FAMILY

LOST and FOUND

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There was fog and some low clouds in the coast when we went out just after 6 this morning. We walked north, as we usually do, picking up trash and hoping for beach glass. I found three pieces in three colors, but my husband had no such luck and thought he would be skunked again.

On our way home, Gary saw what he assumed was a clear jelly fish cast onshore. As is his habit, he gave it a nudge with his foot. Instead of wobbling, the clear object spun around on the sand. Gary had his sea glass. A huge piece found.

In the mean time, fog closed in and as we walked further south toward home, both the waves to our west and the houses fronting the shore to our east became mere suggestions. This reminded both of us of a time my old dog show partner, Bonita, was here with her husband and children. We went for a walk and fog closed in so thick that visibility was reduced to perhaps ten feet. It was extraordinary!

One of Bonnie’s children became lost and searching for the child was impossible, like search for a penny on the floor in absolute darkness. Moments later, as best I recall though it seemed like hours in frantic effort, the child was found. The father began to yell, a reaction I remember from a day long before that when Alan went missing in Lower Woodland Park in Seattle. Gary and I were both nearly hysterical. My mother was with us and commented mildly that Alan had probably gone to the bathroom. But his parents were panicked and running everywhere to search. It was my mother who strolled over to the public restroom and returned our toddler (perhaps he was 4?). Our immediate impulse was to yell at him, but my mother calmed us both.

When we lose those we love, even for an hour or a moment, the adrenaline and sorrow can overwhelm good sense.

That is what we spoke of on our way home. We recognized the faint rooflines silhouetted against the brighter eastern sun.

A friend and his wife have lost a baby at 20 weeks gestation. They are handling this with grace, from what I can see. Hundreds of miles away, I am not there to offer physical comfort. Is there any comfort to be had? I cannot imagine. What they have lost will not be found again. Perhaps they believe in another life and reunion then, but for now, that child is gone as if never was. Lost in fog.

When we have fog like today in summer, this is generally a sign that Portland will have a 100° day. It is what is forecasted. It is a best guess, but only an educated one, not a certainty. There few things certain in life other than morning and loss. We all lose people we love during our lifetime. It is rare to survive to adulthood without gathering ghostly memories of people we will never see again on earth.

Just now, I want to remember the little girl walking out of the fog, my son grasping the hand of his grandmother. Those children are grown now. They, like my friend who lost his baby, will experience the entire range of human losses. They will also find courage and companionship. They will find meaning where they can. They will create and consume. They will share good intentions and make mistakes. And sometimes what they most love will seem lost.

Like all those before them, they will take their losses in hand and search for meaning. And they will, sometimes, find what they need to walk on in the fog.

“Father, Son, and the Holy Spigot”

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Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine. My title is a line from Four Weddings and a Funeral, otherwise notable for the use of an elegy by W. H. Auden, listed as “Funeral Blues” but also known as “Stop All the Clocks.” It is a poem of friendship and devotion and love.

But I mean to write about not partisan or political tolerance, but about the actual support for Donald Trump. On most levels this supportive base completely mystifies me. The man disrespects nearly everyone, including what might be considered the conservative base. He is a friend to our national enemies and an enemy to our friends. He has been married three times, and committed adultery while his most recent wife was in childbed. He has used language on tape that the men I admire would never use. He has insulted a Gold Star family, a POW, and the men and officers of his own military. He admires dictators and autocrats and seems indifferent to nations struggling to achieve what we have in the way of freedom. He is a hypocrite by both claiming religious faith and failing to evidence any knowledge of Christian teachings.

So here’s my understanding of why some still flock to his message:

  1. Money. Despite the fact that he was born wealthy, was handed wealth, and apparently had squandered more than he actually possessed at election, Trump is filthy rich. We admire money, don’t we? Money is power. Money is success. Never mind the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, the man is selfish and mean. But he’s rich and America loves a rich man. “Wealthy”, by the 19th century, was used as a girl’s name. In that case, of course, the meaning was not about wealth in terms of money, which the Bible and Jesus absolutely condemned, but “wealthy in the sight of the Lord.” It was that much-denied group the Puritans who preached that monetary success was a sign of God’s favor, despite an entire book in the Bible designed to refute that notion. Americans gave up Puritanical notions about sex, but decided we liked money. So some like the man because he’s rich.
  2. Vulgarity. He says exactly what he thinks and what many Americans apparently also think. He’s rich enough not to care if some object to his racism and sexism and bias against compassion and humility. They like that Trump attacks the poor for being poor, that he supports religious freedom so long as that religion is the one he pretends to follow. It is a cynical view of many Americans that everyone, or a majority of people, would speak exactly as Trump does, that they would ridicule a disabled person if they could get away with it. They like him for spouting hatred they dare not spout themselves, and for providing an opportunity for that venom to achieve acceptance.
  3. He is Everyman. Trump proves that anyone can be President. We don’t have to know the Constitution or pay attention to the news, study the complexities of international and national events, or even vote in elections. Certainly, if we are smart, we avoid paying taxes. We can brag that we “know more than the generals” and belittle those who have devoted their lives to the public good. Seriously. Some like the idea that a President can be as ill-informed, perhaps even as stupid, selfish, and self-serving as they are themselves. They genuinely believe no one is nicer than they are themselves. And they are not nice.
  4. Government. There are individuals in the world more powerful than small governments. There are companies more powerful that most nations. Yet, paranoia about government control is rampant. Children raised in strict, top-down households, particularly households with a strong authoritarian father, are often fearful of government. The psychological theory explaining this well-documented tendency postulates that when a child’s initial introduction to control and power is cruel and arbitrary, the child often retains distrust of governance throughout life. Trump removes government controls, and many do not seem to mind that those left in power are now the ones more concerned about profit than people. It’s the money again. Some will forgive most anything if a profit is to be made, even at the cost of health, safety, opportunity, and futures of others.

In contrast, it is an essential part of the American character to respect the needs of each individual, so long as this does not trespass on the needs of others. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is at our core. To this end, we live together as human beings have always lived in community. There is evidence of this truth.

I offer Dr. Salk.

“On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952—an epidemic year for polio—there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, which is known as ‘infant paralysis’ because it mainly affects children, Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.”

Both my husband and I were spared this disease when we were children because Dr. Jonas Salk invented a vaccine that protected us and he gave it away for the public good. Both of us knew people who had polio, were confined in iron lungs for weeks or months, and spent the rest of their lives struggling to walk. Dr. Salk made an adequate living as a doctor, he claimed. “His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, ‘Well, to the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ ”

There is irony throughout my explanations. It is ironic to trust Trump because he is “successful” and “says what he thinks” and is as petty as the worst of us, because our life experiences should tell us that success is rarely gained only by those who are deserving. Surely, some people are kinder than others, not out of any selfish motive, but because they sincerely care about being good.

I am genuinely grateful that there are people willing to sacrifice for the common good, that some people are smarter and more generous than I am myself, and that consideration of the needs and feelings of others is not a conservative or liberal notion, but a humane one. And I am grateful that the majority of Americans feel as I do.

My hope and the hope of a majority of Americans is that we will soon inoculate our government against the current virus infecting our nation.

Yet, there is good. There is good in each of us. We fear and are comforted. We hunger and are fed. We are homeless and are housed. We join together to maintain the common good, because as human beings that is what we must do to survive. It is what we have always done. A strong nation protects weak from strong, the vulnerable from powerful, and small from the great. That is, ultimately, our greatness.

NEVER TURN YOUR BACK

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“Never turn your back on the ocean,” we were warned as children.

Most people think of the “front” of their home as the side facing the street. What we call the front faces the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful view.

The hummingbird above—can you see her?—she has her back to me. I was fifty feet away when I shot this photo and she was at least 15 feet in the air, sipping nectar from a semi-tropical plant in the neighbor’s yard. Perhaps it is from New Zealand? The hummer was not alone. We counted at least four hummingbirds feeding a couple of days ago.

Just now, I spotted a hummer in our own garden, checking out the lavender and pale thyme, before settling to dine on the royal purple blossoms of our butterfly bush. The dark pink escalonia pulled her away for a few seconds, but then she was back hovering over the purple. We also have purple hebe, pink geraniums, glistening red-orange “Lucifer,” and white rugosa roses blooming.

In the front yard, the wild roses and ceanothus are done, the honeysuckle past its prime, but another pink rugosa hydrangeas are in full flower. The native salal, which flowers and fruits simultaneously, will feed bees with nectar and us with berries for months. Soon the montbrecia will begin opening while the salal and hydrangea go on to September.

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She seems to have turned and looked at me in the photo above, but I was deliberately distant. I did not want to disturb her.

There is always something blooming in the garden.

