I was talking with my friend, Tyler, the other day about vampires and he suggested there are degrees of vampirism—the less vampirish lamenting the horrible way they are forced to stay alive, the more, of course, having no regrets whatsoever.
Our discussion was particularly relevant to me given the imminent sentencing of Bernie Madoff, whom I see as a vampire of a particularly 21st Century type. Vanity Fair recently published a lengthy article on Madoff and his sons, mainly focusing on how much his family (all of whom worked for his firm) knew about the swindle. It’s a good question because the answer will determine how many others join Madoff in jail. All, of course, plead innocence.
How much one is willing to believe (or disbelieve) strikes me as an interesting question in its own right that many people seem to cast in terms of a failure of values or ethics.
The values group blame the investors who, they say, were blinded by greed and didn’t ask how Madoff was making money. It’s tautological: if they’d been honest, they would have asked how Madoff was succeeding where others weren’t. That they didn’t ask provides one more example of how society is going to hell in a hand basket. Certainly, Madoff was a cheat and a criminal but, they would argue, there are always cheats and criminals in any society. Anyone morally righteous and honest would not have been cheated because they would have asked about fair and right profit and realized something was terribly wrong. No sympathy here: send Madoff to jail and stress individual responsibility and let the learning curve begin among the investors.
The ethics group, on the other hand, prefers to point to some moral flaw or sociopathy in Bernie Madoff’s genetic inheritance. How, otherwise, could he have cheated his friends and those who trusted him? They would argue his fraud must result from some character flaw (or worse) with the bilked investors merely innocent victims. The only protection from the sociopath, they would argue, is regulation so let government intervention begin and let the losses be mitigated.
On a cynical note, let me say that I am attracted by neither position. I find both somewhat hypocritical and more or less fluid depending on how much the government is willing to mitigate: the most dyed-in-the-wool values evangelist tends to stretch out a hand as far as the ethicist. To me the larger question is one of character.
There may be some who feel that my distinction between ethics and values is too precise and that talking about a general failure of character is merely a diversion. While I can respect that position, I have to believe there is a larger question here, one that underlies and perhaps emphasizes a good deal of what passes for public debate these days. Let me explain.
The other day, George Sweanor, whose blog is linked to this one, forwarded a wonderful letter from a comrade not in arms but in conflict. This man had been part of an enemy air force charged with bombing England at the same time that George had been charged with bombing Germany. They met after George returned from being a POW at the Great Escape Stalag. Between the two men, both separated and joined by a common war, there grew a lifelong friendship based on compassion, empathy, and a wisdom that grew beyond judgment and pettiness. That’s what I call character and I think we’re missing it today. How easy it would have been for them to carry forward all the jingoism and propaganda of the wars. Yet they did not. They recognized a common humanity that illuminated them and, in a way, set aside the horrors of the conflict in the hope of communication and understanding.
As I say, this finding of common ground is character, and it is missing in those who indulge in name calling and vitriol, particularly from the group I have come to call the valueists. These are people who use their so-called values as ways to distinguish between themselves and others and deride those who do not agree with them. I have found values, whether they be religious, cultural, or political, not generally compassionate despite original founding principles that might suggest otherwise. If I have to be honest, I am frightened by those who use their values as clubs to beat others who do not share them.
I guess, when it comes to vampires, I am uninterested in whether they have approved values or whether they justify their behavior by appeals to their own survival. I prefer vampires, if I must have them, to be willing to drive the stake through their own hearts.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Taking Back Death
A few days ago, I had to say goodbye to my little cat. She had been with me for 171/2years and her life spanned all the meaningful events of my recent life. She came up from Hawaii with us when we moved to Colorado. She was there when my grandson was born and there when I lost my husband of 37 years. She moved into a new house with me and was the one constant as I tried to rebuild my life.
I knew it was time to let her go when she started having seizures and I realized they could only continue and get worse. Despite knowing this, though, I grieved her loss intensely and found myself wondering what it was so hard for me to let her slip away.
After much reflection, I realize it wasn’t really to do with her. She’d had a wonderful, long life, much loved and cared for, and I knew that keeping her alive would have been merely selfish. My grieving was a tsunami of emotion, built in volume by every other loss in my life. Her death made me remember every one that had preceded it, some of which I understand now that I have never discussed, let alone dealt with.
For example, I found myself dealing not only with actual death but also figurative regret. With little Squeak, I mourned again the loss of my mother, husband, three dogs, and four cats but also more intangible things such as the father I never knew (killed in WWII), the mentally ill grandmother who was unreachable during my childhood, the brother who died the year before I was born, the end of my professional career, the onset of new physical challenges, and the realization that I can no longer promise myself that I still have time to achieve the things I wanted to as a young woman.
You might say that a lot of issues were triggered by the loss a little black-and-white girl of barely ten pounds. These were things I had congratulated myself as having laid to rest or else never had dealt with.
The opportunity to reflect and grow is probably the gift that death gives us It’s a time when those remaining alive can touch the membrane between life and death and perhaps see just a little further. It’s also a time, I believe, to look at one’s own beliefs about death itself.
