What Happens to Bad Boys

I was at the base hospital a few weeks ago in the waiting room of the women's wellness clinic. I was sitting in the far corner of the room waiting to be called for my appointment, reading a textbook I'd brought with me so I could plan for the upcoming quarter, but a little family caught my attention and I didn't end up getting anything done. The little family consisted of Mom, who was holding a newborn daughter; Dad, a tech sergeant with some kind of brace on his lower leg; and their son, a cute little guy who was about three years old.

Little Guy was playing over in the other corner at the plastic table and chairs put there for just that reason. He'd taken the fat, yellow chairs and tipped them on their sides around the table. He wasn't making any noise. The only other people waiting were two separate women on the other side of the room who were engrossed in their magazines. I noticed Little Guy when he called to his dad and asked him to come over and sit down at the table with him. He was a cutie with dark hair and eyes, very earnest about his game. Dad tried to ignore him, but he persisted. Finally Mom said something sharp to Dad and he went over there.

"Set the chairs up like they're supposed to be," he said.
"Daddy, come and sit here with me." Little Guy smiled up at him, happy with his game. He obviously wasn't reading Daddy's tone of voice.
"Put the chairs up like I told you to." Daddy's voice told me he wasn't kidding.
"Daddy, just sit here with me, OK?" Still not getting it. And not getting that Daddy's brace would have prevented his sitting on those small chairs anyway. He was just happy he'd gotten Daddy to come over and see what he'd built.
"I said set the chairs up like they're supposed to be. Do it now!" Daddy grabbed a chair and slammed it upright by the table. And the other chair. Then he grabbed Little Guy's hand and marched him over by Mom. "Stand there." He sat back down in his chair and gave Mom a "There. It's done" look.

Little Guy stood there for a few minutes while his parents talked over his head. I wondered, as I often do in situations like that, if they hadn't brought a book to read to him or some paper and crayons. I guess not everybody thinks about things like that. But it does make life with small children easier if you just entertain them with something so they don't get bored.

Finally a tech called Mom's name. She handed the baby to Daddy and followed the tech back to the exam rooms. Daddy ordered Little Guy up on her chair, so he climbed up and sat on his knees facing the back. He looked over at me and gave a little wave. I smiled and waved back, then looked back down at my textbook...

 ...until I heard a soft "Hey." I looked up. Little Guy had found a piece of plastic or something tucked down in the chair. He held it up and showed it to me. I glanced over at Dad. He was watching CNN. I smiled at Little Guy and said softly, "Whatcha got?"

He gave me a coy look and hid the plastic behind his back. I looked surprised and asked, "Where did it go?"

He shrugged and laughed. I pointed to a plant against the wall. "Is it in that pot?" I said it very softly. I had a feeling we didn't want to get Daddy's attention.

Little Guy laughed and shook his head. We played the game for a while. You know the game. Same one every three-year-old likes to play: pretend to hide something while somebody else pretends to look for it.

For some reason Daddy suddenly became aware of his son. Without even looking at me he snapped, "Turn around and sit down right in that chair." Little Guy did look at me and I nodded and gave him the "better do it" look.

As Little Guy was turning around and sitting down "right" in the chair, he dropped his piece of plastic down in the side of the chair, between the cushion and the arm. And when he tried to reach down and get it, he slipped and fell, hitting his face hard against the solid wooden arm of the chair. He started crying, and I'm afraid I probably started out of my chair before I realized it wasn't my place to comfort him. Can't be a mommy to the world, right? That was Daddy's job.

"That's what happens to bad boys," Daddy snarled. "They get hurt because they're bad boys." I was surprised at the venom in his voice.

Little Guy looked over at me, still crying, a red mark blooming on his cheek. I was frozen. I probably looked like I wanted to cry too. I could feel the shame those words were meant to evoke deep in my own heart.

"Daddy, it hurts. I fell and hurt my face." Little Guy rubbed the side of his head and cried harder.

"You got hurt because you're a bad boy. Just sit there." Little Guy had already started climbing down from the chair. Once he was in motion he couldn't stop.

"Da-a-a-d-d-d-d-y-y-y-y...." He made it over to Daddy's chair and leaned against his leg sobbing. His face was bright red where he'd bumped it.

Daddy didn't touch him. He just sat there with the baby in the crook of his arm and glared at Little Guy. "Get back up on that chair and sit down and shut up." Daddy's voice was louder now, so he could be heard over Little Guy's crying, I suppose. "If you weren't a bad boy, that wouldn't have happened."

Little Guy tried for a few more minutes to get an appropriate response from the guy who was supposed to love and care for him, but only succeeded in making Daddy madder. Finally he climbed back up on the chair and sat facing front, with his little legs straight out in front of him, sobbing quietly. Daddy stared at the TV.

Now I was getting pissed. I wanted to march over there, gather Little Guy up in my arms, comfort him until he felt better and then ask, "So, sergeant, did you hurt your leg because you were a bad boy too?" Because it makes sense, doesn't it? If Little Guy got hurt because he was a bad boy, then Daddy must be a bad boy too. Right?

