The English Geek

Why I Wear a Mask

As the pandemic continues, I have been thinking about fear.

To be fair, I have thought about fear quite often over the past 15 years or so. I think about it when someone tells me I’m brave to go running on my own. I think about it when someone says I’m foolish to go running on my own, too. I’m not fearless about running by myself. I always tell someone where I’m going and how long I’ll be. I take my cell phone with me and make sure it is charged. I watch for people who give strange vibes and I cross roads with the utmost caution. Every time I leave to go running, in fact, I have the thought that this one might be the run when something bad happens: when I get hit by a car, when someone pulls me into the weeds and rapes me, when I fall and get an injury I can’t walk home with…

If you let it, the fear can control your imagination. So I choose, every time I go for a run, to go anyway, despite my fears. Because the truth is, I don’t have someone to run with consistently. If I decided to not run because of my fears, then I would never run, and not running is not an option. So I take precautions and I try to make my choices based on reality rather than on the fearful scenarios my brain can devise.

There is an idea in American society right now that people are wearing masks out of fear. I’ve seen it expressed on social media, of course, but also I’ve seen it in person. The man in the post office in April, who shouted at me because I was wearing a mask while I waited in line to mail a package to Nathan, that I was an idiot for believing in the government’s scare tactics. (And the flu kills more people than this stupid imaginary virus.) “You’re just wearing that mask because you’re a coward,” he said. Luckily librarian eyebrow is REALLY noticeable when you’re wearing a mask. I didn’t even respond with words, just glared at him until he shut up.

Here’s the thing: I’m not wearing a mask because I am afraid. I am wearing a mask because it might help turn the tide, flatten the curve, calm the wave. I’m wearing one because it could help keep someone else from getting sick. I’m wearing one because that’s what scientists are recommending.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid. I am afraid. I don’t want to bring the virus into my family. I have gone through enough medical conditions with my family to fill an entire lifetime. It is enough. I don’t want my husband, whose heart has undergone FOUR damaging processes, to catch a virus that can cause heart damage. I don’t want my teenage son, who has an aortic bulge, to catch a virus that can cause aortic bulges. I don’t want my adult son, who is grappling with mental health issues, to add illness to his list of struggles. I, in my own body, do not want to catch it. My breathing has already been irrevocably altered by pertussis. I don’t need another thing.

I also don’t want any of my adult kids who are out in the world, away from my house, to catch it. I hope many, many complete strangers I will never meet will be wearing masks so that my kids can be healthy and safe, so they can push forward with their amazing and brave pursuits.

All of my friends and family members: I don’t want any of them to get sick, either.

I also reject the idea that I’m wearing a mask because I don’t have enough faith. “I know where I am going when I die,” I have heard more than once, “so I’m not afraid. If it’s my time, it’s my time, and I will be happy in heaven.” My faith has changed so much in the past five years that I can no longer grasp this concept, but even when I did think I knew where I was going, I didn’t want to die. I want to live a long life. I want to see my kids fulfill their ambitions. I hope I get to be a grandma one day. I want to travel. I want to sit in restaurants with friends and laugh and talk together. I still have books to write, races to run, mountains to climb. I want to be here, in this place, living with the people I love. Death is inevitable, but I don’t want to invite it in any sooner than necessary, not because of fear of the afterlife but because I am here, right now, and it is what I know.

When I run by myself, I only use one headphone and I keep my music low so I can hear my surroundings. I check over my shoulder and I look around for weirdos. I also watch the path; what divots or stones do I need to avoid so I don’t twist an ankle? I put on sunscreen so I don’t get sunburned, and make sure I have access to water on longer runs. I don’t run naked but in fact spend no small amount of money on running clothes that keep my boobs from bouncing and compress my hamstrings in a supportive way. I wear socks so I don’t get blisters and shoes so I don’t cut my feet open.

These are the precautions I take to keep myself safe in order to do something that I love. Do they absolutely guarantee that I won’t get hurt, raped, hit by a car, or otherwise injured? No (although I do ensure that there is ZERO boob bouncing). But they up the odds of my safety.

