I’m over at World’s Strongest Librarian today, writing about being a fragile flower, criticism, and self-image. I ‘fess up to receiving not one but TWO marriage proposals online. Gotta love comments. Keep ‘em coming.
Guest Post at World’s Strongest Librarian. Self-Image: How To Get an Undentable One…
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How To Let Go of An Ex. One Simple Thing I Know For Sure.
Let’s assume that you and a former love must stay in contact. You have business together. A dog. Shared custody of a super famous painting.
Or, more likely, you have kids together.
This means that while THE relationship is over, A relationship continues.
This also means that all the stupid, irritating, habitual, minor but painfully-inflamed things you fought over will continue to be stupid, irritating, habitual and ONFUCKINGFIRE.
(Except the socks on the floor or best-towel-as-a-bathmat or cheating-every-time-your-back-is-turned things. Those are all someone else’s babies, now.)
I know only one thing about how to let go of an ex and it is this: you must stop fighting the same fights.
What’s Your Problem?
For me, it is time. I hate lateness. Time is fluid but clocks are not. I used to upbraid and berate and freak and pout and sulk and cast evil eyes loudly and vexedly. And an apology and a promise not to, anymore, would be issued. And then there would be another late, next time, inevitably, always.
So it was when we were together. It was our first fight but it would never be our last fight, because we continued to fight about it even after the relationship clock had stopped ticking.
We split. Lates continued. I continued to upbraid and berate and freak and pout and sulk and cast evil eyes loudly and vexedly. Aapologies and promises not to, anymore, continued to be issued. And then there would be another late, next time, inevitably, always.
Does that paragraph look eerily repetitive?
Just Stop It
Instead of being over, our relationship was on a continuous loop, circling back on itself. Over and over again. And then lightning struck me dead.
I realized that we were just living in different houses while fighting over the same things in exactly the same ways.
To get out of a relationship, to let go of the relationship, and to truly set the other person and yourself free, you have to let go of the patterns of behaviour that defined both the togetherness and the split.
And I did.
How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
When I was twenty-one years old, I declined a monumental apology.
If everyday apologies – oops sorry, I bumped you with the cart, oops sorry I cut you off at the intersection, oops sorry I accidentally had sex with your room-mate – are pleasure crafts, this apology was a freighter. A tanker. A leaking oil tanker about to slick up some helpless sea-life and require flotillas of volunteers, enormous donations and teams of public relations professionals to clean up.
Not only did I refuse the apology, I declined to offer an audience to even hear the apology.
Yet in that decision there was no malice. There was no vengeance. There was nothing. I had been wronged as a child – sadly, habitually, sexually wronged – and now an apology was being offered to my adult self. And I didn’t need it. It was over. As a six year old, as an eight year old, as a ten year old, the only thing I needed from anyone was for someone to make it stop. But as an adult, I had made amends for myself, to myself, and I was fine. I was neutral. I needed nothing from my abuser: no apologies, no explanations, no reparations, no reconciliation. Nothing.
I didn’t need the apology, I didn’t need vengeance, or justice, and I didn’t need to offer forgiveness. Not even for myself.
Forgiveness is a slippery fish. There exists the idea that forgiveness can be offered, like a plate of cookies, or maybe a shot of penicillin, or a priestly palm to the forehead, to cure what ails you. There exists the idea that granting someone forgiveness can help you to release your pain and cure yourself: that forgiveness is, possibly, a selfish act of self-care.
I’ve wondered about that, this week. I thought about apologies that I’ve received and grudgingly accepted, which is not acceptance at all, and apologies I’ve greeted with a tongue-lashing. I wondered about the right way to apologize, to hear an apology, to receive an apology, to accept an apology. I wanted a formula for achieving authentic graciousness, accountability and magnanimity.
I have been struggling to remember a formula I forgot that I knew by heart when I was twenty-one.
Maybe there is grace in refusing to engage in an awkward social show that, deep-down, you don’t require. Maybe it is generous to return the gift to the giver and say:
here.
here is the harm you granted me.
it is for you to intimate and decipher.
the only relationship to be decoded and repaired is yours with your actions.
the pain has passed.
it is nothing to me.
Maybe forgiveness is not mine to give. Maybe asking it of me, at all, is asking me to right your wrongs. Maybe forgiveness is a journey you take, yourself, with yourself. Maybe that is the only path that leads to peace. Maybe what I offer – the nothingness, the absence of any need to inquire, to understand, or to accept – is the meaning of magnanimous, itself.
______________
one of apologies I was waiting for should have been from the Very Bad Lying Man, but this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5
*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it
A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2
Apologies are on my mind. I’m due an apology; I owe several apologies from my flaky days and I’m trying to summon the courage to offer them; and I’m pretty much convinced that Chris Brown is the worst apologizer, ever. Or at least he’s the most sorry sorry-giver in the last 14 days.
Apologies are actually simple. I know this from my children. When they have done wrong – when one sister has snatched a barbie or a precious book; looked at the other one too many times or for too long; when one’s leg has been brushed during dinner; when harsh words have been uttered, like the ever offensive “I don’t want to play with you, I need privacy”; or when life has gone sideways and naps have been missed and it is all too much and hysteria ensues – they know how to set things right.
Here is the child’s guide to apologizing:
1. Take time to yourself. Sometimes this is dictated from on-high (ie your mother sends you to your room to Think About What You’ve Done). Sometimes it is voluntary and involves flouncing and a ritual slamming of the bedroom door. Often it involves sobbing yourself to sleep. Ceilings must be contemplated. The answers must be assembled, the grief must be felt, and the need not to be alone and away from those you love must be acute.