These days there's no telling how Dad might have gotten hurt. He might have taken his knee out playing racquetball or he might have taken a piece of shrapnel over in Iraq. One thing is for sure, he had either been to Iraq (or Afghanistan) or he would be going in the next year or both. That's just the way it is for airmen like him these days. They go over there, and usually they go more than once. It's pretty safe to guess that he didn't think he'd hurt himself because he was a bad boy. Daddy's logic was flawed. His argument failed from the very beginning, but Little Guy couldn't know that.

But that wasn't what bothered me the most. What bothered me most was that Daddy lied. People--little boys included--don't get hurt because they're bad. There are many reasons why people get hurt: carelessness, recklessness, bad luck, bad judgment...shit happens. In fact, sometimes they get hurt because they're good people and they get mixed up with bad people. But not because they're bad--especially when they're three.

Dad wasn't really concerned with why Little Guy got hurt though. He was taking an opportunity to let Little Guy know he didn't really like him, to shame him into disappearing. He was letting him know he didn't want to have to deal with him; he was a bother. So he told Little Guy, "You're bad, you deserve to be hurt, and now you're bad because you're bothering me." Or at least that was the message I got. I'm pretty sure Little Guy got it too; if not, he will.

Maybe someday when he gets older, Daddy will like his son more. Maybe once his son can play football with him--or more likely video games--he'll find some worth in Little Guy. But here's the sad thing: he might not be around by the time Little Guy gets old enough to be cool. He might go off to war and never come back. Of course he doesn't think he's going to die. Mom is the one who worries about him dying. I know because I did it for 20 years. I watched my kids' daddy fly off for weeks or months--once for a year and a half--at a time, knowing it might be the last time we saw him, praying that dark blue car didn't pull into my driveway with bad news. It's harder to be the one waiting at home. And sometimes the wait never ends.

Even if he doesn't die though, his words will live in his child's ears long after he's forgotten the incident. Little Guy adores his daddy. He trusts him--for now. He's too young to discern logical fallacies--bullshit, for the common reader--like Daddy just tossed him: you're bad, therefore bad things will happen to you. He believes everything Daddy says to him.

I realize Daddy might have reasons for being such an ass to his small son. He could be depressed, stressed, or poorly socialized himself. Maybe he wants his son to grow up tough and tearless. You know what? I don't give a shit. I really don't. I know it's hard being the parent of two small children. I know they're needy and it's constant and they don't obey immediately and they're messy and get hurt and you can't reason with them, but they're not bad. Little Guy isn't bad. Little Guy is a miracle, that's what he is.

Imagine being only three years old. Imagine only having three years of experience on this planet. And then imagine what this child has learned and accomplished in just three short years. He's learned to eat, walk, talk, eat with a spoon, put on his socks, tell the difference between red, yellow, and blue, and name things like stars and lamps and pigs. I couldn't list all that he's learned in just three years. His capacity--his potential--is so great it might as well be limitless. He is truly a miracle and one of a kind at that. How in the hell can he be bad?

And Daddy's job--no, his privilege--is to be this child's guide for a relatively short period of time. Daddy's job is to nurture Little Guy's curiosity, his creativity, his compassion, his integrity, and his ability to navigate the world. But he's not. No, I don't think this is an isolated incident for Daddy. He's like a lot of parents. He doesn't want to be bothered. He doesn't want to be bothered to engage with his son in the world so he does everything he can to make him go away. He ignores him until Little Guy needs his attention and then he tells Little Guy he's a bad boy for bumping his face on a chair arm. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so sad.

Oh, I'm sure he loves Little Guy. If you asked him, he'd say he does, right? He just doesn't want to be bothered by him. Or he only wants to be bothered by him on his own schedule. If he's like a lot of kids, Little Guy will be raised by electronic babysitters so his parents don't have to do the hard--and incredibly rewarding--work of helping him learn as much about his world as he can.

I know this little rant sounds judgmental, but I do have compassion for other parents. Really I do. I know how difficult raising children can be. I wasn't, and I'm still not, a perfect parent. I have what I call "Bad Mommy" stories, and I don't tell them with pride. Yeah, there's that word again. Bad. I guess maybe I got the same message as Little guy, huh? Even as an adult, I'm not allowed to make mistakes or I'm a bad person. Those messages get so deeply ingrained it's hard for some of us to ever find our own worth in the world.

By the time I was called back to the exam room by the tech, Little Guy was sitting quietly in his chair, doing absolutely nothing. As I walked behind his chair, I leaned down just barely and said, "I'm sorry you got hurt." I smiled at him as I walked past, but he just glanced up with sad eyes and then looked back down. He didn't smile back this time. It wasn't really my sympathy he wanted. Daddy just stared at CNN while the baby slept in the crook of his arm.

The Weight of the Right Thing

My 12-year-old standard poodle, Pippi, was diagnosed with a bladder tumor several months ago, sometime last spring, although she’s been having problems for about a year and a half.  The vet kept treating her for an infection that never went away, but eventually he had the talk with me—the one where he tried to prepare me for a “quality of life decision” I would need to make soon. He was ready for me to make the decision that day last spring, but I talked him into a standing prescription for pyroxicam, a drug that’s supposed to keep bladder tumors from growing, and amoxicillin to stave off infections.

