So it turns out it's not just me...

Still been a crazy week.  Today I didn't accomplish much other than visiting Bristol's Emergency Food Pantry.  I'd never been there before, even though the director is a friend of mine.  Some recent policy changes from the Department of Social Services mean that a lot more people are coming to Faith in Action for their food pantry vouchers, and I wanted to see how the whole system worked so I'd know if we needed to think about tweaking the voucher system we. 

Anyway, that's one thing I did.  Here's another: sleep in.  Not on purpose, either.

You should know that my husband is one of the most punctual people ever born.  Being late to anything causes him such anxiety that he is nearly always early.  Since I'm also normally very punctual, this suits me fine.

You should also know that my husband took two days off work, yesterday and today, to play in a local golf tournament.  He played golf all day yesterday and had a nice time.

You should further know that my husband is always in charge of setting the alarm clock.  The start of his work day varies depending on what he's doing, so he always makes sure we get up on time.  He sets the alarm.  When it goes off, he gets into the shower, and I go wake up the children.  They're in high school and could certainly be relied upon to wake themselves up, but I've always enjoyed giving them a hug and a kiss first thing, and so I've always woken them up.  Since we've had a child in high school the latest we ever wake on a school day is 6 am, so the high schoolers can be out the door by seven.  (We sit down and eat breakfast as a family.  It's another of those quaint things we do.)

This system has served my husband and I well for our entire married life.  Nearly 24 years.  Until this morning.

My daughter burst through our closed bedroom door, jolting me out of a very nice sleep.  "GUYS!" she said, "It's 6:37!!"

"Wake your brother," I told her.  She ran back into the hall and pounded on his door.  Meanwhile my husband fumbled with the alarm clock.  "Didn't you set it?" I asked him.

He laughed and laid back against the pillows.  "I set it for 7:00," he said.  "I lost track.  I thought today was Saturday."

"It's a miracle Katie woke up," I said.  He agreed, and we gave up on today's family breakfast, rolled over, and both fell back asleep.

So Jesus Gave Me A Kick in the Pants....

If you read yesterday's blog post, or, heck, any number of preceding blog posts, first off, thank you.  Second, you know what an entitled first-world-problem sort of whiner I am.

I'm sorry about this.  Really I am.  I'm working on it.

Of course it's frustrating when my schedule falls apart and the children's activities are shifting and endless and the animals give me dirty looks and pee inappropriately.  Yep. 

Of course we could look at all those problems from the other end, and see that they're really not very problematic:

I had to wait with my husband for two hours at the doctor's office:
I have a husband.
Who wants me to go with him when he's having something stressful done.
Because he likes my company.
Also, I like his.
The problem he's having is completely treatable, and not life-threatening in any way.
We have easy access to excellent medical care.
We have insurance.
We can afford our co-pay.

I remember once being irritated because I had to give up writing time to console my daughter's horse while he got shoes put on.  (Despite wearing shoes for most of his life, the horse finds being shod so enormously stressful that if someone [me] isn't holding onto his head, singing to him, and occaisionally threatening to beat the living snot out of him, he tries to kick the farrier's head in.)  And then I thought how absolutely maniacally happy that sentence would have made me back in the day when I was first married, working at a job I didn't like, wildly hoping to someday have children and write books for a living.  And that I would get a daughter who liked horses, as I do?  Icing on the cake, man.  Icing on the cake.

This bout of retrospection and self-analysis comes to you courtesy of yesterday's difficult day at Faith in Action.  There are so many people who need our help.  There are so many really hard situations.  We nearly had a client go into insulin shock in our waiting room--someone whose Type I diabetes was undiagosed for so long that the person's entire body has beenr ravaged by the disease.  Someone who can't possibly work, who will probably die soon, who comes from a background of never having had resources like money or adequate medical care.  This client, who can die from undereating, had been down to one meal a day for the last several days. 

Then we had someone who on very limited income, carefully budgeted but nearly always inadequate, was pre-paying funeral expenses at a rate of $25 per month.  That client's parent had been buried in a potter's field, in an unmarked and unremembered grave.  That client wanted her children to be spared the pain of not knowing where their mother lay.

