why the debate made me cry

In sixth grade, my reading teacher was named Mrs. Gillis. She was stern, ancient, given to bouts of yelling, possessed of an impossibly straight spine. She also occasionally stepped out of the classroom and left us, 30 eleven and twelve year olds, to work independently for excruciatingly long minutes at a time. Because of her prison warden approach to teaching, students were especially tempted to raise hell every time she turned her back. Often, I braced myself for chaos. 

One day early in the school year, and thus early in my tenure at a rough urban middle school, a boy who shall remain unnamed took advantage of one of those unmonitored moments to jump out of his seat, scurry over and squat down next to mine, grab the bottom of my wide-hemmed blouse, pull it out, and look right up it. 

I remember the shirt. It was Espirit. It was turquoise and sleeveless and had buttons up the back. Despite my weird shy white girl status, I felt very cool wearing it. But it turns out that fashion cannot save you from meanness. That boy nearly put his whole head up inside my new name brand shirt, then pulled back, looked up at me and said: Girl! You ain't got no bra on! You need a bra! 

And then, booming, to the class at large: She don't wear no bra.

A week or two after that, I was in reading, bent over my work. The classroom, organized into long rows of desks, was full and quiet. Mrs. Gillis was writing on the board. Suddenly I felt a sharp yank on my hair from behind. The same boy had grabbed my ponytail and pulled. He pulled so hard that my desk slammed backwards into the two empty desks behind me, sending all three desks, in their cold metal feet, squealing and scraping across the linoleum floor. What an awful sound.

It echoed in the quiet class. Mrs. Gillis' back was turned when it happened. She yelled at us for being disruptive.

Again, I only remember my stunned silence. Fight, flight, or freeze. (I think freezing is my specialty.) But the thing is, I knew I was powerless. Mrs. Gillis was old and pissed; she didn't want the details. My tormentor, a boy who for reasons unknown spent a few awful weeks picking on me in terrible ways, was a fast-talking, skinny, tough, charismatic kid with not a lot of capacity for self-control. That school was a place where violence was commonplace and normalized. Other kids thought he was funny. Hell, sometimes I thought he was funny. He had a kind of social smarts and influence that emboldened him to push boundaries all the time. 

In those awful moments, it seemed there was nothing I could do to regain any power or sense of safety. There was no comeback I could invent to reestablish a shred of social standing; there was no gesture I could make to protect myself; there was no adult to appeal to for help. 

Maybe in the end he was caught, or suffered some consequence. Honestly, I don't remember the aftermath of either episode. I mostly remember the feeling of silent helplessness and shame, unable to secure help, unable to even find words to defend myself with. And I know I never went to school training bra-less again.

I had forgotten about that kid. Until last night, in the middle of a conversation with Mike about the debate, he came back. 

Watching Trump stalk around Clinton, listening to him make assertions and bluster and interrupt and throw up his hands, was profoundly uncomfortable. I loved Hillary more than I ever have as I watched, because she kept her calm in the face of that menace. At one point I was afraid he was going to push her. How does she do it? How does she stand there, just a few feet away, and smile calmly?

I know I'm not alone when I say the debates are tough for me to watch. 

Afterwards, we talked about how it doesn't seem to matter what Trump says. His support doesn't seem linked to the content of his speech. That's why he can say anything he wants. It seems to be more about the assertion of power. As long as he appears powerful and confident, it just doesn't matter. So coming back at him with information, or policy details, or TRUTH, means very little - at least in terms of "winning" in the crudest sense.

I felt increasingly despairing as we talked. How can it be that so many people admire the worst kind of man? I wondered: what would a noble and effective response be? What could Hillary honorably do in these debates that would somehow make him less appealing, less valid? Because truly, I told Mike, he is just like a blustering mean boy in school. He is the kind of enraging person that it can feel impossible to win against. He is a person that makes you fear there is no justice.