   She’s also been in diapers since shortly after that day. It’s nasty. It really is. She still goes out and pees blood in the yard. In fact, she pees and pees and pees; she’s never done. She can squat for hours. If she were human, her thighs would be huge and solid, like a Russian dancer. When she’s in the house, she has to wear the diaper. We have three: one made of denim and two that are white polka dots on black. I call those her pin-up girl diapers. I’m not going to try to pretend there’s anything pleasant about changing a dog’s diapers. But the alternative is that quality of life decision the vet talked about. And yes, he was talking about my quality of life, not Pippi’s.
   People who’ve been through bladder cancer with a dog tell me I’ll know when it’s time, but it doesn’t seem that easy to me. The vet would already have done it. So would a guy I met a few weeks ago at the Sidebar, one of those bars where the $10 drinks are worth it. He’s got cats and a dog, and he was telling me hilarious stories about one of his cats. A cat he’s really sick of and would like to get rid of. He asked if I had any pets and I told him briefly about Pippi. He didn’t react quite the way I expected. He said, “Oh my god, you’ve got to put her to sleep. She’s ready to die. Just do it.”
   I was stunned. Did he think it was like pouring out spoiled milk? “Why?” I said. “She still eats well. She still goes for walks with me.”
   “Of course she does. She does that to please you,” he said. “She’s not going to tell you she’s ready to leave you, but she is. She’s ready to die. Let her go.”
   “I don’t think she’s ready.”
   “Of course she’s ready. She’s in diapers! She’s embarrassed all the time by those diapers. She lives in constant shame.” He sounded so sure of himself.
   “How would she even know?” I asked. “She’s a dog. Dog’s don’t care about fashion.”
   “Is she housebroken?”
   “Of course. She’s quite well trained.”
   “Then she’s embarrassed that she can’t control her bladder anymore.” He didn’t allow me to wedge in a response. “What does she do all day while you’re teaching? What’s she doing right now while you’re sitting here at this bar drinking raspberries and vodka?”
   “She’s lying on her bed, probably in my bedroom. That’s what she does most of the time now,” I said.
   “So she’s just laying around waiting for you to come home. That’s a great life, isn’t it? Would you like to live like that?”
   I started feeling defensive. “She’s always glad to see me,” I said. And she is. Always. “Besides, she mostly lies around even when I’m home. She doesn’t have as much energy as she used to….but that doesn’t mean she wants to die! We still go for walks. We walk down to the river several times a week, and we explore the neighborhood….”
   “Oh, come on. This is about you. It’s all about you. You don’t want to lose her. You don’t want to have to make the decision. You’re not really thinking about her. You can’t stand the thought of letting her go. She in diapers, and she’s probably in pain most of the time. She’s ready to die. You need to do the right thing….” (Note: Really nice guy. You can't tell from this small part of our conversation.)
   Do the right thing. Implicit in those words is the idea that there is a “right thing.” And if you do the right thing, everything will turn out all right. Isn’t that what we tell our kids: do the right thing and everything will be OK? We tell them that because we want them to be decisive, ethical humans. If somebody is bullying you, do the right thing. Tell him to stop. And if he won’t, tell your parents and your teacher. If somebody is cheating, do the right thing. If your boyfriend is pressuring you to have sex, do the right thing. If you do the right thing, we tell them, everything will be OK. The right thing will make everything right. Right?
   No, that’s bullshit. What we don’t tell them is that doing the right thing can seem more painful than doing nothing at all. I say seem because we can’t know what would have happened if we did nothing, but we can sure second-guess ourselves. We can imagine that things would have at least turned out better. The school bully might have moved away. Or a teacher might have finally noticed and put an end to the bullying. Or maybe some other kid would step in front of that bullet and have to suffer the consequences instead. Or maybe if you just had given in a little bit, your boyfriend wouldn’t have left you.
   The fact is doing the right thing can cost a lot. You often lose something valuable, something you were trying to protect in the first place. People get even. Or they leave you. Or your faithful companion of a dozen years no longer walks by your side or greets you at the door when you come home. Doing the right thing can be really lonely.
   Yes, doing the right thing—even if you can figure out what the right thing is—doesn’t guarantee your happiness. More often than not, it just means you will suffer consequences that you might not even be able to accurately predict. Doing the right thing can be fraught with regret and second-guessing, and you will have to live with the consequences forever. The right thing might look brilliantly simple to someone who doesn’t have to actually DO anything. For the person who has to live with her actions, it can be just one more step along a path that was already bad enough—only now the consequences are locked in and there’s no going back.
   The day the vet had “the talk” with me was a rough day. I felt a sense of crisis—I was going to have to make a decision, and I needed to do it soon. I needed to do the right thing.  Well, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure. In fact, I was pretty sure it wasn’t time yet, but I didn’t trust myself to do what was best for Pippi and not just what I wanted.
   That night someone who used to be close to me, and who used to spend a lot of time at my house, came over. As we sat on the deck, with Pippi lying beside us--when she wasn’t taking one of her frequent pee breaks--I told him what the vet had said. I was crying, of course, as I wrestled with this awful decision I didn’t want to make.
   “I don’t want to have to decide when she dies,” I sobbed. “I don’t know how to make this decision.”
   “Let’s look at both sides of it then and see if something becomes obvious,” he said. And then he blocked out the reasons why I didn’t need to make the decision now and the reasons why I should. He didn’t put any judgment on either side, just compared the situation through the lenses of two different outcomes: do it now or wait. Unfortunately, both sides came out pretty equal; the decision wasn’t obvious. In fact, it seemed just as obscure as it had before.
   “This isn’t helping,” I said. “I still don’t know what to do.” I started crying again. “I don’t want to have to make this decision. There doesn’t seem to be a right answer.”
   Even so, we both knew which way I wanted to go. Obviously, I wasn’t ready to let the vet stick a needle in Pippi and “put her to sleep.” I just couldn’t do it. And one thing seemed certain: I didn’t need to make the decision that night, but I still needed know how I would make it. Since logic didn’t work, instead he came up with a kind of rubric for me, and it was really pretty simple. He asked me three questions.
   “Is she eating well?”
   “Yes,” I said. “You know she eats every morning when I eat breakfast. And she usually gets some chicken or whatever I’ve grilled at night.”
   “OK, is she happy to see you when you come home? Is she glad to be around you?”
   “Of course,” I said. “She goes nuts when I get home. And look how she acts as soon as you walk in the door too. And she follows us everywhere, right? This is mostly a rhetorical question, isn’t it?”
   “Here’s the last question,” he said, not answering any questions for me. “Is she in pain?”
   “I don’t know.” I wanted to answer yes to the other two questions and no to this one. “She pees and pees and pees and either nothing comes out or it’s all bloody…I think she might be in pain, but I don’t know. She doesn’t whine or cry or anything. The vet gave her a pretty strong anti-inflammatory though that’s supposed to help if she is…..but I don’t know.” This question had the potential to become the deal-breaker. We both stared at Pippi as if pain would glow in the dark.
   “Pippi!” he said. “Pippi, are you in pain?”

