I need to…

My grandmother thrived on stress.  She would in fact manufacture stressful situations to give herself a buzz.  I remember her lolling around the house watching T.V., then glancing at the clock, jumping up to throw on a dress, smearing lipstick on, picking out one those gaudy, glass rings that were her trademark, and racing out the door muttering how she was going to be late.  She did this all the time.

I correlate need with stress.  I need to correct 107 papers by tomorrow; I need to find a way to make indirect object pronouns engaging; I need to prepare a dish for the potluck tomorrow; I need to buy my mother a gift or she will be resentful for all of January.  I also currently need to downsize to a cheaper apartment.  And I need get myself organized for my move.  I need to clean the year’s layer of soap scum off my shower walls.  I need to make more of those rice paper wraps since I can’t eat bread.  (Since I avoid participation in Christmas artifice, this is the short list.)  

All these needs are expectations that must be lived up to.  And I just want to be the best me I can be (which I think is pretty good already) without having to worry about disappointing people or missing deadlines.  No such luck.

The armies of need are so gargantuan that I come home and the only need I can bring myself to fulfill is the need to ignore it all.  And the tower of tasks grows exponentially until its own weight forces it to hang and loom directly over my head like a dark depression, blocking out all rays of cheer.  I’ve actually been looking down at the ground a lot and avoiding eye contact with people.

Can I vaporize the lead weight of it all by changing my language?  Instead of I need to digitize all my pictures, maybe I could say I want to digitize them because it will keep my scrap-booking more organized? 

Next step:  translate thought into action.  Harder than the first step.

Parenting Editorial

In the October 19 issue of the New Yorker Daniel Zalewski wrote:

So what should you do when a child throws a tantrum?  Many parents, determined not to be cruel or counterproductive, latch on to pre-approved language from books.  Walk through a Manhattan playground and you’ll hear parents responding to their dirt-throwing, swinging-stealing offspring with a studied flatness.  A toddler whirling into a rage is quietly instructed, “Use your words.”  A preschooler who clocks his classmate is offered the vaguely Zen incantation “Hands are not for hitting.”  A kid demanding a Popsicle is given a bland demurral:  “I’m sorry, but I don’t respond to whining.”  The brusque imperative “Say ‘please’!” has been supplanted by the mildest of queries:  “Is there a nicer way to say that?”  The efficacy of this clinical approach has not been confirmed by science…  In this confrontation-averse age of parenting… the “escalation” of emotions is considered a mark of failure.

I would have to do some research to verify that these techniques have indeed “not been confirmed by science.”  However the above-listed parental reactions are effective each in their own way and concur with my experience as a teacher, a student and a mother.

It may be true that some parents take escalation of emotion to be a sign of a failure.  Judgment aside, it is a practical stance to take.  At a basic level, if we adults did not learn to quell the urge to react emotionally, we would all be insane neurotics – because kids can (and do) push the emotional buttons of their parents repeatedly within the span of just a few minutes. 

More significantly, control is not achieved in any field by being emotionally reactive and impulsive.  If there is a problem to be solved, it is most effectively addressed in quiet, measured steps.  It’s not about apathy towards the behavior by so-called “bland demurral”; impulsive emotions manufacture urgency over situations where there may not be any real urgency.  Anger begets anger – sometimes unnecessarily. 

Compliance that is not in the spirit of the request isn’t very useful:  we don’t want our children to say “please” because that’s the rule; we want them to say it because that is polite behavior.  Lectures and commands tend to be invitations for eye-rolling rebellion.  When a parent or a boss (or anyone else for that matter) tosses ultimatums around, compliance can only occur with the intent of avoiding punishment or receiving something worth the price of groveling.  If you consider that nobody likes to be ordered around, it makes sense. 

