What I Think About Cecil The Lion

Lately the news has been full of the death of Cecil the lion, who lived on a protected reserve in Zimbabwe, was illegally led off the reserve, shot by a rich American dentist, tracked injured for 40 hours and finally killed.

National public outrage has been immense.

I've been to South Africa, twice, and also Botswana. I go on photo safaris. I've seen Africa's Big Five, live. I love South Africa. I can't wait to return. And ever since I've first visited the open Velda I've been unable to stomach going to zoos.

It's not that I think zoos are wrong. I recognize the role they play in global conservation. I understand why my young nephews love to visit the zoo; I did once, too. Most people aren't lucky enough to go on safari.

I hate that Cecil was baited and illegally killed. I find all trophy hunting repugnant. There are all sorts of places in Africa where you can, for a very high price, shoot big game in fenced fields. I don't understand this at all. I don't mind hunting for food--it would be hard to be against that while I remain willing to eat meat.

But. The American outrage over one lion is chafing my nether regions. One lion, folks. One lion.

How many African children die from preventable causes in one day? From malaria, HIV, malnutrition?

How many children are worth one lion?
How many lions would you trade for the life of your child?

The outrage is in the wrong place.

Uprooted, my Babcia, and me

It seems like the deadline part of my summer is behind me now. I'm left with the piles and piles of stuff I ignored in deference to stuff that had to be done by a certain time. Yesterday my son and I finally started sorting through my children's playroom--a cozy slanted room above our garage that when we designed the house was intended as an attic space, but that when framed in proved too cute not to use. My children have outgrown the playroom, however, and eventually I'm going to move my floor loom up there, though I'm certainly keeping the best of our toys.

After that I read Naomi Novik's new novel, Uprooted. I'd been saving it for when I could read it in one or two long goes, because it was the sort of novel that needed real attention. Naomi Novik is primarily the author of the Temeraire series--intelligent dragons helping to fight the Napoleonic wars. I don't read a lot of fantasy or science fiction, because I absolutely hate it when it's done poorly. If I can poke holes in the world-building or the science, I lose my mind. (I'm also not a fan of endless world-building. I used to love Robin McKinley but her recent stuff bores me senseless.)

Anyway, I read the reviews of Uprooted and figured I'd like it, and I trust Naomi's writing ability. What I didn't expect was the memories her book brought back to me.

Some of the reviewers on Amazon call Uprooted a Russian fairy tale. It's not--it's Polish. It's not a traditional Polish story--I believe the whole plot is Naomi Novik's creation (and I looked her up--she's a first-generation Polish immigrant)--but it's completely Polish in the place names, and the character names, and, somehow, in the language itself. It brought to mind a flood of very early childhood memories, visiting my babcia and dziadek (I just looked those spellings up in Google translate; I pronounced them "bushy" and "jah-jee.") in their little house in Gary, Indiana. Babcia, my mother's mother's mother, would pour me a little glass of 7-up and then, with a smile, dribble a bit of cooking sherry into it, so that it turned pink. Dziadek was blind from an accident in a steel mill. He'd come to America as an adult and never spoke English well. According to the rest of my family he'd been a stern parent and a somewhat disinterested grandparent, but when I sat on his lap in the front room he would run his fingers gently over my face. Then he would smile and say the only English word I ever heard him use: pretty.

Everyone spoke Polish, words floated around my head, all those comforting phrases. Babcia had a little garden out back, with tomatoes, I think. She also brewed her own beer. They came down the front steps very slowly, blind Dziadek leaning heavily on Babcia's arm, when we picked them up to go to Mass. Their parish priest spoke Polish, too.

I remember them as being the oldest people I ever knew, and was shocked to learn, years later, that they were both in their early 70s when they died. Dziadek's funeral postponed my seventh birthday party. After that Babcia came to live with my grandmother. After a few months she decided to visit her younger son, my Uncle Johnny, in California, and we all drove to O'Hare to see her off. We waved and waved as her big jet pulled away. A few weeks later she had a heart attack while Uncle Johnny was at work, and died.

My family stopped speaking Polish as there was no longer any need. I still use a few phrases, most of them rude. But I remember more than I realized; Uprooted brought it all back.

Sleep Is The Word

This morning my son had two wisdom teeth removed. They hadn't broken through his gumline yet, so this was actual surgery and they briefly knocked him out for it.

