"If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Last night Debbie and I had dinner (again) with Mattie and the kids. (R was somewhere else until later.) Older Brother, who is eight years old and in third grade, was telling about his day in school. In PE they did tests to see if they are healthy.

What kinds of tests? They had to repeat some kind of activity a certain number of iterations within a specified time. I was never clear if it was running back and forth between two spots, or something else. Anyway, he explained that eight-year-old boys were supposed to do it 19 times, and he did it 21 times. I figured that was the point of the story, so I congratulated him on being healthy.

But Mattie was concerned that he had specified 19 repetitions as the goal for eight-year-old boys. Surely he meant "students"? 

Older Brother replied with total seriousness that no, the goal for eight-year-old girls was lower. He didn't remember exactly what it was, but he did remember that even the goal for nine-year-old girls was only 18 repetitions—still lower than that for eight-year-old boys.

At this point, Mattie had to give a speech. She explained clearly that the standards for boys and girls "at that age" should be the same. She was so definite about it that even Older Brother, who had been so innocently proud of his achievement even against girls who were older than he was, said that yes of course he agreed that the standards should be the same for both.

But wait a minute. Doesn't Mattie "believe in science"? Isn't this whole household devoted to a secular, rationalistic, scientific approach to the world? Of course they are—so much so that it feels like Mattie and R think even Debbie's Buddhism and meditation practice are a little weird. (To be clear, I know better than ever to discuss polytheism with them!) 

The reason I ask is that of course everyone knows that boys are stronger than girls, and that this is true from an early age. See for example this report on "Sex Differences in Upper‐ and Lower‐Limb Muscle Strength in Children and Adolescents: A Meta‐Analysis," published on the website of the National Library of Medicine (a branch of the National Institute for Health), which states clearly that "Upper‐ and lower‐limb strength were 17% and 8% greater in boys than girls when 5–10 years old." Those percentages aren't huge, but then the difference in goals set by the school for boys versus girls wasn't huge either. Somehow it seems like the school is operating more in line with "the science" than Mattie.

A few minutes later, Mattie remarked that when she was a girl, she was terrible at Physical Education, and her poor performance in sports made her feel bad about herself. It would not be crazy for a person to wonder if her current attitudes are driven even more by a desire for revenge against the phenomenon of school athletics than by a desire to support her egalitarian ideology. But perhaps I'm reaching too far.

Then she announced, "If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Her boys had no idea what she was talking about. So Mattie explained that some folks are prejudiced against fat people, and that they weigh students in school in order to shame them. Her boys didn't understand what the word prejudice means, so Mattie had to explain that. She gave racism as an example, and then had to explain what racism is. (She got the definition wrong, by the way, because she defined it as "hatred of non-white people" rather than "hatred of others based on skin color.") And all of this was in service of the proposition that it would be an evil thing for the school to check the weights of the students.

Debbie suggested softly that if the school did such a thing, they might be responding to a state law and have no choice. Mattie said, "Well I can still complain."

But let's take time out here for signals. In the first place, Mattie's two boys are rail-thin. The likelihood that either will ever be humiliated by a school official for being fat is vanishingly small. In the second place, childhood obesity is a real problem for the children it affects. For officials to be concerned about it—if any of them ever really are—is not just a matter of blind prejudice, but one of sound medicine. And while it's not likely to be a problem for Mattie's children in particular, I'm not sure that it is best to prejudice the children in favor of fat acceptance before they are able to understand that there might be complexities to the issue.

Why, in fact, bring up any of these points at all, especially since she had to explain every single one? Why not just let her children be innocently proud that they passed their tests in school and are therefore judged "healthy"?       

      

R looks angry

After leaving the weekend retreat, Debbie and I came back to her home. I'll be visiting here for a couple of days before flying back to my own home.

As you no doubt recall, Debbie shares this house with her daughter Mattie, her son-in-law R (Mattie's husband), and her two grandsons. Debbie has her own little apartment in one wing, and the other four occupy the rest. Debbie has said she wishes she had space for her fiber-arts hobbies, and in fact her loom is in a big room downstairs. But she doesn't like to go down there to use it, because she doesn't like to intrude on "the family's" space. In many ways she feels confined to the two-rooms-plus-kitchen-and-bath that are allocated as "hers."