It lays heavy on my heart sometimes.  When a client's monthly income is taken up not by their child's medical expenses (covered under Medicaid), but by the gas money required to take the child to a specialist four hours away.  When one hundred dollars stands between a client and her family and eviction, and that client has absolutely no way of getting the money.

At the end of my tough day at Faith in Action, I go back to my comfortable house and pray.  Jesus kicks me in the pants some days.  Some days I need kickin'.

All The Things I Haven't Done

Despite my previous anxiety over the week's schedule and how it all went south very early on Monday morning, there was a time yesterday when I thought I had everything licked.  I'd cancelled one appointment and swapped another, and called in some favors and did an anti-rain dance, and, other than the moment when one of the barn pigeons splodged my THS Tennis sweatshirt, all was well.

(What, you don't have barn pigeons?  I do, and I can't seem to get rid of them, despite near-heroic efforts by the barn cats, who would prefer I use the term squab.  Anyway, I'd left 5 extra minutes in my morning calculations, which meant I had time to go back to the house and wipe off the sweatshirt, which was how fully I was rocking the morning).

I left the house at 7 am (and again at 7:20, splodge-free) and didn't return until 7 pm, but by evening I'd successfully picked up Visiting Author John Rocco at his hotel in Bristol, got him breakfast, delivered him to St. Anne Catholic School, and hung around just long enough there to see that my friend Angie, the librarian, was on top of her own chaos.  Then I went to the high school, helped my friend Tracy lug in some soup for Teacher Appreciation Week, retrieved my daughter, and headed off to the rescheduled district tournament.

On the way there my daughter noticed that I'd gotten my autographed John Rocco books mixed up with my friend Maureen's autographed books, but Mo and I can fix that.

Then we had tennis, which took awhile, but it was pleasant, and it lasted long enough that I didn't have to feel guilty about not taking my daughter back to school.  I took her to Panera Bread and then a bookstore instead.  Then we met my husband, who'd finished work, at his orthopedist's office.  My husband needed his trick shoulder injected again, and wanted me to go with him.  We had to wait a long time.  I felt like complaining, but my husband suggested mildly that since he'd called his orthopedist at home the night before and asked to come in late in the day, perhaps I should just be grateful.  So I tried that.

Then we got pizza.  All was well.

Then we went home, and the horses were staring at me over the fence, appalled, because DINNER WAS LATE, and guess what?  There wasn't any dinner.  We were stone cold out of grain, which never happens, and I'd forgotten to get more, which is starting to feel like it happens all the time.

Now, the horses were turned out on the lushest pasture on earth, and have been eating so much luscious spring grass that two of them are wearing muzzles to limit their grazing.  On their best days they get 1 cup, 1 household measuring cup, of low-carb horse feed, combined with some vitamins and other stuff.  It's essentially like giving me 4 Cheerios and calling it breakfast.  But horses cling to their habits, and what this group knew most strongly, at 7 pm last night, is that they were being abused and deprived.  Reproachful looks all around.

Duly chastened, I returned to the house and opened some wine.  I had new books to read, and managed to read them even though I'd broken my only pair of bifocals the day before.   I stayed up later than my husband and my daughter, waiting for my son to come home (he'd watched his high school baseball team lose in the district finals, and then gone out for 60-cent wing night with a big group of friends.).   He came home, and we talked for awhile, and then I went to bed, sleeping soundly until 2 am.

At which time I woke up and remembered that my son had missed a doctor's appointment that afternoon.  One he didn't know about, because I didn't tell him. 

My brain hopped onto the hamster wheel of Things I Haven't Done or Have Recently Screwed Up, and whirled for the next hour.  That was fun.  Then I overslept.  Also fun.

Then I sat down at my computer.  I sent 17,000 emails about stuff I will be doing, soon.  Then, still feeling guilty about my many and various personal deficiencies, I typed the above title:  All the Things I Haven't Done.

And the first thought--the very first thought--to enter my head:  "Well, I haven't killed anyone yet."

Very good, I thought.  Carry on.

Eating Dirt

If you ride horses, you will come to recognize a point at which, while you haven't technically fallen off the horse yet, you are no longer capable of staying on.  You're in mid-air, destined for dirt, and there isn't a fool thing you can do about it.

