I'm Home

The surgery went well. I am home and recovering from the anesthesia. I had forgotten how it always makes me vomit. (My Dad reminded me that when I got my tonsils out in France we learned the French word for vomit--vomir.) But aside from that general discomfort and fatigue, I'm doing well. The surgery was 3 hours late, but the nursing staff and doctors were really great. I felt well cared for and calm throughout the procedure.
Thanks to all for your well wishes, thoughts, and prayers. I felt supported.

New Beginnings

I know the focus should be on Christmas, since we are still in the advent period, but I'm already getting excited about the new year. I feel like something inside of me is shifting. I'm preparing for another break through of some kind. My dreams have been vivid and rich, I have intense desires to clean out my house, and I get butterflies in my stomach from time to time when I think of the new year. I feel like maybe this year I will make some real headway in figuring out what I want to do with this life of mine. I feel ready for work.

And I received a lovely box full of comfort to see me through the end of the year and the surgery. Thank you so much!

Exchange

Yesterday I gave my very first "telling" to an audience of children. It was rather anti-climatic. I told a story at a party for homeless families in NYC, and the set-up was terrible. There was music blaring, it was a completely chaotic environment, and just as I started my first story, the food was served, and parents came and motioned for their kids to leave the story area. I started with about 9-10 kids and ended my first story with 4 kids, and my second story with 1 kid. But you know, the best part is that it really was OK. I felt good about my performance. I had been so nervous, and I knew that just going through with the performance would make me feel better. And it did. It made this thing--storytelling--a real thing, rather than some fear in my imagination. And it reminded me that when I'm looking at real children, or adults, something comes over me and I can focus on the task at hand and stop the obsessing about myself that makes me so nervous before an event. I look into their eyes and I realize that they just want me to give the best that I have to give them, and with grace, that will be enough. And that I can do.

On the train ride home I had a NYC moment--the kind that makes me feel like living here is magical. A couple of weeks ago, I learned a string story about a snake and a lizard. The string is the snake, and it winds itself around the sleeping lizard (the hand), but then another lizard comes along and pulls on one part of the string and the snake comes off--miraculously. I didn't practice the story after learning it, and now I can't figure out the pattern. So I was on the train playing with a loop of yarn, winding it around my fingers trying to remember the pattern, when I noticed that the people around me were talking about me. I didn't notice this at first, because they were speaking in Korean. But I looked up from my hand and saw that the woman across from me was motioning in such a way that showed she was talking about my string and me. I smiled at her and showed her the string and asked, "do you know how?" She took the string from me and handed it to a man sitting beside her. He smiled at me, pulled off his glove, and proceeded to stitch the sting onto his fingers. When all of his fingers were encircled by the string, it took his thumb out of its loop and pulled on the string and it all unraveled. I expressed my delight and the woman motioned for me to come sit between them so I could learn it. I watched him do it again, and then I did it while he looked on. They clapped when I figured it out. I did it again to be sure I had it, and then I went back to my seat smiling. The four people in this group were talking and smiling and nodding their heads at me, but we couldn't communicated any further. I showed them the beginning of cat's cradle and said, "do you know this story?" and the woman smiled and nodded, though I'm not sure she understood me.
Anyhow, I now have a new string story. I'll have to do some research and see if a story goes with it. Or maybe make one up.

Indecision

I struggle with making decisions. This happens on a low-level, like "should I throw this mail in the recycling, do I need to shred it, does Eric need to see it, do I need to file it, should I just leave it sitting in a pile right here in the entry way and think about this tomorrow?"
And on major-levels, like "what should I do with my life? What career should I pursue? Should I be giving more money, more time, more care and if I do give more, to whom should I give it?"
It's like a constant buzz going on in my brain, and sometimes the accumulation of the small decisions, "what face cream should I buy, should I try to stop by that store on my way home or put it off for another day, should I go ahead and make the complicated dish or just make something simple tonight?" creates such a buzz in my internal mind that I have no energy or room for the big decisions.
And then there's the guilt. It sounds like this, "If you would answer the big questions, then that will give you guidance on the small questions. You should meditate more, create quiet in your mind, seek a higher power to give focus and direction to these little questions." But it never seems to work out so simply.
Almost every day I wake up with huge goals of getting a handle on this inner buzz. If I can just write it all down, I reason, or schedule it. Maybe I can set one decision aside per day... Or maybe I should just spend the whole day cleaning up the clutter in my house. Wouldn't that be therapeutic? No, I should probably arrange my to do list based on what's due first and leave the house until last.
And on and on the indecision goes. It bothers me most when I'm emotionally frazzled, like I've felt over the last week. I've got the constant clatter of Christmas present lists and card lists and fears that I won't express my affection properly for friends or that I'll forget someone or that I won't have time to get it all done before leaving for Florida. And I've been juggling dentist and doctor appointments in the midst of it all.
And the more I type out the chaos in my mind, the more neurotic I feel.
It's ironic to me how the more freedom I have in my life the more this chaos intensifies. When I worked full-time, that determined what had priority and so reduced my time that many decisions were just made by necessity. Now that I'm doing so much self-directed work, the chaos can be overwhelming. It can be such a relief to have others making the decisions. And it can be awful.

Update from the Doctor

The surgery is rescheduled for Wednesday the 19th. I will be glad to have it over and done with. Such an emotional roller coaster!

Not Comforting

"So I have to go over the risks of surgery with you before you sign this release form. Okay, so there's bleeding. Anyone can bleed when you go in for surgery. I don't expect to have to give you a transfusion, but it's always a possibility. Let's see, perforation. I could puncture your uterine wall. That's far more likely for pregnant women. Being pregnant makes the uterus wall softer. It actually takes a lot of pressure to push through a normal woman's uterus. Of course, the bladder and the bowels are right there, so if something did puncture the uterus lining, it could get complicated. Now I'm not going to wake you up at this point, I would just open you up and fix it and then deliver the bad news. I mean they're horrendous stories, but they do happen. But you could get hit by a car walking down the street and that's a horrendous story too."
Counting on fingers..."bleeding, perforation, oh yeah, so sometimes the cervix just won't open enough for the laparoscopy. That's not so common with a young woman like you, but if it happens, I have to cut and then check to see if I got the right spot. It's not ideal, but it happens. So we've done bleeding, perforation, anatomical complications...also, I put a fluid inside of you so that I can see better. Over time that gets absorbed into the blood stream. Gosh when we first started doing these surgeries women died from it. But now we have a way of measuring how much fluid you're absorbing and if the machine starts beeping, I just have to stop the surgery. It's annoying because then when you wake up I have to tell you we have to do it all over again. I don't think this will be a problem for you. You're having a short procedure. It's the huge fibroids that run into this issue.
"You know, I think I just say all of this so that you'll think I'm an amazing surgeon when it's all over. Well, and I have to tell you. Shall we go over the other options and the benefits of the surgery?"

More on Death

Today's poem from the Writer's Almanac fit quite well with my weekend reflections.
Read it here. (It's Tuesday's poem if you follow the link on another day, I think you'll get the current day.)

My Post-Dentist Weekend

I had a rich couple of days and I'm left with many thoughts. I'll list some of them here:

There are wonderful people in the world that I have never met.
Last year Eric and I met a couple that live in our neighborhood through our farm share. We’ve gotten together occasionally for dinner or lunch and traded a few emails over the last year. Saturday they invited us to their holiday party and we met several of their friends. We stayed at the party for almost 8 hours, because we were enjoying the conversation so much. It was such an unexpected joy. (I usually hate parties.)

My Story
I’m researching the Seal Skin story. From what I can tell, it is an Icelandic tale, though it’s widely told in Ireland and Scotland. There were two Icelanders at the party, so I got a quick overview of Icelandic history, clarification about the Vikings, and information on how Ireland and Iceland were connected in the 700s and 800s or so.
Vikings raided Northern Ireland and brought people as “slaves,” “feudal servants” some status similar to this idea. But then when everyone died in the winters, the masters would often marry the women for survival. I find this a very interesting idea to consider when reflecting on the story.

Clutter
It occurred to me this weekend that clutter is a physical manifestation of indecision. I think this might be why it feels so therapeutic to clean out my closets. I’m finally making decisions about what I need in the world.

Darkness
I really struggle with the early sunsets of winter. It fills me with panic when the sun sets at 4:42. I feel like the day is gone and I haven't done what I need to do. All night I walk around feeling like I should probably be in bed and this makes me so concerned. Candles are a comfort in this dark season. Bright lights just make the darkness seem more ominous, because the contrast is so sharp, but if I light candles, it makes me feel like I can relax and enjoy the soft light and not have to fear the oppressive darkness.

