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I’m not ignoring you.
I probably haven’t left comments on your blog recently.
Or replied to your last email, or seven.
Or tweeted you.
This doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you, or wondering what you’re up to. It just means my only internet is phone-based at the moment. If I’m posting online, it’s because I have something I really, really want to say before I forget. Or, like now, because it’s 4:30 a.m. and I’ve already streamed my quota of The Mindy Project on Hulu.
I’ve missed being online, a little, but I’ve savored it, too. Instead of constantly wondering what I am missing online, I have been immersed in savoring the offline. Instead of arising and running straight to the computer, I’ve laid in bed and listened to the trio of snores filling the air around me.
I’ve washed the dishes, made my rice, read my daily chapter of Just One Thing, and sat on the living room floor savoring a sense of home greater than the one I felt at my last place. There, two friends anxiously began a journey of seeing if they could build a family from friendship. So much was uncertain then, and is certain now. Read more…
Too alight with love to care
“Mommy, you have pretty hair,” my three-year-old son told me as he reached to touch it.
“You do, too,” I replied.
“No, it’s not. It’s dark,” he said solemnly.
I tried not to show my alarm. “Who told you that?” I asked as I reached to ruffle his hair.
Silence.
“Listen,” I said calmly despite the alarm still bubbling up within me. “You have beautiful, curly, dark hair. I wish I had your hair.”
“Oh.” Li’l D, no longer engaged in the conversation, got up and ran off toward more exciting endeavors. My heart remained stuck on those two jarring words: “It’s dark.”
I have no idea where Li’l D heard that “dark” is bad. I cannot undo his hearing it. But what I can do, and what I mean to do, is show him as he grows that misguided words are not all there is in this world. There is joy in abundance, beauty that cares naught for superficial distinctions, and the goodness of knowing that no matter what anyone else sees or says, there is a light inside each of us that demands to shine.
I will strive to teach him to see that light–in those who love him, those who dislike him for whatever reasons, and most of all, within himself.
If he can see it within himself, it won’t matter what anyone else sees.
He will be too alight with love to care.
Enveloped in small wonders
I nose-kissed my son, rubbing my nose against his after reading him one of my childhood favorites, The Rainbow Goblins. He grinned and giggled, so I followed up with a forehead kiss.
His eyes were closed and his breathing had slowed by the time I pulled my forehead away from his. A toothy grin alit his face, inspiring me to smile, too. I stroked his hair and savored the sound of his slowing breath as he fell deeper into slumber.
It’s been months since I last watched him step into dreamland. He usually wants to keep playing if anyone else is around, so our bedtime routine ends with a couple of stories and him humming himself to sleep, by himself, afterward.
I’d forgotten how magical it is to watch him transform from my little whirling dervish to my little sleeping angel. Something awakened in me last night watching this transition: a yearning to be enveloped in small wonders.
So busy looking for big bloggable events, I’ve lost sight of precious many small moments.
I’m seeing now. With a great big smile, I am seeing now.
Trash can parenting?
Dropping my son off for his first day of preschool was a challenge. Four days of classes later, picking him up is the challenge. He’s so happy at preschool, the thought of going home with me is about as pleasing to him as, oh, spinach and sardine cake. There’s kicking. There’s screaming. There’s biting, flailing, whining, limp-going, screaming, and all manner of behavior I didn’t even know my son knew.
Hand in hand: much better than either in the garbage can!
After another showdown yesterday, complete with lots of screaming in the car afterward, I stopped for food. “Where are we going, Mama?” Li’l D asked.
“I’m going to dump you in a trash can,” I mumbled under my breath, or so I thought. I opened the car door, began putting on the shoes he’d thrown in a fit of pique and was marveling at the sudden silence when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Li’l D quietly implored me, “Mama, please don’t put me in the trash bin.”
“Oh, sweetie!” I said, mortified with myself. “I love you. I would never, ever put you in the trash can.”
He climbed out of the car and hugged me tight. “I’m not going in the trash can?”
“No,” I thought, feeling like I might deserve a dive there myself. “We’re getting food.”
