Falling Backward

By Shani Gilchrist Late last week I became fed up. After a particularly pleasant morning out, I came home to catch up on some work in my office. As is my habit, I breezed by my personal Facebook account for a peek at what my community of friends and acquaintances were discussing. Instead of the usual banter about lunch, charitable causes, cute children, and dispatches from abroad, I was seeing words like moron, liar, fool, dirty socialist, racist, stupid, self-righteous, and enemy.

My mood went swirling to the ground. The next thing I knew, I was furiously typing a status update that was the equivalent of throwing a hissy-fit and stomping out of the room. 

My reaction was not the result of a few minutes worth of perusing social media channels. For months the vitriol and fire-breathing had been building across the internet as state and local political campaigning waged on. The feeling was that of being trapped in the center of a growing and sustaining angry mob. The seething posts were coming from waitresses, physicians, salesmen, college students, CFOs, and housewives. People from every walk of life. People whom I and my diverse little family see out and about on any given day were spewing anger in every direction in a way that I’ve never experienced. It is as if people were taking the opportunity to publicly and arbitrarily hurl the ugly, insulting thoughts that we normally hide in that little pocket behind the bitter part of our tongues in the name of politics. People are now using the guise of politics to inflict their fears on others, using social media, that great living room that is supposed to bring us together on equal footing, to turn on each other. Fear and suspicion boils over into grabbing and clawing to bring everyone to the same level in a downward trajectory. Is it really possible for all of these people to seemingly hate their peers over differing political opinions?

In most cases, the answer is no.

As an adult, I now realize that when I was in middle school and the local “mean girl” would pile on me with verbal blows it had little to do with me. It had more to do with her feeling of powerlessness around the girls with the deeper, more historic bonds of friendship than it did her actual feelings about what my hair looked like that day. What we are experiencing here is the exact same thing. We are coming out of a frightening economic time, and while many of us have jobs again, none of us know with any certainty that those jobs will still exist for us in 1, 5 or 10 years. Despite the sensational headlines from today’s more biased news outlets, this is an affliction that reaches across every socio-economic level.  Family fortunes have dried up, leaving college-age former beneficiaries faced with the possibility of dropping out of school. Parents who once had associate or managerial jobs are working in retail and unable to get full-time hours because the industry rarely allows for that anymore. Upper level managers are buried in the debt incurred during the year that they lived without income. The days of knowing that your job will be there for you until the pension is cashed in are long gone. Now people are just hoping that their departments will be intact this time next year.

Talk about a feeling of powerlessness. So now, here we are, bullying each other over the thing that is supposed to unite us… our ability to have an opinion and respect others for the same. Today’s politicians are constantly in our line of vision, so it is easy to pile hopes and beliefs into a small group of people who appear to mirror the thoughts in one’s head. Such action, however, takes away the fact that these politicians are getting up every morning to do a job. It used to be that these politicians would take aim at each other on camera and in chambers, then later that evening see each other at social events and spend at least a few minutes in truly cordial chatter. In many cases, opposing politicians were actually friends after hours. Every now and then there would be a good-humored poke at someone’s political stance, but then they’d have another drink, tell another joke, and go home to prepare for the next day’s work.  This has all changed over the past 20 years. As the old guard of politicians began to thin out, a new, cliquey breed appeared just in time for the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. Almost every newspaper columnist in the country has at some point mourned the loss of civility in Washington, and now that many of the issues being debated have caused a more palpable sting for citizens, that loss of civility has crossed the beltway into our everyday relationships.

Civility hit a new low this year in America. Something that became painfully clear to me recently when my kindergartener came to me hurting because a classmate had told him that he was “bad” for liking a presidential candidate whom the 6-year-old had declared was a “bad person.”

Can we help each other heal from the wounds we’ve inflicted on each other? The girl who piled on me about my hair is now a highly regarded adult, known for being fun and kind, and with a successful job that allows her to be an advocate for her community. Like most people who make it out of middle school, she eventually grew out of her insecurities by taking the focus off of what was wrong with the people around her and placing it on enjoying them. Last night I timidly peeked at my Facebook page and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that things seemed to have settled down. There were a few comments about the recent mean-spiritedness that tells me that people may have snapped awake to the fact that hurt was being inflicted where it need not be. The adolescent pounding has slowed, and perhaps we can start to enjoy each other again.

Envy and Gratitude

For as long as I remember, I—like many girls—have loved the Anne of Green Gables series. Some of my earliest memories involve falling asleep at night to the sound of Meagan Follows reading Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea; to this day, there are whole passages of those particular books embedded in my subconscious, in Follows’ melodious voice. I have always found much to identify with in Anne Shirley; like Anne, I was an impetuous, talkative, dreamy child who used big words and was once paid money to keep quiet for ten minutes. (I succeeded, by the way.) Like Anne, as an adult I struggle with keeping my temper and tending to take life through a rather melodramatic lens. Even as a child, one of my favorite books in the series was also one of the less well-known: Anne’s House of Dreams, the fifth Anne book, which covers Anne’s first years of marriage to the swoon-worthy Gilbert Blythe. I’m not sure why, as a preteen, I found myself drawn to a book about new marriage—especially one that includes a heartbreaking subplot that still makes me cry every time I read it—but the love has persisted. Once I became a newlywed myself, and experienced, like Anne, the pangs of disappointed longing for motherhood, the book earned an even more special place in my heart.

One of the most interesting characters in Anne’s House of Dreams is Leslie Moore, the victim of a loveless marriage who is now left caring for her incapacitated husband in the wake of a traumatic brain injury. Leslie is complex and confusing, by turns sweet and sour; she becomes good friends with  Anne, but has a difficult time not being jealous of Anne’s newlywed bliss. Halfway through the book, after Anne suffers a tragedy herself, Leslie opens up about her conflicted feelings. Describing the first time she saw Anne driving into town with her new husband, Leslie says:

“I hated you in that very moment, Anne . . . it was because you looked so happy. Oh, you’ll agree with me now that I am a hateful beast—to hate another woman just because she was happy,—and when her happiness didn’t take anything from me!”

I must admit: every time I read about Leslie’s passionate jealousy, I feel something of a kinship. Envy has always been my besetting sin. I can vividly remember being fifteen years old, lying on my bed, my soul harrowed up with frustration over some now-forgotten inequality. I’ve always been prone to jealousy, coveting my friends’ lives, their children, the apparent ease that is always the illusion of a life seen from the outside. Like Leslie, I’ve been guilty of feeling anger at someone else for a happiness I couldn’t share, even when that happiness took nothing from me.

Earlier this year, I had had enough. I resolved that 2012 would be the year that I learn to overcome that natural jealousy, that I learn how to be truly content with my life exactly where it is, without feeling the need to look over my neighbor’s fence. And as I pondered, and journaled, and read, and soul-searched about the issue, I came up with a deceptively simple answer:

Live in gratitude. That was it. Could it really be that simple, I wondered? Could a life lived in gratitude have the power to overcome the vice I’d struggled with for twenty-four years?

I set about testing the principle out. I promised myself that the next time I caught myself looking with envy at somebody else’s life, I’d think instead, What they have is wonderful. But what I have is wonderful, too.

And, to my surprise, it worked. I felt myself becoming more and more aware of all of the things I loved about my life. I found that suddenly, even the things that hadn’t turned out in the way I wanted them to had become sources of blessings; I began to rejoice over all the unexpected twists and turns I’d encountered in my life and the exciting and unanticipated places they had taken me. I discovered, to my delight, that scenes and situations that had once filled me with jealousy and bitterness no longer disturbed my equanimity—unless I let them.