I’ve never found much comfort in religious leaders who preach about resurrection and expect me to be joyful. In my experience, there is no substitute for dealing with grief. If it’s not now, then it will be later. I also don’t accept the idea that our animals are kept out of whatever heaven is being promised. Life is life. If I want to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where the animals wait for us, and if I agree with the Indian belief that it is the animals who will decide who crosses, then I will do so. I don’t know when it was that we handed death over to religion: it’s the only power they really have over us. They threaten and promise but in the end, everyone dies alone. I think it’s time to make death personal again and take it back from the constraints of religious dogma.
Meanwhile, I am going to believe that I heard my blue heeler, Kepa, settle for the last time in my office after we had to put her down. I heard the familiar chink of her tags on the wood floor and I smiled—she was home. I’m going to believe that my late husband was on the other side to greet our pets. I’m going to believe that I will see my husband and mother waiting for me as well, along with all the other animals I have loved and that my little Squeak will be sunning herself as she waits for me.
.
I knew it was time to let her go when she started having seizures and I realized they could only continue and get worse. Despite knowing this, though, I grieved her loss intensely and found myself wondering what it was so hard for me to let her slip away.
After much reflection, I realize it wasn’t really to do with her. She’d had a wonderful, long life, much loved and cared for, and I knew that keeping her alive would have been merely selfish. My grieving was a tsunami of emotion, built in volume by every other loss in my life. Her death made me remember every one that had preceded it, some of which I understand now that I have never discussed, let alone dealt with.
For example, I found myself dealing not only with actual death but also figurative regret. With little Squeak, I mourned again the loss of my mother, husband, three dogs, and four cats but also more intangible things such as the father I never knew (killed in WWII), the mentally ill grandmother who was unreachable during my childhood, the brother who died the year before I was born, the end of my professional career, the onset of new physical challenges, and the realization that I can no longer promise myself that I still have time to achieve the things I wanted to as a young woman.
You might say that a lot of issues were triggered by the loss a little black-and-white girl of barely ten pounds. These were things I had congratulated myself as having laid to rest or else never had dealt with.
The opportunity to reflect and grow is probably the gift that death gives us It’s a time when those remaining alive can touch the membrane between life and death and perhaps see just a little further. It’s also a time, I believe, to look at one’s own beliefs about death itself.
I’ve never found much comfort in religious leaders who preach about resurrection and expect me to be joyful. In my experience, there is no substitute for dealing with grief. If it’s not now, then it will be later. I also don’t accept the idea that our animals are kept out of whatever heaven is being promised. Life is life. If I want to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where the animals wait for us, and if I agree with the Indian belief that it is the animals who will decide who crosses, then I will do so. I don’t know when it was that we handed death over to religion: it’s the only power they really have over us. They threaten and promise but in the end, everyone dies alone. I think it’s time to make death personal again and take it back from the constraints of religious dogma.
Meanwhile, I am going to believe that I heard my blue heeler, Kepa, settle for the last time in my office after we had to put her down. I heard the familiar chink of her tags on the wood floor and I smiled—she was home. I’m going to believe that my late husband was on the other side to greet our pets. I’m going to believe that I will see my husband and mother waiting for me as well, along with all the other animals I have loved and that my little Squeak will be sunning herself as she waits for me.
.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Go, Girl
Golly. Gee. Sonia Sotomajor said that a Hispanic woman might have better insight into issues regarding women and family than “objective” white men. To hear the outrage (in the US largely coming from old, privileged, white males on the right who hate parting with the least shred of control) is to assume that all the decisions made by “objective” men regarding women and children must always be the height of wisdom and fabled objectivity.
Let’s take a look at that.
My grandfather wouldn’t educate my mother because it would be a gift to another man. Golly. Gee. My mother was property that he didn’t want to improve and give free to someone other man. Never mind her talents or even her eventual children (me), it was all about goods and property. Same time period: children belonged to the man and he could remove them from the mother with no explanation or recourse on her part. Wife beating was merely someone exerting his husbandly rights. Golly. Gee. If you look on women and children as belongings I guess such decisions seem very “objective.”
Then there’s the lovely practice of genital mutilation—very “objective” indeed if you don’t want another man trespassing on your private preserve. Take away her pleasure and she may not stray. Or covering a women head to toe so she doesn’t attract attention—makes lots of sense if your woman belongs to you and you don’t want to risk someone stealing your exclusive reproductive rights. Whipping and stoning is a very nice touch—let’s keep those women in line and their legs tightly closed. After all, it's in the Bible, isn’t it?
And what about the genial practice of binding feet among the aristocratic classes in China. If a woman couldn’t walk she proved the man’s wealth since he didn’t need her economic contribution. Golly. Gee. Cripple the woman as a demonstration of wealth. How “objective.”
The thing I most dislike about the paternal tradition is not only its paternalistic assumption of knowing what is best for a women but also its dual emphasis on competition and display. Historically, men compete with other men by hiding their women, amassing large numbers of them and thereby denying them to others, raping to show power and superiority, refusing them education and then sneering at their lack of it.