It’s the same with mask-wearing during a global pandemic (although it’s starting to feel like an American epidemic, isn’t it?) I don’t wear a mask because I’m a coward (or because I’m manipulated by the media, influenced by propaganda, virtue signaling to others, or any of the other dumb things people have said or insinuated). I wear one because I understand the risks and want to do what I can to make them smaller, for myself and for others.

This past weekend, my niece who lives in Texas was visiting Utah. I haven’t seen her entire family for years—long enough that none of her kids really even know who I am, but I was excited to see them all anyway. We haven’t had any family interaction since December, so when my sister planned a family party, I was so looking forward to it. But then Texas exploded with cases, and Utah’s cases continued to go up, and I got nervous. None of my concerns about hearts and lungs and mental health have changed. I wanted to go to see my family, but I also wanted to stay safe. So, I very carefully asked. I know this is a hot-button issue and people have strong opinions on both sides. I didn’t want to seem like I was taking all my toys and going home, but I also needed to lower the risk. I asked if people would wear masks to the party. And I know: many of them didn’t want to. Many of them disagree with my opinion.

But, you know? I went to the party and they all wore masks. No one made me feel bad, no one told me I was a coward. Maybe after I left they all took their masks off and had a mask-and-Amy-free party without me, and that is fine.

But they respected my issues because (I think) they love me and wanted to see me. I mean…it might’ve just been for my cake, but I think it was for me.

I can’t help but contrast that with another large activity Kendell and I went to a few weeks ago. We went full of hesitation but wanting to be supportive. We both wore our masks. And we were literally the. only. people. wearing masks. One other person put on his mask in solidarity, but everyone else went about their partying way, maskless. I caught the eye of several people, friends and family both, and the looks on their faces: pity, ridicule, and many efforts not to laugh. It was almost like being back in high school, when the queen bee deigned to notice you and then spotted your flaw and her eyes widened in delight at this thing she could mock you for. Like that, except far more disappointing than painful because now we are grown ups and should know better.

It is a form of privilege, honestly. To stand in the midst of so many people getting sick and so many who are dying and to defy the precautions. It might seem brave to you, you might think I am living in fear, but honestly, to me you are being stupid. It shows that you have yet to learn one of life’s cruelest truths. Illness comes to everyone, eventually, and while you might be healed you are never the same. You will always be fixed, there will always be a scar.

So I will wear my mask. In hopes that it protects my family. In hopes that it protects others. In hopes that it will create good karma that protects my out-of-state loved ones. In hopes that I will not be the vector that causes life to teach you that truth.

Not in fear, but in hope.

Dear America: An Open Letter to All the Voters

Dear America:

You break my heart.

Since 2016, I confess: even though we’re all supposed to “go high” and to try to see both sides and to understand that different people have different ideas about what makes a good leader and to listen to everyone’s voice because everyone’s voices deserve to be heard—I know and believe that. But deep down (and probably not so deep down, especially in my private conversations) I have held contempt for trump voters.

I confess: I do not understand how anyone can think he is good for the country. I am still astounded that a reality-show conman is the president of the United States. I still feel like I am living in the wrong chapter of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Honestly, I find it disgusting that people can believe a person who makes fun of disabled people and thinks that white supremacists are upstanding citizens and denies science and destroys butterfly habitat for a pointless wall (and thinks that building walls is a solution) and doesn’t have time for books, who stands in front of the country every single day to lie about everything he can, even inane issues he doesn’t need to lie about—it disgusts me that people think this is OK.

I’ve tried to keep my small, judgmental thoughts to myself. But, you know? The other smallminded people don’t mind sharing their opinions.

“trump’s my man!” the mom of one of Kaleb’s friends told me shortly after the election. “He’s getting all those lazy unwed moms off welfare.” (This was a short-lived friendship.)

“That man is doing great things for our economy,” many, many men have mansplained to me on Facebook.

“At least he’s preserving our religious freedom,” more than one church member has said.