Death
Sunday night we went to an art show put on by a friend of a friend who is dying of brain cancer. (The friend who invited me is C. The friend who has brain cancer is A.) A. is an artist who was diagnosed this summer with a brain tumor. They’ve done surgery and radiation, but A. isn’t expected to live for very long—months maybe. She has poured herself into her art since the diagnoses and displayed 39 pieces for sale last night. Her friends, many of whom I’ve met at parties at C.’s house, were all at the opening and the paintings sold so fast we never even got a chance to purchase one. At the party, we saw another mutual friend. J. is best friends with C.’s husband and J. was diagnosed with a brain tumor a couple years ago. He had a successful surgery and chemo treatment, but life expectancy is still a gamble. So in case you aren’t following this, which would be entirely understandable, Eric and I are friends with a couple who each had their best friend diagnosed with a brain tumor in the last couple of years. And on top of that, C.’s mother is dying and she just got back from Europe where she was expecting to attend the funeral. So talking with these friends, surrounded by the art of a woman who is facing death, filled me with such grief.
All night I couldn’t shake the sadness. I keep reflecting on death, trying to make sense of what it means. What if there is no afterlife? What if it’s just the end? Is that a comfort or a source of panic? I go back and forth in how I feel about it. I feel like it’s very possible that we just turn to dust. But I’m attached to my consciousness. And sometimes the brevity of a human life in the face of the universe, the planet, the mountains, the trees, is shocking. Even if we are remembered for a time, eventually we are forgotten. Even the most famous fade away in the face of time. And then there’s the loneliness of watching friends die before you. I can’t bear the thought of the emptiness.
And then last night I had a dream about being on some kind of community service project on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. When I was able to climb up and see the Pacific Ocean, I was overcome with emotion and started crying. I kept saying, “it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. So vast and beautiful.” And I feel cleansed a little after the dream. Like there was something healing about that immense expanse of water.

Numb

Our dentist is out on Long Island, which is really very stupid. There are dentists in our neighborhood within walking distance, but instead of using them, this morning I climbed on the LIRR for a 20 minute train ride plus 30 minutes of waiting followed by a 5 minute taxi drive to the dentist. And all of this because I'm afraid to drive Lenny's car and I've never driven a car on the island and those skinny lanes on the freeway make me nervous. I really hate feeling like I can't drive. It makes me feel like I'm becoming dependent in an unpleasant way. So I think tomorrow I'm going to make myself drive Lenny's car!
I explain all of this hassle only to make it clear why I told the dentist to go ahead and numb three parts of my mouth and drill all 5 cavities in one office visit. FIVE cavities! I've only had 2-3 cavities in my life and today he worked on five. What's wrong with me? I still brush my teeth. I don't eat a ton of sugar. Eric says welcome to my thirties.
Anyway, my mouth is totally numb now, especially the bottom left side of my lip, tongue, and everything else in there. Eric is loving it. He keeps asking me to say "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." (and that word is in spell check) I tell him he is a mean and insensitive husband, but since he drove out to pick me up, I guess I can't complain. Anyway, when I do, it just makes him laugh harder.

Entitled

Today I went to get my pre-op blood work done at the hospital. It was 5 minutes of getting my blood taken and a brief chat with a nurse about where to go on the day of my surgery. But I sat in the waiting room for over two hours. "Why?" you ask. "Why?" I asked. Because my doctor's office forgot to fax over the necessary paperwork and I had to wait for the fax to arrive and then wait to be entered into the computer, and then wait for the computer print out so that I could confirm what had been put into the computer.
I have been so annoyed. I called my doctor's office last week to check that they would fax the paperwork. They assured me they would take care of everything. And yet, my day had to be rearranged, because they didn't do it.
I've been reflecting on how annoyed the whole thing makes me. Like I was dealt an injustice by having my two hours taken from me this morning. Doesn't my doctor's office know that they wasted my time. Isn't wasting someone's time very disrespectful in American culture? Aren't I entitled to better treatment? And then I think, "oh well, it was two hours. What's the big deal? Why do I have such a desire to bitch about this?"

And on a completely unrelated note, spending too much time in hospital waiting rooms makes me afraid of growing old. I don't like that it does, but it's a big reality check that I do not spend much time with people whose bodies are failing them. I really like being able to use my body the way I do.

And now I have to laugh at myself, because upon rereading this entry, it occurred to me that my second paragraph isn't all that unrelated from my title. I think my enjoyment of my body is accepted as a sort of entitlement in how I go about my life. But every once and a while I'm reminded to not assume I'm entitled to good health. It is a blessing, a mysterious one at times, and one that makes me grateful that I've lived in places where efficient health care is even an option.

Trade Fair

There's a grocery store in our neighborhood that caters to the multitude of niche markets that make up Jackson Heights. I went shopping there this evening with Eric, and it's amazing what you can find in this tiny store. (Tiny by grocery store standards. There are 8 skinny aisles--and if you haven't shopped in a NYC supermarket, think skinnier than you are imagining.)
Due to the limitation in space, this market uses every inch of vertical space. If you are looking for toilet paper, look up--as in 8 feet above the ground over the produce--up. This market doesn't use the psychological approach that the inexpensive items should be high or low, out of the normal range of vision. Instead, it seems to take a very practical approach of putting light items like toilet paper high as well as items that can hang from hooks, like feather dusters and frying pans. To find the items on my shopping list, I had to walk slowly and scan the aisles all the way up to the ceiling, and this is some of what I noticed in my search for Q-tips. (which I didn't find by the way):
-black rye bread like we buy in Germany
-British cookies
-half an aisle of Indian specialty products -- large bags of nuts, dried beans, spices, etc.
-a large section of canned Turkish items like stuffed grape leaves and specialty olives
-half an aisle of Goya products
-Kosher soap...which is right above the
-Catholic candles in glass jars with pictures of Jesus and the saints on them
-Mexican white cheese
-Columbian arepas
-Twinings tea
-Nestle and Hershey chocolate chips and generic American baking products
-organic, cage-free eggs and a new section of organic vegetables to cater to the new arrivals in the neighborhood
-mango concentrate and other sugary drinks with fruits that I don't recognize from South America
-Microbrew beers (including ones from Brooklyn)
-And then the somewhat bizarre assortment of items like hot pads and fly swatters and frying pans and charcoal and lighter fluid, which I know are common enough in normal grocery stores but feel bizarre to me since the store doesn't even stock Q-tips.

Ego

I recently read a very cute children's book titled The Dot. It's about a little girl who can't begin anything in art class. She battles the blank page, and her teacher encourages her to just begin, with anything. The girl leans over and puts a single dot on a page to show her teacher how stupid it will be, but instead her teacher says, "sign it."
The next day her dot is hanging on the wall and the girl thinks, I could make a better dot than that. And this begins a huge creative outpouring of dot art. Eventually she gets her own show and a little boy says to her, "wow, I could never be a great artist like you. I can't even make straight lines. See?" He shows her his crooked lines and she says, "sign it."
Just this last week I realized that it's time for me to stand up and declare my intentions. A year ago I quit my corporate day job to wrestle the demons that haunt me and find work that will flow from my soul. I now feel like I can say that I am a writer and storyteller. I am in the apprenticeship stage. I have a lot to learn and I'm not exactly financially viable yet, but I have found what I love and who I am and I know that my path will involve this work. I can't see the full path, I don't exactly know how I will use these tools in the world, but I feel like it's time to "sign it." It's time to let my ego inflate enough to carry me through the creative process.
I had a lovely ego boost today. I was attending the Small Press Book Fair on the recommendation of my writing teacher. I happened to bump into her while looking at the books for sale by small publishers. She was talking to an editor at a publishing house and when I interrupted to say hello, she turned to the editor and said, "and this young lady is working on a great project where she's telling stories about growing up as a missionary kid." I was quite taken aback, because she's simply read my essay for the anthology and she's been telling me it's an outline for a full-fledged memoir, but I haven't exactly committed to the idea. (though I've been thinking this week I should take it more seriously.) So I said, "well, just beginning the project." And she said, "well it's a darn good beginning!"
I was quite flattered. I know she's my teacher and it's her job to build up her students, but she doesn't suffer fools, she's very frank and honest about feedback. So perhaps I should go further with my memoir writing, even if I do think it would be hard to publish. Maybe I need a little dose of hope and ego.

Today

Today is the birthday of C.S. Lewis, Louis May Alcott, and Madeleine L'Engle. Who knew these three shared the same birthday. I learned this from my daily email from The Writer's Almanac. I recommend signing up for these emails if you would like a daily dose of poetry. I often love the poems printed in these emails, but I don't like to repost them on the blog because most of them are copyrighted. Not that this probably really matters given my very small readership...but still.

Here's the link to sign up if you're interested:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Procrastinating

I need to finish editing an essay that I wrote for an anthology titled Growing Up Churched. I have to cut the essay from 5000 words to 3000. Ugh. I have been so busy that I haven't been able to work on it at all. Today, I was surprised by some canceled plans and got 5 whole hours to work on it! Crazy! 5 hours. I have done more stupid stuff online in the last 4 hours. Sigh. I have also gotten some writing finished, but good grief. Now I'm going to do something productive and make myself some lunch so I can stop feeling so light-headed. And I'll ponder the telling of my life story in 3000 words.