This admittedly one-sided analysis is only exaggerated to a certain extent. And I certainly do not excuse those women who profit from becoming decorative and expensive trophies. I guess there will always be experts at making lemonade from other people's lemons. But claiming that men have the innate ability to be “objective” without input from those who actually bear children does not strike me as a sensible, let alone wise, attitude for either of the sexes yo accept, let alone promulgate.
In this country, the times have long changed from when women were chattel (won in poker games, anyone?)although even their getting the vote was a study in prejudice against female intelligence and stability. In other parts of the world children of eight can still be married to much older men and then not divorced unless a male relative makes the complain in court. It must be wonderfully ego-building to feel superior to a whole class of people without having to do anything to earn it except being born.
I say hail to a woman not afraid to take on the smug, paternalistic demagoguery of the males on the right. This is one qualified lady who knows her legal stuff and knows reality. It may be clichéd, but I repeat what I was told as I systematically outperformed all the men in my graduate programs—“You go, Girl.”
Let’s take a look at that.
My grandfather wouldn’t educate my mother because it would be a gift to another man. Golly. Gee. My mother was property that he didn’t want to improve and give free to someone other man. Never mind her talents or even her eventual children (me), it was all about goods and property. Same time period: children belonged to the man and he could remove them from the mother with no explanation or recourse on her part. Wife beating was merely someone exerting his husbandly rights. Golly. Gee. If you look on women and children as belongings I guess such decisions seem very “objective.”
Then there’s the lovely practice of genital mutilation—very “objective” indeed if you don’t want another man trespassing on your private preserve. Take away her pleasure and she may not stray. Or covering a women head to toe so she doesn’t attract attention—makes lots of sense if your woman belongs to you and you don’t want to risk someone stealing your exclusive reproductive rights. Whipping and stoning is a very nice touch—let’s keep those women in line and their legs tightly closed. After all, it's in the Bible, isn’t it?
And what about the genial practice of binding feet among the aristocratic classes in China. If a woman couldn’t walk she proved the man’s wealth since he didn’t need her economic contribution. Golly. Gee. Cripple the woman as a demonstration of wealth. How “objective.”
The thing I most dislike about the paternal tradition is not only its paternalistic assumption of knowing what is best for a women but also its dual emphasis on competition and display. Historically, men compete with other men by hiding their women, amassing large numbers of them and thereby denying them to others, raping to show power and superiority, refusing them education and then sneering at their lack of it.
This admittedly one-sided analysis is only exaggerated to a certain extent. And I certainly do not excuse those women who profit from becoming decorative and expensive trophies. I guess there will always be experts at making lemonade from other people's lemons. But claiming that men have the innate ability to be “objective” without input from those who actually bear children does not strike me as a sensible, let alone wise, attitude for either of the sexes yo accept, let alone promulgate.
In this country, the times have long changed from when women were chattel (won in poker games, anyone?)although even their getting the vote was a study in prejudice against female intelligence and stability. In other parts of the world children of eight can still be married to much older men and then not divorced unless a male relative makes the complain in court. It must be wonderfully ego-building to feel superior to a whole class of people without having to do anything to earn it except being born.
I say hail to a woman not afraid to take on the smug, paternalistic demagoguery of the males on the right. This is one qualified lady who knows her legal stuff and knows reality. It may be clichéd, but I repeat what I was told as I systematically outperformed all the men in my graduate programs—“You go, Girl.”
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Au Revoir Immortality
I hadn’t thought before about how much recovering from surgery resembles what Hospice likes to call the grieving process and death researchers call the steps to acceptance. There even appear to be the same stages although in different forms and emphasis: denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance (more or less) among them.
This correlation really shouldn’t be surprising now I think about it. Surgery, after all, usually entails loss. In many cases, it means parting company with some body part, even if in my case it was a torn and useless meniscus. The impact on the body is still enormous and there is certainly suffering of one kind or another. My sister, Wendy, told me she was on morphine for two months after she had knee replacement and I’ve been on Tylenol for the past three weeks for a supposedly kinder procedure.
Of the four stages, I empathize most with the denial part of the process since I went into the surgery with a large dose of it. I lapped up the surgeon’s telling me that the operation was routine and non-invasive, which I, of course, took to mean that I’d walk out of the hospital in some slight discomfort that I would nobly overcome and set a recovery record for this type of surgery in a woman my age. Ha.
I really should have known better as I sat in the surgeon’s waiting room where the closed-circuit television continuously played some video about animals—not your usual cutey-pie stuff but footage showing a wolf cutting out a baby caribou from its mother, chasing it down, and killing it, followed by a killer whale hunting down seals for dinner and eating them in the middle of waves died red from their blood. The images of rending flesh should have warned me to give up my daydreams.
