The Dignity of Woman

The events of today occur only about once every three years in my division. The military organization with which we work (and which provides us oversight) had a formal change of commanders, i.e. the High Muckety Muck was leaving, a new Muckety Muck was arriving, and a ceremony was planned to pass the muck. All the bigwigs in our organization and in town were there. The hand-off came replete with wonderful ceremony on the parade field, marches, music, pomp and circumstance, awards and speeches, and, at some points, before and after, just plain food and fun. Well, it would have been fun, except for my pants.

What I Wrote on Genny's Wall

Since I do have to get some sleep before leaving Duke University, where I have been this week at a conference, I decided to take the easy way out and post here something I wrote on Genny's site, about which she commented on my post about panhandling. (That's not really cheating, is it?) Genny was complaining that her house was full of bugs because her son loves them, but she finds them, well, a little off-putting. What I wrote to her was the following:

My son's house is filled with bugs, like yours, because my 7-year-old grandson, Nathaniel, is fascinated with anything that flies or crawls. We think he may grow up to be an entomologist -- he knows the scientific details of hundreds more bugs than I do. For example, we were walking to a local art fair downtown (downtown being three blocks in our 6x8 block town), and I pointed out a butterfly sitting on a hedge to him. "Grandma, that's not just any butterfly," he responded. "It's a painted lady." Well, pardon me! His wish list right now is for a black widow spider -- he thinks the red hour glass is beautiful. We do have them, but I don't want to be the one to try to catch it.

Still, it is all an improvement over his little scientist father who at the age of 9 nearly burned our house down twice with his fire experiments. (1) The bathroom: he set two candles with the same amount of parafin on fire -- one short and fat, one long and lean, to see whether shape affected speed of burning; on that experiment, we lost our bathroom. (2) The roof: I caught him dropping burning objects from the roof. When confronted, he responded, "Newton said that two objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass, but if one were to be on fire, wouldn't there be thermal uplift, retarding the rate of fall?" Oh, my! We spent the next nine years, throwing out every match we found and conducting daily treasure hunts for matches.

Stick with the bugs -- they won't destroy your home! ;)

What Do You Do for Yourself?

A number of years ago I had a chance conversation with a new-age-type psychologist. We chatted about work, kids (at the time I had four, three of them in pampers), home, travel, writing. I suppose I was streaming my non-stop chatter past her in my usual too-much-to-take-in, high-energy style because suddenly her eyes glazed over briefly, then re-focused, and peered at me intently as if she were trying to locate some specific inner center sourcing this energy, a center which I do not have. My energy comes from without, gathers strength and builds to a crescendo within me, and then explodes onto whoever happens to be in my path.

"Stop!" she commanded. I stopped.

"What do you do for yourself?" She looked at me as if she already knew the answer.

For myself? I had never entertained that thought. I mumbled something about teaching my daughter's Girl Scout troop to canoe, homeschooling a highly gifted son, mentoring some talented employees with what I considered to be high potential, and, oh, yes, probably something about Donnie although he is a big boy and usually does a dandy job of taking care of himself.

As I thought would be the case, my psychologist-acquaintance was not impressed. Immediately, she began pressing me with rapid-fire questions. I could see where she was going, but I compliantly answered her questions anyway.

"Do you get physical exercise?" she asked. Sure. Three floors to traverse at home. Toys to pick up on them all. Vacuuming, dusting, washing. Chasing kids. Watering plants. Yep, lots of exercise. And remember those canoeing Girl Scouts? I was usually in the lead canoe. BLEEP! WRONG ANSWER!

"Okay," she continued. "So, do you read?" Oh, yes, a lot -- in preparation for teaching classes and for writing books and, of course, to the kids although, being the oldest child, daughter Lizzie does a lot of that, too. BLEEP! WRONG ANSWER! THAT DOES NOT SOUND LIKE READING FOR RELAXATION!

"Well, then, how about time alone with your spouse?" Oh, yeah, that's an easy one. Quite a bit of time with him, in fact. As a photographer, he has dozens of stock photos and other pictures every week that have to be sorted, catalogued, and filed -- we spend hours working on them together. BLEEP! BLEEP! WRONG AGAIN!

"Arrggh! All right, there must be something you do for yourself! How about vacation time? Where do you go? What do you do?" Exasperation had not simply crept into her voice; it was jumping up and down. Vacation? You've got to be kidding. I live in the Land of Splat!, remember? We can't afford a vacation. We have to buy pampers, as well as incontinent supplies (such as catheters) for Noelle and a myriad other medical support items for both Noelle and Doah; pay for doctors and hospitals, medicine, and hospital parking; take care of school costs; cover transportation to work; and, when we can afford it, pay all of the utilities, not just the most urgent of them (often, though, we must forego something, such as gas in the summer--who needs heating in the summer, anyway). Besides, vacations require planning, and planning is not an option: Noelle (3o surgeries and counting) and Doah (working on his second dozen) spend unplanned time in the hospital far too frequently to even consider making a plan for the next day, let alone for a vacation weeks away. I do accumulate many use-or-lose annual leave hours at work, so the potential for vacation is there, but reality and potential have no way to meet, so I give the spare hours away to chronically ill employees who would otherwise be without income.

The psychologist sighed deeply and gave me "that" look, the one that indicates she is evaluating me for institutionalization. "You really need to do something for yourself in order to keep up your energy and maintain your sanity."

"Ah," I replied. "That's what you were after. Sure, I do something for myself. Let's see. I have one-on-one night outs (or day outs) with each of the kids every couple of months. I took Lizzie to Moscow with me on a work assignment, Noelle to Hawaii, Doah to New York City, and Shane to Finland. Last week, I taught the neighborhood kids to make pysanki (Ukrainian Easter eggs), and a few weeks before that, I assisted Lizzie and her friends in building a tiny rocket launcher in the backyard, a rather neat science experiment, if I do say so myself!"

"No! No! No!" She interrupted me. "You don't get it! What do you do in order to be happy, for your own happiness?"

So much for what began as a pleasant, casual conversation! There really was nothing more to say. It had become clear that she did not get it. I do not need diversion to be happy. My family is my happiness. Writing is my happiness. Teaching is my happiness. Helping Donnie with his photo work is my happiness. Being able to help my colleagues make it through a few more days through the transfer of annual leave hours does bring me happiness. I don't have to go looking for happiness because I already have it.

That was then. Now is now. Some things have changed. The kids have grown up. They now have children of their own, and I have acquired a new title: Grandma. The source of my happiness, though, has not changed, and I still think that psychologist did not get it. However, I do have a better answer for her these days. Now I do have something I do just for myself, for my own happiness, and I do it often. It is called prayer.