This is a deliberate choice. Most of the garden is evergreen plants, shrubs and bulbs and other flowers were chosen each season to ensure we could feed local bees and birds throughout the year. Even in winter, we have blooms.

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On the beach we also avoid disturbing the birds, though Gary and I both talk to the crows, and sometimes he pretends to want to pick up a seagull. Gary goes straight toward one saying, “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” The gull doesn’t mind him much, but walks away if he gets too close.

My strategy is different. I do not walk in the direction of gulls resting onshore, I do not look at them directly. They seem to understand that I have business of my own that does not involve them.

Yesterday morning an osprey was right out in front. Later one of the four eagles passed overhead. We saw a Cooper’s hawk just a few months ago when it rested on our garden gate. It’s leaving was too fast to see.

The ocean is always in front of our house. Before our house was here, there was spruce forest right down to the beach. Before that, the beach itself followed a different line. The water washes and washes the shore, sweeping up from its basalt basin onto the edge of the continent. It is not only water but the shore that moves. One day the Cascadia fault line will give way and a wave is likely to take not only our home but the land now under it. Everything I recognize as front or back of our house will vanish in an hour.

But the ocean? The ocean will remain. I expect the birds will too.

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WRITING EDUCATION

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I was Class Speaker in 2007 at Pacific University’s MFA in Writing graduation.

A writer friend of mine who has taught in an MFA program for several years reported that not one of her students had become a “successful” writer by publishing a book. I shared that among students from the two years of my MFA program, only a handful had published books. Of those, most were poets and most came to the program with a chapbook already published.

Tom Jenks writes in the newest edition of his online publication:

“By 1975 the number of graduate programs had grown to fifty-two, a number that in the subsequent nine years tripled to 150, and by 2017 the number grew to more than four hundred. If undergraduate programs are included, today’s number exceeds two thousand. Across approximately eighty years, writing programs have proliferated as the accepted foundation for the would-be writer’s route of entry to a life of writing, publishing, and/or teaching. …

“The 2016 AWP conference in Los Angeles hosted twelve thousand attendees, a number that represents perhaps 7 percent of an estimated 170,000 MFA degree holders and students in the US. Currently, graduate writing programs and undergraduate programs with an emphasis in creative writing turn out some fourteen thousand new degree holders each year.”—Narrative

Need I point out that we do not publish 14,000 books from “new” writers each year? The industry published a bit over 316k titles in 2010, but actual sales were down by 14 million that same year. More books, fewer buyers. A book has less than a 1% chance of showing up in a bookstore. That is a bit better odds than being published by most noted literary magazines, which rarely pay anything to their authors.

Academic life? Other than the (very) rare person who lands a tenure track position, the demand for college professors without substantial publications and research means most work as adjunct. Trust me, a high school English teacher is paid much better. A good cocktail waitress is paid much better. Retail sales at least do not result in hours spent scoring papers.

Years ago, I read that the average full-time writer earns less than $10k/year. True, Neil Gaiman, but there is only one of him. The nation does not need many new writers. They will not earn a living through creative writing of any kind. A writer I knew from years ago had this piece of advice: “Marry money.” Unlike the graduate of an engineering program or even one with an English degree, very few creative writing majors will find work relevant to their education. Their odds are about on par with the high school character actor becoming the next Cate Blanchett.

So of the majority of people who graduated with me in 2005, what are we up to? Several are not writing at all. They have stopped pursuing “writing, publishing, and/or teaching” altogether. Some have moved on in their academic careers. At least half published work in literary journals or books, but several of those are not actively writing now. Only two that I know of have new books out in the past few years. They are not making even $10k/year from those books.

I am mostly retired from teaching but still writing. I am publishing in journals. According to Duotrope, an online resource I use to locate markets and track my submissions, my publication rate has consistently been “higher than the average for members who have submitted to the same markets.” My acceptance ratio has varied over the years from a low of around 5% at the start to a brief high of 14%. Just now I am at 8.5%. I submit to journals than accept less than 1% of submissions recorded by Duotrope. At no time have I made a profit on my writing. I have been published in fine journals (without pay) and have presented to regional and national conferences (for zero pay). I have been paid for technical writing, but I was better paid freelancing graphic design, which was not my major, or drawing plans for an architect, for which I had no educational preparation at all. Even when I was judging field trials across the West, a hobby, I was paid travel expenses and was housed and fed. Writing and presentations on writing? Not a chance. I have never actually been paid for any literary work, though I do expect a small check to arrive in the next month from a paying market. Maybe.

So why the degree?