2. When you have the answers – why you did what you did, how awful it must have been to have received those bad actions, why/how you will not do this again, and what you propose to do to make amends – venture out of your cave/princess lair/self-imposed isolation and say this: I’m so sorry.
3. Mean it. Don’t justify. Take whatever comes. Accept it. Be explicit. Say exactly what you did, with no pretty, vague words. Say you’re sorry. Repeat it. Say it again. Explain #2, in detail.
4. Repeat it again. (Yes, I realize that I am repeating the steps. That is the point. You must repeat it until it doesn’t need to be repeated.) Really, truly mean it. FYI: meaning it means that you have resolved NOT to do it again. Ever. Not only if it is convenient, if the stars and the planet and the moons and the green traffic lights align, and if you’re so inclined, and you hope said temptation will just go away, forever. If you’re sorry, wild dogs would have to be chasing you naked through a dark forest for you to fall in that same trap again. You’re only truly sorry if you never, ever want to do what you did again.
5. Offer reparations. Every child – and parent – knows that hugs and kisses and stroking of tear-stained cheeks are the most valuable compensation you can offer.
This is how not to apologize:
1. Shift the blame to the other person. Say “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
2. Apologize with an agenda to serve yourself. Apologize to save face. Apologize to accrue the social benefits of the apology, without really assuming the responsibilities and the humbling that apologies require. See either of Chris Brown’s rote apologies.
3. Talk around the offense you committed. Call it “it”, “what I did”, but don’t be explicit about the harm you caused. See Chris Brown’s apologies. [Definitely do NOT say "I'm so sorry I punched and slapped and bit and beat my girlfriend until she was bruised and bleeding while threatenting to kill her". No, say, "I wish I could have handled the situation better." Because that's authentic.]
4. Get frustrated when your apology isn’t yielding the reaction you demand. Say “I TOLD you I’m SORRY.” Preferably as loudly as possible. See Chris Brown’s apology: “I TOLD Rihanna, over and over again, that I’m sorry.”
5. Keep apologizing for the same thing. Meaning: keep doing what you want, and use “I’m sorry” as your get-out-of-jail-free card.
6. Be insincere. Say you’re sorry with your words and “hahahahaha sucker” with your actions. See Chris Brown’s new $300,000 necklace, below. OOPS.
_________________
this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5
*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it
Love. Why We Should All Get Some, How To, and I Heart Salon
I am surrounded by love and it is lovetastic. Bombastic. Most of it is regular ol’ heterosexual, married, monogamous, suburban love, but those seemingly prosaic and unremarkable relationships are in fact unique and compelling and teach me things. Things I need to know. Things I’m really curious about.
I’m not in love – I’m loved, I love, I have dependants whom I stroke and feed and they reward me with smiles and kisses and erratic and sporadic good behaviour etc etc – and I’m not in A Relationship.
This means I have lots of time to contemplate relationships – I have OODLES of time to think about relationships because I’m not actually required to be in one and generate The Relationship Products - and muse about what they are and are not, what they can and cannot be, what they should be, and of course, what I want. Maybe. One day.
[Which is closely related to that age old question what do women want, dammit? but not exactly the same. Because those sorts of questions are bullshit, really. There is no one representative, summative Woman, so how can we possibly know what women want when we don't even agree on what Woman is/means? Still, it is fun to write frivolous pieces about what women want, but let's all admit that what they really tell you is what the woman who wrote it wants. And, in case you missed it, the answer is: To Be Desired (and respected, and even protected, but To Be Desired, mostly). That's my story and I'm sticking to it, because, well, Hi Mom.]
[I digress. But you liked it.]
Here’s what I’ve learned, recently.
First, most of my happily married friends started out sleazy. Or romantic – whatever you want to call it. What I mean by this is most of the couples I spend time with fucked on their first date (or before) or very close to it; some were in other relationships; and passion swept them away and they woke up two years later knocked up and/or married or thinking that now that they had kids they should probably get married. Except sometimes it wasn’t two years, it was one year. Or less than. It all ends the same place, really, and that place is sweat pants.
There is a saying “marry in haste, repent at leisure.” That old chestnut is hairy. And it is a lie.
What do happy, successful marriages have in common? According to a study by Ted Huston, PHD, the answer is an average courtship of about twenty-five months. In his study, couples who dragged their feet longer than that – who courted for thirty-six months or longer – tended to divorce quickly, between two and seven years of marriage. Passionate, fast-moving courtships, on the other hand, had better results. In Huston’s study, couples who got engaged after nine months of dating, and married by eighteen months, had marriages that lasted longer than the slow movers (more than seven years) and the couples reported feeling strongly enamoured with each other. So marrying in haste might not be such a bad idea, after all. (Just ask my trampy girlfriends and their happy husbands.)
In my humble opinion, the greatest obstacle in the path to a happy marriage is children. Having little kids, under the age of oh, eighteen (I mean four), is not sexy. If your relationship suddenly sucks, and your child is four, don’t despair. It is the kid’s fault. And oh yes, biology and evolution, too. They’re all bastards and they’re in on it together.
Helen Fisher – and others, but I like her work best – notes that the evolutionary purpose of love is to bond a couple long enough to mate, have a successful pregnancy, and stay together long enough to ensure that the resulting child will survive infanthood. All told, that takes approximately four years. So, evolutionarily speaking, love isn’t necessarily built to last more than four years.
I’ve never been a huge fan of ‘natural’ arguments. They end up looking like this: oh it isn’t natural for women to work, they’re mean to be knocked up and chasing kids; oh there’s a reason men rule the world, it is just the natural order of things; oh gay folks can’t get married, because it isn’t natural, because they can’t reproduce (note: heterosexual couples who don’t have kids should promptly get divorced). So let’s not accept the love-only-lasts-four-years thesis.