   She thumped her tail—cropped to five vertebrae like most standard poodles—against the deck, and then got up to get some pets from each of us. He even let her lick his ears, which she did with obvious joy. It was only out of pity that I allowed such a disgusting behavior to continue.

   I felt better to have these three simple questions to ask. It seemed like what they call in the 12-step programs an unmanageable situation. I’ve asked myself those questions a hundred times since that night and it’s still question number three that I can’t answer.  I think maybe she is in pain, but she doesn’t cry and she doesn’t act tender. So far number three doesn’t override numbers one and two, but I do worry about doing the right thing if  the situation becomes unmanageable. If her pain becomes unmanageable. If living with a dog who can’t control her bladder and needs to wear diapers becomes unmanageable. Or even if the cost of the drugs—which doubled within a month—becomes unmanageable. Although there’s a difference between unmanageable and inconvenient, the lines become awfully blurry when you’re the one who has to do the right thing.
   He had one more thing to say though. He said, “It seems pretty obvious that you don’t have to make this decision right now. But you will have to do it in the future and you’ll have to be strong then. She loves you, but she also knows how much you love her. You’ve taken care of her most of her life, and she trusts you to do the right thing for her when the time comes. You owe her that for her loyalty and companionship. You owe her that because you love her and she loves you.”
   Well, shit. I cried some more. And I didn’t make the decision that night. Nor did I make it after my conversation at the Sidebar a couple of weeks ago. I just waited. Yes, the diapers are disgusting—really awful sometimes. And it’s heartbreaking to watch Pippi squat and pee a few drops of blood and then do it again and pee nothing because she never feels relief from the pressure. Anybody who’s had a bladder infection knows that feeling. Sometimes when we’re walking she has to stop and wait for some feeling to pass before she goes on, and I wonder how uncomfortable she is the rest of the time.
   I still ask myself those three questions though, and the answers to numbers one and two still trump the answer to number three—even though I’m more sure now that often she’s in pain.  I don’t really know if I’m making the right choice. It’s like a lot of back-against-the-wall decisions. If you wait, you have to watch the decline, the pain, the slow death and know you could do something about it—you could help, damn it--but you don’t have the surety, or maybe you don’t have the courage. Other people can see what you should do, but you just can’t do it.
   Or you can “do the right thing,” but you’ll still live with the consequences of not only losing someone you love, but also of always knowing that you were the one who did that thing. You did it.  You. And you can’t really ever know if it was the right thing…or if it was just wrong and nothing will ever be the same because you fucked up. And even if it was the only right thing, that doesn't mean you will easily live with the outcome.
   My experience with doing the right thing hasn’t always been so happy. What I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how kind, how funny, how compassionate, how loving, or even how certain you’re right. It’s not who you are or what you’ve given of yourself in the past that matters. It’s that one final act of “doing the right thing” that trumps everything else. It’s all that matters. And it won’t matter how many people tell you it was “the right thing, and you had to do it. Somebody had to do it!” It doesn’t matter because they won’t have to live with the same consequences you will. They won’t have to live with the sleepless nights when you lie awake and wonder what you could have done better. They won’t have to imagine someone looking at them and saying, “How could you do that to me? I thought you loved me. I trusted you.”
   It’s small comfort to reply, “I thought I was doing the right thing. The other options seemed even worse. I was trying to….I was just trying to do the right thing.”
   Once the deed is done, there’s all the rest of time to second guess whether the right thing was really the right thing or not. So I wait. People tell me I’ll know when it’s time. I hope they’re right.