But the anger part was a good second. I couldn’t get the surgeon’s office to return my phone calls asking them what I could do about my painfully cramping calf and thigh muscles that the pain meds weren’t touching. When I limped in at last with gritted teeth to get the stitches out, I learned that the office admitted to internal communications challenges and they hadn’t received my messages. If I hadn’t been so grateful to just be free, I might have said something unrepeatable. Instead, I just vented my feelings that evening to Sid, who patiently listened to me and reminded me I had survived and was on the road to recovery. I realize now that I needed to be angry about something at that point, if only to express the shock of having my body invaded and two weeks of pain.
The bargaining part of the process came afterwards—at the start of the three weeks of physical therapy I’m now embarked on. In comparison to the cramping, bending and stretching the knee is a breeze. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to negotiate how fast the physical therapists expect me top do things like squat—my latest nightmare. The therapists, of course, will get me to do whatever I need to despite my bleats. The negotiation is merely letting me have the illusion of control over my life, which, I suspect, is what terminal patients are trying to regain.
Yes, I’m coming along. But the surgery has made an impression on me. I’m being forced to accept that maybe my body is that of a senior lady, even if she has been something of a jock in her day. I’m not going to parachute or bungee jump, nor am I going to ride roller-coasters or speed boats. I’m not going to try to advance my skiing skills beyond where I am and I’ll leave the steep stuff (where I first got injured) to Generation X; I heartily wish them luck in avoiding injuries. In fact, I am not going to be anything other than wary to avoid obvious threats to my body. Now I know I can get hurt.
I guess you could say I’ve been grieving the realities of what time does to even an active body. The usual creaks, aches, and limitations of age are mine now and I’m not going to avoid them. It’s really too bad because I don’t feel my age—or maybe just don’t want to. In fact, I guess what I’ve primarily accepted (finally, you might say), is that I am not immortal. Shucks.
This correlation really shouldn’t be surprising now I think about it. Surgery, after all, usually entails loss. In many cases, it means parting company with some body part, even if in my case it was a torn and useless meniscus. The impact on the body is still enormous and there is certainly suffering of one kind or another. My sister, Wendy, told me she was on morphine for two months after she had knee replacement and I’ve been on Tylenol for the past three weeks for a supposedly kinder procedure.
Of the four stages, I empathize most with the denial part of the process since I went into the surgery with a large dose of it. I lapped up the surgeon’s telling me that the operation was routine and non-invasive, which I, of course, took to mean that I’d walk out of the hospital in some slight discomfort that I would nobly overcome and set a recovery record for this type of surgery in a woman my age. Ha.
I really should have known better as I sat in the surgeon’s waiting room where the closed-circuit television continuously played some video about animals—not your usual cutey-pie stuff but footage showing a wolf cutting out a baby caribou from its mother, chasing it down, and killing it, followed by a killer whale hunting down seals for dinner and eating them in the middle of waves died red from their blood. The images of rending flesh should have warned me to give up my daydreams.
But the anger part was a good second. I couldn’t get the surgeon’s office to return my phone calls asking them what I could do about my painfully cramping calf and thigh muscles that the pain meds weren’t touching. When I limped in at last with gritted teeth to get the stitches out, I learned that the office admitted to internal communications challenges and they hadn’t received my messages. If I hadn’t been so grateful to just be free, I might have said something unrepeatable. Instead, I just vented my feelings that evening to Sid, who patiently listened to me and reminded me I had survived and was on the road to recovery. I realize now that I needed to be angry about something at that point, if only to express the shock of having my body invaded and two weeks of pain.
The bargaining part of the process came afterwards—at the start of the three weeks of physical therapy I’m now embarked on. In comparison to the cramping, bending and stretching the knee is a breeze. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to negotiate how fast the physical therapists expect me top do things like squat—my latest nightmare. The therapists, of course, will get me to do whatever I need to despite my bleats. The negotiation is merely letting me have the illusion of control over my life, which, I suspect, is what terminal patients are trying to regain.
Yes, I’m coming along. But the surgery has made an impression on me. I’m being forced to accept that maybe my body is that of a senior lady, even if she has been something of a jock in her day. I’m not going to parachute or bungee jump, nor am I going to ride roller-coasters or speed boats. I’m not going to try to advance my skiing skills beyond where I am and I’ll leave the steep stuff (where I first got injured) to Generation X; I heartily wish them luck in avoiding injuries. In fact, I am not going to be anything other than wary to avoid obvious threats to my body. Now I know I can get hurt.
I guess you could say I’ve been grieving the realities of what time does to even an active body. The usual creaks, aches, and limitations of age are mine now and I’m not going to avoid them. It’s really too bad because I don’t feel my age—or maybe just don’t want to. In fact, I guess what I’ve primarily accepted (finally, you might say), is that I am not immortal. Shucks.
Friday, May 15, 2009
I Want the Same Care as My Cat
Last week I went to have my knee scoped. My joint was done in by an old cartilage tear from being on a ski slope I had no business being on and a much newer tear caused by riding a stationary bicycle. Not even a real bicycle for heaven’s sake. I must indeed be getting old.