“Oh. I love you, mama!” Immediately afterward, he began daydreaming aloud everything we’d eat, leaving me a chance to marvel at how quickly kids move on . . . and reflecting how I, as the adult in our relationship, should probably strive to seek–and communicate!–adult-appropriate solutions in the future.
Who he is meant to be
“Mommy, can I hug you?”
“Of course, sweetie. You know I love your hugs!”
“Can I go play with them?” he whispered in my ear, holding me tight.
“I think they’d like that,” I said, looking at the kids playing on a rug a few feet away.
My son pulled away. I wasn’t ready to let him go, but he was ready to go. He was ready, so I released him.
–
Three years earlier, I dropped him off at day care for the very first time. I held him on my lap in the backseat of my car, gazing at his tiny, perfect face and wondering how I could possibly hand him over to someone else. How I could abandon him for ten hours at a time, having never before been away from him for more than two or three anxiety-riddled hours. Read more…
Seeing stars
Walking with my son, I tried to point out the stars to him. He told me we couldn’t see them. “You have to be on the grass to see the stars!”
“Well, I guess that means we can’t see the stars, because we don’t have our own grass.” The moment I spoke the words, I saw how ridiculous they were.
Once we got back to our place, I laid out one of our blankets on the shared lawn. Li’l D rested his head on my tummy and we looked up on at the moon together.
“Yeah! And there are one two three four five six lotsa lotsa lotsa more stars!”
Turns out you don’t need your very own lawn to lay down and enjoy sharing the night sky with a little one.
Fewer goodbyes to childhood cancer, or “My sunshine, my David”
I love many people, and I love many people greatly, but there is no one I love more intensely or completely than one little boy named David. If you read my blog, you have come to know David as “Li’l D.” He is my son, and—although I once dreaded the prospect of parenthood—my life has been a million times brighter since he entered it three years ago.
For this one blog, I cannot call David “Li’l D.” Because, you see, this is a post about the loss of children, and “the loss of children” translates in my mind to “the loss of David.” Not “Li’l D.” David.
David: my exuberant, bossy, compassionate chatterbox of a son. My David.
Last September, I learned that September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I ignored most of the posts I saw on the matter, because paying attention to them meant paying attention to the fact my own son could someday be among them.
I will cross that bridge if I get there, I told myself.
It was January before I steeled myself to read Donna’s Cancer Story, a series documenting one brave, beautiful girl’s battle with cancer. As I read it and for days afterward, I bawled, I cursed the universe, and ultimately held David tighter as I imagined what it would be like to say goodbye to him having barely just said “hello, my sunshine.”
As this September rolled around, I thought about what it would mean to me. I knew I’d read Donna’s Cancer Story again, and share it for those like me who couldn’t bear the thought of reading it the first time around.
I didn’t know I’d find myself also reading Aidan’s Cancer Story, and compelled by the memory of both Donna Quirke Hornik and Aidan Manning to look more deeply into why pediatric cancer awareness is important not only on a personal, empathy-building level but on an extremely practical one.
“Our baby is going to experience racism someday”
There weren’t many white kids in my first grade class in a California military school.
How could any first grade boy resist this frock?
My first crush (if I may use so strong a word for the affections of a first grader) was on a black boy who was so sweet, he immediately forgave me demonstrating the mad karate skills I’d just learned from The Karate Kid . . . even though I’d demonstrated on his groin.
His sweetness went only so far. He lost my favor before the school year was done. A year is, after all, an eternity to a first grader.
My second crush was on another boy, who—like the first—I didn’t think of as “black” at the time. Just cute.
Returning to my Oregon hometown for second grade was a little jarring. To my young eyes, almost everyone’s skin was colored minor variations of the same tone.
When I was old enough to start questioning things, like whether I was really a Republican like my parents, I remember catching sight of a banner flying throughout downtown Eugene and laughing.
The banner proclaimed we ought: “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY!”
“What, as long as it’s somewhere else?!” I remember thinking with equal mirth and incredulity.
I studied Anthropology in college. Most of my mirth remained, but strands of more analytical thought started creeping in. I found it impossible to wrap my mind around how vastly human experience could vary, and nearly impossible the further my studies progressed to speak in absolutes about “the” human experience.