Last night we had dinner with the rest of the family. The boys were silly, as little boys often are, but remarkably well-behaved. Mostly I assume that's training, though a little bit might be that their grandmother's Friend-from-out-of-state was visiting (that's me). Mattie was pleasant and cordial—that is, she still felt cold and reserved, but to me she always feels cold. I don't know if anyone else perceives her the same way, and there's nobody I can ask.

But as dinner progressed, I began to get the impression that R was angry. Not about anything specific, but more as a way of being in the world. To be clear, R is often quiet and reserved. So it's not that he was unusually quiet over dinner. Nor was he visibly out of humor: I even managed to make a couple of jokes that coaxed a chuckle out of him. But there seems to be a set to his jaw that I don't remember seeing before, and a firmness to the gaze. You could chalk this up to maturity: despite his two children, despite owning a house, R was a young man when I got to know him, or youngish. I would guess that today he's somewhere around forty: time enough for the softness of youth to wear off, and to be replaced by muscles built of responsibility. Maybe what I am seeing is no more than that.

It is true that he has had disappointments already in life. He and Mattie were graduate students together, but she finished her Ph.D. while he did not finish his. She therefore has a teaching post, while he is working in business. They picked the town they live in based on Mattie's teaching assignment. Even his house—for which he is on the deed—is shared with his mother-in-law, and it was her inheritance that bought it. I don't know whether R keeps score, but he may feel disgruntled about the turns his life has taken.

Nor am I convinced that he is fully happy with his domestic life. It's just little glimpses that I've noticed in moments over the years, and I could be reading them all wrong. Heaven knows my own difficult life with Wife could have predisposed me to see troubles where there are none. But I feel like I might also be able to see trouble where it is well-hidden, because I certainly tried my best to hide my own troubles back in the day.

I know that Debbie wishes Mattie and R were more easy-going with the boys. It would be easy to attribute the same point of view to R, and to assume that Mattie is the only martinet in the family, but that accusation feels false to me. I think the strict parenting is as much his as hers, and may be one direction that he channels his anger at the world. So I have no guesses at what lies behind his anger. Strictly speaking, my whole diagnosis may be false, especially as it is based on no more than glimpses.

But R looks angry to me.

          

Fearing for your children's future

Tonight in the UU Sangha I attend, we started reading a new book for our dharma study, a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about Fear. So during the discussion period, people began discussing their fears. And I heard several of them express fear for their children or grandchildren.

Debbie, for example, is afraid for her grandchildren because her daughter Mattie, and her son-in-law (Mattie's husband), are such martinets, and always yell at their sons (Debbie's grandchildren). Debbie said she's not afraid of dying for her own sake, but she's afraid of the consequences for her grandsons if one day suddenly she's no longer there for them. (To be clear, there's no imminent threat. Debbie's in her early seventies, and she has various ailments that are consistent with her age, including periodic bouts of long COVID and atrial fibrillation. She also has celiac disease, that seems to be slowly morphing into a more generalized autoimmune sensitivity. But she's not on a timeline, with "X years to live"!)

But then another member is worried about his children, too. (I'm pretty sure I haven't given him a name yet.) His kids—a son and a daughter—are legal adults but just barely. They were both adopted out of a dreadful situation, spent their whole childhood being oppositional, and regularly make terrible decisions. So their lives aren't going well, to nobody's surprise. And he's deeply troubled by this.

I think there was someone else too, but I forget the details.

Of course this is common. At some level, everyone who has kids wants those kids to have a wonderful life, free of the spectres that so routinely blight the lives of Other People. That's why I was so upset at the idea that Wife was going to live with Son 1: I wanted him to be able to have adventures in his life (if he wanted them, of course) and I figured there would be no adventures if he were looking after her. As a secondary concern, I feared that living with Wife would ruin his relationship with Wife, although I figured that he was honorable enough he would never throw her out on the street. (Turns out that I called that secondary concern exactly.) 

"Living consistently with your values" part 2

This post follows on from an earlier post a little more than four years ago.

Last week—I think it was last week—I was talking to Debbie over Zoom. She had just come in from roasting marshmallows with her family: daughter Mattie and her husband, plus their two boys (Debbie's grandsons). Roasting marshmallows? I said. That sounds like fun.

Oh it was, she added. And then she told me the story behind it.

The older boy is now in ... I'm not sure, but I think it's first grade. And at the beginning of the week, his teacher handed out a flyer about the Cub Scouts. Anyone who wanted to join could attend a meeting at a certain date and time, and they would roast marshmallows. 