I started crying. I felt a kind of helplessness, unable to imagine what another woman could do in the face of this charismatic, shameless meanness, with TV cameras running and millions of people watching her every blink in order to tweet about it.

And then I remembered that boy announcing to the class, after a careful, forced investigation, that I was not wearing a bra. 

Hilary handles Trump way better than I handled that bully. But the very idea that a presidential candidate could stir up that memory makes me want to cry all over again. 

We let Frances watch the beginning of the debate. I regret it. How can a mother protect her girls (and boys) from the worst kind of men, when PBS broadcasts one of them stalking the floor of a presidential debate? And what more would that lost boy in the sixth grade have been tempted to try, if he had been emboldened by the example set in 2016? 

welcoming

 

Every afternoon my heart beats just a little faster as I approach the long benches where the children in the primary classes are seated, waiting to be picked up. I scan the small faces, looking for Beatrice. I love to see her before she sees me, and I love to surprise her. She lights up. 

I get the best hug, and then a flood of words about the things she did in school, and then, inevitably, she turns to her friend You Jie. And the two of them turn to me and plead, usually while jumping up and down, to have a play date. A very very very long playdate. A sleeping over playdate. Which bed can I sleep in at your house, anyway?

But I don't know You Jie's parents. So every day I tell them that as soon as I talk to You Jie's mama or papa we will plan a time to play. But honestly, I haven't been trying very hard. 

One of the hardest parts about Mike's illness, especially for the children, has been our compromised ability to host. Kids are loud and unpredictable and there have been times over the past 15 months that I've wanted to muzzle our three so that Mike could feel sick or sleep in relative peace. At those times adding more kids would be a set up for disaster: I'd be driving myself crazy trying to contain the mess, and they'd be wondering why Frances and Gabriel's mom is such a stressed out nag. 

Last fall was especially hard. The children were all starting at a new school, and at the same time Mike was very, very sick on chemo and radiation. I found myself meeting other parents and awkwardly inviting my children over to their houses. Socially weird, yes, but my kids' loneliness and disorientation was breaking my heart. I knew they needed time to solidify new friendships and also knew the last thing Mike needed was more children running up and down the stairs. 

So I'd ask: could our kids get together to play? And could you deal with them? At your house? I was so raw and vulnerable then, and I would try not to cry over our helplessness, and try not to focus too much on the fact that this other person had smiled politely and said hello, how are you? and my response was that my husband has cancer and because of that we moved abruptly and we are feeling lost and uncertain about the future and can my kids come play at your house? Oh, and it's nice to meet you too. And please know I'm normally not this needy and weepy and you don't have to be afraid of me or my children. We're not like this. Not usually. We won't make you uncomfortable, at least we'll try not to. And please don't judge me too much. But anyway, when would be good for you?

It wasn't easy, but for the most part it kind of worked. Ask and you shall receive. Seriously, it's good advice. People have been marvelously kind and generous with my children (and, by extension, me).

But getting back to hosting: I really hate the feeling of hesitating before I ask someone in. Hospitality is a virtue that I hold dear. Feeding people feels so good. So, when Mike came home from his first treatment on this clinical trial and it became clear that it was not going to knock him out like previous treatments have...? I still hesitate - is it okay? is Mike sleeping? - and then I remind myself, it is okay. 

Last night, on a whim, I implored Tessa to bring her family over to eat some pasta in the twenty minutes we had left before she and Gabriel had to go to soccer practice. And they came! And brought green beans. It feels almost unreal to me, that I can spontaneously bring four friends into the kitchen and pass around the parmesan and watch our families eat together without any internal twisting up over whether we are too loud or if I should make everyone go onto the porch because so many people might be stressful. But Mike was right there, one of the people eating pasta. 

And so yesterday, I mustered up my courage and waited for You Jie's mom at pick up. I introduced myself and did something I haven't been able to do with a new small friend in a long time: I asked if You Jie could come over to play. 