“Nah, he’s right,” a friend astounded me by saying. “All the hype over the environment is just fear mongering.”

Library patrons, church members, neighbors, friends, strangers at Costco…it isn’t my imagination. People—actual adults—think he is OK. They aren’t even embarrassed to think he’s just fine, while I’m over here struggling with shame that I think they are morons. And trying to convince myself that if I could see both sides I could somehow heal the rift, at least between people in my actual life.

Maybe it’s time to realize that there isn’t much I can do. Republicans are going to republican. They’re going to continue thinking that voting suppression is fantastic and that taking away women’s rights is a great idea and that destroying the ACA is just fine because, after all, it was pushed through by a black man. I can wave my arms and write my blog posts and raise my eyebrows in disbelief but none of that is going to stop them from being who they are.

And until recently, I held on to the belief that this is a Republican issue. That small-mindedness and the overwhelming desire to look backward for an image of how our country should be (“make America great again” really means “make America white again”; it means going back to that 50s ideal when wives in pearls and dresses scurried around at home making sure dinner was ready for their husbands when they walked in the door, when Black people knew their place, when gays stayed properly in their closet and, of course, when all the Mexicans were still in Mexico) belongs squarely on the red side of politics.

But the Democratic primary is making me think otherwise.

It’s making me think that maybe my sister Suzette was right. “It’s not just Republicans who are slime balls,” she’s reminded me more than once. “It’s all politicians.”

Except…I’m not really heartbroken by politicians.

I’m heartbroken because of voters.

I’m devastated that once again, our choices will come down to old white men.

OLD.

WHITE.

MEN.

I’m so tired of old white men ruling the world. Definitely the current president—I’ve been tired of his type of new-money trashiness and stupid wealth for all of my adult life. But all the senators too, blocking bills and putting narrow-minded judges into courts. Governors like Utah’s stroking the back of the dominant religion and selling our state to oil and property developers. Even the mayor of my little town is an old white man, one who swirls his finger around in his retirement funds and redecorates his office.

But over and over and over and OVER, we just keep voting for old white men.

And of course, the old white men are just going to keep showing up and consuming everything and ruling the world. Why?

Because America elects them.

“Hilary couldn’t beat trump,” someone told me yesterday, “so people won’t vote for a woman because they don’t think a woman can beat him.”

Is this true? Even though Elizabeth and Amy and Kamala aren’t Hilary?

Biden isn’t Obama.

Bernie isn’t Roosevelt.

But Biden says “I’m an Obama Democrat” and we all line up to vote for him?

Obama bailed out the banks. Clinton was a sexual slime ball. The Bushes got us into unnecessary wars.

The litany of trump’s mistakes and failures is legion.

Over and over, old white men—and, OK, at least Obama was black—have done damage to our country.

And yet over and over, we just keep electing them.

America: isn’t it time for something different?

Can’t it be, at last, the time when we can look forward? When we can grow up and let go of our prejudices and narrowmindedness?

If not now, when?

When?

“Did you vote for Elizabeth Warren just because she’s a woman?”

That is the question I asked myself yesterday, over and over. Partly, no. I voted for her because she took on Bloomberg in the debates. And because she had actual plans. And because her health—physical and mental—seems much stronger than Bernie’s and Biden’s. Partly, yes. My first choice already dropped out, so I went with my second choice. I know enough of feminism to understand that this is what people hate about feminism; they think that it’s about prioritizing women over men. If you also have studied feminism, you know that at its core it is about equality, and we have to call it feminism because it is women—not men—who have to fight for every scrap of power.

I voted for Elizabeth Warren because Bernie terrifies me and because Biden can’t remember the position he’s running for or the, you know, the “thing” (ie the Declaration of Independence). And because Bloomberg is terrifying in an entirely different way. And because while I disagree with her stance on health care, I agree with almost all of her other plans, and because I think she would stand a better chance at helping to heal America’s divisions (Bernie certainly will not do this; Biden might but only if he can remember what he’s doing).