Sky Ridge Surgical Center, where the surgery was done, was very good with attentive staff and a crisp proficiency—they see idiots like me on a regular basis and know how to deal kindly with us. My surgeon was communicative and said it was routine and went very well. I had more than adequate pain medicine. I was in bed for two days, had about three days of real misery when I used two crutches, three days of moderate with a single crutch, and the last two not bad on a cane. All as predicted, more or less.
So why, might you ask, am I so discontent? Simple answer: Because I am envious of the surgical patients down at Dr. Weldon’s Coal Creek Veterinary Hospital here in Aurora, Colorado, where I take my cat, Squeak.
Squeak has had her share of surgical misadventures, like the time she ate a small rabbit, furs, whiskers, and all. The only evidence left behind were two paws. She had to be cleaned out, which would have been enough except that she then ate a mouse on top of it and required surgery. It must have been some tropical madness that suddenly gave a well-fed middle-class cat the overwhelming desire for fresh meat, but whatever the reason she came home with a line of neat stitches and a collar to prevent her from removing them.
I found myself remembering her as I sat brooding about my own discomfort. In contrast with me, she seemed to have made a remarkable recovery and was down moping only a couple of days before sitting in the window making irritated faces at the nesting birds outside.
When I took her in today for her senior annual exam (she’s nearly 18) and her rabies shot, I asked Dr. Weldon what they do to help their patients after orthopedic surgery. “Oh,” she told me,” we massage the area, do acupuncture and chiropracty, and treat them with heat.”
I drooled with envy. Right now I could kill to have a massage on my aching calf and thigh muscles and on my back, which is cramping from the tilted way I am walking. My massage therapist is willing to do it but only with permission from the surgeon since I still have the stitches in place. The surgeon is busy doing surgery as he should be. His staff is too busy with other idiots like me to get back to me. So I am stuck.
In the old days, it was common to give massages in hospitals. It’s a lovely lost practice that was especially common in Europe which gives more credence to the idea of a therapeutic massage. I can’t think of a time when it would be more soothing or kind than just after surgery when every muscle in one’s body is traumatized. I am in love with the idea of a long, sweeping movement followed by a deep knuckle into the middle of my cramped, tight calf muscle. Ah luxury. I would be willing to pay whatever it takes for the comfort. But it’s just out of reach and I guess it will just have to wait.
Part of me admires the contextual brilliance and technical artistry of American medicine. We have dandy machines like MRIs and incredibly evolving techniques. I know my surgery was done perfectly and the result eventually will be wonderful. But the other part of me wants the comfort of something like a local shaman to provide hands-on psychological comfort and attention.
I wonder if Dr Weldon would be willing to include me among the cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits.
Sky Ridge Surgical Center, where the surgery was done, was very good with attentive staff and a crisp proficiency—they see idiots like me on a regular basis and know how to deal kindly with us. My surgeon was communicative and said it was routine and went very well. I had more than adequate pain medicine. I was in bed for two days, had about three days of real misery when I used two crutches, three days of moderate with a single crutch, and the last two not bad on a cane. All as predicted, more or less.
So why, might you ask, am I so discontent? Simple answer: Because I am envious of the surgical patients down at Dr. Weldon’s Coal Creek Veterinary Hospital here in Aurora, Colorado, where I take my cat, Squeak.
Squeak has had her share of surgical misadventures, like the time she ate a small rabbit, furs, whiskers, and all. The only evidence left behind were two paws. She had to be cleaned out, which would have been enough except that she then ate a mouse on top of it and required surgery. It must have been some tropical madness that suddenly gave a well-fed middle-class cat the overwhelming desire for fresh meat, but whatever the reason she came home with a line of neat stitches and a collar to prevent her from removing them.
I found myself remembering her as I sat brooding about my own discomfort. In contrast with me, she seemed to have made a remarkable recovery and was down moping only a couple of days before sitting in the window making irritated faces at the nesting birds outside.
When I took her in today for her senior annual exam (she’s nearly 18) and her rabies shot, I asked Dr. Weldon what they do to help their patients after orthopedic surgery. “Oh,” she told me,” we massage the area, do acupuncture and chiropracty, and treat them with heat.”
I drooled with envy. Right now I could kill to have a massage on my aching calf and thigh muscles and on my back, which is cramping from the tilted way I am walking. My massage therapist is willing to do it but only with permission from the surgeon since I still have the stitches in place. The surgeon is busy doing surgery as he should be. His staff is too busy with other idiots like me to get back to me. So I am stuck.
In the old days, it was common to give massages in hospitals. It’s a lovely lost practice that was especially common in Europe which gives more credence to the idea of a therapeutic massage. I can’t think of a time when it would be more soothing or kind than just after surgery when every muscle in one’s body is traumatized. I am in love with the idea of a long, sweeping movement followed by a deep knuckle into the middle of my cramped, tight calf muscle. Ah luxury. I would be willing to pay whatever it takes for the comfort. But it’s just out of reach and I guess it will just have to wait.