In contrast to imperatives, questions are sensible tools for calling a child’s attention to behavioral problems – because a genuine question (i.e., not rhetorical) requires an answer; and an answer requires thought.  In addition, a question implies that you actually care what the child thinks.  If the child’s opinions are important, there is the implication of respect.  Almost everyone – young or old – appreciates being respected.

By the same token, a child who can “use their words” and go through the thought process of expressing how they feel is, by extension, more capable of considering the consequences of their actions.

The cover of a book

Ricky Gervais’ experimental movie “The Invention of Lying” justifiably did not open to critical acclaim, but Gervais won me over in part by being nervy enough to make such a film.  He blatantly reveals the sleazy aspect of humanity that perhaps we don’t want to think about, while also putting his own dignity on the chopping table.

The movie takes place in a society in which people cannot help but say exactly what they think; and, Ricky Gervais being a short pudgy guy, it is made known to him at every turn that he is less than ideal “genetic material”.  If the movie hadn’t been a comedy, it might have been a pity party indulging in the woes of the physically less-than-desirable.  Get me drunk and remind me of how many people look right through me because I do not embody the long-tressed feminine ideal, and I could have written that manuscript.

No one is truly innocent of the crime of passing judgment based on appearance – appearance is the basis of first impressions.  Sweeping evaluations made on sight, however, are a simplistic way to approach anything in life, and suggest narrow criteria for finding value.

Even though I have my physical ideal of a man, I always do a second take, no matter how the man may appear to be.  If I do so out of a sense of equity that might make me a respectable person; but really I do it out of a sense of curiosity.  The façade only tells a small fraction of a person’s story.  I want to hear the whole story before I pass judgment.

I once heard a guy say that he only dated models.  That’s kind of like a musician saying louder is better or a chef saying quantity is quality.  I wouldn’t respect that musician or that chef and, even if I were a model, I wouldn’t have dated that guy.

My Madeleine

Proust had his Madeleine’s to ignite fond memories of youth; I have the acoustic guitar. 

High school was not a particularly enjoyable phase of my life.  In general, my youth is a source of embarrassment that I would prefer to sweep under the rug.  School was all about the terror at the mere thought of boys, fear of speaking up in class, the inability to master my will power, and feelings of freakishness and isolation, as if I were a complete mistake.  (Luckily I have almost no memories from before the age of 20, although it’s not clear to me whether it’s because I can’t remember or because I won’t.)

The one place that minimized most of those feelings, however, was camp.  I took every opportunity to go – 2 or 3 times a year from the age of 12.  (Could it be a coincidence that these rare wonderful memories took place in the absence of my family?)  

In the daytime we’d have our own Olympics, during which I proudly attempted to prove that I actually had prowess at something.  My classmates and I would bond in team spirit making class banners out of sheets and playing tug-o-war.  During free time we would dodge the whitewater at the beach or fly down the spiral slide at the pool; and we would play ping-pong for hours on end.  We held bible study (I went to a parochial school) in open, green pastures at the foot of the vertical rise of the Olomana Mountain Range – a fitting backdrop for feeling the presence of God. 

After dinner we would host talent shows– one year my best friend and I sang choreographed back-up to the class clown’s rendition of “Three Little Words.”  (Or was it “Three Little Birds”?  I forget.)  Later we would hunt for crabs in the wet midnight sand – we’d scare these tiny nocturnal creatures with flashlights and they would come out in droves and race toward the shore break.  Then, we would huddle on damp logs encircling a campfire and sing silly songs (“Going on a Buta Hunt” comes to mind – I always thought it was a Buddha Hunt) and tell scary stories about people who mysteriously died because they carried pork across the Pali Highway.   Well past lights-out we girls would tell risqué stories across our bunk beds and giggle; and sometimes we’d sneak out of our cabins, creep up on the window of the boys’ cabin and scare them awake.  And then, of course, the next night, they would take their vengeance.

The theme that recurred over the course of three nights and four days was the guitar:  a guitar on the bus to liven up a long ride; a guitar to accompany morning and evening worship; a guitar to pass the time; a guitar performance at the talent show.