Introverted

This has been my schedule for the last week:

Sunday: Eric and I went to a storytelling event, met friends for dinner in Brooklyn, and then took a taxi to my father-in-law's (Lenny) house to greet Eric's aunt and uncle who had just arrived from Germany
Monday: Worked all day, went straight to dinner with Lenny, Jan and Hanne (the aunt and uncle) and Eric
Tuesday: Worked all day, went straight to dinner with the same group, then went to watch a contemporary ballet show, got home at 11pm when Eric had to prep the turkey for Thanksgiving
Wednesday: Cooked and cleaned, tutored for 2 hours, cooked, went to class, met Eric at a party
Thursday: Started cooking at 8:30, took a 1 hour break, cooked and prepped the rest of the day, guests arrived at 3 and left at 9:30
Friday: Cleaned up, went to a movie with Eric, met the same group (9 of us in all) for dinner at the raw food restaurant
Saturday: Met Lenny, Jan and Hanne and went on a drive out of the city to walk around, came into the city for dinner at Angelica's restaurant

It has been a wonderful week, but I would like nothing so much as to sit all by myself for a very, very long time.

12 Years

All week I have been meaning to mention this on my blog, and I have been so busy, I haven't. This Thanksgiving marks the twelve year anniversary of my becoming friends with firefly. Twelve years ago we gathered with a group of girls to eat the Thanksgiving dinner in the cafeteria one week before the real Thanksgiving. After dinner we went to our Intro to Literature class. We were listening to a guest speaker that night, and Marti had to leave early because she didn't feel well. About an hour later, I also threw up and left class to go back to the dorm. The next morning I was still too weak to go get breakfast and my roommate didn't help me after leaving for class. Marti, who had heard from others in the class that I was also sick, came down to my room and offered to get me something. (She was feeling better by that time.) I gratefully received her offer and when she came back with food, we got into our first one-on-one conversation. I think we talked about demons or something. :) Who knows. We were very serious young students and took comfort in being able to talk with each other about the pressing concerns of the world. That really hasn't changed much, though now we do tend to laugh at ourselves a bit more.
Firefly, your friendship was probably the best gift from Westmont. Thanks for all of these years of love and care.

The True American Holiday

Eric and I are recovering from Thanksgiving today. This marks the sixth year that I've celebrated Thanksgiving with Eric and his father, Lenny, and it's become a yearly ritual that I love. Eric prepared turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted green beans, and cranberry sauce. I made rolls, two pies, squash soup, and roasted vegetables. It was a ton of work, but we always have such appreciative guests that it's worth every minute.
This year we had a very international crowd for the feast. I invited a Turkish couple that we've become friends with this year, Eric's aunt and uncle from Germany were visiting, and Arno and Dorit--I call them Eric's adopted grandparents--are Holocaust survivors who immigrated to America in the 1940s, but still identify strongly with their European identities. Arno and Dorit speak German, so they had a great time speaking German with the aunt and uncle, and my Turkish friend has an uncle who lives in the same town as Eric's aunt and uncle, so she understands a little German. Eric, Lenny and I understand no German, so we kept having to pull the conversation back to English.
It was an interesting mixture of people. The Holocaust survivors with the German aunt who's father was an extremely prestigious general in the old German military. The Turkish friend with a general father in the Turkish army who could identify with my German aunt's experiences in a rigid military culture. There was one tense moment where we all talked about how German society is not accepting the Turkish immigrants. And yet, by the end of dinner, we all had such a great time together that we decided to all get together for dinner again tonight! Lenny invited everyone to a restaurant that makes raw food. I can't wait to hear the reactions to this experience. I can't imagine a bigger meat eating crowd, and Lenny wants to do raw food. Should be interesting...
I hope your holidays were joyous. Here are a couple of pictures from our day:

Tired and frazzled, but filled up with stories

It's 10pm on Monday night, and it's the first time I've been home since 9am this morning. I spent the morning watching storytellers, the afternoon tutoring, and the evening having dinner with Eric, his father, and his German aunt and uncle. Dinner was oddly stressful. Len brought up some very serious business news and was trying to share it while Eric was trying to help his aunt and uncle understand the Vietnamese menu. That was stressful--trying to make sure everyone was getting what they needed and feeling like it was impossible. Then Eric and Len started talking about Eric applying for German citizenship. And Len mentioned casually, that once Eric got citizenship then he could come with us to Germany and we would take care of him. I was completely baffled and frustrated by the conversation. It stresses me out to think about emigrating to another country. And so I shared this. And that wasn't well understood by his German family. And the whole conversation just felt like it spiraled into a strange abstraction through a series of subtle miscommunications.
But other than this evening, I've had a wonderful day. I followed a new storyteller today, and I loved his style. I got to watch two storytellers and have a lunch discussion with them both. It was a lot of fun to talk story with them and analyze how the students responded to the lessons. I love story. I love watching children listen to stories. Their eyes light up, their mouths fall open, they start to act things out, they crack up with laughter. It's a joy-filled profession. I'm also enjoying watching so many different age groups. It's fun to watch how their sense of humor changes with their age. It's interesting how a room of first graders won't question the fact that the story is about pulling a turkey out of the ground, but second graders would find it ridiculous and need to point it out to the storyteller. And today, there was a group of 3rd grade girls who had a lot of trouble with ambiguity and not having control. At one point the storyteller was sharing different types of possible endings to the same story, and after listening to the options, one of the girls turned around and said to her friends, "I think he did by accident. Right? He did it by accident!" As if voting on it would turn it into an absolute.
"A little political activist," one of the storytellers guessed about this girl.
(Sadly, I think I was that student when I was little. I suppose I shouldn't judge her so harshly--or myself for that matter--but it embarrasses me nonetheless.)

What It Means to Have a Y Chromosome In My Family

Last night at 9pm, I got this phone call:

"Hello."
"Hi, Kirsten. Is your husband there?" (in an urgent tone.)
A slight pause from me as I register that this is my grandmother.
"I'm sorry, that wasn't a very nice greeting, was it? How are you? This is grandma. Is Eric there? I'm having a problem with my DVD player, and your father is not home!"
So I say to Eric who is sitting calmly reading an article on his computer, "It's my grandma, she wants to talk to you."
I then get a wicked grin on my face as I stand there watching for his reaction to her request. It's not like I couldn't help her with her DVD player, but I have a hunch it will be frustrating, and besides, she did ask for Eric.
Eric takes the phone and says, "Hello Betty."
And I wait for it, and then the look of surprise registers on Eric's face as he says, "well what button are you pushing?"
Another pause.
"It says 'disc 1 empty'? Well then you need to switch to one of the other disks and press open."
Another pause. And then Eric tries to explain the concept of multiple disk trays to my grandmother--unsuccessfully.
Eric throws up his hands to me in frustration that he manages to hide in his voice.
"OK, Betty, let's try this. Tell me what type of DVD player you have." He gets out his computer to look it up online, hoping to find a picture that will help him know how it works.
BUT, my grandma couldn't figure out what type of model she has. So Eric went to our DVD player and says, "I think the brand would be written on the front. Our player says Panasonic on the front."
My grandmother starts to read everything that she sees on her DVD player.
"Oh, that's a good idea. Keep reading me the button names."
A pause.
"You have a button called 'disk skip'? Excellent. Keep pushing that button, Betty."
A pause. Then what I assume to be my grandmother expressing her gratitude.
"Great, I'm happy I could help. You're welcome, Betty. Goodnight."

And she hangs up. Not a word of greeting to me. Not a word of news. She just hung up and got back to her DVD. And Eric and I had a good laugh about the fact that she never considered asking me for help.

Teeth

I went to the dentist today. It's a new dentist for Eric and me. Our old dentist retired this year. When he looked at my X-rays, he commented on how good my bone depth was.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"31," I replied.
"Oh, a baby!"
And when I thought about my age in terms of my teeth, I agreed with him. I hope to live past 80 years of age. And so I haven't even reached the half-way mark of my relationship with my teeth. I should probably floss more.

Time

New Yorkers walk the way L.A. drives--fast except when stopped by traffic. We walk with purpose and irritation at anyone or anything that gets in our way. We change lanes quickly, walking into the gutter if necessary, to pass slow commuters. The left side of the escalators are reserved for walking. Traffic lights are mere suggestion of the right of way, at any moment a walker will challenge a car to a game of chicken. By straining against the streets and the crowds, we manage to shave second--minutes even off of our commutes.
What do we do with this precious time we save? We have conversations--debates--about the best and fastest methods of transportation. Like this conversation I recently had with my husband at a party with another friend of ours:
"It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the 7 train from our apartment."
"It does not take 10 minutes to walk to the 7 train."
"Yes it does. Door to platform, 10 minutes. I've timed it."
"Well maybe the way you walk. It takes me 5 minutes."
"No way it takes 5 minutes. Come on. Maybe you could do it in 7 minutes, but I don't believe you walk it in 5 minutes. Are you counting the time it takes to get up the stairs and on the platform?"
"OK, maybe it takes me 7 minutes to get to the platform, but there's no way it takes me 10 minutes."

The irony is that I really enjoy traveling from place to place in NY when I can just relax and accept the time it will take me. There is always a lot going on, stores and people to observe. I can read, ponder, and often even write while on the trains. And yet, I play my own game of chicken when I decide when to leave the house for any given appointment. I squeeze the extra 5 minutes out of my time at home, even if it means the difference between a stressful commute and a leisurely one.

(Maybe I'm just continuing the irony theme that Anne has started on her blog.)