Part of me admires the contextual brilliance and technical artistry of American medicine. We have dandy machines like MRIs and incredibly evolving techniques. I know my surgery was done perfectly and the result eventually will be wonderful. But the other part of me wants the comfort of something like a local shaman to provide hands-on psychological comfort and attention.
I wonder if Dr Weldon would be willing to include me among the cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Not Your Usual Mother's Day
Well, it’s that time—the day when, in my mother’s words, they trot the old girl out of the rest home, stick an orchid corsage on her, and turn her into mother of the year. It’s all around me. I’ve been getting gooey forwarded e-mails and the supermarkets are full of folk snapping up bouquets. I guess it’s nice that we can have a cathartic cry in our beer over the little, grey-haired old lady who sacrificed so much for us to get ahead, except for the selective memory going on. The gooey-est e-mail I read—the one saying that “mother” is another word for “angel”—came from a friend whose mother was a major narcissist and with whom she has an estranged relationship. I guess it is silly time in family relationships.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, families are fraught with the perils common to all human endeavors. Given the odds of a congenial bundle of joy landing on one’s doorstep, it’s a miracle if the personalities thrust under one roof get along. Some people just naturally seem to have the skills to raise children who love one another (to my mind, the primary parental responsibility other than keeping the kids from killing themselves) but also in my experience it’s more likely that people unthinkingly visit on their children all the misery with which they were raised and then expect special recognition for having done so. My former mother-in-law, as an example, expected sweet, flowery expressions of appreciation regardless of how unpleasant and demanding she had been through the years. And she was not above comparing cards from her offspring so she could judge who she thought loved and appreciated her more.
Don’t get me wrong—I am no mother hater. But I am a pragmatist. Since my mother died in 1985, hardly a year goes by without some major reevaluation on my part. Some of the things she did for me were kind and marvelous. Others were highly destructive. The contradiction between what she intended and what she accomplished was so extreme as to leave me completely confused.
It’s been the work of the last twenty years of my life to try to figure out who she was completely separate from her role in my life. Interesting question: if I had met and worked with her and not been her daughter, what would I have thought of her? If I answer honestly, the result would have been mixed.
On the one hand, as a colleague rather than a daughter, I could have admired her commitment to life and her optimism that somehow, no matter things appeared, there was something within her power she could do that would turn things around. For the most part, she succeeded. I could have respected her dedication to her nursing profession. Her patients and fellow staff respected her skills. She did a job well and took pride in it; she was loyal and no quitter. I could also have admired her strong sense of responsibility—she gave her best—and her slightly off-kilter but wonderful sense of humor.
At the same time, I am her daughter. I know even colleagues would (and did) find it difficult to deal with her emotional outbursts. Her feelings for someone could change dramatically in an instant and she looked on disagreement as betrayal, although an outsider might have been easier to know what was likely to upset her. Until I grew too old to be physically disciplined, I couldn’t always connect my punishment to whichever one of my numerous sins had got me in trouble (probably my tendency to answer back—but that’s another issue). If I hadn’t been her daughter and what she called “high-strung,” perhaps I might have understood more of the incredible pressures she was under, raising a child alone first in post-war Britain and then in Canada, a completely new country. But that would have been asking a great deal of a child, even one who accepted immense amounts of responsibility at a very young age.
It's taken me years to even get to the point where I can begin to sort out my feelings for this complex, forceful woman who blew through my life like a hurricane.
I suppose we are all mixed bags of successes and failures as parents. I hope one day that my son doesn't write something like this about me. All I can say is I tried my best, which I am sure she would say also. This is why I think there should be an asterisk and footnote to this whole idea of Mother’s Day. By all means, let’s celebrate the things that went well in our family dynamics. At the same time, though, I think the day should permit us to lay out both the strengths and the weaknesses of what we learned from our parents, meditate on our relations with our own children, and see if we can lessen the baggage we pass on from one generation to the next.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, families are fraught with the perils common to all human endeavors. Given the odds of a congenial bundle of joy landing on one’s doorstep, it’s a miracle if the personalities thrust under one roof get along. Some people just naturally seem to have the skills to raise children who love one another (to my mind, the primary parental responsibility other than keeping the kids from killing themselves) but also in my experience it’s more likely that people unthinkingly visit on their children all the misery with which they were raised and then expect special recognition for having done so. My former mother-in-law, as an example, expected sweet, flowery expressions of appreciation regardless of how unpleasant and demanding she had been through the years. And she was not above comparing cards from her offspring so she could judge who she thought loved and appreciated her more.
Don’t get me wrong—I am no mother hater. But I am a pragmatist. Since my mother died in 1985, hardly a year goes by without some major reevaluation on my part. Some of the things she did for me were kind and marvelous. Others were highly destructive. The contradiction between what she intended and what she accomplished was so extreme as to leave me completely confused.
It’s been the work of the last twenty years of my life to try to figure out who she was completely separate from her role in my life. Interesting question: if I had met and worked with her and not been her daughter, what would I have thought of her? If I answer honestly, the result would have been mixed.