I was the “master of my fate,” I realized; it was up to me to decide what the condition of my heart would be on any given day. Simply the act of acknowledging my own power, and making a conscious choice to live in gratitude and let go of my envy, was bringing more change into my life than I ever could have imagined.

It hasn’t been a perfect, or a permanent, change, of course. Since that May day when I made my decision, I’ve experienced plenty of periods where I’ve let go, let frustration and ingratitude creep back into my life. Like anyone, I’ve had down days—but they have come less frequently than they did before.

As I write this, I find myself marveling over the difference that such a simple choice has made in my life. It seems silly, elementary, hardly worth discussing. But I can’t shake the idea that, this year, I have come upon the secret of happiness:

And its name is gratitude.

XII. Savoie

I take the TGV, train de grande vitesse, from Chambéry to Paris, and then another smaller train to Bernay to stay with Pauline and Roger. Clémence now lives in the neighboring city of Evreux, where she is taking classes for university. I see her a few times for the week I am there, back in that small attic room. Then I have to go back south, ostensibly to attend the language classes that I have been skipping for the past few weeks, bored with repeating lessons that I went through just a month before. On the ride back, I spend most of the three-hour trip holding back tears, hiding my face against the window as the country blurs by. In French, the way you say “homesick” is avoir le mal du pays. You could literally translate this as “to feel the pain of your country.” But it’s not quite that. I am mostly feeling the pain of being in this country.

The second I arrive back in Chambéry, I call Pauline, begging her to let me come back. She calls me nénette, her pet word I’ve heard her say to Clémence so many times before. I am on a train back to Bernay the next morning.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Katherine explores grief and loss through her blog Helping Friends Grieve, which she founded in 2010 as a tool for friends and loved ones supporting someone in the grieving process.  Currently, as a graduate student, Katherine studies community healing in post-conflict environments.  Her work in international development and passion for justice and human rights has taken her to diverse regions of the globe, including the Peruvian Andes, Mexico City, Northern Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Katherine’s interest in grief, memory, and healing is reflected in her desire to explore the role of community and inter-connectedness in healing. When she's not working, you'll find her outside: rock climbing, hiking or backpacking. Grief, loss, and mourning take hold of us. They become tides that come and go throughout the day or rollercoasters that catch us off guard, plunging us into undiscovered emotional territory. Loss leaves us bruised and, yet, curiously open to the world as we re-imagine and re-create our lives. We mourn the loss of place, home, youth, loved ones, and ability; the mix of emotions and utterly human trials exist in a web connecting our individual experience to our community. Our country continues to experience and heal from the devastation of hurricane Sandy; a thread ties together survival, loss, and resilience within our individual stories and communities.  We seek safety, interconnectedness with each other, and real, literal moments of joy that anchor us to our everyday lives.

The world of grief and healing is full of stories. Stories that make our hearts ache and bring tears to our eyes. Stories that touch us deeply, resonating with our experiences, bring our losses closer to the surface, and in their own way, heal us.  A belief in the power of stories is why I share (link to Helping Friends Grieve) and encourage others to share. The stories I look to this week, offline, that is, weave together the personal and community elements of grief, mourning, and healing across cultures and experiences with loss.

this i know by Susannah Conway The moment I laid eyes on Susannah Conway’s subtitle, notes on unraveling the heart, the warm book cover beckoned me in. Yes, I thought to myself, that is what I have been trying to say, loss and grief unravel your heart. Susannah vulnerably shares her experience with layers of grief, emotions, and self-doubt, ultimately, leading to much deeper questions of identity.  Her journey becomes one of self-creation. Susannah began her journey writing about grief after the loss of the love of her life, through blogging (link here: http://www.susannahconway.com/2006/04/a-few-beans-to-spill/). This i know, her 2012 book, re-lives her beautiful, tentative steps towards healing, “When we survive a traumatic event or transition in our lives, there’s a point when the healing really starts to take hold and we feel suddenly invincible.”(pg 39) Beyond words, her camera lens captures grief and healing in a moving combination of self-portraits and the world around her, which she claims give us clues on how to re-create our own worlds after loss.  Her writing and photography show grief settling and her creative, passionate self-emerging from an unraveled heart. It is breath-taking and inspiring as we weave our own stories of grief.

The Long Goodbye by Meghan O’Rourke Why do we write about grief? Why do we tell stories about loved ones?  In a 2011 New York Times piece (link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/weekinreview/27grief.html), Joyce Carol Oates and Meghan O’Rourke explore the public and private sides of grieving through personal emails that they later share publicly. In The Long Goodbye, Meghan O’Rourke jumps headfirst into her journey through the loss of her mother and openly shares its vivid, intimate details. She refers to grief as a nearly universal act with exquisitely personal transactions. (page 57) She opens up these personal moments for the reader to experience and grieve with her, thus blending their own stories of loss with hers.  In her own words;

I was not entirely surprised to find that being a mourner was lonely. But I was surprised to discover that I felt lost. In the days following my mother’s death, I did not know what I was supposed to do, nor, it seemed, did my friends and colleagues, especially those who had never suffered a similar loss. (page 12)

She bookends her story with chapters on love and healing, tying together childhood memories, anticipatory grief, the cracks in her relationships, the rollercoaster of caretaking, and the lack of rituals to shape and support her loss. She gracefully tackles the experience of saying goodbye, allowing the reader to join her and glean insight its messy mechanics.

Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen The Chicken Soup for the Soul series pulls me back to memories of weekends as a young girl, curled up on the couch of my family’s cabin in Colorado, reading stories of teenage love. This scene was nearly repeated after the loss of my father, as I dove back into other people’s stories. Only, this time I found comfort in their stories of loss and healing. I wove their stories into a safety net around my own emotions, allowing me the space to experience my own loss and journey. Wrapped in blankets, sipping cups of tea, I cried over the words I wasn’t brave enough yet to put on paper - a father’s portrayal of the loss of his son, a young woman’s loss of her mother, and a wide variety of other stories written by people who, I assumed, once had also curled up on a couch, searching desperately for meaning in the throes of loss. Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul, is a compilation of stories written by authors who have lost loved ones. It beautifully walks the line between sharing in grief and inspiring readers with stories of healing and understanding. It connects us, showing our resilience as humans.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder In the first few years after the loss of my father, I referred to my life, or rather the life I had known as the pieces. By pieces I meant little bits of strength, memories that let light into my life, and relationships with friends and loved ones that sewed me back together. During this time, I moved abroad and sought to re-create a sense of community spanning countries, regions, and cultures. During the months I spent a truly magical place, Mexico City, a friend gifted me Strength in What Remains. I have read and re-read this book over the past few years, scribbling in the margins and always throwing it in my blue backpack before boarding the next plane. I fell in love all over again with Deo’s story as I crossed the border from Rwanda to Burundi this summer. At 22, his devastating story of survival during genocide and his strength span his harrowing experiences in Burundi, his improbably escape to New York City, and ultimately the fulfillment of his dream – returning to Burundi to build a hospital. Through Deo’s journey, Kidder shows us the pieces of loneliness, pain, grief, and displacement from home, but ultimately the resilience of the human spirit that echoes within elements of our own narratives. The essence of Deo’s experiences are rooted in Wordsworth’s graceful words, which lend the perfect title to the book. From the poem, Strength in What Remains;

“Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass,

of glory in the flower,

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind…..”