Validation

Last night in my Writing Workshop class I read aloud the first part of an essay that I wrote about my experience as a missionary kid. I read a section that dealt with the first two years as an MK, when my parents were deciding to become missionaries and we were moving all the time to raise support and get the necessary training. I have really been processing that time in my life a lot this past year. I was 11 when my parents decided to join Wycliffe and 13 when we left the U.S. to move to France. Those years typically represent a disempowerment experience for girls, but for me that was combined with the confusion of constantly moving and having all kinds of major identity crises at once. The outcome of this confusion and turmoil was that I became a fundamentalist teenager. Then moving overseas made me reconsider some of my rock solid certainties.
But anyhow, what I wanted to say is that reading the essay to my writing class last night made me feel so amazing. I've sent the essay to a bunch of friends, and I've gotten positive feedback, but some part of me felt like maybe they were just being nice because they were my friends. But this group of relative strangers (it is a safe environment and an encouraging one, but I don't know these people, and they don't know me) really responded to my writing. They were moved, and felt such compassion for the narrator in the essay. It helped me to really stand up and own the fact that I lived through something unusual and difficult. And it helped me to listen to their compassion for that young-self that I've been trying to understand and forgive and honor this past year.

Natural IUDs

I started this post last night and then deleted it in a fit of panic after Googling my name. I have an unusual enough name that I'm not confused with hundreds of other people on Google. And now they have some new search sites where people can see all of my relatives listed and for $50 anyone can purchase a complete background check on me. Not that I have anything to hide -- but yikes! It's just so icky. And now my blog is associated with my name. So I have this vulnerable feeling that makes me want to delete the whole thing.
Nevertheless, I really enjoy the connections I'm making to the few people who actually read the blog, so I've decided to push through my anxiety. Though I still may delete the whole thing. Maybe I'll try coming back under a new name and try for some level of anonymity.
The reason that I feel so vulnerable with this post is that I want to write about something that I wouldn't necessarily share with the world. And yet here I go...
I went to see my OB-GYN on Monday for my annual check-up and to check the status of my uterine polyps. I learned I have uterine polyps last year, and my doctor suggested that I have a surgery to cut them away. "I seriously doubt you'll be able to get pregnant with those things," she told me, "they are like natural IUDs." I decided to try alternative treatment, acupuncture, which I started in April. The good news from my doctor visit is that the acupuncture is having an effect, the polyps are smaller. The bad news is that if I want to get pregnant in the near future, they probably aren't small enough, and progress with alternative methods is slow.
I have very mixed feelings about the surgery. My doctor feels like it's not a big deal--the polyps are annoying, but there's a quick surgery that can make them go away. (Of course I have to be completely sedated, but it's still minimally invasive as far as surgery goes.) I feel like there must be a reason my body is creating these polyps and cutting them--though it may solve the short term problem of getting pregnant--does nothing to address whatever it is in my body that makes these grow. (in fact they almost always come back, and the surgery needs to be repeated) I guess that's where acupuncture comes in, and I should be grateful that I have both options at my disposal. I can both treat the underlying problem and have the quick fix that will allow me to get pregnant.
But I'm deeply torn emotionally about this whole thing. I really don't want to go under the knife or to be sedated. I feel like a wimp for feeling like this, but I do. I also don't want to wait another year or two to be able to conceive. And that feeling is its own rabbit hole of confused emotions.
I never planned to have children. I never planned to not have children, and if anyone ever asked me if I wanted children, I would always say yes. However, I never really gave much serious thought to the fact that having children can involve intention. I certainly never wanted to get pregnant when I didn't want children--when I knew I wasn't prepared to support them financially or emotionally. But to stand up and now admit to myself and the world that I want children is really difficult. To be willing to even go through surgery to make it possible.
I find it hard to plan for my future. I really like thinking that one day I'll look back over my life and be pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns my life took. I don't like admitting that I want something unless it's absolutely certain that I can have it. It's part of what make career planning so hard for me. I just have this deeply ingrained habit of squelching dangerous desires.
So kids--well, I don't know what I imagined. That's the problem, I never imagined. And now I'm imagining having one and it's so scary. It's scary to think that maybe I wouldn't be able to conceive. It's scary to think that there could be years of wanting but not having a baby. It's scary to think of the baby actually arriving in the world and being my responsibility! It's scary to think about the rest of my life being changed by this decision. And the hardest thing--for me--is to face all of those fears and still move forward with determination to realize this desire.
I've scheduled the surgery for December. Unless I get pregnant this month, I'm moving forward with it. :) Please pray to the fertility gods. :)

Two Laughs from Thursday

Laugh 1:This little girl was a "Memory Maker" yesterday. The Memory Makers retell a story from the previous week's storytelling time. She told the second half of the story "Boneless."

Boneless is a creature with no skin and no bones. Every Halloween he scared the children and ate their dropped candy, until one day the children decided not to be scared. They went right up to Boneless and asked him, "Boneless, why do you scare us?"

Then this Memory Maker said, "And then Boneless tells the truth." Pause, and in a quiet, serious voice, "But I don't know the Boneless truth."

Laugh 2:
During Dance Therapy class the group was unusually chatty. Normally we start dancing and everyone goes inside their own head and gets quiet. But last night, everyone engaged with the group and told stories and laughed and acted silly with each other. It was a funny shift in how we relate to each other. But that's not the funny story...

While we were talking, someone mentioned how they went to a Bar Mitzvah and all the kids knew these choreographed dances to pop songs. Then my professor said that apparently it's very popular to hire "party promoters" for Bar Mitzvahs, which are professional dancers who organize the kids and get them dancing. She learned this when she arrived late for a Bar Mitzvah and saw the party planners out on the dance floor. Confused, she turned to her friend and asked, "why are the hookers dancing with the children?"

Imagination

Yesterday I worked with my student (feels funny to say that about a child I tutor as opposed to a child in my classroom--I wonder why) on writing. She had an assignment from school to write about the First Thanksgiving from the perspective of a Pilgrim girl. The teacher provided a lot of information about the feast and then she had to put it together in a first person account.
J (my student) and I started talking about this assignment when I saw her last Friday. I told her to stretch her imagination and try to see the scene in her head and then tell me what she saw. We got some books from the library to help put some historically accurate images in her mind's eye. And then today I had her make a web with notes of what she saw, ate, did, felt, so that she would have that information all ready for the writing.
I taught her a fun trick I learned from a storyteller. She has the kids place their thumbs in the middle of their palm and then wrap their fingers around their thumbs very tight. Then she tells them to close there eyes and wait for the hand motion to activate their imagination. If they wait long enough, they will be able to see the colors and shapes with their eyes closed. (I love the gesture that makes this activity so concrete. I think it's genius. And it keeps little hands still.)
So I did this with J as part of the brainstorming, and then I set her loose to write her assignment. It was wonderful to see her dive into writing. She loved writing up those 12 sentences. She delighted in little details that she thought to add--for example that she didn't like the onions because they made her cry. And she wanted to keep working on the assignment even after she'd finished the part she was required to do for homework.
It was such a joy to watch her open up to writing. (In the middle of writing her paragraph, she stopped and said, "I need to do the imagination trick again.") It was wonderful that it wasn't just a matter of counting out the required ten sentences or looking back to the teacher's paper to answer the questions in the assignment. J really could picture the scene and her excitement flowed from using writing as a way to capture something in her mind's eye.
That's why I love teaching writing to kids. The victories are small, but so clear and visible to the adult eye.

And here are the flowers that the family gave me for my birthday. A really wonderful birthday!

31

Today I turn 31. I'm having a great birthday day so far, with lots of time in the morning for reflection and work-at-home, and then tutoring and a birthday dinner with friends. Eric has lots of fun presents for me--books, a video, and I believe earrings, though he's saving those until the end of the day, enjoying dragging out the gift giving process as much as possible. It's a sunny, crisp day, and I just finished listening to a great "This American Life" show while I cooked myself lunch and ate and cleaned up. And I was sung to by a duo in California. A really great day in all.

Shopping/Planning

In an attempt to write more frequently, and not just about serious topics, I thought I'd ask for some input on meal planning. Robyn got me thinking about this with her post about Rachel Ray this week. I watched a Rachel Ray show today, because her post had made me curious. And for what it's worth, Robyn, I enjoyed the show. (I think she's a bit annoying to watch, but I think that of all cooking personas.) I learned something new about spaghetti--putting butter and Parmesan cheese on the noodles before adding the sauce--interesting, and probably really yummy. But watching all of these cooking shows (I watched a couple today) has got me thinking that my problem with cooking really is never in the kitchen. The problem is planning and shopping for food. It seems like if I get too much food, then things will come up and I'll be eating out, and then food goes bad. If I don't shop enough (because we've been eating out a lot) then when I have a night at home, I don't have enough ingredients to make a satisfying dinner. (That's not entirely true, but it is a frustration.)
I've been imagining that I should get really organized and go through my cupboard and refrigerator and try to stock up on basics--like butter and good flour, and spices, and such. And maybe get some containers that would help me store things well. Or become better at cooking and freezing. But then I also think I just need a better routine for thinking about meals and shopping. How do you all do it? Any suggestions?

I am/I follow

Last night I realized that in French "I am" and "I follow" are the same words--Je suis. The thought just popped into my mind during dance therapy class. I was moving, not thinking about French language or the meaning of being or following, but once the idea came to me, I realized it summed up nicely some other thoughts I'd been having earlier in the day.