Or, let’s accept it, but with the strong caveat that we are not ruled by our biologies, because we are gifted with great big brains and lurid imaginations and reason and so we can make our own possibilities and create our own destinies and make love last if only we so choose, so long as we have lots of childcare and hot sex (the two are directly associated with each other). Opposable thumbs are also cool. Yay, Darwin.
So…other than courtship length and evolutionary drives, what are the predictors for long, passionate marriages?
That question is exactly the problem. I think we often split the adjectives: are we seeking long, stable marriages; or are we seeking passionate, loving marriages; and is longevity the enemy of passion? (Because, frankly, I’m not doing long without passion.)
There has been a lot of discussion recently about love, relationships and marriage – mostly about how it all sucks.
I suscribe to this theory, sometimes. Sometimes I’m exasperated with the whole damn package. I’m dating, and I’m amazed at how tentatively mid-life adults approach relationships; at how we compulsively risk-manage and look for red flags (and invent them); how we’re supposed to be finished products who’ve worked on themselves and are ready for a relationship (that would be the most boring person on earth, and I’m totally not sleeping with him); how we invent shit-tests for partners to prove themselves to us; how we’re supposed to be so self-contained that we want a relationship but don’t need one; how we talk about ‘stalking’ as a code for ‘please don’t show too much interest’ (and kill me now, but who wants a partner who doesn’t show interest?); how we resolutely pretend to be unaffected by the other person (mmm, nothing says I want you like a poker face); and how boring and Borg-ish and hive-minded and safe it all is, most of the time.
I think we have collectively lost faith in our ability to survive rejection and heart-break so we try and risk-manage the process up front, and in so doing, we neuter love. We clip its wings. Love requires abandon, irrationality, surrender, butterflies, feeling, vulnerabilty, risk. Get over the fear. It will all be fine. I know I will get rejected; it sucks; it hurts; but I will always be just fine. I have complete faith in my own resilience. I’ve recovered from heartbreak before and it was never pretty, but I’ve never regretted a love, even when I’ve suffered for it. Love is always a risk. The good stuff always is.
I think love has the possibility to be more abandoned and
passionate and generative than the self-helped, middling version that I see lauded and pursued (or at least, I mofo hope so). I don’t think we have to be perfect, need-free, finished products; I think you learn and grow in relationships and that relationships make you better (the good and the bad ones). One of my friend’s partners nailed it when he said this about his relationship: “I’m here to love unconditionally. I’ll fuck it up, I’ll make it up, and I’m here.”
It is always someone else’s boyfriend who gets it and says the heart-skipping good stuff. Sigh.
Anyways. Lots of writers have been talking – and, naturally, writing – about love and marriage.
Christina Nehring is out pimping her new book, A Vindication of Love, in which she rails against the same flaccid vision of love that I’m bored with; and I was totally there with her, cheering her on, until I read this: “As I write these words, I bear the bodily scars of a loss or two in love. I have been derailed by love, hospitalized by love, flung around five continents, shaken, overjoyed, inspired and unsettled by love.” Um, yeah, Christina, you had me until the cutting started. Next.
Sandra Tsing Loh wrote an essay last month about her flailing, failing marriage for The Atlantic called, I kid you not, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off“. She had an affair; she finds that after 20 years of domesticity she cannot substitute the image of her husband for her lover in her romantic imagination; she notes that she is just too damn over-taxed by mothering, by working, by household drudgery, to do the work needed to rekindle her marriage. And so she wonders: “Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?”
And oh yes, all of her forty-something married girlfriends are in sexless marriages. So I think her question is legitimate. I am just saying no to the sexless marriage. I mean, you can have it if you want, but I am NOT. Next.
Then there’s Caitlin Flanagan, the faux stay-at-home mom who writes for Time and the New Yorker, who, as always, touts the benefit of marriage to society, for the children, blah blah blah blah blah, and god forbid you be so frivolous as to want to be happy. (Confession: I left my children’s father for exactly that reason. I was not happy. I was so not happy that it required medication and girlfriends prompting me to open the blinds. I think not being happy and wanting to be happy is a perfectly reasonable reason to leave a relationship.) Next.
Then there’s Aaron Traister, who notes all of these things, and wonders, “Am I the only person who enjoys being hitched these days?” He goes on to write:
I’m starting to feel like there is something wrong with me, because I actually enjoy being married.
My wife and I have been married anywhere from seven to 150 years (I’m not good with dates). During those years we have moved six times, and each move was like an exotic gift that happened to be covered in shit. We have each had multiple jobs, and multiple uniforms with name tags. We’ve been broke, we’ve been well off, we’ve been broke again. We’ve bought our first house together, and it has a giant hole in the kitchen ceiling and sparks come out of the third-floor outlets if you hold anything metal too close to them. We have fought, raged, nearly cheated, and been totally out of sync with each other during chunks of our time together. We’ve also produced two enormous redheaded babies who are as terrifying to us as Mothra and Godzilla were to Japan in the ’60s. We have been depressed, we have wanted more, we have wanted different, we have wanted out. The years since we got married have been the most challenging and at times most frustrating years of my life.
They have also been the most productive, happiest and most hilarious.
Oh, Aaron. I would argue that your story is the story. You are a happy husband and you like – and love – your wife!
[Dude, I am jealous of you on so many levels. Salon and I have an unrequited love in that it has not yet discovered me, returned my affection or wooed me for my writing; your wife, Rebecca Traister, is a kick-ass writer who also writes for Salon so I lovehate you both; and you have a wife you love. I'm not looking for a wife, necessarily, but being married does look kinda nice from the bed I am sharing with laundry - mercifully, folded; all is not (yet) lost - and a laptop.]