The Weight of Santa

Christmas is over. This year happened to be a pretty good one. I've enjoyed some wonderful Christmases and suffered though others that were almost unbearably painful. This year I passed the first one that found me living alone. It was different, but that's not what I'm thinking about tonight. Yesterday one of my Facebook friends wrote about wanting his son to believe in Santa Claus for one more year. I can understand that desire we have for our children to keep their innocence, their belief in a Christmas spirit who shares his generosity with other kids all over the world, asking only cookies and milk in return. And it reminded me of one of my "selfish mom" moments, when I....well, here's the story.

That Christmas LtColEx was on a remote tour to Korea. He'd been gone almost a year and a half--six months in Washington DC, followed immediately by a year-long stint in Korea to which his family wasn't invited. Drake was ten, Elvira was four, and by the time LtColEx came home, Elvira couldn't remember when he used to live with us. We didn't have email and phone calls were rare. I won't bore you with the details of how difficult that winter was--flu, record snowfalls that stranded us at home, spending all day together homeschooling with no relief at 5:30 and too little adult contact. I'll just say it's really hard to keep somebody's space open in your life for that long, and that's the reason 75% of marriages end after just a one-year remote tour.

As Christmas neared, I did everything I could to make it special and, at the same time, normal for the kids. After they went to bed, I sewed a big, faux suede cape for Drake and painted wooden eggs to look like dragon eggs (one cracking open) for Elvira. They were going to go in her stocking and, knowing how much she would love them, I wished I could share the suspense with someone who would understand. It was lonely work being Santa that year, and, anyway it's a special feeling when you're chosen to share imminent surprises, right? I remember how mature I felt when I came out as a Santa disbeliever, and how much fun it was to be in on the secret and help play the Santa game with my four younger sibs.

Like I said, Drake was ten, so you would probably expect I could let him in on some of the Santa prep. And I would have, except he still believed in old St. Nick. If he had been most kids...hell, if he had been his sister....I would have suspected he was saying he believed just so he'd still get presents. A lot of kids think if they tell anybody they're on to us, they won't get any more Santa presents. But Drake wasn't like that. He's just never learned how to play those games. As far as I could tell, he'd never even questioned whether Santa existed or not.

And yet, how could he not have doubts? He had friends. Surely they talked. I thought he had to know. At his age, how could he not? Unless what they said about homeschoolers was really true, and we were hiding our kids from the real world, not letting them be "normal," whatever the hell that is. I was—fuck it, I'm just going to admit this--kind of embarrassed that he still believed some fat guy in a red suit slipped down our chimney and left filled stockings and Legos by the tree. And I really wanted to show him these cool eggs I was making and bring him in on the fun of playing Santa.

So one night a few days before Christmas as I was tucking him in I thought I was going to get my chance. He started the conversation. "Mom, Scott Murphy (a kid in his scout troop) said there isn't really a Santa. I told him he's wrong, but he said I should stop being a baby."

"Oh, yeah. What else did he say?" Finally somebody had let the kitty out.

"He said you and Dad are Santa and you're the ones who put the presents under the tree. I told him my dad can't put presents under our tree this year, and I know I'll still get some. And I told him Santa always eats the milk and cookies we put out for him. I don't know why he would say that. He's such a jerk sometimes." Not going well. Such indignation. "He's wrong, right, Mom? There really is a Santa Claus?"

This seemed like my chance. I was afraid he'd really get teased if other kids knew he still believed at his age. Still.....I loved his innocence, his belief in heroes and people who do good just because they can.

"Would you want to know if there wasn't a Santa? Would you want to know if I was the one putting the presents under the tree this year?"

A pretty broad hint, I thought, but I didn't expect his reaction. He started crying. "No!" He could barely get the words out he was crying so hard. "I wouldn't want to know if Santa wasn't real because that would mean all those kids all over the world aren't really getting presents for Christmas. And I know a lot of them don't even have enough food to eat the rest of the year, so they need to get presents for Christmas." He was sobbing, in his own little super-hero world, worrying not about whether he'd stop getting presents from Santa, but whether all the other kids in the world would have a Christmas. Not really what I expected from a ten-year-old boy.

I lay down beside him and put my arms around him. "Don't be silly," I said. "Of course there's a Santa. How could there not be a Santa?"

He finally calmed down and said, "That's what I thought. Scott Murphy is just wrong and I feel sorry for him."

"I do too," I said. And that Christmas I played Santa all by myself for my two excited, elf-believing children. Elvira thought the dragon eggs were real and patiently waited for them to hatch. Drake flew around the house in his cape fighting bad guys. There were children all over the world who didn't celebrate Christmas, who didn't have enough to eat, much less presents under a shiny evergreen tree, but for one more year I kept that secret to myself. These are burdens our kids will share soon enough, and I've always been ashamed that I forgot for even an instant how short that time of innocence is.