We all ended up walking home together. The little girls held hands, looking back at us and grinning, almost disbelieving their good luck: the dream was finally becoming reality. On the way home, I ended up telling You Jie's mom about cancer and living in my mom's house and all of it in response to her innocent get-to-know-you questions, but I felt okay. So many of those tears that pushed up against my words last year, every time I had to meet someone new, were about the difficulty of perceiving myself (or imagining others' perceptions of me) as needy and messy and broken. 

Church people like to talk about radical hospitality. More than just greeting people at the door: a much deeper kind of welcome. The way Beatrice encounters her friends outside her classroom in the morning, running to greet them, yelling out their names, grinning uncontrollably - talk about radical welcome. The children hang their jackets on the hooks outside and then run into the class, straight up to their teacher Jane, greeting her with enthusiastic delight. It makes me melt every time I see it. When they say good morning, eyes a-sparkling, what they are really saying is: you are wonderful, Jane! You are precious, and we absolutely love to be here with you! 

Welcoming people with that kind of boundless acceptance - opening wide the doors without hesitation - feels really, really good, as any of the kids in Beatrice's class would tell you. 

I fumbled a bit talking to You Jie's mom but I didn't feel like crying or protecting myself, and this too seems like a hospitable gesture. It's the kind I've been practicing for many months now. I haven't always been able to share my home and my kitchen, but I have tried to share my experience with you, to welcome you in to my brokenness. 

Once Katie told me she and another friend joked about how they might try hosting Meagan-style. What style is that? Oh you know, she said, making the salad as people come in, and asking them to help chop or stir, having a messy art project underway all over the kitchen table. 

I guess that is my hosting style. Even under the healthiest of circumstances, guests in my home see how I make the sausage. In fact, I ask them to help me make it. 

Which is maybe like this blog. Come in, come in! Let me welcome you to this messy interior space! Would you like some moments of grace, and moments of terror? While you're here, could you help me make sense of this heartbreaking, beautiful, broken world?

To be radically hospitable, maybe one is obligated to bring her own vulnerability and raggedness to the encounter. Otherwise it doesn't hold the potential to heal; it isn't an authentic connection. When you offer someone a glass of water and look him in the eyes, it's impossible to hide. You're exposed. This is why being around the primary classroom is so profoundly joyful: they all look you in the eye, and invite you to do the same. They are so comfortable seeing and being seen, just as we are.

This ambition to open the doors of my unpolished self for strangers and friends - any of whom might be angels - is essentially self-motived. It feels amazing, when I am strong enough. I am welcomed when I welcome. And I like to think that the more I can share myself fully with all kinds of people - especially annoying people, and needy people, and unsuccessful people (the kind of person I am afraid that I actually am) - the more I can offer radical hospitality to the weirdest and most neglected among us, the more comfortable I will become with that gesture, and the more I might offer the same radical hospitality to myself. Weirdo that I am. 

What would it be like, to offer that kind of delighted acceptance to oneself? To what depths might a generosity and a gracious receiving, circling back in one continuous internal gesture, fortify our spirits for all the tragedy and joy inevitably coming our way?

Welcome, me. You are wonderful. 

and it burns burns burns

At Hope Lodge, where we stayed in New York, Healing Touch is on offer every Thursday for cancer patients and caregivers. If we had stayed that long, I would have signed up. My only experience prior to our stay was when I had a nasty pinched nerve just beneath my right shoulder blade a couple of years ago. I went to work that morning holding myself rigid; every time I sneezed or laughed it hurt something awful. My colleague Bernadette, a psychotherapist and Healing Touch practitioner, noticed I was moving strangely and asked what was wrong.