And there was always a guitar to accompany the sizzle and pop of the keawe branches in the campfire.  As the chill would sweep down the slope of the mountains, the flames would do a spasmodic dance in layers of yellow, orange, white and blue against a pitch black night, scented by crashing waves.  With sand between my toes, salt caked on my shoulders, and random guitar sounds, I felt tired and safe and warm in front of the fire, underneath the stars, next to my friends, and even next to boys.

Fear of stuff

When my son was two, we took art class at the local Gymboree.  Twice a week we would glue collages, paint, and string together macaroni elbows.  One day he made a collage with almost an entire bottle of glue, and it was still a dripping, sopping mess when it was time to go.  So I unceremoniously dropped it in the trash on the way out the door.  One of the other mothers tried to mask her complete appall of my action.  “But your son made it!”  I did not feel apologetic while imagining stickiness covering every surface of my car and home. 

I have cultivated a strong aversion to the accumulation of things.  I get rid of things the way I brush cobwebs off my skin.  Any sense of sentimentality is completely trumped by my desire to unload.  

I love pictures, though.  Photography is up there with theater, dance – my favorite art forms.  Until a recent purchase of a phone with camera, however, I didn’t own a camera for the specific reason that it is a stuff-creating machine – stuff that is often not aesthetically pleasing nor especially meaningful.  I can’t tell you how many times I have developed a role of film full of blurry half-people, a person’s hand on its way to picking the nose, people’s stomachs, and mouths contorted in the process of saying “noooo.”  Even though they are evidence of events past I fight the instinct to keep those pictures with all my heart.

Still, my dream job would be to capture humanity in photography.  Before I can do that, though, I have to get over my fear of collecting stuff.

Lazy, stupid, lucky or ingenious?

If I ever got A’s in high school and college, it was dumb luck.  In saying this I am not being facetious or self-deprecating or modest – I am being honest and realistic.  This is not, however, the same as saying that I’m stupid.

Beyond choosing not to fail my courses (never got an F; got one D, I think, but I forget what course it was), good grades were never a choice for me.  The way my mind works, I either get it or I don’t get it.  And if I don’t get it, there is little possibility that anyone (including myself) will be able to force me to get it before I am “ready”.  Looking back, most skills that I didn’t get initially came to me after much time and reflection à merveille.  While the light of comprehension was fermenting to perfection, however, more than a few teachers gave up on me.

My first French teacher comes to mind.  I was 18 years old and the idea of inanimate objects having gender struck me as the biggest fraud ever.  I diligently showed up on time for my 7:30 class 5 days a week out of both conscience and interest, and I scraped a C.  One day the teacher stormed out of the classroom ranting that we students weren’t trying hard enough and that she couldn’t teach us.  (We are colleagues now, more than 20 years later – I saw her the other day at the French Teachers’ annual Christmas luncheon.)  Well, truth be told, I wasn’t trying very hard.  But trying hard does not get (has never gotten) me results.  More to the point, I just didn’t get it. 

The university’s pilot study abroad program was in formation the summer after that course.  After some pleading (because my grades were not good enough), I was allowed to participate.  After that summer I never got anything less than an A in any French class.  (Well, except for the B in 18^th century French Lit – but I didn’t care for that class.)

The funny thing is that I don’t think I had any more control over that first C than I did over all of the A’s that followed.  That depresses me.  It suggests I have no control over the course of my life. 

Here’s another sordid story.  When I was in my early 20’s, my driver’s ed teacher put forth his best effort to get me to make tight right turns by making me go around the same block repeatedly.  I don’t know how many times we tried it – maybe a dozen – when he finally stormed out of the car and gave up on me.  The irony is that I’m actually a pretty good driver now, with the clean record to prove it.  And I can make the turn now with no problem.