I had promised myself an MFA. I assumed it would be in the visual arts since my undergraduate degrees were in the visual arts. I have BFA degrees in ceramics and metal and a BA in Arts Education. I came to writing relatively late in life because I wanted to return to teaching and there were no arts jobs available. I thought I would teach Social Studies, those classes where I learned to write essays, but instead I began teaching English, where all writing is taught these days. I did not need an MFA for that job.

My MFA cost me $20,000 and I will never see a return on that investment in any job. I had already written three novels and published essays, stories, and poetry before I began the program.

So why?

There were people in my program who only wanted to write a book, people who needed a terminal degree to advance in academia, and people who left the program and became musicians. I have kept writing and reading and writing and reading. Why the MFA? I was already productive and growing.

It was that promise to myself. Self-indulgence really. Just as most the other actual writing is self-indulgence. My sons had graduated from college and I found that the frugal habits I had developed when we were a one-income family and throughout our sons’ education were not as easy to break as I once thought they would be. I was at the top of the pay scale as a teacher, my husband was also working, and we went no where on vacation, drank only cheap wine and good homemade coffee, used no drugs, and ate out rarely at restaurants labeled with one fork, for “cheap eats.” I could afford $20,000 spent over the course of two years.

The degree was for me. I hoped to become a better writer and to find a writing community since my efforts at finding a writing group had failed again and again. (There was the group where the poet-leader declared fiction “annoying.” The group that wanted mostly to gossip. The one that wanted to get high. The one that self-published horrible trendy fiction.)

Jenks assures me that I didn’t need that MFA degree, that I will likely join the tens of thousands who will never “use” their degree to be a “successful author,” a term even he finds it difficult the define. Did I enjoy the program? Yes, very much. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Did I find the writing community that I desired? Not really. Did it make me a better writer? Perhaps it did. Did it help me to become a published writer? No, it did not. That is something else again. I got something from the program, made a few friends, and often consider how to return. That is enough.

Were I today in my early 20s, a white girl, even a white girl from a modest upbringing _MG_0049and married to a man raised in poverty, what value would I bring to fiction? What story do I offer? It is a question I ask myself even now.

“Some things can be taught, some learned—so much depends on the character of the writer.”—Tom Jenks

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CLEANING OUT

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Seeking a loving home: nearly 100 pieces of Havilland porcelain, a pattern called “Ranson” made in France about a hundred years ago and emblazoned with a W or M in 24k gold. I have never used these pieces. Even my grandmother never used them, to my knowledge.

We paid off our mortgage on Tuesday. We asked for a payout balance and had the bank wire the funds. The trick is that we will still be putting the money into the bank to cover insurance and taxes. It feels good even so.

As I type, my husband is realizing a long-term goal. He is emptying the attic. It is part of a broader effort to streamline the house and rid ourselves of accumulated stuff. We have filled the garage and atrium with things that will not return to the house.

For many years I have presented my husband with a pair of champagne flutes on our anniversary. We generally broke them, or at least one of them, but I still have twenty or more cluttering up a cabinet.

No one wants this sort of thing anymore, I find. And neither do I.

In my childhood, coming to the beach was an enormous effort. The highway through Arch Cape was so evenly lined with aged spruce that finding the turn to the narrow gravel track leading to my grandfather’s house was tricky. My mother had spent all her childhood summers here, but even so we always overshot the turn. Today, and especially during the 4th, the change is unmistakable. Nearly all the houses are short-term rentals. A new business of several thousand square feet will be added to the property that was a tiny deli and post office in my childhood. The three-unit rental cabins south of us are converted to year-round rental use and a new 7-unit motel is only the latest.

This is not the quiet, isolated beach where my great grand-aunts purchased property for $10 in 1911. They packed up toilet paper for the summer and drove on the beach at low tide to get here on Memorial Day and stayed till Labor Day. My grandfather inherited the place in the 30s and continued the tradition. My mother raked crabs for supper as a child. She and her sister had to clean the lanterns of soot once a week. There was no electricity or running water. The outhouse hung over the swamp next door. The house on that sand-filled lot rents for $695/night in September these days. It’s fully booked for the rest of the summer at over a thousand/night.

The house was always “too rich for our blood” with taxes costing more than the mortgage on our Seattle house. When we moved to my grandfather’s house, it was a two-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, one story house. We added back the second story my grandfather removed in the 40s. Our children were born here and raised and went to public school here. Beyond home improvements, we have added too much stuff.