We stopped briefly for a milkshake breakfast on the way home and he was asleep on the couch within minutes.

All day long my energy level has been similar to his, or perhaps slightly lower, with much less excuse.

Tomorrow and Saturday my daughter is taking her pony club HB examination, in Greenville, South Carolina (saints be praised--she was originally scheduled for Chesapeake, VA, which is an 8-hour drive away instead of a 3-hour drive). This is her first national-level pony club test. She's been spending the day getting all her records and plans finalized, and, I believe, is still in her pajamas.

I'm not in my pajamas. People look at you funny if you take your child to the oral surgeon wearing pajamas. Also, Bristol is resolutely a small town; my son's OR nurse turned out to be a friend, who in addition to giving me all my son's post-op instructions also asked if I'd made my writing deadline. If I show up at the doctor's office in pajamas without arriving in the middle of the night in an ambulance, I'll probably make the newspaper.

I'm not getting back into jammies until after I've done the barn chores. But we're all enjoying a low-motion day. Sleep is the word.

Second Drafts and Joy

Last week, while hanging out at the United States Pony Clubs East Coast Championships (my daughter was stellar-more on that later) I had a chance to spend some time with my 11-year-old friend Lily (her mother is also a friend of mine).

Lily confided that she was in the process of writing a book. I asked her what it was about. Her expression became a mixture of pride, panic, and anxiousness--which made me think that Lily really might have the makings of a writer.

"If it's too early to talk about it, don't even try," I said. "I can never talk about my books until I'm past a certain point."

Lily exhaled in relief. "It's too early to talk about it," she said.

I then gave her the only decent writing advice I have: finish the story, even if you know it isn't right yet. Too many neophyte writers realize about halfway through a story that it isn't coming out the way they want and they stop writing and start a new story. Odds are they won't finish that one, either, nor the third...at which point they decide that they aren't really writers.

All first drafts suck. I so wish this weren't true. But it's only by finishing a first draft that you can ever get to a second draft. Second drafts aren't quite as lousy--third drafts can begin to be worthwhile.

I told Lily that it turned out the original beginning of my new book stunk, so I chopped it in half and added 20 new pages on the front. Also the original ending stunk, so I got rid of it. Also I changed something major in the middle, and well, you get the idea. I'm finding the story, buried somewhere in my wretched first draft.

It's such a relief, I told Lily, not to have to get things right on the first try. And Lily, being very wise for 11, happily agreed.

The Blog Returns!

Boola-boola.

That triumphant sound you're hearing is the noise of me meeting what turned out to be a wholly improbable deadline.

Boola-boola

For the past month, beloved friends, I have divided my time into 1) being with my family, particularly on vacation; 2) writing my tush off; 3) moaning about writing; 4) doing the bare minimum to keep all our animals alive.

Blogging didn't make the list. Nor laundry, nor, honestly, much else. I've missed blogging. I've missed hanging out with my friends. Missed reading novels all in one go. Missed going to yoga every single day.

In the week to come I'm going to clean the playroom and my book pile and do a host of other things, including being attentive to this blog.

For now I'm just going to rejoice in 274 pages of novel that are a big improvement over the 180 pages they replace. (and yes, my books always do get bigger like that.).

Girls Play Soccer Now

"I want to try out for the soccer team," I said.

Sister Theresa looked at me over the top of her glasses. Later, when I was in high school and we served on a retreat team together, I would get to know her better, and grew to like her very much, but in 1980, when I was thirteen years old, she intimidated me. She was the Principal of St. Charles, the Catholic school of 800 pupils that I'd only been attending for two years. She ruled absolutely.

"If you like to run," Sister Teresa said, "Why don't you do track and field?"

I hated running. No matter how hard I tried, I was horrible at it--coughing and gasping after a quarter mile while my friends did easy laps. Looking back it should have been more obvious. I was fit. I rode my bike everywhere, including to swim practice and back each morning. I swam every day; at camp I got a gold medal for swimming across the lake. But I couldn't swim fast for more than a single lap. After that I had to breathe, and I couldn't. Sometimes after a hard swim meet or an especially windy bike ride, the spaces between my ribs hurt from the effort it took me to breathe.

I had asthma. As an adult I've had three separate doctors tell me that during childhood I was very lucky not to have died.