The next year, Drake no longer believed in Santa Claus, and I wished, just like my FB friend, that he'd had one more year of believing Santa really existed. I wish I had one more year too.

Gratitude (or how the karma fairy spanked me twice)

I thought I was doing pretty well expressing my gratitude in November. I posted daily status updates to Facebook detailing the things I appreciate most: warm blankets, the library (where fines are only ten cents), my dog Pippi on her twelfth birthday, friends old and new, and music. In fact, I appreciated various forms of music more than once, because it’s such a big part of my life. I even “liked” my friends’ gratitudinal offerings. I was just that thankful. And then about the middle of the month, the ever-vigilant Karma Fairy noticed the itchy hubris in my constant demonstrations of gratitude and zipped merrily over from where she plays among the cowslips and marigolds just to spank me with her sexy pink wand.

It was week ten, the last week of fall quarter. Many of my students had decided now was the time to pass college composition, so I had stacks of revisions begging for my comments. I made it through the entire quarter without getting sick only to suffer an allergy attack from something I inhaled at the dog groomer. And, no, that wasn’t enough. I found out sometime into the week that somebody needed to provide music during the offering Sunday morning at church. When the request comes that late, somebody is me.

Normally it’s not that difficult to find something suitable to play, but the service was on Sufism and Rumi, and Indian music is not one of my genres. I played through a dozen or more possibilities before I found something that wouldn‘t clash heinously with the rest of the service. If I played a sitar the choice would have been so much easier, but I didn’t have time to learn a new instrument and a new piece of music. Of the instruments I do play, the piano is my first love, but I don‘t play often these days. The guitar is so much more portable and social. And playing the piano for a quiet, captive congregation requires more practice than backing someone up on guitar. Strumming three or four chords in a repetitive pattern isn’t a precise art; add in a couple of voices, maybe a bass, and a few mistakes won’t even register on the average listener. Playing a Baldwin concert grand in a room that’s silent except for the rustle of bills and checks being placed in offering plates leaves no room for mistakes. Every note counts. I would have to practice a lot to be ready by Sunday morning.

And so I started to feel a little put out, a little taken advantage of. Enough so that I sent a whiny, snarky email to another musician friend that said “Why do people think I can pull music out of my ass? If I could fart Mozart don’t you think I’d be playing for bigger audiences?” I’m not proud that I wanted him to think I was clever and sarcastic and a fine musical savior, which he did. Validation is so vital to petty displays of self-importance, don’t you think?

Along with his sympathy, he also sent me a link to an article about Joseph Pujol, who actually could fart music. I’m not sure if he already knew about Pujol, whose stage name was Le Pétomane, or if he googled “fart Mozart” and found this wonder of all wonders in Wikipedia. I didn’t ask. Let’s just say it let some of the air out of my self-importance to find out somebody really could fart Mozart…and I can’t.

I chose music from one of my daughter’s late intermediate piano solo books, so it wasn’t Chopin or Mozart, but still it’s a lovely piece of music. I knew I could make it sound just fine by exaggerating the dynamics: dramatizing the ritards, speeding up the arpeggios at the crescendos, doing some bob and weave theatrics as I played. Nevertheless, it would take all of the four days I had to get it ready.

And so when I wasn’t at school teaching and conferencing with students, I was at home following my new week-ten routine: I’d read and comment on a couple of papers, blow my nose, play the piano, blow my nose, and then go back to reading and commenting on papers. Read, blow, play, blow, read, blow, play…. By late Saturday night, I was a day away from having the song memorized, which was better than good enough. In other words, I practiced more than I really need to. Sunday morning I went in half an hour early to warm up on the church piano, to get a feel for the action, which is significantly different from my piano.

Halfway through the service, the worship leader said, “We will now receive the offering in grateful appreciation…” (redundant I know, but you can’t overdo the gratitude, as I’m about to show), and I slid onto the piano bench, placing my hands lightly on the keys. I leaned forward slightly and flexed my wrists, preparing to lift and then bring my fingers down on the first arpeggio. I took a deep breath and as I looked up at my music, noticed Dan reaching for his guitar. I paused. He lifted his guitar onto his lap and introduced the song he was going to sing…during the offering.

The entire congregation was watching and listening to him, so I’m sure nobody noticed that quick twinkle as the Karma Fairy flew into the sanctuary and planted her sparkling little wand on the very part of my anatomy I had so elegantly threatened to pull music from. Ouch! I tried to swat her but she was too quick, so I slipped off the bench and returned to my seat to enjoy the rest of the service.

But I couldn’t help thinking how very ungrateful I’d been for the opportunity, during a particularly stressful week, to do something I love and rarely get a chance to do. After all the times I’ve bitched about not getting enough time to play the piano, there I was complaining that I had to play a lovely, soothing piece of music. All I could do at that point was offer Mistress Fairy the other cheek.