I have bins of yarn and fabric and some day I must have whittled down our possessions so that our sons will not be faced with the monumental task of doing it for us. We did that for my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, and even my grandmother’s second husband’s brother. We still have unexamined boxes of family documents and photos that my mother never sorted and which I will never sort. All the lifetime accumulation of stuff no one wants. If I could sell it, we might afford a vacation. In 44 years of marriage we had no honeymoon and have never traveled for longer than the week spent with friends in Alberta nearly 30 years ago. It is memories of that sort I still desire. But then I live in a vacation paradise, too beautiful to leave. Instead I have beautiful things.

I confess even I no longer want them.

When I explained to my mother that inheriting my grandfather’s house was the reason we had children, that having a safe and largely undeveloped place for children to play was essential to our vision of child-rearing, she called that “a ridiculous reason to have children.”

Maybe she never made the connection between her own childhood spent playing in the woods in Gresham and on the sand here, and my own childhood play in woods and swamp north of Seattle. I cannot imagine growing up in a city. I cannot picture what sort of childhood that would have been. My husband and I both “ran wild” as children. We were determined that our children would have that opportunity.

Those times and those ideals of childhood freedom seem to have gone the way of typewriters. Manual typewriters.

Taxes were the largest portion of our mortgage payment, and living here is really more than we can afford. It always was. There has been no time since 1978 when we could have afforded this house. It has been an enormous gift to live here. Every morning we go for our walk. And Gary is about done emptying the attic.

The china is beautiful. Want it?

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4BITS OF FOUND WISDOM

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We had no local ravens when we moved to the coast in 1979. In 1992 I saw a raven at the crest of highway 26 through the coast range. He stood on the shoulder and four crows walked around him. I would never confuse crows and ravens again. The first raven I saw at sea level would have been while running in the late 1990s. Then a pair moved into the neighborhood. Today we have an extended family of four ravens. This is one of the youngsters.

What to do and how to live.

1. SMILING. As a very young girl I read in one of my mother’s magazines—Redbook?—that smiling was the secret to forming friendships. I was a lonely child, but I learned that lesson that most girls are taught from a magazine.

Too many girl and women have been told to smile. Maybe not so much. Maybe smile only when there is something to smile about. Lesson unlearned.

2. SLEEPING. Somewhere, at least ten years later, I read another article that more permanently altered the way I live my life. A neuroscientist explained that sleeping in on the weekends guaranteed that on Mondays, I would feel “jet-lagged” since my body would have to make a two-three hour adjustment to sleep schedule. I realized then that the secret to getting my eight hours of sleep was not so much bedtime as getting-up time. Yes, I needed to be asleep by ten or eleven at night, but that meant I also needed to have gotten up by six or seven in the morning in order to feel ready to sleep that night. It is the reason I took Art 101 Drawing at 7:30am my first term at the University of Washington. The class was smaller and I knew I would be awake.

Sleeping in these days means 6am, and that is because it is June and the day is bright by 5am.

I have absolutely no memory of where I found this bit of wisdom.

If we struggle to get up Monday morning at 6:30, but we have to because we have to get to work or school, we resist and resent the effort to be wide-awake-an-bushy-tailed at the crack of dawn. We struggle Tuesday and Wednesday, and by Thursday we’re thinking one more day till the weekend. So Friday is only bearable because tomorrow is Saturday. The Saturday and and Sunday we sleep in a couple or three hours, so on Monday morning, we feel cheated of sleep and much start all over again with the struggle to wake.

Get up at the same time every day. No matter what. Pick a time and get up. Go to bed in time to get the sleep you need. And then get up at the same time as yesterday.

3 MY WAY. Another great truth that I might never have come by on my own concerned the Way People Do Things. If you want something done in a particular way—the dishes washed just so, the laundry sorted in a particular way (beyond not putting the red t-shirt in with your white underwear), colored pencils sorted by rainbow—if you are very picky about a job and your partner is not, do it yourself. Yes, I know, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” But this is a reminder that when we are fussy about some things, it is unreasonable to expect anyone else to absorb our fuss, because half the time it’s just our preference.

If it’s rationally better and the other person is willing, teach them to do the job right. But if the precise manner something is done is just a personal preference, for heaven’s sake don’t expect others to see the need.

Do it yourself the way you want. 

4. COMPLAINING. One bit of wisdom dropped on me all by myself partially as a daughter and reinforced as a result of teaching for over 40 years has to do with dealing with parents. You cannot go wrong telling parents something good about their child. I’m a daughter and mother, and as a teacher: Say something nice and keep most criticism to yourself.