I observed two storytellers in a school Thursday morning, and one of the storytellers dressed up like a colonial school teacher and pretended with the 4th graders that everyone was at a colonial school. The kids were separated by gender and lined up to represent the grades in a one-room schoolhouse. The children had to stand and address the teacher as "School Master Jonathan" before saying anything. They learned about the hickory stick punishment and sitting in the dunce seat. And he had them all recite the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The storyteller also went over the subjects that were taught, and he shared how "history" back then was memorizing kings and not called "social studies." And "mathematics" was different because it was all memorization and recitation, not word problems.

After acting out a day in the life of colonial school children, the storyteller left and returned as the storyteller to do a Q & A session with the kids. In the last class, one of the kids pointed out, "the golden rule says to treat others nicely so they will treat you nicely, but the teacher didn't have to treat the kids nicely." That astute observation and the constant reminder of how much colonial school was about recitation and perfect penmanship got me thinking about the evolution of what gets taught in school. Today many specialists argue that school is too rote, we aren't doing enough to foster kids' creativity. Leaders today want workers who can adapt to ever-changing demands in business and society and find creative solutions to problems. And that kind of training asks for evermore equality. You can't tell a kid to obey your every word and "be seen and not heard" and then expect them to grow up to be a super creative thinker. And I think it's interesting that we now want and need creative thinkers and that we respect a certain level of challenging authority because that's where much innovation comes from. It made me want to really study what societies teach their children as an insight into cultural values.

Continuing on this vein of thought, though, I came home and had a short break before I went into class. I watched a tivoed (is that a word?) rerun of Scrubs in which the older doctors are bemoaning the fact that there's no respect for doctors anymore. Now, the show claimed, people think they know everything because they can read the medical information on Google. I thought it was funny to think that doctors feel that same loss respect as teachers. (assuming the show is reflecting something real in the medical world, of course) Teachers are often complaining about how difficult it is to do their job because there's no respect for the position anymore. I think those comments say more about the fact that school hasn't evolved as fast as society. I think kids would be hungry to follow a great teacher and would show her a lot of respect, but kids won't tolerate much of the boredom that comes with school. And we no longer tell them they have to--that they just have to tolerate things they hate and suck it up. As a society, I think we are starting to tell our kids, "if you aren't happy, change it. Speak up. We want to hear you." Don't follow, be. It can create a certain level of chaos--all of that being. We certainly need following for any society to work, but I think it's interesting to think about how much and in what situations.

And then I closed the day with a conversation with Marti about some big changes that I'm feeling inside of myself. A shift internally in how I perceive my relationship with my mother. I'm feeling a greater sense of separation, a greater freedom to be and not to follow her ways. And so it seems very appropriate that my mind made that silly connection between the French words yesterday.

Fire

When I was little, there was a big sticker on the window of my bedroom that let firefighters know that a child slept there. I was always told that if there was a fire, I should never open my door, but climb out the window to safety. Sometimes I would lay awake in my bed and try to imagine how I would perform in a fire. I knew that I should just leave, because my life was the most valuable. But in the safe darkness I would imagine that I was able to heroically save my stuffed animals too. Maybe I would open the window and quickly throw things out the window before running. Where should I start? In my drawers to save some clothes? In my closet to save my stuffed animals? The more I imagined, the more I was able to save it all, coming back multiple times for loads before having to run for it--presumably with all of my precious belongings in my arms.
I guess I was just trying to make sense of how I would survive if disaster struck, hoping and praying that I could be prepared or strong enough to save myself from total devastation. The idea of everything I owned being burned in a fire was one of my true fears as a child. I would see pictures of burnt homes and burnt toys and it would strike fear in my heart.
I still wonder what would happen if I lost everything. I feel like it's a very real possibility, even though I constantly tell myself to relax and go about life in happy denial that harm could ever touch me. Being a missionary kid meant giving up a lot of securities and material objects of comfort over and over again. But it also meant that I mostly knew it was coming. I knew that we would be moving to France soon, and that meant I only got two suitcases. I knew that I couldn't take the teddy bear my French classmates gave me as a going away present onto the plane with me to Africa. I knew that when we left Africa, the community and world that I loved would dissolve as all of my friends left the place never to return again. And maybe that makes me more confident that even if everything disappears, new growth comes and fills in the holes. Or maybe it just makes me more paranoid that one day I will have to leave everything I now love behind, and so I should get prepared.
I've been thinking about fire today, because my brother lives in San Diego. He expects that his house will be fine, but he has evacuated anyway just because things are getting so bad. And even if he survives this without major loss, so many others are losing right now. My heart goes out to them. There's nothing worse than loss that strikes when you least expect it, or when you are powerless save that which is most dear.

Embodied Story

Yesterday I attended an all-day workshop titled "Thinking Like a Storyteller" given by two accomplished storytellers. We each brought a story that we wanted to "work on," and then the leaders gave us several activities to use to craft our stories. We never used paper or pen, note taking was discouraged, and the leaders never expected us to get out the stories and read them. What I learned to do is imagine my story with such detail and care, that I could begin to remove myself and any opinions or preconceptions I may have about the story from my telling. The leader would tell the participants, "stop acting, just tell us the story." She talked about seeing the story so completely that the telling was an unfolding of that vision for the audience. The other leader had a saying that exemplified that. It comes from East Africa.
The Griot says, "I have been and I have seen."
The listeners respond, "See again so that we also can see."

The lessons were similar if not identical to the ones I've learned in writing classes:
1. The narrator has to be believable, whether it's fiction, memoir, or storytelling, the audience has to trust the narrator or it won't work.
2. Be concrete. Show don't tell.
3. Let the story take on its own life. A story that is proving a point isn't a story. It's politics or advertisement or manipulation. A story follows the facts and leaves space for the listener (reader) to have their own experience within the story.

But there's something so powerful about learning storytelling not as a writer, but as someone who will embody that story for an audience. It's so intimate. It's a call to slow down and really live within the story.

All during the workshop I felt like I was taking the story that I had read and pushing it out in front of me. I was imagining the details of it like a movie before my eyes. I was sitting with the characters and contemplating the choices they made. I was trying to know the story with my senses.

And I watched the other participants doing the same. I listened to the leaders critique other stories, and as they slowed us down and pared the stories down to their essential cores, it became clear why a simple scene like an old man sitting beside a well, underneath a tree, dusty from travel, about to eat a cake baked by his wife and sacrificed by his 100 children was immensely powerful. The well reaching down to the underworld, the tree reaching up to the heavens, and an old man facing his only sustenance, the symbol of his family's love and trust. It became a moment of suspense, a moment of wonder.

It's made me think about something I heard once about discipleship. I heard that Christianity was never about the written text. Jesus left no written records. And following Jesus was never about adhering to a creed. It was about living out the stories.

I feel like learning to craft story in this way will be a source of rich life for me. As I heard all day yesterday, "stop trying to figure it out, don't worry about getting it right, just be present to your audience and stick with the story."

Dance Class Observation

I'm puzzled by an observation I made during my last Dance Therapy Class. We were doing our usual closing time of moving to music when the professor asked us to move into a circle and to shift our awareness to the others in the group. She danced up to my left side and I moved over to close in the circle. As she danced next to me, I became very aware of her warmth and energy. I could feel her energy like a warm embrace on my left side. We weren't touching, there was about 6-8 inches between us, but her presence was unmistakable. I tried to focus on the student dancing on my right side, wondering if I turned my awareness to her movements if I would feel the same connection. I made eye contact, smiled, and tried to match the style and tempo of the student's movements. But I never felt the same energy. In fact I couldn't feel anything at all. Meanwhile, even when I was trying to focus on the student, I continued to feel my professor's presence.
This experience fascinates me. I think I will discuss it with my professor on Thursday.

MK, TCK, What's the Difference?

Last Wednesday night in my writing class, we started discussing what kind of writing existed that captured the MK (missionary kid) experience. I said how I had been unable to find very many first person accounts about the MK experience, and that the ones I did find were mostly written by my parents' generation. Someone in the class mentioned The Poisonwood Bible as an example of something that captured the MK experience.
"Didn't Barbara Kingsolver grow up in Africa?" someone asked.
I jumped in with the clarification that her parents were NOT missionaries but government workers, and that the book portrayed such an extreme religious figure that I didn't feel it really represented the majority of mission work.
One of the students said to me, "as someone without any religious experience, I would be curious why you see an important distinction between someone who had missionary parents and someone who had parents working overseas for the government. I just don't see what's so different about those two experiences."
Something inside of me rose up like an angry bear when she said it. I felt something in me want to scream, THERE'S A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! And that world is religion.
But I've been thinking more about the question, and I'm not sure that the differences are so distinct. There's a title that lumps MKs, military brats, and kids who lived internationally for government and business reasons and that's TCK - Third Culture Kids. What we share is the experience of being raised in a culture that is not the native culture of our parents. So we don't belong to our parents' culture and we don't belong to the culture of the country where we live. It's a lot like second generation immigrants, except that the expectation is that once we leave the house, we'll return to our parent's culture. (Though many just continue traveling or living overseas because that's more natural.)
But what is it in me that felt so defensive about the missionary experience? Obviously the faith factor is unique among MKs, but why the strong emotional reaction? Maybe Barbara Kingsolver did experience much of what I experienced, but for some reason I have my doubts. And I don't think The Poisonwood Bible captures something critical about mission work. I don't think it captures how ordinary, organized, and corporate it is. It does a good job of exploring the way extreme belief meets cross-cultural impasses. It's a great book to explore the rape and pillaging of Africa. But it's not a book that captures my experience. I want to keep thinking about why that is, because I might get closer to figuring out what my experience was.