In the New Yorker magazine, Alec Wilkinson wrote earlier this year:

The women’s record for constant weight [free-diving] is 96 meters, which took 3 minutes and 34 seconds… and only two women are thought to be capable of it.  One is Sara Campbell, a British diver who lives in Egypt, and the other is Natalia Molchanova, a Russian who lives in Moscow.  Campbell set the record of 96 meters in April [2009], in the Bahamas, breaking Molchanova’s record of 95, which had broken Campbell’s record of 90… 

In 2006, Campbell started taking classes at [Lotta & Peter] Ericson’s and [Linda] Pagnelli’s diving school.  “She was quite average – normal beginner student,” Ericson said.  “You couldn’t say that wow, she was going to be a star.  She was being very graceful in the water when she was moving, but she would go down ten, fifteen meters and feel out of breath.  Then, at some point, that block was gone.”

Malignant

My ex-husband would call me defeatist, and I’m inclined to agree with him.  Certainly before I met him I was prone to saying “I can’t” more often than was true.  From my ex I learned that it is often more truthful – and more productive – to say instead “I don’t understand yet” or “I’m not ready” or “I haven’t learned how yet” or “I could if…”  This is one of the more positive legacies he has left in his wake.

What I am left trying to decipher, though, is if there is ever an appropriate time to admit that I can’t.  Certainly I don’t understand hair-pulling, and I could stop if I understood more about what causes it.  

On the other hand, while my pulling has much less of that intense, hypnotic control over me (because I have cut back on fungus-inducing foods), it is still a low-grade, constant element in my life.  I experience guilt from the fear that conceding to it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The power of the mind says that once you decide something it is bound to happen.  But this is not always true.  Some things will happen (or not happen) no matter what you believe, and no matter how hard you believe it.  How do I know when I can control something and when I can’t?  It’s a question I grapple with constantly. 

Hair-pulling – so obviously illogical and senseless – is an easy gibe for those who want a cheap shot at solving my apparently simple problem.  And when I don’t solve it, the easiest solution for self-confident, omniscient people is to suggest that I’m weak – that I haven’t harnessed the power of my mind to put a stop to this.  Add to that all-knowing confidence a bit of charm and persuasiveness, and doom and gloom incubates into full-blown, malignant hopelessness. 

By keeping an open mind to believing what people tell me – an innocent exercise in trust and wanting to do what’s right – I victimize myself.  Unfortunately, these people are all around me, under the guise of family and friends. 

John Kender wrote:

According to the medical literature and to most researchers, behavior therapy has a poor track record, even during treatment, and for most people it has very little continuing effect afterwards.  This may be why you have to “believe it or not”: the evidence does not support belief. . .  It surely doesn’t help pullers to be told that the reason you aren’t getting better from existing techniques is that you are not working hard enough or that you are not willing enough to suffer.  That is just a small step from saying that TTM is something that only happens to lazy and self-indulgent people.

Medical history is full of diseases and disorders for which a misunderstanding of causes has led to ineffective treatments and, often, to blame on the sufferers.

Worry

You’d think that a woman strutting around with a shaved head – in the company of women who dye and curl and straighten and otherwise dose vast quantities of money onto their hair – doesn’t give a damn what other people think.  But I do, actually.  I endure it only within a harsh context:  I literally cannot control my hair-pulling.  I do monitor my food and hygiene for the sake of my hair-pulling – in that sense I will never give up – but I also give myself credit for knowing when to put up a fight and when to give in.  I’ll never be happy about it, but on the other hand complaining about it is about the same as complaining that I’m Japanese – nothing much to be done about it except learn to live with it. 

In fact, though, I run my entire life based on what other people think of me.  So if I suffer from emotional health issues it is because of the stress that entails – neither logically nor logistically can anyone live up to everyone else’s expectations.  Unfortunately, logic does not often participate in emotion’s games.