Now, I must tell you, I'm sort of a funny case. I'm a chronic hanger-around-the-fringes of yoga communities and other places where people talk with conviction about chakras and energy fields. I'm genuinely fascinated by all kinds of work that integrates touch, movement and breath into holistic healing. I believe in the importance of quiet, intentional laying on of hands. I crave it when I am hurt - actually I yearn for hugs and physical contact most of the time - see twelve a day. But I've never really been a Believer. I'm more of a Dabbler, a Willing Participant. I always maintain a bit of distance; I want the freedom to make a joke about wacky mystical bullshit. Especially when people start getting preachy.

Bernadette asked me to show her the place that hurt. I pointed. She placed her hand gently on my back and we were quiet together for maybe a minute (this was while other clinicians trickled into the room for a staff meeting about to begin). She took her hand off my back and looked at me quietly. I thought: that's it? It still hurts, lady. You were supposed to fix me up in the two minutes we had between our last client and this meeting. What about that healing mojo?

Honey, she finally said, you're holding your breath so that you can avoid feeling the pain, but that's making it worse. When we feel pain, something is calling for our attention. You can't avoid it. You have to breathe right into the place that hurts.

Oh. Right. Despite its obvious appeal, avoiding pain isn't usually a good strategy. I depend on the wisdom of other people to help me remember.

She was totally right and after a few excruciating breaths my back felt better. The pain was completely resolved by the afternoon.

This morning Beatrice was dragging her feet and telling all of us that she didn't want to go to school. She flopped onto the floor and cried when I tried to help her get dressed. She refused to open her mouth when she saw the toothbrush approach.

Finally she mentioned a fire drill. She didn't want to do the fire drill today. It might be scary. Aha. So Gabriel patiently told her all about fire drills. Mike told her there would be no fire as I slid her arms into her rain jacket - even though it's called a fire drill.

She was only slightly reassured, and kept crying on and off all the way to the car. We said goodbye to Frances and Gabriel and with mounting irritation (enough with the fire drill business, good lord) I sighed and looked back at buckled up Beatrice in the mirror. And when I saw her face, I felt my heart, of its own accord, drop heavily in my chest, freighted with love for her.

We watched an old episode of Mr. Rogers recently, during which I listened to the dialogue between two characters in the world of make believe with near-bewilderment. Lady Aviland articulated Daniel Tiger's worry, whatever it was, again and again, mirroring it slowly back to him, giving language to his fear with a kind of patience normally associated with sainthood. Maybe kids need a long time to transfer a worry from the inside to the outside, from feelings to words.

Would you like to snuggle and talk about your worries? I asked. She said yes. We settled in to hang out in the back of the minivan with the doors open to the cool rainy air.

Okay. What are you worried might happen today?

I am worried that my body will be in flames. I am worried that my friends will have burns. I am afraid of a fire truck being pretend but then turning real and coming to my school and there being a fire. I am afraid we won't be able to leave without touching the flames and getting burned. I am afraid firemen will have a truck that makes loud noises and I think someone will be hurt.

Did you catch that first worry? That her body will be in flames?

We had to go right to the source of fear. I had to stop trying to shake off her worry, and rather breathe into the pain with her. We talked about why schools have fire drills, how fires very rarely happen but it's good to know how to be safe just in case, how no one will have a burn today or have to touch flames. She had to keep telling me about the images in her mind that were truly terror-inducing, over and over.

Sometimes clients tell me they don't want to talk about their depression, because that will only make it worse. If they pay attention to it, it will probably get bigger and bigger and become overwhelming.

It is counter-intuitive, really, that the opposite is almost always the case.

Beatrice agreed, after our talk, to walk into school with me. She had a perceptibly lighter step. She  ran right into her classroom and greeted her friends with contagious enthusiasm. Magic.

I left thinking about her, about the hugeness of her worries and how she was able to let them go.

I remember the midwife's face hovering over mine during Frances's birth, how she firmly and humorlessly informed me that it was time to stop shrieking, Meagan. Stop avoiding. Vocalize much deeper. Prepare to go through the Ring of Fire.

Mike just barely managed to stop himself from singing the little horn riff from Johnny Cash's song of the same title. It wasn't the time, he says.