Pulse and Acupuncture

Today I saw my acupuncturist and told her all of the strange things I was experiencing in my body. She was surprised that the treatment had inspired a physical detox. She said she would have expected a big emotional release or a shift in my perception or in a relationship, or some change in my dreams. I think some of that might also be happening, but it's harder for me to know.
She suspected that the treatment opened up the left side of my body, and then with the Indian Summer weather and the detox yoga class, my body just decided to go with it.
The good news though is that today my pulse was 64. For months (even years) my pulse went from 70 up to 86. A pulse of 72 was a good week, and rare. A month ago I was 86. Two weeks ago I was 76. Today I was 64. So something shifted. My body has released some of the heat that has been plaguing me. She suspects the heat was from the malaria I had in high school, so it's very encouraging to finally see something change.

Update

So I'm still dealing with the tail end of this detox. I went to my chiropractor on Tuesday, and he was shocked at the state of my muscles and back. He said it was unlike any other time he's seen me, that I bore the signs of a full-on detox. His metaphor: "It's like your body took everything in the attic and the basement and all the closets and every room in the house and put it all in the living room." I just hope I feel better tomorrow, because I am flying to Florida.
And that's the other update. I leave for a family visit tomorrow night. I won't be back to NYC until Tuesday afternoon, when I hit the ground running. The week I get back I have tutoring, classes, a night out with Len for Eric's birthday, a conference for my storytelling internship, and I have to plan, cook, and clean for a big party I'm throwing for Eric's birthday on Saturday the 13th. I'm getting tired in anticipation of the week. :)
I'm looking forward to seeing Jonathan and my grandparents who I haven't seen in almost a year. I can't believe it's been so long.

The Left Side of My Body

is sick. Yes, just the left side. I started feeling a cold last night, and by the time I woke up this morning the sinuses on the left side of my face were all swollen. My left eye is red and watery. My left nostril is running. My left eardrum is tender. My left cheek hurts. The left side of my throat is raw from nasal drip. The left side of my neck aches. My left shoulder hurts. My left hip really aches. And I even have gas on the left side of my abdomen.
But my right side is fine. No aches, no runny nose, no gas, no nothing.
It feels SO weird!
I get acupuncture treatments every two weeks for reasons I won't go into online, but the strange thing is that a little over a week ago she did a treatment that focused on the left side of my body. Maybe this is some strange detox. I can't wait to ask her.

More from Dance Therapy Class

Last night my professor was at a Dance Therapists' Conference, so she left two movies for us to watch. The movies showed dance therapy sessions with all kinds of different populations: prisoners, psychiatric patients, a normal (meaning not diagnosed as psychotic) woman, elderly patients confined to wheelchairs, normal preschoolers in a group, disturbed preschoolers in a group, autistic children in one-on-one sessions, the parents of psychotic children in a group of adults. It was fascinating to see the therapy in process. It helped me to get a sense for how what we do together in the class relates to the actual work.
The videos were extremely moving in some cases. The work with the two autistic children moved many in the class close to tears. The children couldn't relate to any other people, they didn't play with toys, they just spent their time in a bare room "stimulating themselves," which sounds funny to me, but that is the technical language that was used to describe autism in the videos. The therapist started by imitating the child's movement, so that the child would understand the therapist as trying to learn her language. Eventually, the child would allow the therapist to get closer, and then touch was allowed, and finally the child would welcome touch and even run after the therapist if she moved away. Once that started, the children would want to be held, nestled, rocked, and basically treated like infants. They would explore the therapist's body the way toddlers explore bodies, touching everything, pulling at her hair. And after that, the children would start to recognize that they had a separate body, studying themselves in the mirror.
This was a common experience for the disturbed children. They needed a certain amount of physical nurturing, and the therapist would imitate nursing positions, pretending to feed the children with her fingers, all to give the children that experience of bonding and love.
When working with adults, the therapy seemed more about free expression of emotions. It was also a return to that primal experience of knowing you have a body and using it to communicate. It seems that with adults, the biggest problem is that the demands on the intellect and conformity lead people to forget about the body. Kind of like I've heard it said about art--most people are encouraged to draw as children, but then we stop once the demands to read and write become more pressing. So most adults draw like children, because they stopped their artistic development as children. It seems that the same can be said about using the body to communicate. The body is our first language, but once we learn verbal language, we can shift to forget about the body. And yet, by returning to the body, adults were able to better access their emotions and learn how to use those emotions well. Anger was the scariest emotion to express, and work with prisoners and psychotic patients really focused on how to express it but not let it overpower and control the person. There was also a lot of work that focused on how to relate to a group, how to stand firmly on one's two feet, and how to feel supported. And with the elderly in wheelchairs, the session was mostly about touch.
I also enjoyed watching the therapists in the videos. There was a noticeable ease that these women had in their bodies. They could be so expressive with their movements. They were so open to their patients. It made it clear that like drawing, this is a skill that will improve with time.

Jackson Heights Troubadour

In terms of eccentric residents that I've identified so far, my favorite is the man who dresses up in bright skirts, a pink wig, and a clown nose and rides his bike with his toy poodle and parrot in the front basket. I see him every couple of months on the main drag. Then this Wednesday, I discovered a new delight. My walk to the train was serenaded by a man I'm calling the neighborhood troubadour.
The troubadour is not so eccentric in his dress, though he tucked his pants into his black socks, giving him a strange 80's look. He wore a denim long-sleeve shirt and respectable brown leather shoes. His gray hair was tied back in a bandanna and he has a full gray beard that make him look a little hippy-ish, but nothing outrageous. The remarkable thing about the troubadour was the way he moved.
He had his empty guitar case on his back and hugged the guitar close to his chest. His elbows were tucked protectively around the sides of the guitar and his left hand just barely reached out to caress the neck of the guitar that stuck out to the left. With his right hand he was constantly strumming, and with his legs he marched down the street. He took huge steps, raising his right knee high in the air like a soldier and then following with a more casual swing in his left leg. Up and down went his legs, flashing his black socks pulled up high around his pant legs, moving forward with intention and grace. He attracted the stares of everyone on the street, but his own gaze remained focused on the space directly in front of him, the space he would enter momentarily with his striding.
With his guitar he repeated a succession of chords. Two strums on one chord, then a shift, then another, then something that sounded like a conclusion, and then the first chord again. I would say it sounded like a paso doble, but it seemed too gentle to inspire bull fighting.
I abandoned the bus stop to follow him, and when we reached the next intersection and a red light, he made an abrupt turn to the left, and then swung around and stepped to the right. He continued in this figure-eight pattern until he could navigate a way through the cars, never missing a beat on his guitar. When the light turned, I followed him down 37th street, running to catch up so that I could still hear the music. We walked like this for another six blocks, and then he stopped at the Jewish Center. He approached two old men sitting in lawn chairs out in front of the center and swung his guitar away from his body as he took his last high step and glided to a stop.

Reflections from Dance Therapy Class

I LOVE Dance Therapy class. We spend over half of the class moving to music and reflecting on what the experience feels like and what it might mean. It makes us all wake up and leave the class glowing. It makes us feel such love and warmth toward each other, even though we really know nothing about each other except the little we've shared and how we each move.
I don't know why I'm in this class. I have no intention of ever becoming a therapist, dance therapist, or creative arts therapist. In fact the idea is particularly unpleasant. I say, "I'm interested in the mind/body connection." And that is entirely true, but what does it mean? I don't know. I really don't. But nonetheless, there are a few ideas that I would like to think more about, and so I'm recording them here:

1. Dance in some other cultures serves the function of working through everything, such as birth, coming of age, hunting, death.
2. Dance therapy's roots came from modern dance.
3. Who we are is reflected in how we inhabit our body.
4. You won't think clearly if the mind is disconnected from the body. This is just as true for academics as it is for people with psychotic issues.
5. The fundamental principle of dance therapy is for the therapist to pick up on peoples' movement and reflect that back to them and then to orchestrate that movement into the group. (The group might be the group gathered for therapy or society at large. Often patients cannot coordinate their movements to society's movements. Dance therapy tries to guide patients into new movement/cultural movements and help them bridge the gap. This therapy has been particularly effective with people with autism or Alzheimer's.)
6. How we move reflects our culture, our sub-culture, and our personal experiences.

This past Thursday, we practiced moving from different centers of our bodies. For example, we'd try to lead our movement from our belly buttons, then our chests, then our knees, the back of our knees, etc. We imagined there was a light shining from that place of our bodies and we were suppose to share that light with the other dancers. It made people very self-aware and at times embarrassed. It was interesting how different parts of our body liked to shine light and others didn't. It was interesting how when we moved into this exercise, instead of simply doing free dancing, we quickly fell into a linear circle moving around the room. And then when we stopped to analyze the activity, we slipped out of our bodies, and we had to take some time to dance freely to get back in our previous space of experiencing our bodies energetically. When we were talking, I would get tired again. When I was moving, I wasn't tired, or even if I was aware of fatigue, I could find other energy within myself.