And, yes: I also voted for her because she’s a woman.

And it breaks my heart, America, that you can’t do the same.

Sincerely:

Amy

Hearts Like Crazy Paving: Thoughts on a Quilt

Where do ideas come from?

In January I noticed that a lot of the quilters I follow on Instagram were participating in a “scrappy hearts quilt along.” (Click on the link to see the first post about the quilt along, which was hosted by Emily Dennis.)  All those images of cute, sweet, scrappy (mostly pink) patchwork made me think I haven’t ever made a quilt to put out for Valentine’s Day…

For about five seconds I could imagine my own cute, sweet, scrappy, pink patchwork heart quilt.

(a screen shot of the #scrappyheartsqal hashtag on Instagram to illustrate what I mean. SEE! Cute! Pink! Sweet!)

But then reality smacked me in the face. First off: I am still deep inside making my black and pink quilt. I don’t need another pink quilt. (To reality I said: that’s true! But I don’t have to make a pink one. I could make an aqua one. Or a purple one! All multicolor florals! All low volume! What about plaids?) Second: I get a little bit obsessive with scrappiness sometimes. Meaning, I’d start out intending to use my scraps, but then I’d think “I need something new” and then before I knew it I’d have made 27 trips to 5 different fabric stores and I’d have enough fabric to make six scrappy heart quilts, not just one, and I’d have spent enough to cover an airplane ticket to London. (To reality I said: that’s true! But…and I really didn’t have a comeback to that truth.) Third: Last fall I made three scrappy patchwork pumpkin hot pads with very similar design ideas (scrappy squares and a few half square triangles) and those things took me an entire month. If I were to make a Valentine’s Day quilt, I wanted something faster. (To reality I said: that’s true! But maybe with my new machine it would be faster?)

But reality’s biggest argument was this: I really don’t love Valentine’s Day. I’ve written about this many times so there is no need to rehash all the reasons, but I can sum it up like this: having not married a romantic man, I have zero hopes for romantic Valentine’s Day gestures, and even though he shows me he loves me in many other ways on many other days during our life together, my bitterness at wanting traditional romantic Valentine’s Day gestures anyway flares high in February. My bookshelves are a lovely romantic gesture (if you’ve read A Man Called Ove you know my reference) but sometimes a girl wants overly priced flowers or expensive jewelry—and it annoys me that I still have that want even while knowing it’s manufactured by rose sellers and jewelry stores and Hallmark commercials.

Valentine’s Day, then, sparks annoyance with myself and frustration with my husband (I mean, really…would it be that hard to just get me some damn flowers?) and then more annoyance at myself for being frustrated with my husband (because bookshelves) and then I also remember it isn’t about Valentine’s Day, really, but about unmet needs (on both sides) and just how hard marriage really is and then I’m sparked and frustrated and annoyed and sad and…yeah.

So to reality I thought that’s true! And then I thought I moved on.

But those cute, sweet, scrappy patchwork quilts still kept popping up in my IG feed.

And part of my brain must’ve continued working on it, because one morning I woke up with an idea.

What if I made a quilt that was representative of my relationship to Valentine’s Day? What might that look like?

(And, yes, I confess: one of my first ideas was just a whole-cloth quilt, black cotton and broken hearts stitched in black thread, but then I thought too bitter, Amy and besides, my almost-50-year-old eyes could never manage that.)

I made a list: angles. Sharp edges. Corners and lines almost lining up, but not quite. A tiny bit of sweetness—candy hearts and all the times I made pink heart sugar cookies with my kids—but not too much. One of my favorite Valentine’s Day conversations, when Kaleb was six or seven and his favorite color was purple, but he was worried it wasn’t a “boy color,” so he asked me if he could wear his purple shirt to school on Valentine’s Day because “on Valentine’s Day purple is a Valentine color, not a girl color” and then we talked about color and gender and personal choice and individuality (and he wore his purple shirt of course). So, purple. And, yes: pink, but mostly bright, cool, deep pinks. Black, of course. Maybe even a little bit of silver (there’s a story there, too, but it would take too long to tell it here). Flowers of some sort, but not overtly floral, to represent that resentful wish for flowers. I wanted it to be edgy and maybe just a little bit punk. A rebellious quilt.