And this, research concludes, is what predicts loving, happy, hopefully passionate marriages: happy husbands. Men who are not disappointed in their wives, men who like their wives, men who enjoy their wives and who pay attention to them and who are engaged in the relationship – these people have satisfying marriages.
I don’t know what that says for lesbian marriages that lack husbands, or gay marriages that have two husbands. These marriage studies tell a single story like it is the only one (just like this post).
Again, I digress. The point was this: happy men make for happy heterosexual marriages. Husbands who like their wives are nice to their wives and then everyone is happy and I’m pretty sure that happy is the address where the good lovin’ happens. Simple, really.
And oh yes, it doesn’t always end in sweatpants, because nothing says I love you like lipgloss.
P.S. Salon, call me.
How To Help Your Child Succeed in Life, and Extra-Curricular Activities are NOT It
Busy is not a virtue.
In fact, busy is bullshit. Multi-tasking is the devil. We’re doing too much, and not much of it is important, useful, inspired, or part of a passionate life.
Case in point: children’s activities.
I Do NOT Heart League Sports or Bourgeois Lessons
My children are five and (almost) three years old. So far, I have studiously avoided team sports, dance, play-dates and music lessons. But the end of our idyllic free time is nigh.
My oldest starts kindergarten in September, and I anticipate that school will be to her what the apple was to Adam and Eve. Her eyes are going to snap wide open when she finds out that her classmates do things other than play outside and get dirty. The veil of innocence will dissipate, discontentment will ensue and she will realize that her schedule is naked. Her fig leaf will manifest as requests to start gymnastics, ballet, tennis, soccer, baseball, opera, anthropology, mime and juggling.
I dread this.
I cannot adequately describe how deeply and intensely I dread this. In order to capture this fear in words, I would have to invent a new language called ‘forboding’.
In fact, so deeply do I dread this that if I was a hippy or a religious fundamentalist or just deeply paranoid, I’d homeschool her, except then I really would have to put her in activities so that she would spend time with humans other than me. You see my dilemna.
BAH to Being Over-Scheduled and Well-Rounded
Here are my issues.
I think we overschedule our kids, and I’m sure that we do this because we think it is good for them.
I think we overschedule them because we want to keep them off the crack-pipe, which is a noble and practical objective and for this, society thanks you (although TLC and the re-hab industry have quiet misgivings). Please note, however, that the schedules some grade-schoolers endure would drive me straight to the pipe. And I am an adult and presumably more bitchy and resilient and arguably have less disposable income (seriously!) than your average ten year old. So embark upon that path with care, if you please.
We want children to be well-rounded, but well-rounded is a vicious lie. Nobody needs to be well-rounded. We just need one or two overwhelming passions or talents and the freedom and the guts to follow them where they lead us.
Still, I think that we think that a busy, well-rounded schedule leads to a busy, well-rounded child who will get into a busy, well-rounded university so that she can lead a busy, well-rounded professional life.
Kill me now. I did all of those things and have a busy, well-rounded professional life and want nothing more than to just Be. Off. That. Hamster. Wheel.
Here is my objection to the “child must play violin, two sports, dance in a structured environ that requires year-end costumes and extortion via tickets to a torturous recital, and know how to swim” mandate of middle class culture:
- At this exact, activity-free moment, I have as many plates in the air as I can possibly juggle alone. Adding baseball or soccer practice two nights a week and tournaments on weekends WILL upset the fragile, precarious balance in our world.
It is a tipping point, but in the bad way. I see the future and it is so scary that it merits an incomplete run-on sentence that will make your head explode.
Like this:
Eating fast food in the car on the way to practice, rushing from daycare to home to McDonalds to games, forgetting the serves-no-earthly-purpose-except-to-torment-me-with-one-more-item-to-pack-and-remember stirrup socks and batting gloves, having to buy batting gloves and bats and cleats and fancy bags to carry all this crap, going to bed way past bedtime, waking up cranky and behaving badly because of bad food and lack of sleep, lipping off elders, crying over small reprimands, abandoning backpacks on the floor at the door, and leaving dishes to fester in the sink until abruptly moving house in the middle of the night is the only solution.And that is just me. Pity the children.
The End
My three year old is passionate about sand, rocks, dirt, and being dirty. She has also been borne into my religion, which is shoes, and recently I looked out the kitchen window to see that she was playing in a sand mountain whilst wearing my new, hot pink heels. This, to her, was heaven. Why should I pay fees, eat dinner in the car, chit chat with other weirdly normal parents, so that she can then continue to play in the sand in the outfield of a baseball diamond?
When I played ball we had to take off our jewelry before the game started, so I can only presume that coaches also have rules about just-saying-no to hot pink pumps or would make up some as soon as the issue arose (and it would). We’ve already got paradise by the porch light. I don’t need to join leagues to round off my angular girls. We’re good.
I believe that this parent-driven, frog-marched participation in extra-curricular activities stems from a noble and earnest parental desire to give children the greatest, richest start in life, full of opportunities and experience, so that a child may find their passion and develop a well-rounded resume with a litany of awards and honours and honourable mentions that will get them into a good university, because a good university means a good job, and a good job means a good income, and a good income means a stable, respectable, satisfying life.
And of course a parent wants a child to have a satisfying life. That is The End. The activities are simply the means to that end.
Re: university. There is no guarantee, here, my darlings. I know this from experience, and let me explain why: liberal arts. Wide mind, narrow pay. A university degree (or two!) is no guarantee of good job, good pay.