That was how I felt this morning.  I'd crafted a schedule for the week that amazed even myself, but it had a tragic flaw--it was so hopeless intertwined that even one tiny screw-up would cause the whole thing to collapse.  And there was just no way to get through the week without a screw-up.  I really needed my daughter's tennis matches (high school district finals) to go off as scheduled today, because if they didn't go today they'd be pushed to tomorrow, and I had nowhere to move the stuff happening tomorrow.  Wednesday was full.  Also Thursday, etc. 

When we woke up it was raining, and they couldn't play tennis in the rain, but I decided to be forcibly optimistic.  I was going to control the weather with the power of my optimism.  I put on my THS Tennis sweatshirt, and then I picked out the absolute PERFECT pair of socks.

I knit socks.  I'd made this particular pair for myself several years ago, they fit beautifully, and I have always loved them.  The pattern is Lenore; the yarn Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock lightweight.  I can't remember the name of the colorway, but it's the maroon one of their Raven series.  The Raven yarns were first dyed a base color or colors, and then overdyed black, so that only a hint of the original color came through.  Over years of washing my Lenore socks had faded so they are now a lovely marbled grey and maroon swirl--perfectly matching my daughter's high school colors.

Thus optimistically attired, I went downstairs to check the weather radar online.  I was still in midair, still fighting for my balance, grabbing for reins.  But the fall was already inevitable.  My daughter came down the stairs. "Match's cancelled," she said, on her way to the kitchen.  I went after her, falling, falling, my whole schedule with me, and as I turned from the computer suddenly felt my middle toe bare against the wood floor.

I'd punched a hole in my sock as I fell.

Jason Collins: Some Day Soon

On Tuesday night I got back from my school visits in time to meet my family, including one of my son's friends, for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.  I asked the boys, who are seniors in high school and avid sports fans, what they thought of Jason Collins, the NBA player, coming out as gay.

My son's friend shrugged.  "Okay," he said, "so, everyone remembers Jackie Robinson.  But can you name the seventh black major league baseball player?  Nobody knows his name.  In another couple of weeks more players will come out, and it'll just be, like, over."

Appearances to the contrary, I am not old.  I don't feel old.  But boy howdy, how attitudes toward homosexuality have changed since I was my son's age.  I know we're not there yet.  I know there are still people insisting that being gay means being some sort of predator, that being gay is a choice, or that somehow the few words the Bible says that might be against homosexuality (I've read a lot of Biblical scholarship lately, and I'm pretty sure most people are reading the Sodom story wrong) are much more important that the Biblical prohibitions against tattoos, divorce, and eating bacon.

I don't remember ever talking about homosexuality in my high school.  If I thought about gay people at all, I maybe thought Liberace.  A clear odd-ball, an outlier--something so random that it simply didn't happen at all at Bishop Dwenger High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

It did.  Oh, of course, it did.  It was just so completely hidden.

Even in my own family.  My beloved great-uncle died of AIDS in 1978, except that AIDS was not recognized as a disease until 1980, which meant no one knew why my uncle died.  We grieved.  We loved him so.  I wonder now if the adults in the family--I was eleven in 1978--understood that he was gay.  Perhaps they did, but they never said so.  It was only later, piecing together the symptoms of illness, that we realized how he died and what that meant.  "But he was the nicest man," one of my relatives said, as though afraid I would love him less now that I understood he was gay.

My great-uncle spun me around in my red dress and told me I was beautiful.  He bought me a hideous gold plaster dog because I loved it.  He held my hand.  He listened to my stories.  He listened to all of us, and I will always regret that we never really listened to him.

I'm friends with lots of my high school classmates on Facebook now.  At dinner a few months ago I said to my husband, "Did you know So-and-So was gay?"

My husband said, "No, he's not."

"Yes, he is.  We're friends on Facebook now."

My husband frowned, remembering.  "No, I'm pretty sure he had a girlfriend in high school."

My son coughed into his hand: "Cover-up."  I ignored him.  "Well, he's got a boyfriend now," I said.  "Named Alex."

My husband said, "That could be short for Alexandria."

"Could be," I said, "but this Alexandria has a beard."

We looked at each other across the table for a moment.  I thought of this friend as I'd known him in high school, nearly always smiling.  I said, "Our school would not have been an easy place to known to be gay."