But I also wanted to keep in mind my other little nudges from reality. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on this quilt, or cause a huge influx of new fabrics to enter my stash. And I didn’t want to spend months making it, either.

By now, with all the rethinking and pondering, it was almost February, but I decided: I’m going to try to make a…I’d already stopped thinking of it as a Valentine’s Day quilt. Instead it is a quilt that is a textile interpretation not only of my complicated feelings about Valentine’s Day but also, somehow, of marriage (we were married on February 13 so the two days are tied together anyway), and of the contrast of what society—movies and romance novels and TV shows and social media posts—tells us what love is supposed to be like and what the reality of love really is. Also me right now and me thirty years ago and me loving my husband and my kids but also those memories of other, younger, wilder loves I still carry with me. Cotton and softness both, unpredictable lines but some sort of structure anyway.

Am I thinking too much? Am I being dramatic? Reading too much into a quilt? Or just…silly?

I don’t know.

My life hasn’t followed a pattern. It hasn’t lined itself up in neat columns and rows. It hasn’t been sweet, always. There is a part of me that feels I have never been loved or seen for who I am, truly—and maybe everyone on this wide world feels that way, too, I don’t know. Has it been bad? No. But I can’t pretend it has been all sweetness and light, either.

Where do ideas come from?

Can making a quilt be cathartic?

Can pieces of fabric cut and then made into something different mean something other than just another quilt someone might cover themselves with?

One afternoon when I was quilting this quilt—I do all of the piecing in my craft room, but my desk isn’t big enough for the actual quilting and so I do that at the kitchen table—Kendell walked down the hall and said “I had a great idea! Why don’t you start selling your quilts?”

He said this in an encouraging way, full of certainty that someone would want to buy something I made. I tried to explain to him the realities of selling items like quilts, how I’d have to have an Etsy shop or develop a website, and how probably only people with name recognition sell their quilts, and I didn’t even go down the rabbit hole of how much a quilt actually costs to make. He would not be deterred, though. He was certain I could sell my quilts, starting with that one, with this one I’d been working on all month.

(All of those thoughts and the creative(?) process that brought me to this idea were in my head, and in my notebook, not in our conversations so he has no idea about this quilt’s meaning, just what it looks like.)

And then I laughed a little caustic laugh and I said “listen! This quilt is a representation of my interpretation of modern love as it is influenced by consumerism! No one will want to buy it!”

And he said “you should have more belief in yourself and besides, that’s a weird thing to say about a quilt” and then he wandered back down the hall.

And then I laughed for real because that is it in a conversation, a summary of what led me to make this in the first place, of how it is to be married to someone for 28 years and have the history of unimaginable anger and unspeakable love stored in your body, of all the ways we try to see each other’s way of seeing but almost never do because we are two different people. All the times I have been shattered and then put myself back together and he has, also, and how for us it hasn’t been smooth or perfect or light but work. And how I don’t know if that is really how all marriages are, despite the Hallmark ads and the husbands buying roses at Costco. Maybe that, really, is why I can never love Valentine’s Day, because I am unable to pretend, even for just February 14^th, that marriage is represented by cheesy conversation hearts and velvet boxes of chocolates.

I can’t pretend.

For me, for us, it has been angles. Lines of communication almost matching up, but not quite. Stitching ourselves back together and trying again. Starting at entirely different points but sometimes, sometimes, crossing anyway. Meeting up, moving together. Clashing, figuring it out. Laughing at ourselves, sometimes. Bitterness, sweetness. History and tomorrow, bound up in acid pink.

That is why I couldn’t make the cute, scrappy quilt.

That is what I tried to put into this quilt.

(PS: I sat down to write this blog post thinking I would write a short introduction and then a tutorial. Obviously that got away from me. Tutorial next post/tomorrow.)