My husband and I were not perfect people when I met him and we are certain I still am not a perfect person today. Both of us have our flaws, our fussiness, our weaknesses and fits of temper. My husband dyed the laundry pink at least three times before he learned to sort colors. I have given in to being a morning person. But in the early years of our relationship, while were were famously in love with the giddy passion associated with youth and romance, sometimes we got on one another’s case. We squabbled and quarreled and yelled.

In all those years, I never once complained to his parents about Gary. I did not even complain to my parents about him. Our struggles, however angry and irritating, were between us and they were worth working through because, you know, love. Complaining to his parents would only have been seeking allies. And what kind of future daughter-in-law allies herself with her husband’s parents against him? Not this one.

Do not complain to parents or in-laws about their children. You will only hurt their feelings. They likely did the best they could, and most do as well as anyone. Give them a break.

Did I have complaints about my in-laws’ offspring? Of course. Did Gary? Undoubtedly. We worked it out.

Perhaps that is a reason we have 49 years.

“Hillbilly”

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Last fall, I read the memoir Hillbilly Elegy and I struggled with its view of poverty. The man suffered, but suffering does not necessarily make us wise. I both recognized that he was reporting his personal experience, and felt concerned that his view of his own life was limited by his selfish political point of view. This morning, an essay by Chris Offut, “I Will Always Write About Appalachia” helped me understand why.

“The most recent addition to these false accounts of Appalachian life is the widely read book Hillbilly Elegy, the author of which grew up in the decaying Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio. Nevertheless, he blames his personal difficulties on the culture of Appalachia.”

The writing in Vance’s memoir isn’t anything special, but the story is emotionally compelling. Vance grew up in a violent, loud, drug-afflicted, under-educated, and sometimes poor household, but he had people who genuinely loved him and cared for him, even if those people had their flaws and were not necessarily his parents. I love the quote from a teacher at his former high school: “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.” And then . . .

I began to consider stories I knew best from my own family and from teaching in public schools. I don’t know much about Appalachia, but I do know something about poverty and disadvantage. “Hillbilly” and “white trash” are filthy words in my home.

For one, I know it’s no shame to be poor is immediately followed in my head by “It’s no great honor either” from Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye was not a sinful man, but a good, honest, hardworking father and husband. “Economically disadvantaged” is a euphemism I find personally offensive because it suggest there is something shameful about poverty. Being rich is not supposed to give anyone special rights or privileges, and I have been thinking a lot about that lately. I know being poor is not a sin or a failure.

My husband was raised poor in a family that did not take charity. His family bought “day old” bread from an outlet when he was little, and he picked the mold off his lunch, trying not to be seen doing it. He sat on the porch waiting for his dad to get home on payday because there was no food in the house beyond scraped jars of condiments. His experience of poverty was not unique, and it didn’t happen in Kentucky, but in Arizona, but it was hard. One side of his family was Ballard Swedes from Seattle, Washington and the other was Dust Bowl Scots-Irish share croppers from Oklahoma, orphaned when their mother died and Pappie gave them away.

No one in his family intervened or encouraged him to make something of himself. Vietnam was raging and his hair was long. In the years between high school and college, he had three pieces of luck. He was granted a draft deferment based on his eyesight that eventually became permanent, he began working at the University Book Store where he was exposed to new people and ideas, and he met me. When I graduated from high school the next year, he went to college because I was going to college. My husband graduated from high school with a C average but he was Phi Beta Kappa when he graduated from the University of Washington four years later. Like Vance, he saw no point in pajamas and is still in a perpetual state of what others term catastrophizing. Christmas was fraught when I met him but has become a good holiday through decades of determined effort on my part. He loves his cotton jersey pajamas.

Vance would like to give himself all the credit. He would blame achievement or lack of it on people rather than circumstance, but like my husband, he had some luck.

From the LA Times: “As Vance puts it at the beginning of this American dream memoir, he has done nothing ‘extraordinary.’ So what’s wrong with all those other hillbillies? In suggesting that his own success in Silicon Valley was a matter of refusing cinnamon rolls, Vance is giving us a basis in feeling for the devastating policy Ben Carson wants to enact. People are poor because they deserve to be. And there it is: Trump-era elitism defined.”