Re: good job, good pay. The two do not necessarily go together. And even if they do, they do not necessarily lead to a satisfying life.
Re: The End. The End is a satisfying life. Let’s reverse-engineer that, shall we?
I want my children to be happy. I want them to be caring, compassionate people able to act on and actualize their goals, whatever they may be. I want them to live soul-full lives. And to do that, I think they need exactly two skills. They need to know how to interact fluidly and graciously with other people, and they need to know how to learn. This means, in my opinion, that all they need in life are good manners and to be passionately literate. Let’s discuss.
Good manners
I’m not talking about etiquette or charm school or elaborate codes of conduct signalled in silverware. I don’t care which fork you use as long as you don’t stick it in my eye. I’m talking about interacting with people with kindness and compassion in a way that puts them and you at ease. Good manners are social lubricant and a way of showing kindness and respect to others and to yourself. When you understand the purpose good manners and how to use them, you also know when to drop them and go to the mat. This is an essential life skill.
Passionate Literacy
A love affair with words and books and the written word cultivates the imagination, curiosity, and gives you the skills you need to learn anything you want to know about anything. If you love to read, you will be a lifelong learner. If you read critically, you will be able to make sense of the world and your choices within it. If you can navigate the written word, you can chart your own path. Dr. Seuss totally nailed it: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” This is the base for launching an empowered, authentic life and that is the stuff of life, baby.
That’s All There Is, Folks
So that’s it. That is my parenting mission. If I instill in my children good manners and a love of reading, I have done my job and given them the tools they will need to live a rich life of their choosing.
That is The End, after all: a satisfying life. I don’t know what it is for them, but I know how they might find it and what they might need along the way.
And, I admit, if my five year old thinks she may find it on the baseball field, then I shall cave and we will rent Field of Dreams.
I’m kidding. I’ll sign her up already.
How to Like Your Crazy Little Kids
I’m a woman and a writer…that means words are my forte and my foreplay. Talking is bonding. Nothing reels me in like communication.
And while I know, due to many, many magazine subscriptions, that ‘communication is key’ in adult relationships, for some reason I never made the connection that communication is also the key to being close to my children.
My daughter, Sophie, taught me this. She is a very wise and silly five year old.
I know, I know. Gag. Treacle. “I learn from my children”…I hate those sort of cliches. (And this is not even the first time I’ve indulged in syrupy I-believe-the-children-are-our-future crap – I did the same thing in an earlier post about my daughter, Lola.) While most of the learning is a top-down, adult-to-child sort of affair in my house, every once in a while, my girls say or do something simple and profound that stops me in my smug tracks.
At daycare, my eldest daughter has been struggling to find a way to get along with another girl. Sophie is smart, sensitive, fragile and emotional. If you blink at her the wrong way, she cries great, gulping, heart-wrenching, body-wracking sobs of earnest pain.
Naturally, my delicate, screaming flower is attracted to people with big, dominant personalities. (Alas, I am her and she is me.) At daycare, she and another young girl have been engaged in some sort of five-year-old pissing match. Sophie has been losing. And we have both been distraught about it.
I called the daycare, I went in and spoke to the staff, and I was convinced that this other child was brutalizing my baby. The daycare leader agreed that the other child was a bit domineering, but that Sophie’s reactions were out of proportion to the slights she was receiving.
This I could totally believe. See paragraph #5, re: blinking.
So I sat down with Sophie and we talked. We talked and we talked and we talked. She told me every detail of every grevious injury, real and/or imagined. She told me every detail of every day of her life since she was born approximately three hundred years ago.
Now, every night, after I tuck her sister into bed, I get under the covers with Sophie, and we talk. We talk about her day, what happened at daycare and in the world, who said what to whom, who scratched whom, who thought about scratching, who walked in front of the swing and got a kick in the head for her troubles, what bugs got squished, what rocks are in her pocket and should not go through the washing machine, what Barack Obama should do next, and that yes, Michelle Obama’s arms are fabulous and she has the right to bare them. My god, people.
At the end of our first night of one-on-one Mama/daughter talking – and this first night lasted six weeks because the child had things to say - Sophie wrapped her arms around me, pressed her cheek against mine, and said to me “Mama, I love it when we talk about everything.”
Me too, baby. Me too.
This is the lesson I learned from a wise and silly five year old: If you want to like your kids, and be close to them, talk to them. And by talk, I mean listen.
Happy Mama Monday.
How to Stop Being Judgmental
You do it, I do it, most of us mere mortals do it. We judge, and the results are not pleasant for the judged or the judges.
Let’s be charitable. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the impetus for judging other people is concern. We are worried that their actions will cause harm to themselves, or to us, or to people around them. In the case of parents, we worry for their children.
When we talk amongst ourselves (or in our own heads) about the egregious offenses of other parents it is because we are worried, and we want to make sure we are not the only ones. We want to reinforce whatever tentative rule was being flouted with agreement between friends, that yes it is sooooooooooo inappropriate for preschoolers to wear skirts and tackle the monkey bars sans underwear. Get a clue, Dad. (BTW it is the sans underwear bit that was odd; I feel very strongly that preschoolers – boys or girls – should be able to wear skirts whilst battling gravity on the monkey bars, if they so desire.)
And oh yes, on a less charitable note, when I judge you it is also because I am better than you.
When you judge me, on the other hand, whatever triggered the condemnation was simply an error or lapse in judgement. I admit it. I forgot the no-peanut rule and sent my children to daycare with peanut butter sandwiches and nutty granola bars. I was appropriately shamed.