…..

My experience with grief is no longer just a memory of my own experience, but a mix of the stories I have loved, savored, and wiped tears off my cheeks while reading. These are just a few of the stories that sustain me.

Curating the internet

Recently, I came across a brief news article offering up a study as evidence of what I’ve already known for a while: Facebook is depressing. The Utah Valley University study showed that of the 425 students who were interviewed, those who spent more time on Facebook were more likely to feel that life was unfair and that others’ lives were better than their own. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we tend to curate the best pieces of ourselves on the internet. We tend to share the sweetest, most photogenic aspects of our lives, polishing them up before sending them out into the world. You’re more likely to share a photo of your puppy in the brief, glowing moment when she’s sleeping than when she’s simultaneously tearing up your socks and pooping on the floor.

And if you’ve ever drowned your sorrows in your Facebook news feed while you’re in a funk, you’ll know what I mean. As soon as you’ve broken up with your boyfriend, everyone in your feed seems to be blissfully in love. Circumstances or biology are preventing you from procreating as you’d like to, and suddenly it seems as if everyone else in your feed is popping out babies by the dozen.

The problem with the feed—which is not very nourishing, by the way, but often rather draining—is that it’s missing a holistic view of other people’s lives. When you bond with your real-life friends, you share in their triumphs and their sorrows. Most of our hundreds of Facebook friends are actually acquaintances or strangers, and although it may seem that they are sharing aspects of their private lives online, these glimpses have been selected from among many others for public consumption.

Of course, there are a number of ways to respond to a study like this: ignore it, cut back on Facebook usage, stop using Facebook altogether. My own experience of Facebook has been very conflicted. On the one hand, I find it to be so very useful as a directory and as a sort of social memory. I use it to look up contact information or to find a friend’s friend’s spouse’s name that I’ve forgotten. On the other hand, I arrive to look up a bit of information, and then find I’ve lost a couple of precious hours after having fallen down the rabbit hole of the news feed.

This problem certainly extends beyond Facebook to other social networking sites, Twitter, blogs, etc., and there have been many interesting responses to it across these platforms. Some have chosen to regularly prune their feeds by cutting back on people they follow. Others have taken a cue from Jess Lively’s “Things I’m afraid to tell you” post, sharing some of their own flaws and challenges as a balance to their otherwise optimistic and upbeat content.

For my own part, I’ve taken the “regular maintenance” approach to managing my feeds and overall internet experience. My Twitter bookmark is set to a list of people I actually know. I’ve trimmed my Facebook feed by taking some time to block updates from people I’ve lost touch with beyond Facebook. I’ve used Feedly to craft a reader of content that’s consistently thoughtful and inspiring. It makes sense that we curate our public personalities online, and in response, I’ve tried to curate my own window onto what I encounter when I first open up a browser. It takes time, but it feels like a method for encouraging healthy content consumption, without having to feel like I’m fasting or binging on internet “junk.”

So long, Vogue

By Rhea St. Julien After several years of an admittedly tumultuous relationship, I am breaking up with Vogue.  My subscription is up, and I am finally pulling the trigger and not renewing.  If this blog were a movie, I’d segue here into a montage of me + Vogue in better times, reading sandy articles on the beach, discovering Claire Dederer and Cheryl Strayed, ripping out amazingly curated spreads by Grace Coddington and Irving Penn to create collage art.

But our relationship has not all been Happy Days with scissors.  Like everyone else on the planet, I was appalled by Dara-Lynn Weiss’s article about shaming her child into losing weight.  I have grown increasingly tired of the pieces on Connecticut garden homes refurbished by gazillionaires, and the lack of diversity reflected on the pages.  However, I was willing to overlook all of this, because Vogue isn’t pretending to be anything else than it is.  The magazine is sold as the flight of fantasy of a particular Manhattan woman, and if I don’t like their point of view, I can just skip those articles or join the conversation surrounding them to shift the culture.  Somehow, what pushed me over the edge from giving them a pass to writing CANCEL on my invoice was a subtle message in an otherwise innocuous, seemingly empowering article.

I was drawn in by their profile of fascinating congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a woman who manages to balance motherhood, congressional leadership, and extracurriculars such as softball teams and fundraising for cancer awareness.  The tale of her own breast cancer battle was riveting, but then they slipped in this absolutely ridiculous paragraph:

“By 2011, the only lingering effect of her treatment was weight gain brought on by the drug tamoxifen.  Having ‘never gained an ounce in my life,’ she found herself 23 pounds heavier.  ‘Like every woman who goes through weight gain, you’re just not happy,’ she says.  ‘You’re not comfortable in your clothes, you’re mad when you walk in your closet, you hate going shopping.  I didn’t feel good about myself.’  After a press event in her district promoting a small business called the Fresh Diet, she decided to sign up.  Seven months later, she had lost the 23 pounds and dropped from a size 8 back to a size 2.”

First of all, I’m sorry, the only lingering effect of surviving cancer was weight gain?  What about the scars from surgery, the months lost to recovery, the strain on your family, the emotional damage from confronting mortality in such a raw way?  If you fight cancer and win, and you’re worried about your dress size, CANCER WINS.  You learned nothing from your brush with death, and I just can’t believe that a woman so intelligent and powerful really feels that way.  I suspect they took her comments about her body image struggles out of context in their attempt to trivialize and glamorize the congresswoman.

Also, what’s so terrible about being a size 8 (ahem, ahem)?  The fact that they even put the sizes in there shows that it was a nod to diet culture rather than a well-rounded portrait of a woman’s experience with cancer.  I realized I needed to stop giving money to a publication that was insulting me.

It really bothered me that this blatant body-shaming message was slipped in to a profile of a political leader, a piece that was well-written and interesting.  The subtlety of it was what shook me, left me thinking about the lasting effects of such a paragraph, like when, in the 90′s, they found all those messages about sex in Disney movies.

Recently, my review of Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From The Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture was published on the Equals Record, and in my piece, I say that I’m going to try to keep my daughter away from the princess craze as long as I can, and to expose her to different forms of what it means to be a woman than the overwhelmingly narrow cultural ideal.

Well, if I’m going to do that for my daughter, I need to stop “playing princess” myself, and reading Vogue is a way that I, monthly, escape to a world where women are saved from the effects of aging (The Wicked Witch of Wrinkles) by state-of-the-art surgeries and creams (Prince Botox), I dream of having a Fairy Godmother that will bring me a $3,450 biker jacket for the ball, and my confidence is boosted by how modern day royalty (celebs) are really down-to-earth, just like me.

It’s time to put down the princess wand.

I am searching for a new way to be feminine.  Am I a woman because I paint my lips red, wear a dress on the daily, shave my legs and flat iron my bangs?  Of course not.  These are the ways I am fashioning my body right now, and I have chosen other forms for it throughout my life---letting my prodigious body hair grow in college (my husband and I got together, actually, when my leg hair was so long I could French braid it), wearing the same pair of dusty Carhartts for months, forgoing make-up even in the face of period zits.

Right now, my look is very traditionally femme, but, my love for fashion will not die with my Vogue subscription, and I could see myself dressing like one of my icons, Patti Smith, or Georgia O’Keefe, my hair a wild mass of black and gray, my pants pegged and baggy, my white shirt crisp enough to cut a fingernail on.