Mattie and her husband told him No, they weren't going to sign him up for Scouts.The way Debbie described it, they gave two reasons:

1. The Boy Scouts require you to believe in God.
2. The Boy Scouts are homophobic.

Besides, said Mattie's husband, the main thing you do in Scouts is learn to go camping, and we already do a lot of camping.

But they were going to roast marshmallows!

So Mattie and her husband offered that the family could roast marshmallows on their own. And they did.

Your children are not you

I was talking with Debbie a couple of weeks ago, and she was telling me with sorrow about how things are going in their house. (You remember that she lives with her daughter Mattie, with Mattie's husband R., and with their two little boys—Debbie's grandsons.) There have been other conflicts before, but many of the longest-lasting frictions seems to be related to the ways that Mattie and R. raise their children. Of course Debbie says that she understands it's none of her business and she has to back away. But it all makes her very sad.

Mattie and R. appear to be very demanding parents. But I'm sure they would never believe themselves to be cruel. They are good liberals in many of the most stereotypical ways, so I'm sure they think that parental cruelty is Something Bad that Other People do. I'm sure they just think that they just have high standards.

Fine, but are they cruel, in reality? I haven't observed enough to be sure. But you can ask other questions that help delineate that space. For example: ….

Are they dogmatic? Absolutely. 

Inflexible? No question. 

Tyrannical? We only use that word for people who are inflexible about Bad Things; as long as they are Our Sort of people, we prefer to call them "reliable" or "committed." Or to put it another way, I'm sure Debbie would go to great lengths to deny that Mattie and R. are actually tyrannical. It would be easy for me to say it, because they're not my family. What's odd is that I don't get the idea that this tyranny is intentional for them. It feels to me more like they just honestly can't imagine that there is any other way to do things than the way they are doing them.

And this brings me to my title. I think parents are often guided (in their parenting) by introspection. How would I feel if my parent did that to/for me? But this is a poor metric to use, because your children are not you!

Debbie is discontent

A couple days ago I had a phone call with Debbie. She is discontent with her situation at home, and we talked about that. But over dinner that evening I made notes to try to remember what we had discussed, so I could write it up here, and I realized the conversation connects to a number of other topics I could talk about independently. So this single post here may end up spawning up to four others. Let's see how much stamina I have.

As background, remember that Debbie is currently living in a house that she bought for her daughter Mattie, along with Mattie's husband and their two sons (Debbie's grandsons). The idea is that now, while the boys are little, she can help with them as a live-in grandmother. (And wow, let me second the idea that parenthood is too much work for two people, so additional help with young children is always a blessing!) And in the future, so runs the plan, when Debbie is getting old and frail, Mattie and husband can offer her their help in return. It's clear and logical.

Only now she is having second thoughts.

"Good night John-Boy, … Debbie, … Mattie …."

This week Debbie bought a new house.

She won't move for a while. The current owners don't want to have to leave till November. That's fine with Debbie because she's still waiting for her mom's house to sell so she'll have the money. (You remember that her mom died a couple months ago.)

But wait, doesn't Debbie already have a house? Doesn't she, in fact, own a house that she herself described as "the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult"? What gives?

Well, you know that her daughter Mattie lives in the next town over -- Mattie and her husband and two little boys. (That's the whole reason Debbie is living where she's living.) She regularly drives over to spend time with them, helping out in a grandmotherly way when Mattie and her husband are overburdened. You also know that Mattie and her husband don't make much money, and live very frugally. So Debbie and Mattie put their heads together and decided it would make the most sense to buy a big house where they could all live together. Debbie could help raise the boys, Mattie and her husband could stop paying rent, and when Debbie gets actually old (she's 67 this year, and clearly not yet "old" by this definition), Mattie and her husband could help her out and take care of her. 

Wait a minute -- suppose I want to come visit? How will that work? Debbie figures she'll put a sofa-bed in her bedroom along with her regular bed; then any guest "who is like family" can sleep there. For someone who is less close, she guesses they can figure something else out. I think I'm probably in the first category.

OK, OK, so if we suppose that the question of my visits has been handled, what then? It's interesting. In principle I think it is a great idea. When my father was a kid his grandmother lived with them, and he loved it. And I can personally vouch that parenthood is too big a job for two adults: having live-in help is a great idea.

But at the same time I can never imagine doing the same thing with either of my boys. And I am trying to understand why not.