On the one hand, as a colleague rather than a daughter, I could have admired her commitment to life and her optimism that somehow, no matter things appeared, there was something within her power she could do that would turn things around. For the most part, she succeeded. I could have respected her dedication to her nursing profession. Her patients and fellow staff respected her skills. She did a job well and took pride in it; she was loyal and no quitter. I could also have admired her strong sense of responsibility—she gave her best—and her slightly off-kilter but wonderful sense of humor.
At the same time, I am her daughter. I know even colleagues would (and did) find it difficult to deal with her emotional outbursts. Her feelings for someone could change dramatically in an instant and she looked on disagreement as betrayal, although an outsider might have been easier to know what was likely to upset her. Until I grew too old to be physically disciplined, I couldn’t always connect my punishment to whichever one of my numerous sins had got me in trouble (probably my tendency to answer back—but that’s another issue). If I hadn’t been her daughter and what she called “high-strung,” perhaps I might have understood more of the incredible pressures she was under, raising a child alone first in post-war Britain and then in Canada, a completely new country. But that would have been asking a great deal of a child, even one who accepted immense amounts of responsibility at a very young age.
It's taken me years to even get to the point where I can begin to sort out my feelings for this complex, forceful woman who blew through my life like a hurricane.
I suppose we are all mixed bags of successes and failures as parents. I hope one day that my son doesn't write something like this about me. All I can say is I tried my best, which I am sure she would say also. This is why I think there should be an asterisk and footnote to this whole idea of Mother’s Day. By all means, let’s celebrate the things that went well in our family dynamics. At the same time, though, I think the day should permit us to lay out both the strengths and the weaknesses of what we learned from our parents, meditate on our relations with our own children, and see if we can lessen the baggage we pass on from one generation to the next.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Of Moral Universes
One of the few sites I follow carefully is Judith Gayles “political waves” (http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/ ) She spends a great deal of time searching blogs and national newspapers daily looking for profound and interesting political articles, which she either reprints or links to. These are serious thought pieces with careful substantive comment. I recommend her wholeheartedly and if you haven’t checked out her site, please do. I hope one day she sets up a donation site as she spends so much time hunting and gathering for us.
One of her recent editions included an article reporting on the research of Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia who maintains that liberals and conservatives “inhabit different moral universes.” In order to demonstrate this, he identifies what he calls “five foundational moral impulses” that are hardwired into who we are as a species. His five are listed below with his explanation. (This gets increasingly interesting, so hang in there).
Harm/Care: Not harming others and relieving suffering.
Fairness/Reciprocity: People have rights that need to be protected.
In-Group Loyalty: Patriotism and loyalty are vital.
Authority/Respect: Social order should be a primary goal
Purity/Sanctity: Chastity and respect for life, lust and greed are bad.
Liberals, he maintains, prioritize the first two; conservatives the last three.
Most of us are probably some combination and if you’re not sure where you stand, you can go to Haidt’s site www.yourmorals.org and take some tests. That’s what I did, and I found that—just as I have always maintained, I’m somewhere in the middle, favoring conservative positions sometimes and liberal at other times.
Sure, I believe very strongly about harm/care. I’ve been grateful for public education, public-supported healthcare in Britain and Canada, and the willingness of the US to take in an immigrant and give her a chance that was denied to her elsewhere. But I’m no-raise-the-ladder thinker (the British call the phenomenon “I’m all right in my corner, Jack”). I’m glad to extend the opportunities to others in the hopes they will pay back as I have tried to do. I’m always intrigued by people who tell me they are “self-made,” when they have accepted public education, FEMA, air-traffic control, dispute mediation, fire services, protection from cheats and swindlers, and so on, and fully expect the government to “do something” in the face of natural disasters, economic downturn, and national pandemics.
I hate injustice and have walked on picket lines to protest various issues. Yet I have a problem with all the claims of rights. I think it has turned the US into a nation of lawyers where nobody knows where we stand until some court or another has clarified what ought to be common sense. Anybody can claim their rights have been violated and the consequences can be ruinous.
In-group loyalty and patriotism I will support to the extent that the loyalty is deserved. I’m not going to blindly support or excuse a crook just because he or she happens to be on my Super-Bowl political team. Like Hilary Clinton I initially supported Barry Goldwater until Kent State happened. People just walking across campus were shot. That could have been me. I learned then that authority—all authority—needed to be questioned. My friend Peter loves to label me a screaming liberal because I don’t agree with his extremely conservative positions. He doesn’t want to see the nuances in where I stand because (I suspect) his positions are based on what he finds comfortable.
Authority/Respect is important to me. I pay my taxes, and unlike others, don’t feel it’s “my:” money once it leaves my hands. I like having fire service and police protection. In these hard times, I’ve particularly enjoyed my local library. I wish that there had been more respect for authority and balancing of competing “rights” when it came to regulating the financial markets in their mad scramble for unregulated profit. If there’s a law for the common good, I really don’t like breaking it deliberately.