I couldn't catch a ball, either. I was somewhat nearsighted in one eye and extremely nearsighted in the other, which left me with no depth perception. (I didn't get glasses until I was 17.) I couldn't track a ball coming at me. Gym class terrified me.

But I loved soccer. I don't know why. The Pepsi Youth Soccer League--named, of course, for its sponsor, the local bottling plant--started in Fort Wayne a year or so before I decided to join. Soccer had just gotten started in the United States; Pepsi teams played 11-on-11 on a full-sized court, even the five-year-olds, which meant that in my younger brother's games the goalies were usually stretched out on their backs, gazing at the clouds, while somewhere midfield 20 small children kicked each other in the shins in the vague vacinity of the ball.

I wanted to try it. Fall of my 7th-grade year I joined the Purple team (with only one league sponsor, we were known by the color of our jerseys) of the oldest division, the 12-year-olds. I was one of 3 girls and 13 boys. Most of them had played soccer for a least a year and most of them had better coordination than me. But it was fun--fabulously fun. Running still made me cough and wheeze, but I loved playing right wing, racing to get my foot onto a midfield pass, kicking it sideways to the center. I loved the camaraderie of our team. I loved my jersey and my cleats. I played on the same team over the summer, riding my bike to practices at the local high school, travelling all the way across town for Saturday morning games.

Then I aged out of the Pepsi league. Most middle schools and high schools fielded teams of their own. I don't know if the public schools had girls' teams then. I don't think they did. The Catholic Youth Organization, which ran sports for our city's dozen Catholic grade schools, did not.

(In college I would play again, on our house intramural team. I ran hard enough despite my asthma that the refs became accustomed to calling time-outs so I could vomit on the field. I still played right wing; twice my house won the championship. One year we had a varsity midfielder on our house team--she and I worked well together and I averaged 3 goals a game. But it was her skill, not mine.)

All this came back to me yesterday, as my whole family sat glued to the Women's World Cup Final. The athletes, both sides, were fit and skilled and beautiful. I watched team USA score five goals for the win. I saw how they all ran to a corner of the stadium afterward and searched the stands for their families--saw their eyes light up, saw them blow kisses and mouth, 'I love you.' Saw them draped in the Stars and Stripes. I felt so happy, so unreasonably elated. It took me a few minutes to understand why.

"I hate running," my 13-year-old self told Sister Theresa. "But I like soccer, and I want to play. Look," I pressed, "it doesn't say boys' team. It just says soccer team. There's no reason I can't play."

Sister Theresa shook her head. "Girls don't play soccer," she said.

They do now.

Making Mothers Cry

I wasn't going to write a blog post this morning--I've got a novel under a highly improbable deadline. But when I sat down to work and opened my Facebook feed, I saw a post from a friend saying that she'd been listening to the radio all day about people saying gays were "pushing marriage down peoples' throats." My friend's post included a link to a humorous essay written by a university English professor, on all the startling ways that gay marriage had not affected her straight marriage so far.

(For the record, I think that in a week or two we're going to have to adjust and quit calling it "gay marriage" and "straight marriage." It's just "marriage" now.)

Maybe it's only because I know her well, but I could feel the pain in my friend's post, feel how hard it was for her to hear people bashing gay marriage on the radio. My friend is one of the most caring, honest, trustworthy women I know. She's a wife, a mother, a Christian, a churchgoer, a hardworking professional. She's got a great garden. She reads good books. She's also gay. She's married to another woman.

Her marriage inspires mine. I've told her and her wife that before.

So I thought I'd tell you how, on the day the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, two women I care about burst into tears. One is in her 40s, the other in her 70s. Neither is gay.

The both have a gay child.

I texted one of them right after the ruling--I'd have just run over to see her in person, but she was out of town. She texted back that her high-school-aged gay child had just phoned her with the news, overflowing with happiness, and then she texted back that she was crying tears of joy on her child's behalf.

The other mother posted on Facebook to her gay child, who'd been in a committed monogamous relationship for the past 21 years. I'm just going to copy it, I don't think she'd mind:

I am in tears of joy at this news. I love you all so very very much! You have all been so patient and brave about this and I am so proud and happy I am bursting !

C'mon, everybody. Think what you want. Worship how you want. No one can stop you; no one is trying to. But quit saying mean stuff in public. Mommas are listening.