The Differences Between Christians and Jews

It's the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur. Today is the last day of the holidays, and I will be going to a few of the day's services with Eric's family and then eating a delicious Break Fast at Dorit's. Of course I'm not fasting. I've never been good denying myself food. I like to blame it on my super-fast metabolism and my inclination to get light headed when I don't eat every few hours, but I think it might have more to do with a lack of self-discipline. And since I approach these holidays without spiritual devotion and more a sense of familial togetherness, I find it hard to put myself through the discipline of fasting.
Even though I don't celebrate these holidays out of spiritual devotion, I do really enjoy the annual ritual that has developed over the last six years. I like sitting and being quiet in the services. I like listening to the Hebrew and the singing. I like being part of a congregation. I like eating with Eric's family and wishing them all a Happy New Year with kisses and hugs.
What I don't love is the Rabbi who leads the services we always attend. He is growing on me, but that's the best I can probably say for him. He works at an Episcopal Church in NYC as some kind of interfaith Rabbi. He teaches and spends his days (for the last 13 years) trying to explain Jewish beliefs and practices to Christians. In my opinion, this has left him a little worn out and less than inspired about his own faith. He reads the prayer book and preaches with this slightly annoyed tone, as if to say, "Okay, I'll say this one more time..." And he always preaches on the differences between Christians and Jews.
It's been kind of cute to watch Eric's family get defensive on my behalf in response to these sermons. Lenny will say, "I don't think he knows what he's talking about." Eric will say, "Not ALL Christians are like that!" and last night Arno pulled Eric aside to check that I wasn't offended. Truthfully, I'm not offended, and I kind of enjoy the comparisons. Last night his ending intrigued me. He had been talking about "God" and how people and religions understand God. Is God a projection of all things good? Is God a Judge on high? He said that the greatest Jewish philosopher said it was impossible to make a positive statement about God. You could only say, "God is not..." He said the Jewish Rabbi's worked so hard to not talk directly about God because the effort to prevent idolatry was so central. They felt that if you started to define God, it would lead to idolatry. He mentioned that he found it a little shocking how Christian preachers can talk about Jesus and God without distinguishing between them. "As if they are one," he said shaking his head. And I turned to Eric and said, "well, if you believe They are one, then it makes sense."
After all of this reflecting he closed with these words:

Perhaps we envy people for whom God is a personal God, a God involved in the details of our personal lives. But for us, God has always been a challenge. A challenge to see good in ourselves and in others around us. A challenge to keep seeking that good, even when it feels hopeless.

I don't have anything insightful to say about that, but I liked listening to this man say it. I thought it was a small window into his life's struggle of being a Jew among Christians. How it must be strange for him to be constantly defending the Jewish traditions which will welcome Atheist Jews as nothing out of the ordinary to Christians who believe in a personal God asking for belief and acknowledgement.

On a related but different topic, this Rabbi made two funny slips of the tongue when reading the prayer book this season. I wrote them down to share with the world. (Poor man) The words in parentheses are the words he added, but aren't in the prayerbook.

Yet we look ahead with hope, giving thanks for the daily miracle of renewal, for the (com)promise of good to come.
As if to say, "fine God, we'll compromise on the fact that we have to wait for our good."

Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, for giving us (His) life.
OOPS! And with that slip he Christianized the sentence.

And one last passage from the prayer book for reflection:

When justice burns within us like a flaming fire, when love evokes willing sacrifice from us, when, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness, then Your goodness enters our lives; then You live within our hearts, and we through righteousness behold Your presence.

The language is so familiar to my Christian upbringing. Except that we do freely exchange "Jesus" for "God". Jesus comes to live within our hearts. And that is the key additional step in Christianity. FIRST Jesus comes, we confess sins and receive the sacrificial forgiveness. THEN justice burns in us like a fire, love evokes willing sacrifice, and we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness. Isn't it interesting that some people believe there's no skipping the first step, and other people believe the first step is entirely not necessary to achieving the second step. I can't help but be fascinated by that.

Long Post about MK Identity Issues

It's interesting to me that I have titled this with an implied apology. But I do feel a sort of embarrassment/irritation with these parts of myself. But the apology (and warning) out of the way, let me get down to my post.

My writing teacher suggested that I read the writing of other MKs when I told her I was writing about my MK experiences. She tells us that we learn to talk by imitating and that we learn to write the same way. So we shouldn’t be afraid to read writing that’s doing exactly what we want to do, because if we stick with it long enough, it will become more than imitation.

So I took her advice to heart and have been looking for writing about the MK experience. I haven’t done an extensive search, but I Googled several search terms and searched through Amazon, and I was surprised at how there is almost nothing written by MKs about their experiences. I found two memoirs, both written by people in my parents’ generation. It made me wonder if we are just such a small segment of the population that it’s natural that not much would have been written/published. Or is there something about the experience that makes it hard to write, or hard to publish.

Also, when I did find writing, it was almost all about MKs who are still Christians or who went on to become missionaries themselves. I did find one book, Through Isaac’s Eyes, which seems to be written by an MK who is willing to talk about how he felt sacrificed by his parents’ decision to go to the mission field. It was published in 1996 by a man born in 1955. He waited until long after his father had died. Maybe his father’s death inspired the reflections that led to the book.

I am really, really enjoying this book. It’s clear writing that gets to the heart of Evangelical Christian beliefs. He does such a good job writing about his father and how the beliefs and culture of the religion made his father the man that he was. And the father he portrays is a genuinely loving man who is incredibly tender and wise and gentle with his son. His father was a preacher who decided to go to Vietnam in 1967. Daniel Barth Peters, the author of the book, was 13 when his parents left to go to Vietnam. He was the youngest of four children, and the only child to go to Vietnam. A little over a year after arriving, the mother and son were evacuated because the war became so serious.

What I respect about this book is the ordinariness of his MK experiences. He focuses in on the little things, the little moments, the moments of cross-culture shock and shame. I like that it’s not a book like the Poisonwood Bible where the father is such a fanatic. It’s not an extreme book about abuse and sick, twisted faith. It’s a book about a loving father and a respectable faith experience. It’s about a father who knew when fundamentalist beliefs were crazy, about the calm, rational choices that the father made for his own faith. And yet that faith, which can inspire respect, also was the source of profound, life-long pain for his son.

It’s a book that can publish this quote on its cover: “Your book stirred me deep down in my heart. I wept and rejoiced at the love your daddy had for Jesus.”—Bill McCartney (Founder, Promise Keepers)
When I read that quote, I thought, “oh, maybe this isn’t a book that I’ll relate to so much.” But then I started noticing what the author hides in more symbolic language. I noticed the silences, the way he comes right up to the edge of his own doubts and anger and stops short of spelling it out. And I realized that I probably have a kindred spirit after all.

I’m going to put some quotes from the book that I feel like I could have written they so poignantly capture emotions that I’ve known (or still know).

“To be in the world, but not of it, was the most bittersweet knowledge that a boy my age could have. I had heard of it and even sung it—
This world is not my home,
I’m just a-passing through.
If Heaven’s not my home,
Then, Lord, what will I do?
But until this moment that song had been just a Sunday school chorus that we sang….Now, however, I realized we believed those words. We acted on those words.”

“All that had been mine…was either gone or in a barrel in the basement of a house that was no longer ours. The things that had brought me such happiness, defined my status in the neighborhood, were now as irrelevant as Daddy always believed they should have been. I did not know then that I would never again be able to sort out the piles of my life, throw some away, stuff the rest in a barrel and snap on the lid.”

“Starting the ninth grade was almost as frightening as the war.”

“Then he turned to me and said, “You new here?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you from?” he asked.
I was stunned. I could not answer. I no longer knew. The question made my feet feel no longer attached to the earth, as though I simply floated. Oh sure, I walked here and there and rode my bike, but that gravity of the soul that keeps one attached to the earth was gone. I became conscious of myself in a way that made normal living impossible. It was as though I knew that I was adrift in the universe, that I had no power to determine my own direction or fate, that life was bigger than I was. Not only could I not control it, I could not even influence it….I was no longer even a traveler, for travelers have a sense of where they come from and know where they are headed. I looked in at life from the place that only I knew. A private place, a lonely place.”

“I had no idea of what to wear or how to act. Carmen’s motherly instincts took over enough to get me some white jeans and a new shirt so that I looked almost normal. But looking normal was a long way from my sense of life. Ever since coming back I had been trying to participate in talk about baseball and girls and television, but it always seemed that while my words and theirs were derived from the same language, mine were empty of meaning, hollow….My body walked and talked and laughed, but there was a new distance between myself and it, and between myself and the people around me. This distance was new and sharp. I felt out of place when I first arrived in Saigon, yet I was still somehow present. But life back here, especially among all the kids…whom I knew and had grown up with, existed on the other side of a clear thin wall. I could see them through it. I could see myself acting on a stage while standing outside of it, unable to even push my hand through that clear thin wall.”