The Best Way to Retain Teachers: An Ex-Teacher's Perspective on a Disturbing Problem

I have been thinking about this article from the Washington Post all day. It describes how, in Utah, to become a teacher you no longer have to have a teaching credential. Instead, you need a Bachelor's degree in the subject you want to teach.

(The only picture I have of myself in my classroom.)

Probably I have been thinking about it because I made the fatal mistake of trying to engage people online who think this is a fantastic idea. "Learning about teaching is pointless" the argument always begins, and then it follows from there. "Because my uncle Tom taught me how to do geometry much better than the geometry/baseball coach I had in high school." "Because pedagogy takes time away from learning about the subject." "Because teaching is something almost anyone can do, so long as they know about their subject."

Now I find myself caught in a frustration loop, arguing with those voices in my head.

Of course, I'm not a teacher anymore. But I did teach, high school English for two years. When I decided to start teaching, I already had a degree in English, but to get my teaching credential, I got another degree, this time in Secondary Ed. (Were I to go back in time, I would just get myself a Master's degree instead of a second Bachelor's; I'm still not sure why I didn't even consider that option.) My English degree taught me about reading, writing, literature, history, grammar, and all things book-related; my secondary ed degree taught me how to teach what I knew to others.

I'd like to think I was a good teacher. I know I was passionate about it. I wanted desperately to teach each of my students several things: to love books, to write well, and to integrate literary thinking into their lives. I spent hours during my two years of teaching working on lesson plans. When I graded essays, I had a green pen in my hand, which I used to correct grammar and usage errors, write encouraging comments, and leave a final thought (on every assignment I gave). You can’t teach writing well without the comments and the corrections, but it takes so much time, especially when you’re grading 75, 100, 150 papers. I ran on caffeine and sugar and not much else during those years; I gained weight and I got wrinkles and prematurely grey hair. I loved teaching—but I was entirely overwhelmed by it. It consumed my life. I didn't go to church, or to family parties, or to my kids' activities. I just worked on my school stuff because I had to stay on top of it. If I didn't do it, who would?

And I did all of that work on a salary that would qualify me for food stamps.

Two years was all I could manage.

The Washington Post article says that "Education officials in [Utah] have been trying to figure out why 2 in 5 teachers leave the state’s public schools within five years."

Really? They can't have been trying very hard. Because their solution—let's hire people who don't know how to teach!—fails miserably at solving the problem. Their "solution" only tries to make it easier for people to become​ teachers, not to continue teaching, thereby underlining the idea that "qualified teachers" aren't the point, just bodies in the front of the classroom.

The process of becoming a teacher isn't the hard part. The hard part is continuing to teach for more than a few years.

Why do so many teachers leave the profession within five years?

Some of it is​ because of the pay scale. But if you dare suggest that teachers are underpaid, the reaction is swift: teachers should teach because they love their subject, because they love teaching, because they have the power to influence young lives. All of that is true, of course, but it is also beside the point. What other career requires people to be paid in encouragement and gratitude? And then there’s the always-popular response: But teachers only work nine months out of the year! Actually, what teachers do is squish twelve months (or more) of work into nine months.

It goes deeper than the pay scale, though. It’s also the working conditions, the run-down classrooms and ancient desks, the computer labs filled with painfully slow machines, the always-dirty floors. It’s the overwhelming classroom size. It’s the demand that if you want, say, whiteboard markers, then you know where Staples is. It’s the fact that technically, there is almost no time in the day for a teacher to use the bathroom. It’s the relentless, looming reminder of testing. And it is the overwhelming feeling that it is always the teacher’s fault when students don’t fulfill their potential.

And yet—we still love it. At least, I did. I loved being with students and trying to ignite their excitement, trying to encourage them to think broadly and objectively, trying to help them see how using the correct word might be the thing that gets them ahead in the world. I loved preparing lessons. I even loved the moments when, grading papers, I’d find a clever phrase or a thoughtful metaphor and think yes! Here! This student is learning! I would go back to teaching in a heartbeat—if they doubled the salary and required me to teach two classes a day instead of three. (Which will never happen, of course. Especially in Utah.)