Still, my engagement was largely intellectual. It remained that way until a couple of weeks after I told my boyfriend, Ba.D., I was pregnant.
Ba.D., you see, is black.
In one of our early conversations, he told me, “You know our baby is going to experience racism someday.”
Wait, what? In Los Angeles? In 2009? No way.
“I’ve been called a ‘nigger.’ Lots of times.”
Gah.
I started reading articles and finding myself incensed at examples of racism very much alive and present. Even in L.A., today.
I’d rant about these things to Ba.D. only to find myself flummoxed by his calm. It took me a little while and lots of patient explanation on his part to understand this was borne of decades of personal experience. What was new and pressing to me was something he’d already lived for 3.5 decades.
Weathering it together
A couple of months into my pregnancy, I flew home to tell my mom I was pregnant. When I showed her a picture of me and Ba.D. from the scariest weekend of my pregnancy, one in which I’d been told I’d just have to wait and see if my baby would live, she said, “So it’s gonna be biracial.”
I wrote about that conversation and what I took away from it in my blog “Race and my mother’s footsteps.”
Although I blogged a response to a racial profiling incident on 9/11/11, I haven’t been aware of any racism evidenced in my vicinity since I had that conversation with my mom. But every hateful word I’ve read has caused me great sorrow as I’ve wondered, “How on earth could someone hate my child without even knowing him? Without knowing how his laugh sounds, his touching concern when anyone around him hurts themselves, how much comfort he brought my mom in her dying days? How can that even be possible?”
It's not the kid in this picture that's scary.
When I read about Trayvon Martin, I wept to imagine losing my son over the color of his skin.
I quietly raged at people who waved off the suggestion race played a role in his death, and rejoiced earlier today at this comment #10 responding to such an assertion.
I rejoiced the comment, but not the reason for the blog that began the conversation. Some fans of the The Hunger Games books left the movie outraged by their belated discovery that a beloved character was black, a “discovery” made surprising by the fact it’s clearly stated in the book.
As always, after letting it simmer for a few hours, I eased my raging heart by transferring some of my outrage to print:
A few years ago, Joss Whedon (creator of the TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, to start) was asked why he keeps writing strong women characters.
His response? “Because you’re still asking me that question.”
Along the same vein, I’ve heard questions like, “Why are we still talking about race?” My take? Because the question is still being asked. The fact an asker hasn’t experienced, witnessed or understood they’re witnessing racism doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or is wildly diminished. The question alone implies a disheartening depth of misunderstanding about internal experience versus external reality.
Today’s real world is still very full of very real inequities. We can’t change that by saying “But look how far we’ve come!” and leaving it at that.
Ba.D.’s response was, as always, perfect to calm and focus me:
Love ya and hold onto that rage. Don’t let it rule you, but let it guide you. Temper it with the knowledge that most people are at least trying. Steel that with the truth that you will have to fight.
Unlike first grade, the fights I face won’t be on the schoolyard. They won’t likely involve punches, kicks (groinal or otherwise) or thrown stones.
They’ll involve words.
If I’m able to mirror Ba.D.’s patience, those words won’t sound like fighting words. They’ll sound instead like considered assessments, and the more I practice shaping them, glimmers of hope.
I do have hope. I have seen horrible things done by the hands of man, but I have also seen great kindnesses, even by those whom I’ve witnessed behaving monstrously.
So I’ll keep reading. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep struggling to use words instead of inarticulate cries of outrage.
Words are, to me, our bridges to other hearts. When used wisely, to cross over to someone else’s heart or to grant them passage to our own, their power to transform is immense. Not fast, usually.
But mighty.
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
Experiencing books
Once a quarter during college, I’d receive my financial aid and go on a book-buying binge. I’d vow to spend my remaining money wisely enough that I’d be able to keep the books.
Once a quarter, nearer its end, I’d look at my books and wish they were nutritionally as well as intellectually sustaining. I’d then haul them to Smith Family Bookstore, where I’d trade one form of sustenance (books) for cash for the other (food).