My ex-husband once told me that I am extremely competitive.  I was in disbelief at the time he told me, and, after ten years of pondering it, I still disagree.  I asked my closest friends, and they too disagreed – which makes one wonder what made him think so.  I wonder if he’s not reacting to my compulsive attempts to measure up to other people’s expectations.

I worry that I am not a competent teacher.  I am certainly not the worst teacher ever, but, on a daily basis anyway, I under-plan.  I often create lessons on the fly.  80% of the time, these are actually fairly effective because in a sense I’ve been planning constantly for the past 12 years – I never really stop planning in my mind.  I can be performing the most random activity and come up with a great lesson plan, including grading criteria.  But when the administration asks for rubrics and assessments of the standards, it’s generally all in my head, and oftentimes that comes off as unpreparedness and incompetence.

I worry that I am a poor mother.  If I forget to look in my son’s folder or fail to sign a paper, or an assignment goes undone, I fear judgment by my professional peers – my son’s teachers, who are in the same e-mail system as I am.

I worry that I don’t take care of my son’s well-being.  I have never pretended to cook.  I barely keep up with my own nutrition, in fact.  My son, I confess, gets too many a fast-food meal.  At home he gets about as much fresh food as I do – which is to say, not much.  (I do sneak in frozen vegetables with his canned ravioli and instant saimin.) 

Generally I don’t force him to do anything I can’t persuade him to do.  Since he’s ridiculously headstrong, that allows him to get away with doing what he wants most of the time.  I can be very persuasive with kids, and very adamant about the handful of standards that I expect him to abide by; but other than that, he does what he wants.  He watches a lot of T.V. at my house.  I monitor what he watches, but by and large I am just happy to have him occupied.  If I had a few more runts running around and a live-in boyfriend covered in tattoos, I’d be trailer trash.

Before I abandoned my psychologist, I think she may have been in the process of telling me that, to the extent that I care about my son, and do have at least some expectations that I absolutely stand by, I am a good mother; but she never got a chance to finish her argument effectively.  My father-in-law wrote me once: 

bedwetting is his protest to have to live like this…  such urban settings contribute to produce todays prevalence of psychopathy. To successfully bring up a boy like him is a great burden even for two, but we were willing to sacrifice for his wellbeing.  You do not have enough time to pay the needed attention to him, you have enough other things to deal with. It saddens me

That letter still hurts me today.  And that is probably the biggest reason why I have to send my son away:  to remove my son from that arrogant, authoritarian, self-righteous, internet-touting, low-German-speaking absolutist.  On the other hand I fear that he is right – that I have to remove my son from me because I fail as a mother.

Yip Harburg

Without overly bemoaning my misfortune, I would characterize the past 10 years by repeated loss.  Slowly and grudgingly, I have conceded the loss of my hair, my dietary freedom, my husband, and now my child. 

There are certainly more threatening losses to be had, but these in particular have stripped away key elements of my identity, to the point of my very humanity.  I am unrecognizable from when I was younger, I have no family, and indeed have no identity in society:  social events – around which societies revolve, and which always include food (and seem to require hair for some reason) – are practically forbidden.

“When I lost my possessions,” E.Y. Harburg wrote about the Depression, “I found my creativity.”  Maybe it is by fate that I have found my way here to write.

Avatar

A cartoon by Robert Mankoff appeared in the New Yorker Magazine a few years ago – its destiny was to be my avatar.  To deconstruct this cartoon is to understand me. 

You could surmise that I understand French, and you’d be right. 

If you understand French and know a little bit about French literature, you would know that the caption – A la recherche des cheveux perdus – is a play on Marcel Proust’s book, A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), in which Mankoff replaced the word time with the word hair.  If you imagined me at this point spouting a spontaneous guffaw, you’d have an accurate imagination.

This cartoon might be even funnier still, if you imagine me without any hair – because, as it happens, I do not have any hair.  I literally am à la recherche des cheveux perdus.

You might have figured out, too, that I am a big fan of the New Yorker Magazine – but that’s stating the obvious.