"No," my husband said. 

I know it's still not easy.  I know high school is still difficult for everyone, and anything that makes you an outlier makes it more so.  I know there are still slings and arrows and ignorance and hatred.  But pretty soon there will be a seventh gay pro basketball player, and no one will remember his name.  And some day, I hope some day soon, it''ll just be, like, over.

 

Random Links

I don't usually do links, but these are hilarious:

Dear Vague Facebook Poster

Worst Client Comments Turned into Posters

Real or Simulated Respect

I'm back from my 1.5 days of school talks, which became 1.3 when a substation in west Knoxville blew and the whole district, including Webb School, lost power.  School let out early.  I've never had that happen before.  Then at Robertsville Middle School, a student projectile-vomited all over the students in the row in front of her right in the middle of my talk.  I've never had that happen before, either.  (How did I respond, from my position at the podium?  I didn't.  When you see four teachers converging on a student, fast, you figure the situation is well in hand.  Plus, like that girl needed more people staring at her.)

Webb School was amazing.  It's a private K-12 school that costs over 15K for kindergarten, and it looks like the campus of a small, very tidy college.   Most of the students were in uniform, but a handful weren't, so I asked one of the girls about it.  "Oh," she said, "if it's your birthday you can wear whatever you want."

"Well, that wouldn't work for me," I said.  "My birthday's in the summer."  I may have said this with a degree of petulance.  I always wanted a chance to wear the Birthday Crown in elementary school, and hand out mini Snickers bars, and have everyone make a great big fuss over me, and I never got it.  Of course, I never had to go to school on my birthday either, but most of us find a way to be disappointed with our lot, one way or another.

"Then you'd get free dress on your half-birthday," the girl said.

"My half-birthday," I said, "is Christmas Eve."

The girl was amazingly patient.  "Then you could just pick any day you want," she said.

"Okay," I said, "I'll do that," before I remembered that we were having a hypothetical conversation.  About what I might be allowed to wear if I had to repeat seventh grade.

The Webb Book Club had all finished For Freedom, but were still amazed to find out it was based on the life of a real person.  This is because not a single one of them had read the Afterword.  Sometimes I think the only people that read the Afterwords are me and my editor.  Fortunately we both love Afterwords.

The motto at Robertsville Middle School, emblazoned on posters in every single hallway, is "Real or Simulated Respect."  I asked if that meant that the students didn't have to respect the adults, they just had to act as though they did.  Bingo.  Fake it 'til you make it, bro.

Talking about Jefferson's Sons to children is more challenging than talking about it to adults.   When I'm talking to adults I can say things like, "Before I started my research, I would have said that the only possible word that could describe a sexual relationship between a woman and a man who owned her was rape," but when I'm talking to middle schoolers I need to find substitutes for the words sexual and rape.  I want to be truthful to them, and I know they can handle hard stuff, but I don't want to bludgeon them with it.  Nor do I want their parents to be calling the school tomorrow asking, "Is it true your speaker told the fifth graders about rape?"

The Webb students wanted to know about passing for white.  Why could some of the Sally's children pass, but not others?  What did I know for sure, and what was I guessing?  What did it take to pass?  I wanted to tell them, look around your class.  Some of you are darker than others.  There are all sorts of variations on the human theme.  But I never want to label middle school students, either, or call attention to them individually (except for the girl who hung a clothespin off her nose.  I told her to knock it off.).  I don't know any of these students' stories.

At Robertsville I got a sudden insight into Sally Hemmings.  You'd think, after four years' intensive research, a lot of writing, and a lot of thinking, that I would be done with insights, but apparently I'm slower than average.  I told the students that one of the things that sparked my interest in the whole Hemmings/Jefferson story was that I'd learned Jefferson did not free Sally in his will.  He freed five slaves, but not her.  I asked the students why they thought that might be true.

A cheerful-looking black boy put up his hand.  "'Cause she was cheating on him!" he said.

"Are you kidding me?" I replied, without even stopping to think.  "This man holds her children's future in his hands.  He's got total control over the most important things in her life.  She's never going to cheat on him.  She can't afford to tick him off.  Not ever."

She can't afford to make him angry.  Not ever.

Imagine that.