I doubt I would have noticed anyway. Sometimes shrieking and hesitating seems so much better than heading into the fire. Oh Beatrice! Maybe sometimes we do have to enter flames, in order to pass through and out of our pain.

After I dropped her off I went to a yoga class with a teacher I admire. She was teaching a series of classes on the different chakra centers and today's was, what do you know, the yellow-hued, fire-associated third chakra.

When I left class, all cleansed by the heat of yoga practice, I walked to my car, parked further down the street. Just as I was getting in I heard sirens approach. I slid in quickly and shut the door to be sure I was out of their way. My heart racing, I counted three fire trucks and then three more fire vehicles scream past me.

I couldn't help myself. Frightened, I drove by the New School, steeling myself to leap through flames to save my kids. Just in case the firefighters needed some help.

But all was quiet, cool, and rainy: a perfect day for a fire drill.

every moment

Enjoy every moment. Savor it all. Carpe diem!!

Thus were we exhorted when I shared that Mike and I had decided to take the kids out of school and head off to a nearby state park for a midweek mini family vacation. We wanted to go away together before Mike begins a new clinical trial in New York next Monday. This treatment's goal is to get his cancer into remission so that he can safely have a stem cell transplant (read: many potentially harrowing months ahead for my family). His cancer has the worst timing, and we've had to cancel woodsy mountain idylls over two consecutive summers. So this was the first time we'd had a real family vacation in well over two years.

But just two days? Well then, squeeze as much delight and family love and adventure in as you can! 

The problem with "enjoy every moment" is that we are still ourselves and, related to this, life simply isn't enjoyable all the time, even on vacation, even when you really appreciate being able to go at all. It's a bit of pressure, isn't it? Enjoy every minute! 

Now, I know that everyone who expressed this sentiment did it with a loving heart and sincere happiness that we were finally going to get a goddamn break. I recently read an Anne Lamott essay about a family with whom she is very close. Their two year old has cystic fibrosis. She describes the time before and after diagnosis, when they made the irreversible journey from the universe of normal, sometimes-pleasant-sometimes-stressful family life to the Land of the Fucked. 

Boy did that make me laugh. Ah, yes. The Land of the Fucked! I know it well.  

And people who love us can see us bumbling around in this uncertain, treacherous territory from out there, where most of them live, in the more predictable world of work and kids and family and vacations. So when we shared that we had found a temporary exit door and were going to return to where families take vacations (the midweek, September nature of it belied our continued alien status, but still), our friends and family celebrated this triumph with us. And they wanted us to have some Serious Fun, to take the edge off life in the valley of the shadow of death and squeeze all the pleasures there were to be had out of forty eight hours in French Creek State Park.

Let me make a confession. Within the past week I've told not one but two friends to enjoy every minute of their upcoming adventuresome international vacations. I know now that when I said it, some meanness and aggression were behind the sentiment. I think I felt resentful and small and stuck in the Land of the Fucked. You know about Mike's cancer, right? You know that we can't plan more than three days in advance ever, right? So enjoy your trip. Some of us don't go on trips. But you do, like, all the time, and if you waste it with fights over where to go for dinner or space out and forget to appreciate all the amazing architecture, it will be a moral failing and an offense to every last denizen who shares my new address.  

Anyway. I'm a little ashamed about that. I'm sorry. My heart shrinks sometimes. 

So back to our trip: people I love are telling me to savor savor savor, and I'm making a packing list and looking for sheets that will fit the cabin bunk beds and a bigger cooler and glancing at the confusing directions and the time is growing short and I might not get to run before we pick up the kids at school and go, not to mention it's still raining, and I'm wondering why I have to do everything around here anyway, and I am feeling very irritable. 