There is so much power in womanhood---this is one of the major reasons I chose to have my baby as naturally as I could---I wanted to experience that feminine power running through my body in the most primal way possible, to let it change me in the process.  And it did.  But now, despite Operation Rad Bod, I feel crappy about that amazing body that brought me a baby, about two weeks out of every month (if you guessed that those are the week before and the week of my period, then ladies, you are correct).

Vogue is absolutely not going to help me with my quest for a learned experience of the deeper meaning of femininity, beyond waist size and wardrobe.  So, I’m taking this whole experiment to the next level, and trying to limit my own exposure to damaging cultural messages about women, especially since I’m going to limit my daughter’s.  I can’t be wresting the Bratz doll out of her hands while I’m filling my own with pictures of Kate Moss’s wedding.

Perhaps, I’ll spend all the time once consumed with Vogue reading things like this, an excerpt from Dear Sugar’s column entitled Tiny Revolutions:

“You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be ‘hot’ in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don’t have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits.

You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, I’m right here.

There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It’s the one place we can’t leave. We’re there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn’t, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn’t do that?”

So long, Vogue.  It has been fun.  But it has not been real.

Republished with the author's permission from Thirty Threadbare Mercies, Photo:  Some rights reserved by JeepersMedia

A Note of Thanks

If you spend any time at all on Facebook, you’ve likely seen a new trend this November.  I’m not talking about political status updates---thank goodness. Someone, somewhere in the World Wide Web decided that each day in November, they would post a status about something they were thankful for.  The crusade was adopted and has become a certifiable trend.  And I couldn’t be happier. One of my best habits is saying thank you.  I say it a lot.  I thank cashiers, waiters, and people who hold open doors just like my mother taught me.  But I also offer up non-verbal thanks.  I’ve never cared too much about figuring out who I’m silently thanking, maybe it’s a higher being, maybe it’s the universe, maybe it’s the neurons firing in my brain.  Truth is, that part just doesn’t matter so much to me.  What matters is acknowledging my gratitude.

Every night and every morning I silently reel off a list of things and people I’m grateful for: My husband, my family & friends, my life, my health, the health of all the people I already mentioned etc.  I think it helps put me in the proper frame of mind and reminds me how incredibly blessed I am to lead the life I do.

Throughout the day I’ll send out silent shout outs for the things that make me happy---a letter from a friend, a particularly great cup of coffee, a snuggly blanket.  Acknowledging the joy or peace of a moment goes hand in hand with being grateful.  When I tell my husband how content I am to be sitting next to him and reading a good book, I’m also saying thanks; thanks for a perfect moment.

I haven’t hopped on the Facebook thanks train, at least not yet, but I’ve enjoyed reading notes of gratitude from friends and acquaintances who are thankful for their family, friends, freedom, jobs, spouses, and pets among other things.  Right now, I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to write this column every week, I’m grateful to Elisabeth and Miya for welcoming my enthusiastic email and inviting me in; I am continually awed by my inclusion as a contributor alongside women whose words paint pictures, tell stories, and inspire searching thought and I am always pleased as punch that anyone besides my parents would care to read my words.

In Thanks,

Renee

Reaching for Sweet Things

“So there is a girl sleeping in the front room,” I hear my grandmother whisper to my grandfather. “Did you know that?” I listen through a cracked door. She has just said goodnight to me very warmly, despite the fact that I am mostly a stranger to her these days. The room I am staying in is a blank walled cube with a vaulted ceiling and three big windows. In the mornings I wake when the sun comes in, when it is quiet and bright. The shape of the space reminds me of a hamster carrying crate, the cardboard kind you’d get at a pet store. Four straight walls, a milk carton style top. The ever present sense of fascination and fear I feel while staying in this room makes me feel a strange kinship with those small furry creatures. Bewildered. Alert. In this house I feel wonder at all the new things I see, and also a heart pounding anxiety in facing the unknown.

My grandparents both have Alzheimer's Disease. My grandmother is further along than my grandfather. I have recently been recruited to spend weekends with them so their regular home health aide can take time off. Their regular caregiver is a beautiful woman who moves through their home with grace and kindness, who tiptoes through the land mines of potential conflict as though it were her sixth sense. Instead of correcting, she redirects. Instead of asking "don't you remember?" she slips into their world and accepts their state of being. This is only my second weekend, and so far I have stepped on plenty of land mines. I have, for example, identified myself as their granddaughter, to which they say, defensively: Of course you are, we know that!  Now I've learned to say it less directly, more casually. And I usually add: Well, you have so many, it's hard to keep track of us all. A concession which they gladly take.

Food is also land mine. What to eat, when to eat, where to eat. Too many questions and decisions, too much room for confusion. Long menus with complicated descriptions are overwhelming, and so it helps to pose two options. Would you like the chicken, or the pasta? Because one of those is what you usually get. These are key words and phrasing. You usually do this, so does that sound good? The answer is always: Yes, I will do what I usually do.

Last Saturday morning we had breakfast at home. I made french toast---my favorite childhood breakfast---then arranged pieces of cut up fruit into little bowls and set them at the table next to two small plastic boxes of pills. The next morning I made "sunny side up" eggs, also an old favorite. Each morning I feel like I'm entering into a new world where there are new social codes, new conventions, new people. Our one moor, the one common thing we have to keep us from drifting apart, is food. As volatile as it can be, it is also our touchstone.

As we are finishing breakfast, we talk of lunch. Then we talk of which day this is, we talk of the weather, we talk of the newspaper (which one of us will read out loud, sometimes going into imagined stories of the people in the photos on the front page.) But it always comes back to food. Well, we just had breakfast, so what is for lunch? Breakfast then lunch then dinner -- a sequence of time based actions that is retained. I think talking of food is also comforting because it is a ritual, a measurement of time. Our day is held up by meals. When do you want to have dinner? My grandmother asks. We could eat at five, would that be ok? I will say, repeating this answer to a series of questions new to her, but the same to me.

When I was little I remember standing on my tiptoes in my grandmother’s kitchen and reaching my hand into the wooden bread box on the counter top. I must have been very small, because I clearly remember the discomfort, as I reached, of my armpit digging into the edge of the counter. But it was worth it. If I were lucky, I'd come out grasping a handful of Starbursts.  I would separate the pinks from the rest and squirrel away my cache in my pocket, saving those cherished pale beauties for last. I would sometimes mould many flavors in to one pastel blob, rolling and kneading the hardened corn syrup into a sticky ball, which I would later nibble, pretending it was a special kind of apple.

That breadbox is on their counter still, but I’ve not been able to open it since being here. It’s as if opening that box and finding no Starbursts would mean something. That my grandparents, as I had known them in my youth, are lost forever? That my happiness is no longer so easily accessed, that my inner life is now more bland? That we've lost the time of tiptoes and reaching? Yes, maybe all of the above.

Still, I stay with them in their kitchen and make them the breakfasts of my childhood, pretending that those french toasts and sunny side up eggs can link our two worlds and the past to the present. Maybe next weekend I will buy some Starbursts to hide in the old breadbox. I entertain the idea of catching glimpses of pink wax wrappers beneath loaves of brown bread.  I know that a gesture like that won't make my grandparents feel any less lost or confused. It won't make me less worried for them. It won't bind my shattered heart, which breaks, each day, into smaller and smaller pieces as I brush my grandmother's hair, hold her hand, fold her clothes, paint her nails. But I will do it anyway. I will do what I usually do. I will gesture, reach, and imagine. Just like I will say to my grandmother, for the fifth or sixth time in a row, We could eat at five, would that be ok? 