• Partly, I value my own solitude too much. This will become a problem when I get old and frail and brittle, but I am assiduously not thinking about that right now. (That always works, right?)
• Partly there are two of them, … so in the event that they both start families, which one should I stay with?
• And partly I just assume that neither one of them wants to see that much of me. Didn't they get pretty well sick of me during all those years they were growing up? Sure, we get along fine now, but I assume that's just because we see each other only in small doses. 

Of course, I assume that about most people, really -- I mean, I assume that they can tolerate me best when there are strict boundaries and limited exposure. And, well, OK … I guess strictly speaking I know that Marie wants to marry me or live with me permanently, but I figure she just doesn't know her own desires well enough because she hasn't been married before: I keep telling her that after a few years the bloom will fade and she'll get sick of me. Also I know that Son 1 is living with Wife right now, but I'm pretty sure that's just because of straight-up emotional blackmail on her part. If anything, surely that experience will leave him sufficiently disgusted that there would be no prayer of his ever wanting to do it again.

It's strange that I can think this is such a good idea in the abstract, and yet it feels odd when Debbie does it and I find it unthinkable that I myself ever would. Maybe this makes me a flawed person … I mean, more flawed than we already knew I am. I just don't know.

      

Mattie, or, Movie meme 8

I've figured out what name to use for Debbie's daughter, if I ever have to write about her again. (The most recent time was here, for example.) I'm going to call her Mattie, after Mattie Ross in the movie "True Grit." 

Partly there is a physical similarity between Debbie's real daughter and Mattie as played by Hailee Steinfeld. But most of the similarity is in attitude. I am thinking specifically of Mattie's absolute conviction, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, of her own righteousness – and of the determination that it gives her.

Maybe this is only part of the story with Debbie's daughter, but it's the part I see. 

"Living consistently with your values"

I wonder if this post belongs over on the Patio. Maybe it does, though I'd have to pretty it up a little first. But let me get it at least written now, and think about where to post it later.

When I was out hiking with Debbie last week, at one point she started talking about her daughter and son-in-law and their family (two little boys). And somehow the topic of the Boy Scouts came up. Or maybe we mentioned the Boy Scouts first? (It's hard for me to remember exactly.) Anyway, Debbie said that her daughter and son-in-law had decided explicitly not to let their sons join the Boy Scouts. 

"Gosh, why not?" I asked. 

As an aside, I myself was never in Scouts, and I was kind of bored by it when Son 1 and Son 2 were involved. But they seemed to enjoy it more or less. Besides, there's a difference between not interested and forbidden.

"Homophobia," she replied. 

I had no idea what she was talking about, but made a mental note to check later. And according to this article in Wikipedia, at least today, it looks like the Boy Scouts have lifted any ban on gay Scouts or gay adult leaders. So I'm still not completely sure what she meant. But maybe there's more than this, somewhere else. I didn't spend a lot of time on the research, honestly.

I was silent for a while as we trudged up the hill, and then finally asked, "Is this because they don't want their sons exposed to bad influences, or because they don't want to give money to organizations they disagree with?"

"I'm not sure. Probably both. I think really they just want to live consistently with their values."

At that, I stopped saying anything more. I reminded myself that I never cared that much about Scouting in the first place. I reminded myself further that, even if I thought it worthwhile to point out the weakness in this reasoning, there was nothing to be gained by pointing it out to Debbie because the decision had been taken by someone else and she had no responsibility for it.

But it irritated me. Not that I hold any special brief for the Boy Scouts, but I do hold some kind of brief for logical thought. And this ain't it.

As I see it, there are two possible cases: either the programs, skills, and training offered by the Boy Scouts have no value, or they have some (positive) value. Arithmetically speaking I suppose there is a third case -- viz., that the value of their programs, skills, and training are negative (i.e., that these things are overtly harmful). But practically speaking the "negative" case can be handled under the "no value" case.

In Case 1, where the value offered by Scouting is zero (or negative), the parents would decide against it not on the grounds of "homophobia" but on the grounds that Scouting as a whole was worthless (or harmful). This is not what the parents said.

In Case 2, where the value offered by Scouting is positive, I would expect to hear some discussion of trade-offs: On the one hand our boys could learn how to go camping and build fires, but on the other hand they'll be exposed to this or that opinion that we disagree with. And then there might be room for a further discussion about how heavy each side of the balance really is. 