In my van on the way home, I thought about all the other times I’ve complained about having to do things that really deserved my gratitude. I’m not talking about being grateful for Pippi as I’m cleaning up a puke stain on the carpet. Or being thankful for dumpsters on wheels as I’m hauling the trash to the curb. This wasn’t an “embrace the suck” situation. Playing the piano doesn’t suck; it’s a privilege and I should face every opportunity to do it with joy. And yet I’m also not talking about being grateful because I’m so lucky to have a piano and the ability to play it, although the argument can be made. My mom suffered a stroke ten years ago at age 62, and she would be grateful to play half as well as she used to. It does her no good for me to practice some kind of vicarious gratitude for the pleasure she’s lost though.

No, I’m talking about those times when I complain (and please tell me you do this too) about having to do something I really like to do. Like exercise. I really do like to exercise. Years ago when I played basketball, I liked the practice every bit as much as the games. I like the feeling of muscles working; I even like the sweat and the soreness the next day. It makes me feel like I'm going somewhere...and leaving something behind. And yet, I not only complain about doing it, I actually avoid it—to my detriment.

And then there’s writing. I love to write, but I hate to write at the same time. I spent my entire stint in graduate school bitching about the papers I had to write. And yet, an assignment for a seven-page paper inevitably elicited from me a 28-page paper. My professors were the ones who should have been complaining (and probably did). I love writing so much, I can be compulsive about it. I sleep with a legal pad on the bed next to me in case I want to write something down after I’ve turned off the light. Often my muse—more about her later—visits me just as I’m about to fall asleep and I wake up long enough to write down some notes. And sometimes I just get up and give in to it. Yet, you wouldn’t believe how much I complain about having to face that blank page—so much so that I was an utter NaNoWriMo failure this year. As if my track record with this blog hadn't already blown my cover as a writer.

And sex! C'mon, who hasn't had an "oh, no, not again" moment about sex? And yet, why does a hot, juicy tumble on a soft bed, even at the end of a long, trying day...especially at the end of a long, trying day!...cause an Excedrin moment? Is it so much better to watch Desperate Housewives or to play Farmville on Facebook?

Anyway, I promised myself I would be more grateful for the chance and the ability to do those things I love to do, starting with playing music. Or if I didn’t remember to be thankful, at least I would stop complaining about those things. And last week I got a chance to put my commitment to the test. I said I would play the hymns for Sunday’s service so the choir director could have the morning off because she would be playing our big holiday program and carol sing-along that evening. Only three hymns, but one of them was a little tricky and again I had to practice. OK, I’m going to say it because the damage, as you will see, has already been done…I don’t like playing hymns. They’re all block chords played in a marchy tempo with weird passing notes. I find them challenging and not very rewarding to play.

But I tried. I did. I really tried to face those practice sessions with an attitude of gratitude and joy. Yes, I did catch myself sighing and eyeing the Christmas music with longing, wishing I didn’t have to spend my piano time on those hymns, but I always ended the wish with “but I’m not complaining.” I was sure I’d learned my lesson well enough. More hubris, I’m afraid.


Sunday morning I arrived early to warm up. The guest musician, a classical guitar player, was getting a sound check and running through his music. I opened the piano, set my music on the stand, hoped I wouldn’t screw the hymns up too badly (not that I was complaining), sat down on our nice, padded, adjustable piano bench and…you guessed it. The Karma Fairy darted in and stripped one of the screws in the adjustment mechanism so the entire right side collapsed. I caught myself just before I was dumped on my butt, and then I played those three hymns sitting on the phone book on a chair. I didn’t swat at the pixie this time.

Now I don’t really believe there’s a karma fairy circling my head waiting to whop me every time I need a lesson in humility. I’m sure karma, if it exists, has evolved into a more subtle form of punishment and reward. But I do think this is a valuable lesson I need to learn. Some things really do suck, and I’m going to bitch about them as much as I want to. For example, I love and appreciate my dog, but when she pukes on the carpet, I’m not going to clean it up with a joyful heart. I’m going to gag and whine and bathe in self-pity. However, those things I do love--playing music, writing, working out--I plan to greet with a better attitude, even if I don’t get as many points for being a long-suffering, music-farting savior.

Sacred Collections

Recently Meg Barnhouse, a UU minister and singer/songwriter, posted a status update on Facebook that said "I've never collected things. What do you collect and why?" Thirty-four people responded that they collected things like books, newspapers from important events, plates with lemons on them, shot glasses, rocks, shells, rubber duckies. I said I collect people's stories, which is true. I almost stopped there, but then I admitted "also small parts of animals and insects: tiny bones, wings, claws, [snake] rattles, half a blue eggshell..." I guess that's something I've never outgrown, looking for the cast-off parts of living creatures, the tiny parts that hide between sidewalk cracks and beneath layers of soil and under river rocks.

One afternoon late this summer, after a hike along the Little Miami river with my friend Cyd and her nine-year-old daughter Maddy, I came home with the bottom of my pocket full of tiny treasures (please don't tell the ranger!):
•four orange crawdad claws about half an inch long (Maddy took one with her)
•four inch-long "finger" bones from part of an unknown small animal’s skeleton that I pried out of the mud with a stick. Oh, how I wish I'd been able to find the skull.
•a fresh-water clam shell the size of Maddy's pinkie fingernail
•five, black-webbed cicada wings. Four I had to pull from a corpse. (Maddy took one of those too.)
•a rock that looks like it has a brain imbedded in it. (You might argue that a rock isn't a tiny part of a dead creature, but you would be wrong. Rocks are made of whatever stuff was in the soil at the time: shells, bones, coral, even worm shit.)