Yes, she will say, that will be fine.

Bluff View Art District

I've become quite obsessed with the historic Bluff View Art District.  Any time there is mention of a weekend walk, my first request is to venture over to this magical place.  It may only be a sliver, not even two city blocks to be exact, of the Chattanooga pie but it packs huge flavor.  The neighborhood is filled with restaurants, one of the best coffee houses in town, an art gallery, beautiful gardens, and plenty of quirky sculptures to ponder.  The art district will have your senses yearning for another visit.

For sight starters, this secret garden sits on top of a cliff giving it the most dramatic downtown and Tennessee River views. From the highest point of the bluff, it would seem the river flows to the end of the earth.  The mortar-speckled dwellings are covered with dark green ivy and provide an enchanting setting for alley strolls.  At night, the city sparkles with lights as if it were decorated for the holidays year round.

The smells that permeate the Bluff View Art District will leave one full before ever sitting down for a morning pastry or a savory meal.  Rembrandt's Coffee House is a European-style cafe nestled behind grand foliage on the main street. They provide an abundant selection of fresh coffee beans, rich chocolates, sweet danishes, hot pressed paninis and cold salads for the lunch crowd.  Right around the corner located in a Victorian mansion is a casual but superb Italian eatery known as Tony's Pasta Shop and Trattoria.  The aroma of warm pastas and homemade sauces tossed together with fresh herbs and meatballs would have anyone drooling.  Just a short walk down the block and you'll stumble upon the Back Inn Cafe's menu of upscale dishes and a wine list that will make the head spin in delight.  Between the quaint library, the bright sun room, and the outdoor terrace, this restaurant allows you to pick your own setting while enjoying dinner with friends and family.  I'm a real sucker for fresh-baked bread so naturally my favorite stop is into the Bluff View Bakery.  This artisan bakery specializes in rustic breads and infuses only the best ingredients into their hand-molded loaves.  If my husband and I get into a disagreement, I always tell him to forego the bouquet of "I'm sorry" flowers and instead bring home a roasted garlic ciabatta or rosemary focaccia loaf as a peace offering.  It works like a charm every time.  Whether it be a create your own pasta dish or an after dinner dessert, the taste of the Bluff View Art District will leave your buds completely satisfied.

For such a tiny area, the sounds of the art district come in a variety pack. While lounging on one of the benches in the garden, the natural flow of the river combined with the chirping baby birds provide a calming and rejuvenating sound for the ears.  The background noise is a mixture of friends sharing laughs while catching up over a steamy cup of joe, servers politely asking their guests if another bottle of wine should be opened, and flattering oohs and awes of tourists.  This district area has a unique bustle all of its own.

As for the sense of touch, the "do not" signs discourage it but with all the beautiful flowers and artsy pieces, how could you not?  If you find yourself in Chattanooga for any reason, it's definitely worth a visit and I'll be more than happy to meet up for dinner with a view.

The Effects of a Storm, an Ocean Away

My landlord woke me up with a phone call on Monday morning. “Are your friends and family okay?” he asked. “I heard about everything on the news, and I was so worried.” It’s the first question off any of my new London friends’ tongues when they see me, and the first question of any stranger when I first tell them where I’m from. Is everyone okay? Is my old apartment okay? Is New York okay?

My answers are, in order, yes, yes and I don’t know. The first two are easy: almost everyone I know in New York lived mostly out of harm's way. A few of my friends have had to walk or bike to work; some have had to go without showers or use candles to light their way. My old apartment, nestled safely in Midtown, never even lost power or water. The last question is the worst and the hardest for me to answer, both because I have no information and because I hate that I have no information. I don’t know how New York is, because, while I identify as a New Yorker to everyone I meet in Europe, while I compare everything I encounter here ceaselessly to the world I knew and loved back there, while many of my friends and family are still in the place I consider home, I am not. I am in London.

I’m not jealous of those in New York, and it should be said plainly and clearly that I absolutely wish Sandy hadn’t hit the East Coast and Caribbean. I wish it was a repeat of last year in New York City, where we ventured out into Times Square in the middle of Hurricane Irene and took pictures in the typically overrun with tourists hub that was now deserted (I, of course, also wish Irene had never negatively impacted the areas outside of New York that bore the brunt of the storm). But there’s something to be said for the ache you feel when something happens to your home and you can’t be there. You want to stand up for it. You want to experience things with it, so it doesn’t have to go it alone. I don’t fool myself to think I know what New Yorkers are going through right now, but there’s a part of me that wishes I was there for it. New Yorkers, I believe, are at their best in the face of adversity, and I feel a pang in my chest when I read Facebook updates about candlelit sleepovers or charging parties or the Exodus like group walking over the Brooklyn Bridge together. I want to change things there---I want to help, desperately, beyond the Red Cross donations and options from afar---but that’s not the whole story. I want to be there because I feel it---the city, the people in it---would change me.

And while my heart goes out to everyone affected by the storm, New York will be okay, with or without me. And I will be okay, with or without it. But it’s moments like these you realize that it doesn’t take a hurricane to create ripples strong enough to be felt even across an ocean.

XI. Provence

My classmates and I pile onto a bus and drive for over an hour, winding up and over and around the steadily climbing hills of the Luberon valley and eating tasteless crackers to keep from getting sick. Then we step out and this golden-orange view, peppered through with greenest evergreen trees, is what awaits us. We are in Roussillon, a town whose rusty clay cliffs have been mined for ochre for the past century or so.

Tipsy on the fresh air, we rush to climb and play in the silty dust like children, and the ochre cliffs---run through with brilliant smudges of pinks and oranges and crimsons, even---rub off on our clothes. The earth feels like soft charcoal on our fingers. Soon we are covered with it, and traces of color will make their way back on the bus to Aix-en-Provence with us, only to be found hours or even days later by scolding host mothers, impatient with hanging the laundry outside to dry only to find it still dirty and streaked through with red silt.

Why they insist on cleaning our clothes is beyond us---the teachers at the ACPP center tell us it is a différence culturelle which translates most directly as don't question it.

On making (and breaking) tradition

As a brand new family unit, my husband and I now face the strange and interesting task of managing tradition—embracing some of the traditions that have been passed down to us from our families and communities, casting others aside, and creating new ones. I’ve always been interested in tradition. I’ve loved learning about ritual practices and mythologies and uncovering the origins of our often deeply-held beliefs about why we do things the way we do them.

But engagement and wedding planning were a bit like being tossed into the deep end on the tradition front. I can’t count the number of times I received advice in the past several months—often from perfect strangers—that began with the loaded word “traditionally.” Let’s try out a few basic examples to get the “tradition” juices flowing.

“Traditionally, a bride wears a white dress.”

“Traditionally, a bride is escorted down the aisle by her father.”

“Traditionally, Americans eat turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Why do brides “traditionally” wear white dresses? In which cultures is this true? Who started this trend? What if a bride hates white? What if a bride does not have a father? What if there is no bride, but rather two grooms? What if an American is also a vegetarian?

Ouf. As (I hope) you can see, even the simplest statements about tradition require a bit of unpacking and may be more useful in statistical reports than as practical advice for individuals.