Some people abuse the system, and some people are too proud to accept help, even for their children. When my husband was given a sweater by his pastor because his second-hand store clothing was too poor for church and too sad for the pastor to ignore, it was only because his mother won the argument with his father that he was allowed to keep it. It was the nicest item of clothing he ever owned as a child. “White trash” is a filthy expression in my home. “Red neck” was the term I was taught as a child. I would not use it today. Change is not easy.

In my forty-year experience working with students, I witnessed most parents doing the absolute best they knew how. Neglectful poor parents do not necessarily love their children any less than neglectful affluent parents do, but the results tend to be more public among the poor. They are less skillful at concealing problems because they do not have the money to hide behind. Some parents work too many jobs just to get by. I think of a single parent who could not ensure his child did his homework because he got off work in the middle of the night find his teenager drinking soda and playing video games instead of sleeping.

Affluent families have their own troubles involving drugs and mental health, abuse and time. Even in my poor, rural community, some entitled parents send their children to elite private schools. They can afford private lessons and vacations their peers cannot even imagine. Their students drive cars worth more than the average local yearly income. Affluent parents may not need to work two or three jobs to pay rent, but sometimes they work long hours or ignore their children because they choose to do so. The results are similar.

Things go horribly wrong for children, dreadful things happen to them, but in my experience, not always, but often when things go wrong with children—pregnancy, drinking, drugs, crime, dropping out—the causes are not simple genetics, politics, poverty, public education, or an unwillingness to work hard. Something is wrong in the home. Too many children from “nice homes” have revealed the truth of their lives to me. Wealthy or impoverished, when kids’ lives go very wrong, there is nearly always something very wrong in their lives. It is not a character flaw, but reaction to something they cannot control. And there is bad luck again.

Unintended teenage pregnancy caused moves and marriages and monstrous errors beginning with his Mamaw when she was too young to drive. It seems to me to be the particular curse of Vance’s family is early pregnancy. Yet he reflects on this only in passing, perhaps because as a boy it did not hit him personally.

Vance works hard not to blame the people he loved, even the people who damaged his life, but he is also specific and detailed in itemizing the chaos, abuses, insults, and injuries inflicted upon himself and he repeats the lists every few chapters to ensure readers do not miss the hardships he suffered. Still, this book is lived truth, and if Vance fails to recognize the irony of complaining that a single call to child services fails to net any interference in a neighbor’s neglect of her children and then complaining a handful of pages later about child services “prying” into his own messy family . . . well, I guess he’s what one of my young students once called “a guy”.

There is no easy answer to the problems we face in America, but I think it is fair to suggest that we could do better as a nation for our children, regardless of who is at fault for their troubles. An equitable public education, a reliable health care, a decent diet, and a nation caring enough to inconvenience itself would go a long way toward making the lives of all American children better. It would give us all a better future.

Vance was lucky in more ways that he credits.

His Mamaw was tough-talking and violent, but she used her threats to keep him off drugs and she assured him that golf was a rich boy’s game and education was his best hope for a decent future. In other words, he was pushed—hard!—to do what every person ambitious for monetary success does. Vance had support.

In addition to choosing to reject the dysfunctional walk he witnessed all around him and gaining the stability and peace of his Mamaw’s house, Vance claims he “found a couple of teachers who inspired [him] to love learning”, but it’s likely he didn’t find them; those teachers found him. No member of his family killed him though several seem to have tried, and he found a family and practical education in the Marines, without seeing action in Iraq. That’s another piece of luck. The Marines taught him to give more than he thought he had, and they took less than they have required from many others.

Vance would like to blame people on assistance for their trouble, but he had plenty of assistance himself.

Vance was lucky. He had strong people who loved him unconditionally. He found friends and mentors along the way. It was luck and generous people who saved him. He knows that. Or at least he should.

APOLOGY

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments
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Koi. Just because they are big fish and pretty.

My husband and I were talking about apologies last evening. We had been discussing boorish behavior revealed by the MeToo movement as contrasted by the genuinely criminal behavior of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.

I can forgive the guy who makes a stupid joke or a failed pass. But what about the cases of men who double down on a stupid move by harassing and threatening the careers of women? How bad before borderline become brutality? How bad does it have to be before action pass into unforgivable?

At what point does a mistake become abuse? Is the line so very hard to see? I don’t think it’s all that difficult to define where a mistake becomes a failure to offer basic respect. You make a modest error, and instead of threatening to damage a woman’s career, you apologize. You don’t wait years, you don’t pretend it didn’t happen, you don’t blame her for anything, and you don’t apologize to one woman while ignoring the other two or six or sixteen you abused. You recognize you have been a jerk and say, Sorry! right off. Then you do not do it again.

