter, though I'm beginning to want to stop following her, because I find her Tweets mostly self-referential and annoying.  Yesterday she was whining about Kirkus Reviews's take on her new book, Stitches, and then about a minute later was saying that most writers found a bad review from Kirkus to be a good thing, a secret sign that their book was actually brilliant.

Sorry.  I review for Kirkus.  If I give you a bad review, it's because you've written a bad book.

Bad reviews are hard for writers.  We pour ourselves into our books.   Some bad reviews are, of course, meaningless:  I read a one-star review on Amazon for Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, The Milk that complained it was a children's book.  Duh.  Read the book description before you buy it, blockhead.  I also don't feel slighted by the sort of reviews written under duress by children who were forced to read one of my books for school.  But the reviews, even on blogs, that complain that you're boring, or not very skilled, or unimaginative, or lying--boy, that last one really burns me, I always have to stifle the urge to send the reviewer a pile of my primary resources--those can hurt.

Bummer.  I'm happy I review for Kirkus, widely reputed to live up to their slogan, "The toughest book critics on earth."  Here's why:  I live in a small town.  With an excellent but small library that must use its money wisely.  My children went to an excellent but underfunded parochial school whose book-buying budget for the year was the profit made off their book fair.  Those places can't afford to buy bad books.  They simply can't.  If you're an otherwise brilliant author whose latest work was well below standard, I want that publically known, so that my librarians can make informed choices about whether or not to buy it.  Similarly, if you're completely unknown but just wrote something amazing, I want that book in my library, in my schools.

I'm sure Bristol's public library will still carry Stitches.  After all, it's written by Anne Lamott.  And stop your whining, Annie, the review wasn't that bad.  Trust me.  I've written worse.

Scarcity, Or, Should I Nap or Work Out?

This morning, after I returned home from taking my daughter to school, I faced a small dilemma.  For the past several days I've been promising myself that today would be the day I'd start working out on our new treadmill.  But also, I have a cold that won't go away, and even though I slept well I was still really, really tired.  Workout or nap?  Workout or nap?

Then it occurred to me:  I have plenty of time.  I could do both.

You can send me that Genius award now.  I've earned it.

Anyway, I took a nap, and now I'm working, and after lunch, when I tend to feel sleepy again, I'll work out.  And the whole reason I'm bringing all of this up is to lead into telling you about a brilliant book I read this weekend:  Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.  It's by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, an economist/psychologist combo that also formed ideas42, a non-profit organization that studies what actually works to combat poverty.

The premise of Scarcity is that when humans feel an area of lack in their lives--whether financial, emotional, or temporal--their brains function less well.  They focus on what they're lacking to the detriment of both other parts of their lives, and the part that's lacking.  They're more impulsive.  They make worse decisions.  They're more easily overwhelmed. 

Two things especially intrigued me.  The first is that these effects were independent of intelligence, education level, and other variables.  In one interesting experiment, researchers recruited a bunch of Princeton undergrads to play games of Family Feud--only the groups were manipulated so that some of them were artificially "poor" and some were "rich."  "Poor" and "rich" had no meaning outside the bounds of this very simple game, all the players were smart and well-educated, and yet the "poor" groups consisently under-performed the "rich" groups.

In other words, sometimes people aren't poor because they make bad decisions.  Sometimes they make bad decisions because they're poor.

The other is that this suggests for a number of our clients, the work we're doing at Faith in Action is very effective.  When we pay $100 toward someone's light bill because their car broke down and they had to pay to repair it (and so can't pay for the lights), we're alleviating both a financial problem and a mental one.  Because we can provide that bit of slack to our clients, we may be making them better parents, better employees, and better decision-makers overall.  At FIA we're always trying to make a real difference in the lives of our clients, and this book suggests to me that what we're doing is less of a band-aid and more of a real solution than we feared.

Now I'm off to write about obelisks.  Carry on.

Who Are The Poor?

Then I, the King, shall say to those at my right, 'Come, blessed of my Father, into the Kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the world.  For I was hungry and you fed me.  Unless, of course, you were on food stamps you didn't deserve.  Or you used your food stamps for junk food, or expensive food, or any food other than lentils and rice.  Why don't you get a job? Ok, then, why don't you get a better job? 