Only a handful of books survived my college days. Fewer still moved overseas and back with me. Twice.
Early last year, my dear friend Sarah started recommending books she knew I’d like. A Brief History of Montmaray didn’t just suck me into its own pages but back into reading. By the end of 2011, thanks to copious readwalking, I’d read 40ish books. Most of those were ones I’d bought myself, which meant I was adding books to my shelves* knowing I really would be able to keep them this time around.
Since my return to reading, most of my books have come from Amazon. With time in short supply, it’s been convenient to click straight from a review to my online shopping cart, having to waste time on nothing more than cutting open a box.
It was all so easy, I forgot how I used to enjoy the book-buying experience. In bygone days, I’d spend hours maneuvering through stacks of books and savor the weight, feel and smell of each book I touched, whether or not any given book came home with me. Being surrounded by books was better than being surrounded by anything else in the entire world, and in the presence of so many books I felt the vastness of the world represented across all those pages.
What reminded me of the cost of “ease”?
I’d driven by it many times before I actually stopped and peeked in a couple of weeks ago. With my little one, Li’l D, close at heel, I picked up books based on a combination of color, title and whimsy before scanning their blurbs and selecting some. Unlike the old days, my perusing time was limited.
Also unlike the old days, I was able to partake of the goodness of sharing the book-buying experience with my own little (pre-)reader. I left with five books; Li’l D, three. Sadly but predictably**, Li’l D’s favorite thing about his books was learning that pop-up books are really fun to demolish. (Li’l D: “Mommy, look! I have a monkey!” Mommy: “Sweetie, the monkey was supposed to stay in the book.”)
I had maybe ten minutes to explore. In ten minutes, with a little help from a little helper, I’d found eight books to take home. Each of those books has its own history, from inception in the writer’s mind to agent to publisher to reader to bookstore . . . and then to me. With each book I touched, I touched more than pages. I touched history. I touched humanity. I touched the words of others who make these things accessible and tangible.
Seeing right side up? Upside down? No matter!
As long as I read, I’m granted the ability to see this world and others through others’ eyes. This is the antithesis to loneliness.
I left the bookstore wondering how much time I’m really saving when I use Amazon. Am I saving minutes? Seconds? Is any “saving” worth the loss of really connecting with the individual books I decide to make part of my home, hopefully forever?
I’m not going to answer this question with a timer. I’m going to rely on intuition as I always used to. My intuition says the loss is greater than the gain, in most caess.
If I’m after a really specific book, I’ll still nab it off Amazon. But I’ll not keep making the mistake of thinking only books recommended by friends and available on Amazon are worth buying. There’s a whole world of books out there, and no matter how behemoth any online bookseller might be, its inventory reflects only a portion of what’s out there.
As for the portion in my own neighborhood? There’s little sweeter than seeing my future reader running through the stacks of knowledge that might someday become his own.
Do you still visit book stores? Libraries? What do books mean to you? Your kids?
* The floor counts as a shelf, right?
** “Curse you and your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” — Oh, man, have I ever been waiting for a chance to quote this! What Wash (Firefly) said.
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
Twelve times forever
“I’m too straight, mama. I’m too straight.”
My son assuredly meant something by this, but it’s doubtful he meant what it sounded like to me.
I couldn’t help but laugh, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his words, either. And when we drove away from a bookstore with a new Cat in the Hat book in our possession, I found myself imagining a Seuss-style conversation with his older self.
Li’l D, just so’s you know, I’ll love you . . .
twelve times forever
Mommy, mommy, you love me, right?
I love you, silly, bigger than the sun is bright!
Would you love me if I were a girl?
It’s your heart I love, not the parts that show to the world.
What if I were sick? Would you love me then?
Aye, for it’s not a temperature that makes a good friend!
But if I were gay, would you turn me away?
As long as you love, you’ll make my every day.
What If I grow up and become a judge?
I wouldn’t wish law upon you, but my love wouldn’t budge!
Does this mean that you’ll love me forever and ever?
Forever’s too short; I’ll love you twelve times forever.
(And then let’s just add one more little forever.)
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
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