I did not bring home a small silver and iridescent minnow we found dying in a sticky, fetid patch of greenish mud left over from when the river was higher. Several other minnows had already died there, stranded as the sun dried up their private pool. Every once in a while, a bubble would pop on the surface, indicating a heartier species lurking beneath the surface, possibly with an amphibious nature. Cyd had to hold my hand so I could lean out to scoop the gasping fish from the rank, gooey mud. I ran to the river and let it slide off my hand into the water, but it had lost its will to swim. It just laid there on its side, lazily floating with the current that lapped against the shore. Finally it floated headfirst into a dried, curled leaf. I "rescued" it again, but we knew it wouldn't live, and it didn't. It nourished other river creatures. That's not the kind of thing I collect anyway. I don't want to deal with rotting flesh.

The other thing I don't collect is feathers. I did when I was a kid, especially the black-striped blue jay feathers. But my mom has a feather phobia so I wasn't allowed to bring "those filthy things" into the house. I feared for her sanity the few times I forgot and ran in to show her an especially bright blue one.

She says her phobia is a result of being forced to feed and collect eggs from vicious laying hens when she was a child. I probably would have been scratching around the barnyard with them, looking for cast-off beaks and toenails and even feathers. (Yes, chickens have toenails. I've never found one in the wild though.) So even though we saw several feathers, and Cyd may have put one in the collection jar we pulled from the river, I didn't put a feather in my pocket for fear my mom would reach across 600 miles and thump me the top of my head. And it turns out she was right. Feathers can carry mites, although she didn't know that no matter what she claims now.

I'm not sure what I'll do with my little collection of parts. They could join the blue robin's egg shell, the chicken wishbone, the minuscule vertebrae and the rattlesnake rattle that stay on the little ledge made by the top of the backsplash on my kitchen counter. The rattlesnake rattle came out of an old classical guitar Cyd's sister brought her from Colorado last winter. They said I could keep it. OK, I begged for it and they allowed me to keep it, but I didn't ask for the feather that was tied to the headstock. The chicken wishbone is one I used when Cyd and I taught poetry workshops with a class of seventh-graders in a school near downtown Dayton. We gave them bags and got them started on keeping a collection of “poetry bones”: photos, special words, glue sticks, and other things they could pull out to inspire their poetry writing. I have a feeling lining up too many of these things on my kitchen counter, even if it is the part where I don't cook or eat, will eventually make me into one of those crazy women who, in lieu of owning too many cats, collects too many body parts from dead animals.

Of course, I could throw them all out in the garden and let them decompose into their elements. I've done that many times before, and I keep meaning to do that with my last dog's ashes. He died only twelve years ago.

Or I could collect them in a pretty jar and try to fill it up. That might look cool. Or pile them in a hand-tossed pottery bowl and set them on the table by the couch for guests to sift through and examine.

The best idea is to arrange them on a piece of mat board and mount them in a shadow box. You can frame almost anything. My ex-husband and I owned a custom framing store for a while, and we framed everything from a signed electric guitar to Shaquille O'Neal's big-ass athletic shoe to an Olympic torch.

The strangest thing we framed though was for a woman who liked to collect organic castoffs too: her own toenails. She claimed her ex-husband used to complain that her toenails were too long; they scratched him in the night. After they divorced, she grew her toenails out, painted them blood red, cut them, and paid us to frame them in an expensive shadowbox. She wanted to remind herself why she should never get married again. That's her story and it's as good as the next one.

Here's what I'll do with my collection. I'll arrange them in a frame and leave room to add more later. Already I'm thinking of other things I could add to this small collection: a couple of my kids' teeth from the little box in my dresser drawer. (What? You can't just throw those away after you smear glitter on the sheet and slip a silver dollar under the pillow.) A small skull I had on the mantle for several years. Whatever else I find next time I walk along the river. Hey, maybe one of those minnows has decomposed into a perfect little skeleton preserved in the killing mud.


Someday maybe I'll try to analyze this penchant I have for picking up the tiny leftovers from what to us seem like very short lives. Whatever animated those bodies is long gone. Call it god or the great creator or the flying spaghetti monster. Somehow these little parts retain for me a memory of creation that goes back to those first organisms that grew teeth and toenails, fur and beaks, bones and feathers. Even if I keep them in a frame for the rest of my likewise brief life, they will eventually find their way back into the soil, maybe to become a rock that looks like it has a brain growing out of it. One of my descendants will throw my carefully arranged shadowbox into the trash, breaking the glass if it's not already broken, freeing the tiny parts at last to feed the earth, return the elements they borrowed. By then, my body too will be doing the same thing, although I doubt very much anybody will collect any of my parts and show them off in a shadowbox.
I don't know or much care why I feel a connection to these little bits of bodies any more than the person who collects plates with lemons painted on them does. She said they make her feel "[h]appy. Sunshiny and yellow." They make her happy. That's good enough for me too.