[Side note: One of the great un-asked for but truly appreciated blessings in my life is the conglomerate of thirteen allergy-free children at our new daycare. Oh thank you thank you thank you, great peanut-god.]
I am a mother of very little ones, so I am on intimate terms with judging. It is a world of hurt that we Imperial Mamas inflict on ourselves and on each other.
This is not to say that you should just turn a blind eye to bad parenting. I am certainly not saying that you should suspend the ability to think critically and run, don’t walk, to your nearest meadow to look for leprachauns and unicorns.
If something doesn’t feel right, say so. If you are genuinely uncomfortable or worried about how someone is raising their children, by all means raise the issue. There may be a child who desperately needs some adult, somewhere, to say what she cannot. I just think that there are more constructive ways than judging and snipping and backbiting to accomplish that end.
So how do we stop judging? The antidote to judging, the habit you can substitute in its place, is encouragement.
If you want to help a child, encourage her parent. Encourage that faulty, imperfect, oblivious, woefully inadequate parent (especially if that parent is you) who is clearly getting it all wrong.
Look, when it comes to parenting, few of us – if any – know what we’re doing. I am both a tender, loving mama and an eternally confused newbie figuring it out as I go along. Just when I get the hang of raising a four year old and all of her associated quirks, milestones and evil notions, she changes up the game. She goes and turns five with no regard – except possibly malicious glee – for the fact that it took me an entire year just to figure out four. Every single year, I am a rookie all over again. A little encouragement goes a long way with me.
I promise you, the single greatest thing you can do to help a child is encourage her parents. I absolutely know this to be true.
Recently, the owner of my girls’ daycare told me that she loved the way that I talk to my girls with respect and kindness and care. My eyes welled up. This, of course, is not always true. But hearing those words, receiving that kindness, made me want to try harder to make it more consistently true. Since then, I have been so much more conscious of my tone of voice and the way I speak to my children. I do a good job, most of the time, but I appreciated the enouragement. I need encouragement. We all do. It makes us better.
Cheesy beast that I am, I took this lesson of love and encouragement and paid it forward.
Last weekend, I was having coffee in Fort Langley with a very hot date – the weekend Globe and Mail – while sitting outside on the patio next to two women and a young boy. The child was restless. He was trying to behave, sort of, but bees were buzzing, wind was blowing, and the conversation was boring (to him – to me, it was fascinating).
The child’s mother was a gorgeous woman with impossibly perfect waist length ringlets. I mean, they were amazing. I wanted to touch those curls. I wanted to bathe in them. I wanted to wind them around my naked body while riding a white horse through the town and inspiring chocolatiers to name their bon-bons after me. I could not take my eyes off this freak-of-nature fabulous hair.
While I was inconspicuously (sure!) leaning back in my chair to try and see if those astonishing curls were firmly follicularly rooted or purchased (weave, and a really, really good one), her son almost invisibly sort-of nearly bumped me with his bike. The hooligan.
The coffee shop Godiva instructed her son to apologize to me ‘for getting in her personal space’.
Now, I could have given her a baleful glare and then gone home and kvetched about the hyperactive so-and-so riding his bike around the coffee shop patio, spilling my coffee all over my newspaper (didn’t happen, but you know how these stories go), and clearly destined for a life of crime. That’s the judgey-judgerson Imperial Mama approach.
Instead, here’s what went down.
Me: “It’s okay. I have a five year old. I have no personal space.”
[This is not an exaggeration. My youngest daughter's greeting of choice is this: "Hi ________. I sleep on Mama's head!"]
Her: “Thanks, but I am just trying to teach him that his behaviour has consequences.”
Me: “And you’re doing a really great job. I love how you speak to him.” (See any pattern here?)
Then we peacefully went about our business. The women returned to their conversation, and I returned to eavesdropping on their conversation.
When she left, she stopped in front of me and we had another brief conversation.
Her: “Thank you for your kindness. You have a five year old? Boy or girl?”
Me: “Girl”
Her: “Oh they are whole other species…”
Me: “Oh she’s crazy.”
Her: “I love you!”
The two stories have something in common.
The daycare leader found a way to be sweet to me, and in parenting terms, tried to catch me doing something right. This unexpected kindness and support touched my heart, and made me resolve to keep on keeping on.
Then I did the same for another mama – and I am sure our kids are happier for it. The coffee shop Godiva did not have to go home and wrestle her son into the naughty corner, and I am more conscious of my tone of voice and kindness, love and respect it can convey. I am trying a little harder to consistently be the mother that people think I am, and to support other parents in that same endeavour.
Wow. I like this so much better than telling bitchy stories.
In fact, I liked it so much I blogged about it. Happy Mama Monday.
How To Spend Your Money and Your Time…Happily
I’ll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I’ll give to you
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love
- The Beatles, “Can’t Buy Me Love”
“In love but no money…you won’t be in love long.”
Okay, I know that you know how to spend your money. We all do. Since 1990, the average Canadian household income grew 11.6% but spending grew twice as fast, increasing 24%. In that time, total household debt also increased 71%. Most of us are expert spenders. But does the way you spend your money make you happy?
My guess is no, and I’ve got some recommendations about how to spend your money and your time to be happy.
Stop hissing. Yes, dear reader, I do think that you can buy happiness if you spend your resources on the ‘right’ things. Let me tell you how and why and you can stone me later.
Today, my darlings, we’re going to talk about the Economy of Happiness.