Are your children really more likely to adopt the values they clearly learn from you, their parents, every single day at home; or the values they might possibly hear from their den leader once a week? 

For that matter, how likely is it that the opinions of the Scouting central leadership are actually reflected in the local groups? 

Briefly, is there a real problem here, or only an apparent one?

And if Debbie's daughter and son-in-law truly believed they were giving up something important or valuable by giving up Scouting, … wouldn't they have talked like this? Wouldn't they have wrestled with the decision? On the other hand, if they thought it worthless, why make such a big deal over it? Why not just say, "Scouting? Naah, why bother? Such a waste"?

Of course I never talked to them directly about it. But I heard in Debbie's explanation no recognition that there might be any complexity to the decision. And this puzzles me.

The thing is, surely it would have been educational (at the very least) for Debbie's grandsons to study camping and fire-building under people who thought differently from their parents. 

For that matter, since it is a simple fact that there are people in the world who disagree with their parents, surely it would have been valuable for these little boys to learn from an early age how to handle differences of opinion. 

Since real life does -- in fact -- require trade-offs, surely it would have been valuable for these same little boys (when they are old enough) to hear their parents explain this one particular trade-off to them. They could pick up the idea and apply it in other cases. They might see that the world is not a perfect place, but you can still make a life in it anyway.

Also, if they were to come to feel affection for a den leader who taught them valuable skills but whose opinions were different from theirs or their parents', they might learn that human beings can be precious and irreplaceable even if you disagree with them about this or that particular topic. That notion used to be one of the guiding principles of Liberalism, once upon a time. 

Of course the whole discussion was second-hand. But it disturbed me all the same. Maybe the daughter and son-in-law actually agree with me and their opinions just got garbled in transmission. That would be a pleasant thing to believe, if only I could.

Or maybe not. The world, after all, is not a perfect place. But you can still make a life in it anyway.

     

Debbie talks about her daughter's family

 I just got off another Zoom call with Debbie. We didn't end with "I love you" this time -- I think we are both consciously backing away from that -- but she's having a tough time.

On the one hand she's still taking care of her mother, which is as difficult as ever. Tonight her mom got confused over what medicines she was supposed to be taking, and the whole discussion was very hard before she finally let it go and went to bed.

On the other hand this week she flew back to the state where she lives now, and where her daughter and son-in-law live with their two baby boys. And that trip too was very difficult. She visited briefly with her daughter's family, besides taking care of a couple things on her own side that had to be attended to. And she says her daughter's family is under huge amounts of stress. I didn't ask where the stress is coming from, but I can guess: Daughter is a university professor; Son-in-Law has a job now, which must alleviate some financial stresses but also means he is away from the house more; and the children are both very young. (I forget their exact ages, but the younger one is still breast-feeding some of the time, and the older one can't be more than two or three.) This is a situation that has stress written all over it in big red marker. I don't have to know any more details than the ones I've listed to see that. And my sense is that Daughter is something of a perfectionist, which (if true) will only make things more difficult.

Debbie says she remembers being really stressed when her daughter was a baby, but she took it all out on her husband. But she sees Daughter yelling at her older son instead, and it troubles her deeply. She tells me that she didn't want to criticize, and that she knows children are remarkably resilient. But it troubles her.

So I tried to remember what it was like when Son 1 and Son 2 were both little. I was working, at least until they were six and four respectively. (That's when I lost my job and was unemployed for 21 months.) Before Son 2 was born Wife was working as well. But she was diagnosed with lupus and went out on disability when the boys were four and two, or thereabouts. Before that, when she was still working, the boys spent the days at daycare and just came home for dinner and bed; after that she was home with them, sometimes with the support of a nanny. (We hired a few people over the years to help her out.) It was tough -- some days it was really tough -- but I think when we yelled it was at each other and not at the boys. Also when Wife lost it and started yelling at the boys, I tried to act as a buffer. (I think of stories like this one, though they were a few years older by then … more like ten and eight.)

Or maybe my memory is trying to make life easy for me. I do remember noticing once that the boys had formulated comparatives for the sake of emphasis: specifically "as sad as Mommy" and "as mad as Daddy." I do remember that there was a time when they were very young that I identified anger as my most signal and particular sin, one that I felt overwhelmed by while I could distance myself from pride or even lust. Maybe I was a lot worse than I let myself remember. God knows, it's possible.