Not anyone can be a teacher, and yes: pedagogy doesn’t save the world from apathetic, careless, or downright bad teachers. But here is what I know: I learned as much as I could about teaching before I got into the classroom. I worked my butt off during my student teaching experience and absorbed everything I could from my mentors. I was passionate about my subject and I put everything I could into my classroom.

But I only managed to teach for two years.

And I still feel like I failed as a teacher. Because I couldn’t endure, because it became too much, because I could see how I could give everything to it and it would still want more, because to be a halfway-decent teacher I would always be a horrible mother. Because I couldn’t thrive in a broken system.

Utah’s education officials have been trying to figure out how to retain teachers. Their solution is to throw unprepared people into a system that can’t keep the people who are prepared. That’s not even a bandaid. That’s a bomb.

Instead, Utah—the entire nation, really—needs to fix the system itself. If the state wants to retain teachers, it needs to create a working environment that bolsters and rewards, not drains and decimates educators. And it can’t only start with politicians. It needs to start with parents. What if every single parent in the state wrote a letter, demanding that their children’s teachers be given better working conditions? These parents need not be motivated by altruistic measures. They don’t need to care about the teachers at all. They need to care about their very own children, and realize that they will receive better education from teachers who are nurtured instead of drained by the system.

The solution to retaining teachers is not as complicated as Utah is making it. If the states want to retain teachers, they must create conditions that encourage teachers to continue teaching. The teachers would benefit—but even more importantly, the students would benefit. Until that happens, teachers and students will continue to suffer.

An Open Letter to the Universe (Or, My List of Things that Make Me Sad (Right Now))

In a book I just finished, The Spellbook of Listen Taylor, there is a spell for making two happy people have an argument about absolutely nothing:

1. Do twenty jumping jacks.
2. Write a list of everything that makes you sad.
3. Put the list at the bottom of a box of Kleenex.

I don’t want anyone to have an argument over nothing, but I did feel compelled to write my list of Things that Make Me Sad (right now) (even though “sad” isn’t quite the right word to capture what I have been feeling).

In my head, I keep going back and back through time, trying to find the month or the year or the day I didn’t have this underlying sense of doom or anxiety. I think it started way back with Kendell’s first surgery, when he had his hips replaced. I have done much work and had many happy days since then, but still: I don’t think I’ve ever stopped worrying, that he wouldn’t make it through the surgery, and then that his post-op complications would never get better, and then that he would still be in pain. There was a tiny little respite, maybe, for about 8 or 9 months, when he was fully recuperated from the surgery, starting to exercise regularly, and really feeling like life could be normal. Then we found out about his heart and he had his first heart surgery. My clearest memory of that day was when his heart surgeon called me from the operating room and said “we just put him on bypass.” It was so surreal, knowing I was sitting at my house (his surgery was at a hospital just a half mile away from our house), curled up on our bed waiting, and his heart wasn’t, at that very moment, beating at all.

He recuperated from that surgery, and then 18 months later had his gall bladder removed.

And then a few weeks after that, we found out that Kaleb also has a bicuspid aortic valve.

And then we found out, a year later, that he has a bulge on his aorta.

And then Kendell’s dad died.

And then, a year later, my dad died.

And then, the next year, Kendell’s mom died.

And then my mom was under strict orders not to die, which she didn’t, but she did have an incredibly difficult back surgery and a long recovery that was muddled with family tensions and long-buried resentments.

Then, last summer, we found out Kendell had to have his valve replaced again.

And then in April he almost died. He should, but all logic and statistics and medical understanding, have died.

Mix in what for me has been the hardest part of parenting—raising teenagers. I love my kids and I am proud of them; they are good kids trying to find their way in the world, but it has still been hard. I have some mom friends who have loved this part, but for me it has been anguish, and feeling guilty over the anguish makes the anguish even worse. Add in the feeling that my extended family (my mom and sisters and nieces and nephews) is fracturing. There have been so many heartaches in my kids’ lives, friends and girlfriends and boyfriends who have betrayed them, mistakes and disappointments and the ongoing struggles of modern adolescence. And all of the every day sort of worries and troubles, car wrecks, stitches, bike collisions, broken bones, sprained ankles and twisted knees and smashed fingers.