Enjoy every minute. Right. So far, not so much. But we made it there, and despite the drippy weather the children were all delighted by the cabin and proceeded to leap off the bunk beds over and over, to break the place in. It was too wet to make a campfire so the older kids held marshmallows over matches to set them on fire, and Beatrice and I snuck into the cabin and used the microwave to blow up our marshmallows and make them squishy. Mike sighed in disappointment at our quickness to turn to modern conveniences in the middle of the woods. Voila! S'mores! We're on vacation!

Beatrice, who has moved too many times and faced too much uncertainty for a three year old to comfortably process, began to melt down right and left, every time she asked for something (a book, a snack, a toy) that I hadn't brought with us. I finally figured out that she thought we were moving to this little cabin in a state park permanently. New house #5. The bunk beds are nice and all Mama, but you didn't even bring a box of crackers! We are lost!

We all reassured her, we all sympathized, and we all got annoyed, too. We suggested she retreat into the bunk bed room to cry, so we could properly enjoy our microwaved marshmallows and the peace of the woods. That didn't really fly.

The next day the rain had stopped and we went hiking. Beatrice protested wildly. Initially Frances and I took turns giving her piggy back rides and reminding her not to choke us. Mike felt tired. We discovered that the Boone Trail I had chosen was actually 6 miles, not .6 miles.

I remembered that I get annoyed at my husband when we travel. I remembered that hiking with a three year old is pretty touch-and-go. I tried to accept these things, take a deep breath, and notice the riotous beauty everywhere I turned instead.

And I did. And you would have seen it too. The woods in September in Pennsylvania, if you can put your own enjoyment-shortcomings aside, are spectacular. Yellow leaves drifted down continuously through the stands of trees, and the smell of earthy wet decomposition was pervasive, an additional transparent color layered over everything. We were present on the brilliant cusp of autumn, when the summer is at its wettest, richest, greenest height, just beginning the tip and slide into a time of warm autumn colors, of greater stillness, of death.  

Beatrice decided she wasn't too scared or tired after all, and that she'd rather walk. It was fun, because there was so much to see on the forest floor, including little adorable toads. Gabriel is our most gifted observer of the natural world, and he led the effort to spot these charming little guys. By the end, it was a thirteen toad hike.

And things continued from there. We were still our anxiety-riddled raw-edged selves, but we began to relax into this new space with greater harmony. We skipped (and hurled) rocks at the lake. We ate a lot of sweets. We played cards, and drew pictures, and some of us spent hours futilely working on a campfire, watching it spark to life momentarily only to hear the wood begin to hiss, a harbinger of fire failure. Too wet. But such heroic efforts! Mike and Gabriel definitely made some smoke, and eventually humor, the absurd and ticklish kind that sometimes, thanks to grace, comes with big disappointments. We giggled helplessly about the doomed campfire. We lit paper plates. We sang songs around the ashy firepit in awful rounds and I snuck back to the microwave to make another squishy marshmallow for Bea.

The next day was even better. The morning hike was glorious, peaceful. We didn't see another soul on the trail - just us, walking a carpet of soggy leaves with those elegant trees overhead, the smooth  lichen-covered rocks, some caterpillars and spindly daddy long legs, brilliant springy moss, a toad or two, occasional splashes of sunshine. You had to give in. You just couldn't help but enjoy it.

It was a good vacation.

 

And I've been thinking about this. It isn't reasonable to expect a family of human beings (especially the one you are a part of) to enjoy every moment. But you might aspire to accept every moment. 

To try to be present for at least most of the moments. To resist running away from the moments, even when the little one lies down on the trail and wails, or when the almost-teenager shrieks about the lack of privacy. 

Don't run away from the moments when you feel yourself shaking with anger or heavy with unbearable sadness. Because those too are gifts. Take it from me, a citizen of the Land of the Fucked, a stark place where everything gets stripped away. See through this rawness. In my post-vacation, heart-healed state, I now speak not with judgement but rather gentleness: if you can, set aside the expectation. Instead accept every moment, that your heart might open wider and wider still, that love might scour you out, and fill you up.