[Side note: In university, I attended exactly one Econ 100 class and then dropped it. The professor did not make any jokes. The class was early. The textbook contained a lot of formulas. Formulas allow very little wiggle room for bullshit, and the strength of my GPA was directly related to the number of classes I took that required expert bullshitting. As you might expect, I majored in Political Science. I wrote brilliant papers on the gender politics of dance movies and romance novels, which meant that my primary research activities consisted of reading Harlequin Romances and watching "Dirty Dancing" seven million times. My GPA was obscene. Unfortunately, any analysis I offer on subjects other than fictional love stories - including and especially economics - is suspect.]
[Side note to side note: I heart liberal arts and am deeply saddened by the loss of Patrick Swayze.]
I first learned about the Economy of Happiness in March 2006 when I attended a presentation given to Vancouver Board of Trade by UBC Professor Emeritus John Helliwell.
Helliwell told a swashbuckling tale of income, satisfaction and the law of diminishing returns. It went something like this:
Once upon a time, classical economic theory said that income was a primary indicator and predictor of quality of life. More income = more happiness.
Then along came Happiness Researchers, who combined the methods of economics and psychology to describe and predict the factors that created ‘the good life’.
This was not The End.
They also applied a law from classical economics, the law of diminishing return, which says that after an optimal level of production is reached, each input yields less and less increases in output. In practical terms, this means that when you’re struggling to find enough money for food, shelter and healthcare, every additional dollar you earn makes you happier – a lot happier.
But after a certain threshold is met – the level at which your needs for are met – each additional buck yields less and less bang. Money can buy happiness, initially, but after a certain point, the currency of choice is time. Spare time.
Turns out there is a lot of wiggle room in economics and that John Helliwell is the sexiest man alive. And that econ class I dropped? Regretting it. Dr. Helliwell was the prof.
I digress.
All of this means that if you want to be happy, working more and sacrificing your leisure time to increase your income is not the answer. Instead, you should increase the amount of spare time you have, the amount of control you have over how you use your spare time, and spend more of that spare time with friends, family, and in your community.
This is not easy. We’re all so busy. We don’t have enough time to do everything we are need to do – work full-time, work out, parent, call Mom, cook, clean, bathe, go to the liquor store, maintain an adequate supply of clean underwear, play slow-pitch, date, organize the garage, update Facebook, curse the dog, volunteer resentfully at preschool, and spend time with friends – so we outsource parts of our lives that could be communal tasks. We hire people to babysit, landscape, mow lawns, walk the damn dog, build fences, demo unfashionable kitchens, and move.
Yet I think that there is actually a profound social and personal value created when friends, families and neighbours work together on these kinds of projects. This time together – no matter what mundane thing you are doing – strengthens bonds and builds narratives.
When you need help moving house, you learn who your friends are – and you remember. When your buddy wants you to help him move 1 1/2 tonnes of paving stones instead of paying to have them delivered, it is just an excuse to spend time with you in a sweating, panting, heaving, but non-homoerotic way. No. Not homoerotic at all. And he’s not cheap. He just loves you, man.
If you want to be happy, spend a little less money on working madly and outsourcing and a little more time collaborating.
Not convinced? Here is my point in action:
Uncle Tony and the FenceIf someone you hired to take down your fence did this, you might not crack a smile. You might think evil thoughts about his provenance, sobriety and work ethic.
However, if your brother-in-law did this during a yard reno fueled by free family labour, you post the video to your blog. Your family members tell stories about it. Your three year old nephew is hysterical with delight. It becomes part of the family history and we all know that families are held together not by blood but by gossip. I mean memories.
In short, there is no better way to build community than engaging in volunteer gonzo demolition.
So, if you want to buy happiness, spend your money on experiential things that foster togetherness and create memories, and spend your time with people. Spend less time working and more time helping friends, families, neighbours, community members and handsome strangers.
You can buy happiness, but only if you spend your resources – time, money, attention – on the right things. The right things are people and experiences. Happiness comes from what you do and who you do it with.
I absolutely know this to be true. Here are just a few reasons why:
- When I was recovering from the birth of my first child and could not safely walk my nine-month old puppy/bear, my sister would drive one hour to my house, her toddlers in tow, to walk my dog.
- When I was moving and scheduled to be on a plane to Texas on the same freaking day, my friend convinced her husband to give up his Sunday to haul my boxes from one house to another. I have a hunch as to which favours were required. She is a great friend.
- The armoire that I saved for a year to buy generates nowhere near the satisfaction of the $4 I spent on cupcakes, tea and conversation with my five year old.
- The only reason I survived my first four years of parenthood was this recipe: fair weather, lawn chairs, a group of stay-at-home moms, and day-long conversations that included lots of bad words and bad-mommy confessions. (Winters required medication.)
- My two daughers still talk about the first really sunny warm day this spring when I picked them up at daycare, flip-flops and sunglasses in hand, and we took an impromptu trip to the beach for dinner. It cost $13. We threw seaweed at each other and squealed like girls. Magic.
- Last week I went to six meetings but the only one I remember is the one that took place on a patio on Commercial Drive. Two girlfriends can sort out the meaning of life – or at least nail down a practical guide to dating – in two courses or less.
- Going to fancy schmancy places is great – I love that – but the best and most memorable conversations happen when a couple of friends and Sailor Jerry convene around the kitchen island.
This is the good life. I am loved, I love, and I am happy. I am most happy when I am the least worried about myself.
This is because the antidote to the alienation of modern life (shout out to Karl Marx!) is strong and frequent doses of love, leisure time, togetherness, and memory- and community building. This is how you to buy happiness.
Interestingly enough, this lesson is much the same as the themes of my much loved and rigorously analyzed romance novels and dance movies. Love is what you do. Love is when you stand up to the whole world, or at least to your disapproving parents, hypocritical resort guests and one lazy poli sci student, because you know that Johnny didn’t take the wallet. You know because he was in his room all night. And the reason you know is because you were with him.