This comes at the end of the book, and he’s talking about an expensive football his father gave him as a gift when he returned from the mission field. Later, he feels such guilt about having that expensive gift when orphans were being bombed in Vietnam. His father comes in to talk to him.
“His explanation may have helped me go to sleep that night, but it did not diffuse the confusion—was this a bomb, or was it a special gift from Daddy and God? The confusion settled into a permanent discordant resonance and left me to walk an uneven, rutted road, first lurching to the left and then to the right.”
(I don’t think I’m reading into this to see the football as symbolic of the faith he received from his father.)

And a final reflection on his father:
“There on the front lines, his body on the line, Daddy was able to kill the self, the carnal self, and move to that spiritual state of being filled with the resurrected Christ where joy and sorrow mix and confuse the mind but clarify the vision of the heart.
I cannot see through Daddy’s eyes, or through Mother’s, the ironic self-fulfillment that came with self-sacrifice. I can only see through Isaac’s eyes—for while he left the other kids behind as adults, it was me, the favored heir, whom he tethered down on the altar of Saigon. An act that confused us both by the simultaneous joy of obedience and horror of human sacrifice.
Total surrender to God’s will. In God’s will is perfection. In God’s will is security. In God’s will is the knowledge that all things work together for good, even the sobs of little boys in the night longing for big brother, even ducking for cover as the shrapnel flies, even the decision to send Mother and me home, and for him to stay. God’s will is that we present our bodies a living sacrifice. God’s will is for the son to be sacrificed. This is the old, old story.
This ideology of sacrifice, of ultimate denial, of humans bearing the pain of the universe by the giving up of the self and the giving up of what one truly loves as the way to God, this is the Christian story. This story is rooted in the God/Jesus story, but does God condemn us to endlessly repeat it for our own salvation? And in sacrificing me, why is it that Daddy had the Epiphany of his life?…”

Confession

A change of plans in my internship means that I have more time this week than I expected. Does this mean that I'm doing my writing homework? No! It means that I'm finding new and useless ways to be in my house. Sometimes I so frustrate myself!

After a Dry Spell

Okay, so I haven't posted since July 24th. I lost inspiration, I lost motivation, and I started to get a little scared to have my thoughts posted live, but I've decided to start up the conversation again. Since I now have Firefly checking in, and Robyn (if she hasn't given up on checking), I figured I'd start keeping up my end of our various conversations.

My Current Reason for Inspiration
I love my classes. I'm taking a writing class and a dance/movement therapy class. The writing class is a workshop format with a lot of flexibility. So far the teacher has asked me to write 15 minutes daily and compose a one to two page "sketch" of someone I know intimately. Though I wrote these assignments down thinking it would be no problem, I'm finding it difficult to do them. I'm better than 50% on the journal, but I'm not satisfied with my "sketches" yet. I need to devote more time to this. I need to stop telling Scholastic I'll work for them so that I'll have time and energy to do this. But the money is so irresistible.
Actually, what I'm realizing the more I try to make myself write, is that I'm not sure if I'm ready to be as vulnerable and honest as I need to be to write. I like very raw writing. I recently read Toni Morrison's novel Love, and I was reminded of how much I love her work. Why? Because it's so insightful and honest and raw. And though I'm hardly saying that I have any illusions of writing like Toni Morrison, I do feel like it represents the type of writing I want from myself. I think I expect myself to be as honest as I am capable of being. But honestly, I don't show that part of myself to anyone. I slowly let bits and pieces out to my close friends, to Eric, but it comforts me to think of the things that I control, that I never reveal. This feels like a profound dilemma if I want to continue teaching myself to write.
My Dance Therapy class, by comparison, is just a release. We talk for a while and then the teacher puts on music and everyone in the class moves (dances) around the room. We do this for a long time, and then last Thursday she gathered us into a circle and we tried imitating each other's movements - one at a time. We only had time for five people, and I was one of the five people. While the class was trying to imitate the selected student's movement, the teacher would ask us to analyze the movement. What part of the body initiated the movement? Was everyone able to do it? Did it feel strange in our bodies? Why? Was it different from our comfortable movement? How? The most fascinating observation for me was that when I was "leading" I was completely as ease and could have continued that movement indefinitely. But when I was imitating the other four people, I quickly became tired, even if the movement was very simple. It was effort, because it didn't flow from my unconsciousness. It made me really wonder about movement. Where does it come from? How do we develop a comfort level with some movement but not others? How long does it take for a movement to become part of us?
The teacher said that she thought my movement was very interesting, that it was an interesting combination of elements. She said that it was interesting to her to know that I had a multi-cultural background, because she could recognize such different influences in my movement. I really didn't understand what she was talking about, but I didn't have the courage to ask her more about it after class. Maybe I'll figure it out as the class continues.

I'm filled up with thoughts and ideas from these classes, but I've also been working a lot and not giving myself time to process it all. And I haven't even mentioned my internship with the storytellers, which is still being shaped. I'm once again faced with the question, "what age group do I want to be working with?" I always find that such an overwhelming question.

That's all for now.
La Loba

Do You Remember That Feeling?

I tutor two kids in my neighborhood, and every few weeks I like to take them to the library to assist them in finding reading material. On our last visit, I suggested to the boy going into sixth grade that we might want to just take a look at the YA section of the library.
"Many of the books might not interest you," I told him, "but I saw a lot of biographies down there, and it would be worth taking a look. You're right at that age where some of those books might be at your reading level."
He is a quiet boy, and when I said this he just opened his eyes wide and nodded his head to indicate that he'd give it a try. After leaving the children's area, we stopped into the teen section, and while I searched through the biographies, Andrew looked carefully around. Then he leaned into the bookshelf where I was checking the amount and complexity of the text in the books and said to me in a very quiet voice, with his nose scrunched up, "I'm going to be a teen?"

I so remember that feeling! All of the adults around me treating it like it's not such a big deal, but also trying to prepare me for some major life change. I remember it most clearly in the battle over wearing a bra. My Mom wanted me to wear a training bra in fifth grade, and I absolutely didn't want to. I can remember sitting in church and looking around me at all of the women, the women in the choir, the women beside me in the pews, and thinking, "they all wear bras. It can't be so embarrassing if every single one of them wears one."
But it still took me several more months before I wore one. And I only started then because my Mom told me in the tone of voice that meant I couldn't argue that we were shopping for a bra.

I'm so glad that phase in my life is over. And I'm also glad that I have such clear memories of it. I think that's why I kind of liked teaching in a Middle School.

My Brother Jonathan

At the end of June, I went on a short vacation with some friends and their sixth-and-a-half year old son. We got stuck in traffic driving out to Pennsylvania, so to keep Owen calm, I started telling stories. I started with my fishing stories, which led to my camping stories, which led to me being plumb out of stories and Owen still begging for more. Finally, he told me I should just repeat some of the stories I had just told, and so I chose his favorite, the night my Dad scared us by pretending to be a bear.
The story is good because my youngest brother, Jonathan, was so scared that he jumped off the ground while cocooned in his sleeping bag. Jim and I still aren't sure how he could jump that high from a horizontal position. Owen loved that image of Jonathan shooting up into the air, his arms and legs wrapped in his sleeping bag, and then crashing down on top of Jim and I in our sleeping bags.
Later in the week, I was having a very serious discussion with Owen's parents about adoption and race, and I mentioned Jonathan, who was adopted from Korea. Owen had been eating and then playing near the table, and when he heard me mention Jonathan, he came over to whisper in my ear, "Did you tell them about Jonathan and the sleeping bag?" His eyes were big and expectant and he giggled in anticipation of his parents hearing the story. My brother, the sleeping-bag-jumping superhero.

The Power of the Right Word

This week I went over to a friend's house to help her pack and to be entertained by her adorable two-year-old son. We were in their bedroom, packing and sorting and Andrew was playing on his own. At some point in the morning, he walked into the room holding a little package that my friend had made up for his birthday party. It had two cookies and a magnet of Andrew in a clear plastic bag and was sealed with a cute label she had stamped. Andrew pulled at the package, trying to open it, showing it to us, and mumbling in his almost-speaking sort of way.
I assumed that he wanted a cookie, because that's what he was holding, and what kid doesn't want a cookie? I'm not sure what my friend was thinking. Maybe she knew what he needed in that sixth sense way that mothers develop, or maybe she needed some time to put together all the clues. She told him that they were saving the package for his uncle; I asked Andrew if he wanted a cookie. Neither of our comments made any impression on him. He just continued to pull at the wrapping and motion to us. After about a minute of this, my friend stopped her packing, took the package from him, and said, "do you want a snack?" Andrew's eyes lit up instantly when she asked this, and he repeated, "snack." There was such visible relief in his little face at discovering this word, like "ha! I've found the word that will get me what I want." He toddled after her to the kitchen and came back smiling with grape tomatoes.
I've been thinking about that moment of relief on Andrew's face today. I've been thinking how I can feel like that some days when I'm writing. I will try out all of these words and sentences and feel like Andrew struggling with that packaging. And then suddenly I'll get it. I'll find the word or the phrase or the way of thinking that makes it all seem clear.
"Snack." That's a pretty powerful word for Andrew to remember. And he's starting to realize the power that it holds.