All I could tell Debbie is that these things are very tough. She agreed. I wish I could have offered a hug, but even the chance to talk is something.

Very tough. 

           

Visiting Debbie, 64 hours

It's Monday and I'm traveling home. Wait, shouldn't I be in the office? Well, the reason I was traveling in the first place was for work, so technically I suppose that I can consider today a travel day and still be on duty as long as I check my email during layovers. And planning my trip this way gave me a full weekend with Debbie: Friday afternoon to Monday morning.

It was delightful, like a sabbath from my normal life. It wasn't exactly restful, though. Debbie wanted to put in her garden this weekend, so on Saturday I went with her to the garden store to buy three cubic feet of dirt, plus one-and-a-half cubic feet of compost; also some plants that she was missing. There is some deep irony at work here: Debbie, Marie, and my mother are all seriously into gardening, and I cannot for the life of me see the attraction. Sunday after church we dug up her existing beds, put in all the new dirt, and settled into planting and watering. 

Wait, Sunday? What happened to the rest of Saturday, or did the shopping really take that long? No, we had her daughter and family over for lunch and a visit in the afternoon: "and family" means the daughter's husband and one-year-old baby. Also they have a new dog, since their old dog died a few days ago and they went right out to the shelter to get a new one. The new dog seems to have anxiety issues whenever they leave (and a huge urge to run away), so of course they brought her along. I tried to be nice even though I'm really not a dog person under the best of circumstances; also this one seriously freaked out on seeing me. Maybe I looked or smelled like a previous owner? Someone who beat her, perhaps? No way to know, because she doesn't talk; but I spent the afternoon trying hard to move slowly and non-threateningly.

Actually I spent most of the afternoon playing with the baby. I'm not sure how much I have to discuss with Daughter and her husband — that is, I like them (especially her husband) but they have a lot going on and what can I really contribute? — but I'm a sucker for babies. So he and I crawled around the living room a few times, pulled books off the bookshelf, and generally made noises to each other for several hours. The best part was that when he got smelly I could pass him back to his parents to let them change his diaper. 

Daughter and her family left after supper. Debbie and I decided to go see a movie, but the nearest theater was half an hour away and her Internet was out. So we couldn't check ahead what was showing, but just drove out on a lark. We got there exactly in time for a showing of "Rocketman," which was the only one that interested us. Couldn't have asked for better.

Sunday morning we went to church after breakfast, meeting up with Daughter & Family again. After the service was the church's annual meeting, which Debbie, her daughter, and her son-in-law all planned to attend. So I spent 90 minutes or so with their baby again, and on the whole it was time pleasantly spent. 

After that, Debbie and I went back to her place and did the gardening I described above. But we worked for only a couple of hours, because Daughter & Family had invited us to their place for dinner. So we showered and drove to their place. 

The whole visit was somehow sad. Afterwards Debbie said that the family seemed anxious and discouraged. Certainly I felt a kind of anxiety the whole time I was there, as if there were something contagious in the air. And they have plenty to be stressed about. Their baby is healthy, and developing well and on schedule; but a baby in the house always adds stress. My recollection from when my own boys were little is that the stress can be mitigated only somewhat by a fixed clockworklike schedule, to which any guests (even well-known friends and family, to say nothing of semi-strangers like Grandmother's recent ex-boyfriend) are an interruption. 

They have money worries. Daughter is a new professor at some little college in a town that makes Sticksville look cosmopolitan. Son-in-law was going to be a professor, but never finished his Ph.D., so now he is offering summer school classes in the department and looking for work in the "real world." Unemployment is supposed to be at record lows, but he's not finding it. So their household income is ... I don't know a number, but low enough for them to worry. 

Then there is the new dog, whom they have owned less than a week (if I heard them right), who seems to have major anxiety issues, and who shat on the living room floor while we were there. (Thank God it was on the hardwood and not the carpet.) Son-in-law took her outside very deliberately while Daughter cleaned up the mess; then he explained in a soft, low voice that he hadn't beaten or punished her. 

For whatever it is worth, I have no idea what he did do, much less what one is supposed to do in a case like that. But I think I recognize the tone of voice. It sounded like the tone I heard from myself, back in the days when both boys were very young, back when we still owned a house and our own dog (plus a parrot, God help us!), back when Wife had recently left work on disability and was at home spending money crazily online, back when my job was closing and it took me almost two years to find another — back when I controlled myself very carefully and responded very deliberately every time Fate kicked me in the ribs yet again, because ... well hell, why not? Fate had whipped and cowed me; what was there to gain by screaming or rebellion? And besides where would I even have started?