I’m telling you, there is wisdom in the movies of the 1980s and 1990s.
Next post: what we can learn about gender roles and misogyny from the films of actor (I use this term loosely) Michael Douglas.
I’m just kidding. Now go boil a rabbit (but do it with friends) while I make a mural of John Helliwell press clippings.
How to Quit Anything (Smoking, Your Man, Junk Food, Smoking Your Man’s Junk Food…)
Want to quit a bad habit? Change your focus from quitting something old and tired to starting something new and impassioned.
Just do it strategically. Time your break with bad habits past to coincide with new and major life events. Get busy, and make sure you are going to stay very, VERY busy for a good long while.
I realize that this is somewhat counterintuitive: it might not be a good idea to try to stop smoking in the midst of moving house or lose weight when starting a new job. Lots of articles and experts tell us that. I’ve even said it: save your will power: don’t spread it out over several causes. Use it strategically and sparingly, preferably after a good snack.
Yet the kind of “quitting” I am talking about doesn’t require will power. It requires passion. It requires a mission.
Here’s a fabled example of what I mean. William Griffith Wilson, “Bill W”, a stock broker and lifelong alcoholic, was admitted to hospital more than fifty times for his excessive and compulsive drinking. Doctors despaired and declared him a lost cause. One of his doctors even promised him a drink if he would go over to the next room tell his story to a young man who was also battling alcoholism. In essence, Bill W was to serve as the cautionary tale to the younger man and scare him straight. It worked – for both of them. Bill W found such meaning and passion in counseling another person that he quit drinking – and founded Alcoholics Anonymous*.
Okay, now for a more mundane, real-life example. Women often lose weight in the beginning of a new relationship. And what is more all-consuming than new love? If you can lose weight when all hopped up on mind-altering chemicals, well then hats-off to you and yes, you can do just about anything you decide. Including ________________ (you fill in the blank).
This perhaps gives us a clue as to what really works when trying to make changes. Basically, change everything, be passionately focussed on something else, and be busy, busy, busy.
I know that this method works. In my own life, I quit smoking when I moved from Taiwan back to Canada; quit TV and untidiness when I moved house; got over a failed relationship when I moved house, too; lost weight when I went backpacking in Europe; and lost weight when I started a coffee shop.
A profound change in routine – moving from one country to another, from one home to another, starting a business, or traveling – takes your mind off of ‘missing’ that bad habit or bad boyfriend. At the same time, the novelty and demands of a new venture or new environment fill the gap with positive, productive new habits. Cool.
In these circumstances, when you change everything, you only need will power initially and then distraction, novelty and sheer lack of time are the names of the game.
This works because bad habits are initially a function of boredom. Why was I smoking in a teeny-tiny Taiwanese alley between kindergarten classes? (Settle down, I was the teacher, not the student. Actually, that probably does not make it any better.) Because I had nothing better to do. Why was I stroking the bag of potato chips like a lover? Because I didn’t have anything/anyone better to do. Why was I watching hours after hours of soap operas, Divorce Court and Maury Pauvich? Well, I definitely had better things to do, but just did not feel inclined to do them. Boredom.
Passion is the antidote to boredom. Failing that, being busy is a good prescription, too.
Start something new, something time- and mind-space-intensive, and then let go of the bad habit. If no life-altering trips, moves, or business ventures are in your immediate future, then manufacture a set of all-consuming new life circumstances.
- Enrol in a fitness boot camp.
- Declutter on an all-consuming, grand scale (ie do you really, really, really need it? Would you stop to grab it during your panicked, naked exit from the house in a housefire? Ask yourself this about every object and person – apart from those whom you are legally obliged to feed and water – in your home beyond running water and electricity. Look at every object as a tax on your breathing space and as a dollar figure that ought to be in your bank account and is not. Resentment will rapidly clear your garage and your life).
- Volunteer to lead a project.
- Volunteer to lead a project in Taiwan.
- Move.
- Schedule an art show before you’ve even started painting.
- Have a child (you will have no time for bad habits for at least four years. Unfortunately your good habits like regular bathing and basic grooming will also get that memo and go on leave, too.)
Change everything, including – especially - the little routines that reinforce your habit, whether it be smoke breaks between classes, or a set of friends with whom you drink. When your lifestyle is novel, busy, and exciting, the sting of loss is softened when you notice that ice cream is no longer your best friend.
Distraction, and a new, impassioned routine build and reinforce new habits. It is a lifestyle reboot.
This is why serious issues, like drugs and alchol addictions, benefit from stays in treatment centres. This is why savvy parents over-schedule their teenagers in after-school activities. This is why Mae West said that “the best way to get over a man is to get under a new one.”
( I personally set my moral compass by the teachings of the scandalous Miss Mae West, but that is another post entirely, dear readers. To each her own.)
Although I am a fan of timing your change in habits with huge, sweeping, long-term lifestyle changes, in reality you probably only need six weeks to really, truly, conclusively let a bad habit go. (Heartbreak included.)
Changes of scenery, strategic visits and well-timed visits are not running away from your problems (because wherever you go, there you are), they are just a good, hard, forced page break in the book of life.
Oh, and as for the six weeks – research shows that this is the length of time it takes to start and ingrain a new habit.
Notice I didn’t say break a bad habit – I said start a new and improved one. Starting something new is oh-so-much easier than quitting something. And in your newfound, all-consuming passion for bellydancing/quantum mechanics/casual sex/pick-up-stix (the last two may be the same thing), you might just let go of an old habit. Easily.
* From “The Law of Unselfishness” by Fulton Oursler, in Stephen Covey’s book Everyday Greatness.