Puriity/sancitity I am not so hot on because in my experience “respect for life” in social issues turns people self-righteous and judgmental (sometimes even hypocrital as it’s almost impossible to live perfectly). I do not want anyone interfering in my family’s end-of-life decisions, for example. I had to decide whether to approve heroic measures for my dying mother. I had to decide to administer morphine to my dying husband, knowing that it was depressing his respiratory system and hastening death. I needed no “guidance” from others to do what I believed to be right and had anyone said something to me—no matter how well-intentioned—I would have heaved them out on the sidewalk. Yet I also support groups that protect society’s suffering and seek to protect farm and family animals from abuse.
Personally, I would argue for some compassion instead of the quick rush to judgment, along with pragmatic experiment as to what works. God save me from the theoreticians. I’m very fond of a section from Milton’s Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . . “ Lets judge things by how they work before rushing to condemn because it suits our particular prejudices. I guess it’s all a matter of balance and self-awareness. That’s what Haidt says. America needs to balance the founding virtues. I would also argue for some good manners instead of all the shrill screeching about who’s right or wrong and which side we are on. We are all on the side of the United States.
One of her recent editions included an article reporting on the research of Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia who maintains that liberals and conservatives “inhabit different moral universes.” In order to demonstrate this, he identifies what he calls “five foundational moral impulses” that are hardwired into who we are as a species. His five are listed below with his explanation. (This gets increasingly interesting, so hang in there).
Harm/Care: Not harming others and relieving suffering.
Fairness/Reciprocity: People have rights that need to be protected.
In-Group Loyalty: Patriotism and loyalty are vital.
Authority/Respect: Social order should be a primary goal
Purity/Sanctity: Chastity and respect for life, lust and greed are bad.
Liberals, he maintains, prioritize the first two; conservatives the last three.
Most of us are probably some combination and if you’re not sure where you stand, you can go to Haidt’s site www.yourmorals.org and take some tests. That’s what I did, and I found that—just as I have always maintained, I’m somewhere in the middle, favoring conservative positions sometimes and liberal at other times.
Sure, I believe very strongly about harm/care. I’ve been grateful for public education, public-supported healthcare in Britain and Canada, and the willingness of the US to take in an immigrant and give her a chance that was denied to her elsewhere. But I’m no-raise-the-ladder thinker (the British call the phenomenon “I’m all right in my corner, Jack”). I’m glad to extend the opportunities to others in the hopes they will pay back as I have tried to do. I’m always intrigued by people who tell me they are “self-made,” when they have accepted public education, FEMA, air-traffic control, dispute mediation, fire services, protection from cheats and swindlers, and so on, and fully expect the government to “do something” in the face of natural disasters, economic downturn, and national pandemics.
I hate injustice and have walked on picket lines to protest various issues. Yet I have a problem with all the claims of rights. I think it has turned the US into a nation of lawyers where nobody knows where we stand until some court or another has clarified what ought to be common sense. Anybody can claim their rights have been violated and the consequences can be ruinous.
In-group loyalty and patriotism I will support to the extent that the loyalty is deserved. I’m not going to blindly support or excuse a crook just because he or she happens to be on my Super-Bowl political team. Like Hilary Clinton I initially supported Barry Goldwater until Kent State happened. People just walking across campus were shot. That could have been me. I learned then that authority—all authority—needed to be questioned. My friend Peter loves to label me a screaming liberal because I don’t agree with his extremely conservative positions. He doesn’t want to see the nuances in where I stand because (I suspect) his positions are based on what he finds comfortable.
Authority/Respect is important to me. I pay my taxes, and unlike others, don’t feel it’s “my:” money once it leaves my hands. I like having fire service and police protection. In these hard times, I’ve particularly enjoyed my local library. I wish that there had been more respect for authority and balancing of competing “rights” when it came to regulating the financial markets in their mad scramble for unregulated profit. If there’s a law for the common good, I really don’t like breaking it deliberately.
Puriity/sancitity I am not so hot on because in my experience “respect for life” in social issues turns people self-righteous and judgmental (sometimes even hypocrital as it’s almost impossible to live perfectly). I do not want anyone interfering in my family’s end-of-life decisions, for example. I had to decide whether to approve heroic measures for my dying mother. I had to decide to administer morphine to my dying husband, knowing that it was depressing his respiratory system and hastening death. I needed no “guidance” from others to do what I believed to be right and had anyone said something to me—no matter how well-intentioned—I would have heaved them out on the sidewalk. Yet I also support groups that protect society’s suffering and seek to protect farm and family animals from abuse.
Personally, I would argue for some compassion instead of the quick rush to judgment, along with pragmatic experiment as to what works. God save me from the theoreticians. I’m very fond of a section from Milton’s Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . . “ Lets judge things by how they work before rushing to condemn because it suits our particular prejudices. I guess it’s all a matter of balance and self-awareness. That’s what Haidt says. America needs to balance the founding virtues. I would also argue for some good manners instead of all the shrill screeching about who’s right or wrong and which side we are on. We are all on the side of the United States.
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