 I was thirsty and you gave me water; but not Mountain Dew.  I see you drinking a Mountain Dew, you're totally out of the Kingdom.  Or getting a tattoo--where'd you get the money for that?  Cigarettes!  Spend a dime on cigarettes, you're out.  You're wasting your money, or you once wasted it, back when you had more.  At any rate, you don't see me making mistakes like that, do you? 

 I was a stranger and you invited me into your homes; Not dressed like that, I won't.  Not with the poor personal hygiene, the air of desperation.  Don't you understand?  It's your own fault you were born without resources, without expectations.  Abuse, trauma, mental illness--blah, blah, blah.  What do you want from me?  Hope?  Equality in the eyes of God? 

naked and you clothed me; In cast-offs.  Be grateful.  

sick and in prison, and you visited me.'  Here's the thing.  If I did that, if I visited you, I'd have to spend time with you.  I'd have to see you as, you know, a person.  You wouldn't be an abstract anymore, "the poor."  I'd have a harder time dividing you into groups, the "deserving poor," the "undeserving poor," the "lazy bastards who won't get off their butts."  If I got to know you, if I knew your name, I'd start to see your brokenness, and how it mirrors my own.  I'd see that the difference between us is more a matter of safety nets--mine is bigger--and I'd understand that when we stand before God, side-by-side, I'll be the one with some accounting to do:

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

And that starts to sound frightening.  It's so much easier to deem myself independent of God's grace.

New Novels, Old Dogs, and Taking the Rest of the Week Off

Recently I read a list--most likely on Facebook, so who knows if it's true--but, on the other hand, this, which I found on Facebook, is both true and fascinating--anyway, I read a list of the 10 happiest jobs.  Number ten was Operating Engineer, because you got to "play with giant toys like bulldozers." 

Number Four was Writer.  The list said, "For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existant, but the autonomy of writing down the contents of your own mind apparently leads to happiness."

Oh yeah, baby.

My "England book" is, to all intents, done.  I'm very happy with this draft, my editor likes my improved ending, and all is well.  We'll have to run it through spell-check, and the grammar police known as Copyeditors, who've saved me from my own ignorance repeatedly.  But that's all nothing.  The real work is done.

Which is so cool, for more reasons than one.  Like, I'll get the second half of my advance.  Always good.  I'll get a real publication date.  Fun.  But also, I can start writing something new.  Yesterday I cleaned off a section of my desk and found a rough draft of a book on Egyptian obelisks.  It doesn't stink nearly as much as I expected.  I'll certainly clean that up in the next week or so, and send it off to Be Considered.  I'll start the true research for my Egypt Novel, too.  And, on the novel writing front, I've planned a sequel to the "England book," my first true sequel ever.  One of the ways I know I'm really done with the first book is that the characters are rushing all over each other trying to tell me how to start the second.  (It's not schizophenia, it's creativity.)  But I've decided not to let them out until Monday.  They can squabble among themselves until somebody wins and I know where to start the story.

Meanwhile, my son is asleep upstairs, though he promised, last night, to set his alarm for 9:45.  His old dog is sleeping curled up on the sweatshirt my son left on the couch last night.  We wondered how the dog would react when he saw my son again--but he was so sound asleep that he only blinked in drowsy wonderment, his ears at half-mast.  Then he curled up on my son's stomach; when I tried to pick him up he went completely boneless in protest, like a recalcitrant toddler.  As he's grown ever older and more senile, the dog has reached a very peaceful state.  He's lost all his anxiety.

Kind of like me.

Today My Boy Comes Home!

Actually, probably not technically today: the plane carrying him and his father is scheduled to land at our local airport at 11:42.  It'll probably land early--the last plane usually does--but they'll have to pick up luggage and then drive home, which will likely put them through the door just after midnight.

I'll be waiting.

It's my son's fall break from his freshman year in college.  It's not like he's been off to war.  Still, I keep wanting to quote Bert Le Clos, whose son Chad beat Michael Phelps to take the gold medal in the 200m butterfly at the London Olympics.  I'd seen Bert on BBC, and thought he was British, but it turns out he's South African (the accents are close).   (At least, Bert's was.)  Live on TV, with tears in his eyes, he kept looking down at his son and saying, "He's so beautiful.  Oh, look at him.  My beautiful boy."

I won't be crying when my son comes home.  In fact, I'll probably be asleep on the couch.  But when I wake up, the first thing I'm going to think is, oh, my beautiful boy.