Sorry, I've suddenly made this all about me, which it shouldn't be. But I think I recognize Son-in-law's tone and his whole demeanor. And I wish there were something I could do to help. Can I even tell him it gets better? It got better for me, but only through ways I couldn't have imagined at the time. And it took years. He's a young guy, and there is plenty of time for him to take a totally different path to some totally different and unforeseeable end. 

After dinner Debbie and I came home, finished the last bit of gardening and watering, and had banana splits for dessert. Then I showered, packed, and went to bed. She stayed up to call her mother, and then talked to her sister for a while ... partly about their mother ("Does it sound to you like Mom's been drinking again?") and partly about Daughter's new dog ("You've had a lot of dogs, so WTF?") This morning we had breakfast, in and around Debbie calling her daughter ("Sis says dogs with that much anxiety rarely get better, so think about whether you are really prepared to deal with all this in the long term.") and fielding urgent calls from her work. We packed our respective cars, and then hugged goodbye in her driveway: a long and tender hug with a couple of light kisses. "Hosea, I'm so glad you came." "Debbie, I always love seeing you." And we drove away; she to work, and I to the airport.

In my post on Friday I made a flippant remark about our reading Walt Whitman together, suggesting that there might still be a sexual dynamic at work between us, but I don't really believe it. Or rather, I think it will always be there at some level, as a kind of fuel for the relationship. But I no longer think we have to work at it to keep the relationship non-romantic and non-sexual. That's just how it is. In some ways I'm a little wistful about it. If this were a thing that Debbie and Marie could both accept gladly I'd be happy if we were still on terms of intermittent fuckability. But at this point it's less that I want genital ecstasy than that I'd like to be allowed to hold hands when we walk alongside each other; I'd like to be allowed to drape an arm around her waist when we stand next to each other; I'd like to be allowed to kiss her seriously, not with a quick peck on the lips but slowly and deeply inside her mouth. I haven't asked after any of these liberties, of course; and I understand that even these trigger strong, deep emotions. I'm still wistful.

Oh well. Sabbath's over. Time to come back to the world.

I still think I will always love her.

Sent from my iPhone

Visiting Debbie, 2

Once again ... I guess this is about a year later, or almost ... I got the chance to visit Debbie at the tail end of a visit to Sticksville for work. Like before, it was a pleasant visit: we talked together and cooked together. Unlike the last time, I detected no underlying romantic tension, no effort being put behind Not Doing Anything Sexual. So maybe that's now a thing of the past? Or maybe it's just a matter of Different day, different atmosphere. I don't know which.
 
What follows is slightly reworked from the email I sent Marie about it. 

• So I talked to Debbie about my job situation, mentioning the following points:
• The change of status changes my bonus potential, but not my base salary. Losing the bonus at the same time Son 1 graduates from university is close to a wash, because all I ever spend my bonus on is his tuition.
• My boss assures me that there is no risk of my losing the job itself, but I don’t believe him. I think I’ll be overpaid if I’m reclassified as a non-manager, but that’s my idea and nothing anyone has said.
• Saying I’m overpaid is synonymous with saying I’m underutilized, and according to one way of looking at it that’s bad for me too. Underutilization makes it easy for me to grow dull and fall into a rut, which in turn makes me more likely to lose my job.
• I used to tell myself that I was highly mobile and loved exploring new places, but at this point that’s more of a religious self-identification than a reality. (“Of course I’m a Methodist / Episcopalian / Jew / whatever, ... just because I’ve never been in a house of worship in the last 50 years doesn’t mean anything!”) That is to say, in the last 27 years I’ve really settled into Beautiful City as home. And I would really miss Beautiful City if I were to move.
• On the other hand, I have somehow organized my life in such a way that it involves a lot of travel.

Maybe there was more. You’ve heard me talk through this a lot.

Debbie didn’t comment on any of that directly at first, but talked about her own moves: to Los Angeles in the fall of 2013 for her M.Div. studies, to Wisconsin for a year of practical apprenticeship after getting the degree, and then to her current home a year ago for this job. Talking through her experiences, she said that she missed Beautiful City enormously. While in L.A. she’d come back from time to time to visit, and every time she got here she would start to cry. She expected to hate L.A. when she first moved there; and in both Wisconsin and her current home she felt very alone and culturally isolated.