If, let’s say, you accuse someone of having a bad temper while standing over them and yelling, and while the person you are yelling at is worried because her husband has gone to the doctor and been taken to the ER; or you have yelled at a teacher and called her “vindictive” because she asked your son to rewrite an essay that failed to follow directions, after several papers where the same student didn’t follow directions. It is not enough to stop. “Sorry” is the missing word.

Sucking up to someone later to avoid admitting you have been a jerk is not the same as apologizing. “Being nice” or claiming: “I didn’t intend for your feelings to be hurt” is not the same as apologizing.

An apology begins with “I’m sorry” and moves on from there.

Some people seem to have trouble with those words. Some women have trouble saying they are sorry, too, but mostly it seems to be men. Last night, I said I was glad both our sons and my husband were able to do that.

“Well,” my husband offered mildly, “it’s different for a man to apologize.”

I thought: male ego? Cultural demands for masculine behavior? “Is it?” I said.

“No,” Gary said.

I laughed.

Gary said, “If you’re an asshole you’re an asshole and you should apologize.”

Well, you see why I married him 44 years ago, right? Our sons take after their dad. I am proud that they consider the consequences of their actions. They care about justice. They care about what is right. They aren’t perfect people. Who is?

Gary ordered six CDs today. “I got carried away.” I don’t mind. He loves music the way I love yarn. He’s entitled. (And he’s not sorry.)

On the other hand, we all make mistakes sometimes. We lose our temper or say something we wish we hadn’t. We do or say things we are sorry for.

When that happens, we should just say it: I’m sorry.

We should mean it.

 

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BETTER

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

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We were up on the balcony at the Schnitz in Portland the other evening. A woman sitting behind us dropped her cane and it hit my husband right on the top of his head.

“Oh! I am sorry!”

“It’s okay.”

“No, really, I am so sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“But are you sure you’re okay? I can’t believe I did that!” She could not stop apologizing.

My husband turned full around. “Hello, I’m Gary.” He grinned.

Soon they knew one another’s history and we all chatted away.

There is some empirical evidence that talking to others, particularly the habit of reaching out to people we meet casually—the person waiting in line in front of us, the man watering his lawn, the woman having coffee at the next table—is a reliable predictor of longevity. It’s certainly no cure for what ails us, but it focuses us away from our pain in the same way the I was taught to focus away from labor pains.

Talking to other people is a challenge during depression, but if we already have the habit and refuse to let go, such casual conversation can be a distraction from our sadness.

Depression IS sadness, but on a level and for a length of time that there is no end in sight. This belief that depression is not often caused by circumstances flies in the face of all evidence. It is not a literal “epidemic” but a failure of our culture to provide meaning and purpose. We fail to eat, sleep, communicate, work, and live meaningful lives and then we wonder . . .

Undoubtedly, suicide is sometimes the result of illness. It is always the result of unbearable circumstances, it is always the result of overwhelming sadness. Like the current “epidemic” of opioid abuse, suicide is about loss.

Sometimes the loss is entirely personal and unknowable. Increasingly, the loss is widespread and a failure of our culture to sustain the human soul.

For most of human history, human interaction was primarily cooperative.

For most of human history, communication was between people, not machines.

For most of human history, people ate what they could find or grow themselves.

For most of human history, we slept more than we do today.

For most of human history, we sat quietly for regularly periods of time. We attended to the seasons, to the darkness and light, to shifts of other living things because this attention was necessary to survival.

Despite growing awareness of the dangers of depression, acknowledgement of suicide, and drug and talk therapy, suicide rates continue to grow.

I have heard depression compared to diabetes, in that we would not expect a person ill with diabetes to thrive only on good intentions. A symptom of diabetes is increased thirst. A glass of water addresses their immediate need but not the problem. The “epidemic” of depression and suicide will not be cured with anti-depressants or even with talk therapy. It will only be repaired by addressing the cause, which is the result of a failed culture, not broken brains.

Wiser people than me have insisted that suicide is not a cry for help. But maybe it is a cry for help in the way we live. Maybe it is a symptom of illness not of the person but of an increasingly unsatisfying, unsustainable, and unbearable way of life.

Maybe I can’t do a thing about any of that. But I can greet others. I can trade stories. As long as I can participate, I will.

Hello! My name is Jan, and you are . . .

 

 

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