This is not to say that all traditions are bad or wrong. Traditions can offer guidelines for interpersonal conduct that help us connect with and show respect for others. Traditions can help us make meaning of important life cycle events. But many traditions also have the frustrating characteristic of seeming natural and obvious to insiders, while appearing completely foreign and unnatural to outsiders. Many traditions do not account for difference.

So as we continue in the process of “tradition management” together, I hope that we will be able to practice a bit of what we’ve learned thus far—that tradition is best handled with equal parts critical thinking and creativity, research and respect, humor and sensitivity.

More or Less Normal

By Carey Swanson Taking my daughter on her first official trick-or-treating excursion did not happen quite as planned.  We went early, at four o’clock, rather than after work.  I wasn’t at work, of course, because it is Day 3 of the Hurricane Sandy school closings.  We will end up with this entire week as a surprise staycation, with no school for the kiddos in the city as we cope with the aftermath of this storm.

I'm homebound from my apartment in central Brooklyn, and the strangeness has officially set in.  I was not alone in my decision to simply celebrate Halloween.  Loads of kids decked out in store-bought animal costumes, or inspired cardboard cars and sandwich boards dotted the streets, only on occasion having to divert their path to avoid the stray fallen tree or branch.  For the most part, there was simply no sign of anything amiss, and everything seemed more or less normal.  Most businesses are open, with bins of candy ready.  It feels so strange, the normalness of it all.  It feels like it should feel different.  The mood is festive.  People laugh and smile and wave at the costumed children and adults alike.

Step a little closer, however, and you’ll hear a touch of the strangeness, if you know what to listen for.  Bits and pieces of cell phone conversations:  No, we’re fine, but we have four guests with us.  They don’t have heat, electricity, or hot water and who knows how much longer it will last.  Or: Another day with the kids is going to drive me crazy!  And if you look closely, scan the landscape; you’ll see a glimpse of it here and there.  The Laundromat sign, broken and caved in, bulbs exposed.  The shop awning, inexplicitly on the ground, trick-or-treaters simply stepping around as they make their way down the street.

Go a mile in any direction and you’ll find streets or homes still in water, without power, businesses struggling, a city slowly but surely pulling itself together after this crazy storm.  During the storm itself, as my lights flickered but kept steady, I found myself feeling left off the hook somehow.  It was hitting us, it was right on top of us, my Facebook page was telling me that people were losing power in every direction, but I was markedly unaffected.   It hit my city, but somehow it missed me.

So what is to be made of this?  I know I’m supposed to simply be grateful and count my blessings.  However, I feel like that seems unfair—shouldn’t everyone get to do that?  Why do I get to count my blessings as opposed to the shop owner in lower Manhattan, or the family in Staten Island, or the neighborhood in Queens?  I’ve been sitting here in my apartment, homebound these past three days, and yet everything is the same except for my day’s destination and the endless sound of the news anchors on repeat in the background. I can’t help but be transported back over a decade, to the last fall morning I sat on the couch slightly removed and yet right in the thick of disaster.  And I won’t try to compare tragedies or even in any way equate one to the other, except in the feelings it brings up to me as spectator.  Back then I was uptown, couchbound and fixed to the news, aware of the fact that I was technically stranded on a closed off Manhattan Island.  In my city I was a safe distance, while to my friends and family in the Midwest I was right in the thick of it.  And I watched, cried, and then went about my life.

Today, I took my daughter trick-or-treating.   While the mayor peppered the city employees with praise, I attached paws and a tail on a 20 month old.  While firemen went door to door looking for trapped victims, I stuck lollipops and bubblegum she’s not old enough to chew into a bag.  And when a fallen tree blocked my path, I crossed the street, and kept on walking.  Side view of a disaster, and yet life goes on, more or less as normal.

A few of my favorite things

I mentioned this last week, but I have an exceptional fondness for records, handwritten letters, and books.  I'm not sure what it is, but I love the presence of such things; the tactile sense of touching my music, turning a page, or holding a pen.  I think it helps me appreciate those elements and actions a little more. I almost always think better with a pen in my hand; I'm a dedicated note taker & list maker.  I even write my Equals Records columns out by hand every week before typing them. Handwriting letters is is extra special though. Its like sending a little piece of myself to a friend. And of course I treasure return letters, they sit in a special box in my office.

I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. When your mom is a librarian, the love of books is basically instilled at birth.  Growing up I was never the girl who could shoot a free-throw or predict the next makeup trend, but I could work a card catalog like nobodies business. I love to read and use an e-reader often, but nothing beats the turn of a page.

Music is a bit different.  My parents had a record player when I was growing up and it was common for them to have music playing in the evenings. I collected CDs & Cassette tapes like any other child of the 80s &90s, but eventually gave them all up to go digital. For a while I listened to my favorite tunes through headphones or computer speakers. So it probably came as a shock when I told my parents I wanted a record for christmas.  But they obliged and my vinyl collection gradually grew through gifts, record shops, and thrift store purchases.  Now I love to choose an album, slide it out of its case and gently place the needle, just as I love to flip a page and hear the scratch of a pen.

Big Love to New York (and the whole East Coast)

I’m feeling particularly homesick for New York today. With so many loved ones struggling through the hurricane aftermath (including Miya in Brooklyn and many of our beloved contributors all over the East Coast), it’s difficult to believe that I’m across the country and can’t do much more than obsessively scroll through photos and check in on friends and family through texts, emails, and phone calls. Sandy proved devastating to so many, but it reminded me that the fundamental beauty of New York City lies in its people.  New York is tough and New Yorkers are tougher; don’t let that deceive you though. If you’re going to cram over eight million people into a small island and its boroughs, everyone needs to get along. I’ve yet to visit or live in a city where people demonstrate more generosity of spirit than in New York.

Maybe it’s because New York is a city of transplants and all of us remember the first time we found ourselves on an uptown express train instead of the downtown local, holding back tears while wondering if daily life would ever feel easy. Then there’s the day you become a real New Yorker and offer directions to a band of map-wielding tourists or recent grad decked out in her interview best.

In that same spirit of generosity, everyone is lending a hand while New York wrings itself out. Even before Sandy made landfall, Facebook and Twitter exploded with offers to house evacuees. And after, those with power, water, or . . . booze opened their homes---offering charging to the powerless, grooming to the waterless, and merry-making to the stir crazy.

That's how I know New York will be just fine; after all, it’s full of New Yorkers.

Oh, and see you tomorrow (Jet Blue willing)!

It’s easy to contribute to the relief effort in New York and other afflicted areas. To donate, visit the Red Cross, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or just text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Another way to make a huge impact is to donate blood. Blood supplies were severely depleted, but the need is as great as ever. Please consider scheduling a blood donation by visiting redcrossblood.org.

Greetings from Grrls Meat Camp

The morning is chilly and bright. A sheen of frost covers the picnic tables and the wooden deck, the nearby pond is shimmering in the morning light, and the towering evergreens sway in the breeze. This idyllic setting belongs to the YMCA’s Camp Duncan, located just outside of Chicago. Inside the cozy cabin kitchen there are biscuits in the oven and sausage gravy simmering on the stove. After breakfast there will be an entire 250 pound hog delivered to the back porch, followed by lessons in whole animal butchery, pate and sausage making, and grilling and smoking. This is Grrls Meat Camp.