 

All that having been said, she has also found the process of breaking out into something new to be incredibly rewarding on many levels. She has felt revitalized and challenged, professionally and personally. Yes, she still misses Beautiful City terribly. (I brought her some marmalade, made from fruit from my neighbor's tree, which she gladly accepted.) But she didn’t hate L.A. when she moved there — she loved it. Moving to her current home was a big change, but she made friends through the Unitarian Church, through her work, and through hobbies like quilting and fiber arts. And not only has she thereby made a new place for herself, but getting in motion again has reminded her of other places she wants to go too — to travel or to live — while she is still able-bodied. (She turns 64 later this summer.)


So that’s the filter of her own experience, which she offered as a perspective on my question. From there I started to talk more about the details of the job I've recently applied to, and we brainstormed some questions I should ask when I talk to the manager on Tuesday. (Gosh, I hope I can remember them all now!)

After that she got me to help with some of her gardening, and then we drove a few towns over to visit her daughter, her son-in-law, and their two-week old baby. We stayed there for a few hours; drove back, set up a bed for me in her guest room (after moving the ironing board and a couple of sewing projects), and went to our respective beds. Breakfast this morning was out on her deck in the back yard — she said that this house is the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult, and certainly the view of the yard in the morning was lovely — and then I drove 4.5 hours to the airport....

Lotus Blossom

This evening, the UU Sangha that I attend held a Tea Ceremony in honor of their tenth anniversary.  Debbie was in town tonight for the occasion.  In fact – I forget if I ever explained this – Debbie founded this Sangha.  She was a member of the UU congregation and she wanted to incorporate meditation into her church life, so she asked if anybody else wanted to start meditating with her.  That's how it started, back in November 2004.  Some people have been members for the whole time, or for many years, but Debbie began it all.

Of course I knew I'd be seeing her.  I wrote about that last month or so.  And actually I figured it would be fairly easy, all things considered.  After all, I've decided that I don't want to be romantically involved with anybody right now, so the fact that we aren't together is just fine.  Right?  No need for heavy weather.

Maybe I could have guessed that it wouldn't be quite that simple.

Mind you, I behaved myself.  And at first it was simple.  When I got there this evening, she was standing near the door; I walked over, gave her a hug, and asked softly, "Hey there, Lotus Blossom … how ya doing?"  We traded "Fine"s and then took our seats.  And for the duration of the Tea Ceremony I was able to look at whoever was talking and to avoid sneaking glances at her.

But afterwards, she suggested that maybe we should take a little time to talk together.  So I hung out while one after another long-time member of the Sangha came up to give her a hug and tell her how great it was to see her again.  And then, after everyone else had gone and we had locked up, we sat in her car and talked.

We talked a little bit about superficial things, and then got more real.  I told her that I don't want to be involved with anybody right now, and she emphatically agreed: that is to say, she agreed that she herself went through such a phase, that she feels that way strongly now that she is in graduate school, that she expects to feel that way at least until she finishes her program in another couple of years … and that she fully believed way back during our first lunch that this was where I needed to be.  Then with that out of the way we talked about other things: how Son1 and Son2 are doing, how her daughter and son-in-law are doing, whether I will move next year to another office (did I tell you my boss wants to move me across the country?) and how the boys will feel if I leave the town that has been their home their whole lives, how her research is going, whether she'll move to live near her daughter and son-in-law after her classes are over, how soon she'll be a grandmother … a lot about the future, now that I think about it, … about how we feel about the futures that spread out before us.  And we couldn't talk for too long because she had a two hour drive yet tonight to get back to the big city where she lives now, and where her classes are tomorrow morning.

I didn't start to feel the ache until we began to wrap up to say goodbye, until I hugged her (as well as I could in the front seat of a small car) and kissed her cheek and told her to drive safely, until I had to swallow suddenly to keep from blurting out "I will always love you."  But I felt it then.  And I kept feeling it as she drove away and I drove home, overlaid though it was with the pleasant sense of having seen her again and of the meeting having gone well.  And I feel it now, after some food and a beer.  And I'll be feeling it as I go to bed.

Don't I have anything else to drink in this apartment?

It's true that I don't want to be romantically entangled with anybody right now.  It's true, I know it's true, I'm sure it's true.  There's no question in my mind.  Dear God, how I miss her.