I first learned of Meat Camp via Kate Hill's Kitchen at Camont blog and through last year's Washington Post coverage of the inaugural event.  It's a gathering of chefs, butchers, bakers and enthusiastic home cooks. It's a weekend of food, fun, and ultimately of camaraderie and encouragement.

The group's Facebook mission statement reads: "To inspire, educate and foster sisterhood through a cooperative collaboration of women . . ." with an aim of "giving voice to those working with animals and meat on farms, butcher shops, restaurants and home."

It was an inspiring weekend, and not just because of all the delicious food.

It was a salon, of sorts, with conversation focused on sustainability, ethical farming, and our shifting food systems.

Even more moving, perhaps, were the personal stories shared of learning a craft that didn't typically welcome gender diversity. At Grrls Meat Camp, though, we were all in the front row. We all had access to new knowledge and experience, and were encouraged to participate.

At one point over the weekend I over heard a conversation between two of the butchers who were discussing the most physically difficult parts of their job. "If you have the right tools, you can do anything. Anything is possible if you've got the right tools." It's true of butchery, sure, but it struck me as some advice for life's work in general. "The right tools" could mean sharp knives and saws, but also the strength an individual receives from a supportive community. Many women I met this weekend were self-educated and self-motivated, their successful careers the products of their own initiative. Even the professional food photographer who was busily shooting stills of the beautiful dishes coming out of the kitchen agreed: No one taught her to be a photographer, she taught herself. So, even if you have no desire to butcher a hog or some beef hip, these lessons from Meat Camp resonate with those of us finding our way---in the kitchen, and beyond.

Kitchen Meditation

The potatoes are cold in my hands, imbued with the chill of the refigerator. My husband will only peel potatoes after they’ve been sitting in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes, but I prefer to do it quickly and go on to other things. Dusty brown peelings curl off into the trash can, the little pile growing fast as the white flesh of the tuber is revealed. When the potatoes are chopped and placed in boiling water, I raid the crisper for other vegetables: Carrots, onions, fresh garlic (a staple in my kitchen), celery, corn. I have a method for chopping each different vegetable—the carrots are sliced in half long-wise and then diced into half-moons; the onions are gently scored in both directions across the top, so that when I cut off an inch from the onion’s face, I’m rewarded with a shower of evenly-chopped pieces falling to my cutting board.

I vividly remember a conversation I had shortly after getting married, when I was still part-time in college and struggling to get the degree I knew was out of my reach for the time being. “I want to like cooking,” I had said into the phone. “I feel like it’s the kind of thing that I should enjoy, that I could enjoy. I feel like it’s something that could bring me a huge amount of satisfaction. But I’m always just too tired.”

And I was. Even with a light class load, by the time I got home from my one or two classes in a day and finished my homework, I’d exhausted my slim supply of energy for that day. I made dinner each nigth with my husband because I believed in good, home-cooked food, and I loved eating the fruits of our labors—but I rarely enjoyed the experience. Always, I felt that frustrating sense that the true joy of cooking was just out of my reach, the kind of thing I ought to feel, but didn’t.

I baked bread, and ended up so tired I could hardly enjoy the finished product. I made muffins, and thought that cleaning the muffin tin might be the death of me. I cooked soups and puddings and even, on occasion, things like pasta from scratch, reveling in the knowledge that I could identify every ingredient that went into our meals—but ultimately, feeling utterly spent by the task.

Two years later, when I began the true transition from part-time studenthood to full-time homemaking, I was surprised to discover that suddenly, I was beginning to love cooking. All at once, as I began to spend less time in the classroom and have more time for the kitchen, I was feeling all those things I had thought I should feel before. Baking became a celebration. Chopping vegetables became a game. Doing the dishes afterward became a meditation.

Now, as I sweep a neat pile of onions and carrots from my cutting board into a pan for sautéeing, I think about that time of transition. Cooking still tires me, of course; it’s a physical task, one that requires time spent standing up, and often one that demands strength in the kneading or rolling out of dough. But in my life as it stands now, that’s all right. I may be tired afterwards, but I have the liberty to spare a few minutes for rest and recovery.

It is, I think, a perfect example of the unexpected joy the last few years have brought me—my adult life in a microcosm. For such a long time, I was frightened of my plans being changed, terrified of being forced to find something new to define myself. And yet, when that change did come, it wasn’t meaninglessness that lay on the other side—it was just a different kind of purpose, a different shape to my days.

A different shape, but a good one.

I pour extra-virgin olive oil over my pan of vegetables, letting the rich, fruity scent of the oil assail my senses, hearing the crackle and pop as it hits the bottom of the hot skillet.

And in this quiet kitchen moment, I know what it is to feel peace.

The View at the End of the Day

By Eliza Deacon Waiting for the rains. Long days hot and dusty, the air is damp and my skin feels too tight.  As the afternoon wears on and the wind picks up, seed pods and small branches rain down on the house; its tin roof magnifies the sound and makes me start and the cats wake from their afternon reverie. From my office, where I sit now, I look up beyond the tall elephant grass at the top of the garden, see Kilimanjaro beyond and the black sky that surrounds the mountain, dark and swirling. But it’s a tease, it makes much noise and fuss but then dissipates like the dust devils I chase on the open road in the space between the mountains. I just need an inch, says James, an inch of rain will make all the difference to the coffee growing in the folds of red earth around us.

I run to tie back windows and doors as they swing wildly; let the winds blow straight through and clear out all the hot stale air. Our house was built in a wind tunnel and I think nature has defined a line between Kili's peaks and down over the Steppe, channeled by the tall trees on each side and picking up speed as it goes. Opening all the doors wide feels like good karma. I am reluctant to get in its way and want to let it go wildly through through and out the other side. I hope that with each gust the things that have haunted this last month, stress, sadness, and disappointment, will be blown far away.

Standing outside I feel the sweat drying on my skin and smell rain on soil elsewhere, but not here. It makes me feel giddy. I want to be woken by the sound of rain thundering down on our tin roof early in the morning, and look out to see clouds below us. Walking on the farm with muddy feet and red dirt dogs and a house that stands firm against the elements but allows it all in. This is what makes me happy.

Each year it's the same and we wait.

X. Normandie

Pauline is a nurse at the hospital in Bernay. Because of the proximity to the Channel and, therefore, England, it’s not uncommon for British patients to come in from time to time. Pauline doesn’t speak any English, and so she has asked for me to help her make a list of important questions that she must be able to say in a routine exam. It’s fairly easy for me, though sometimes I lack the proper medical jargon.

She repeats after me. “’Ave you ‘ad a poo?”

I struggle to keep a straight face and nod encouragingly. The translation doesn't sound quite right, but it's the best I can do.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is?)

Rhea St. Julien was absolutely certain she would grow up to be a Fly Girl, but had to rethink her life goals when In Living Color was cancelled in 1994.  Since then, she's been trying to find a comparable life goal, trying out teaching Pilates, becoming an Expressive Arts Therapist, and a work-at-home Mama/children's programming consultant.  In the process, she's become one of those wacky San Franciscans her grandmother always warned her about.  In her spare time, she can be found rocking out with her husband in their band Him Downstairs, shaking it in dance class, or reading a stack of library books.  Her personal blog, Thirty Threadbare Mercies, focuses on parenting, spirituality and pop culture.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of The New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein

Just after my daughter's Where the Wild Things Are themed 2-year-old birthday party, I found myself sitting in a pile of pink, sparkly gifts, worried that perhaps I would be smothered by all the tulle and sequins. It hit me: the princess craze was right around the corner, and Olive had just been issued her uniform. I needed to heed my friends' suggestions, and read Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter, before the fate the book's title warned became reality.

I was a charming toddler, and was told so often, by strangers as well as relatives, who made up funny nicknames for me like "Reebeedee", "Ribbit" and "Pumpkin", that they felt reflected my free spirit and but also my cuteness. However, I do not recall ever being called "Princess." It would not have fit my tendency to come home covered in dirt every day from the playground, or the way that I dressed, which was mostly in overalls or corduroys.

Since having my daughter, however, I have been disconcerted by how many people call her "Princess". Far from a castle, we live in a cramped urban apartment, and as the child of a pair of artist/social workers, she has anything but a royal pedigree. When she plays, she’s aggressively physical: running, jumping, dancing, singing. We dress her mostly in primary colors, rather than the ubiquitous pink pastels that take up the girls’ section of any children’s clothing store.

However, no matter what she’s doing or what she’s wearing, people say, “Oh, look at the little princess!” Well, why should it bother me that people are bestowing this moniker on her? Isn't it a compliment?

Orenstein, journalist and mother, breaks down why the princess title gets under my skin: “Let’s review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married . . . and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists. They might affect your daughter’s interest in math” (p.23). She goes on to explain how the princesses-on-everything phenomenon was created by a Disney exec a decade or so ago, a marketing strategy rather than something girls started doing on their own, which led girls away from creating crowns out of felt and gave them perfectly scripted play to follow, word by word.

Don't get me wrong. Sequins, wands, and big dresses are attractive, and your child of either gender may be drawn to them. However, Orenstein’s book shows how girls today are being told that if a toy, like a toolkit, or a ball and bat, are not painted Pepto Pink and adorned with a picture of a skinny, smiling girl in a tiara, then they are not suitable for girls to play with, and if they do otherwise, then they are not really a girl but . . . something else.

For toddlers that are engaged in the brain-building task of sorting their world into categories, not knowing where you stand is not going to make you feel like a cool misfit, it is going to negate your existence entirely. So, young ones seek to proclaim their gender through engaging in whatever their culture considers appropriate play for either girls or boys.

This is not in and of itself a problem, but if all the options for girls are focused around how they look rather than actively doing something, they equate being a girl with looking pretty. And that creates a never-ending urge to define yourself as beautiful externally, which can lead to the myriad of problems women have with body image.

Princess play, and what it turns into in the tween years (The Hannah Montana/High School Musical/Cheetah Girls industrial complex), is largely focused on appearance, rather than accomplishment or inner growth. Orenstein asserts, "Girls pushed to be sexy too soon can't really understand what they're doing. And that, (researchers argue), is the point: they do not---and may never---learn to connect their performance to erotic feelings or intimacy. They learn how to act desirable but not how to desire, undermining rather than promoting healthy sexuality" (p. 85).

This is perhaps the strongest argument of the book, for me. I want my daughter to understand pleasure as something derived not from how others perceive her, but from actually experiencing it. If I praise her only for how she looks, she will become so used to objectification that she will seek it out in order to feel loved.

Reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From The Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (with its deceptively pink sparkly cover) on the playground while my daughter used dump trucks to push the sand around, led to some interesting conversations.

"LOVED that book," one mom intoned passionately, which quickly turned to sheepishness when her daughter, decked out in a pink-and-purple Princess gown, ran up to us to get a snack.

"Oh, I just finished that book!", a Dad covered in tattoos told me. "What did you think?" I asked. "It was great . . . but she doesn't really offer any practical solutions." So, several parents I knew and respected had read this book, but didn't feel like they were doing things any differently now.

However, that may be just what Orenstein wanted. She makes the case in her book for parents finding their own personal threshold for gendered toys and activities, but that, at the very least, it is "absolutely vital to think through our own values and limits early, to consider what we approve or disapprove of and why" (p. 182).

Which is why I suggest picking up a copy of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, as a good first step to figuring out what your boundaries are going to be around Bratz, Barbies and Beauty Pageants, before you find yourself in the toy aisle at Target, hemming and hawing about your child’s request. I recommend it for parents of both boys and girls, as Orenstein reviews the research on whether nature or nurture defines toy choice and play attitudes for children of both sex.

Orenstein’s tone is engaging, funny, and suggests a journey rather than a checklist of “shows to ban” and surefire ways to protect your child from materialism and objectification. Her book is an invitation to the conversation about girlie-girl culture, rather than a hard and fast indictment of it. I may not be able to keep my daughter completely from the lure of Princess play, but I am going to counterbalance it with stories of strong women, and relationships with adults who are non-conformist in their gender expression, so that she will have more choices, not less.

A Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Ever since the end to the Harry Potter book series, fans have been waiting with baited breath to learn what JK Rowling's next step would be. When she announced A Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults, her Goodreads page blew up with animated GIFs that expressed the internet version of a collective orgy of anticipation.

A fan of the Harry Potter series myself, I dutifully pre-ordered the novel to my Nook, and looked forward to being transported by Rowling's words once again. A few days before A Casual Vacancy was released, The New Yorker published a rather nasty portrait of Rowling, in which the profiler took cheap shots like saying she was wearing heavy foundation, or bringing up her troubled relationship with her father in revealing ways. My back went up: why can't writers be quirky and not exactly perfectly likeable?

But then I read A Casual Vacancy. And I realized, the New Yorker writer was simply furious at Rowling for wasting her talent and our time by writing quite possible the least redemptive, most depressing novel of the past decade.

To understand why Rowling wrote such a soul-crushing novel, let’s go back to where she left off with her readers. Personally, I was disappointed by the end of the Harry Potter series. Harry and his friends end up in safe jobs, with happy marriages, and everything is tied up with a neat little bow. It seemed like Rowling had really phoned it in, giving children an unrealistic portrait of adulthood, which was out of character with the series, which often showed adults as complex figures, capable of both betrayal and loyalty.

Perhaps she felt she needed to atone for wearing the kid gloves with Harry and co., so she wrote her characters in A Casual Vacancy with a razor-sharp lack of compassion for the reader, or for her storyline. She spends the first thirty pages describing all the characters, save one, as unspeakably ugly and savoring the death of what appeared to be last person with a soul in Pagford, the stultifying English small town in which the novel is set.

"It must get better. There has to be some emotional resonance and redemption in here somewhere. It's JK Fucking Rowling!" I told myself, as character after character that I thought could perhaps be an interesting anti hero turned out to be a baseless tweeb, only concerned with their own petty desires, which mostly centered on jockeying for position for the council seat vacated by the Last Good Person in Pagford, which is the outward premise of the novel.

I got the feeling that the hidden premise Rowling sought was to show the raw underbelly of life, to stick her reader’s noses in it and say, “THIS is real life! Not magical train rides and children defeating death with a flick of a wand!” But . . . the world that Rowling created in A Casual Vacancy was not that realistic to me. Sure, people are petty and small-minded and self-centered, but they are also capable of change and of sacrificial love.

The question begs itself: who did Rowling write this book for? Certainly not for Harry Potter fans of any age. And that is fine---artists should not have to pander to their past work as they keep creating. However, the new work she has presented is so unlikeable, so devoid of truth and beauty, that my only hope is that she wrote it for herself, because it was a story inside of her that just needed to be told.

Want to know what Rhea thought of every book she read last year? You're in luck---she reviewed all 58 books here.