Plus my back has hurt for 92% of those years.

I just feel like asking the universe for a break. But apparently the universe is not done with me. Because at first I started writing my List of Things that Make Me Sad (right now) right in the book, until I decided it was just too grisly and depressing.

But if I am honest, I can say: I’m in a bad place right now. So, as to avoid causing anyone to have an argument over absolutely nothing, I’m going to write my list on my blog instead. There will be no jumping jacks or bottoms of Kleenex boxes. But maybe if I write it down, it will remind the universe: Amy has had enough. Amy is at her breaking point. Please, give Amy a break. (Because…Amy is writing in third person!)

1. There is some unexpected medical fallout from Kendell’s cardiac arrest. I feel entirely alone and unable to know even where to start dealing with this, as he doesn’t really see it, only I do. (I am being vague because I am not yet ready to hold it up to the light.)
2. Kaleb had his annual heart check up in June and it did not go well. This is another thing I just really, really can’t even look at yet. Living in constant fear that your husband could die is one thing. It’s entirely another thing with your child.
3. You know that feeling when something happens that lets you see clearly that a relationship you thought you could trust is actually fairly untrustworthy? Like when you caught your best friend in high school making out with your boyfriend. That feeling, except with adult friendships it’s less about the boy (actually, there is no boy involved) and mostly about realizing you trusted and loved where you shouldn’t have. That happened to me this past weekend, with a friendship I have relied upon for years, and I don’t really know how to change my life to adapt to it. I do know this: the brushing-off of a friendship in whatever form of betrayal it occurs is always, whether you’re 13 or 43, an ugly feeling, one that is based surprisingly on shame and embarrassment. I’m embarrassed to have thought for so long that I actually mattered to this person. (This time I’m being vague only to protect the not-really-innocent-but-whatever.)
4. Speaking of relationships. Another fairly important one in my life I am realizing will likely never be how I had hoped it would be. There is still goodness and connection there, but different than I had hoped. I need to make peace with the reality of this relationship rather than the wishes I had had for it. I just don’t know how. (Vague because…I love this person so much and would never want to burn any bridges.)
5. Recent decisions of various people have left me feeling like I have failed myself, my family, and God. How do you make peace with failing God? He gave me one job. And sure, everyone will tell me it’s not my fault and people make choices. But all that means is that I failed at teaching how to make good choices. I failed.
6. When we were in Paris, Haley’s cell phone and all of her credit cards were stolen. It’s been kind of a nightmare getting everything functional again. We mailed her a new phone…and it is stuck in the customs office in Madrid. After much research I still can’t figure out how to get it out. The replacement credit card she was sent is an emergency card, which doesn’t have a chip, so it doesn’t work at most of the places she needs it to work. She’s got two weeks left and needs cash and the phone needs to get to her before she comes home and I just am so tired of worrying about this. (I actually just googled air flights to Madrid. So I could, you know. Fly to Madrid, fetch that *#&%*+!~# cell phone, and then just hang around in Madrid for a week. That actually might be the perfect answer. Who’s coming with me?)

Or, to sum up: continuing medical troubles; terror at my child’s heart; betrayal; an emotion I don’t have a word for which is equal parts grief, regret, yearning, and self-loathing; failing God; and a kid without a cell phone or money in a foreign country.

And I know: this blog post is a great big pity party. It’s dark and sad and whiny; it fails to remember that during the years since Kendell’s first surgery, there have been a lot of good things, too. Vacations and high school graduations and birthday parties and holidays and delicious meals, running and hiking and learning and growing. I am stronger than I was when this started. My kids are all alive and in one piece and moving forward.

But oh, dear Universe. I need a little pause. A small one, but a real one. A moment when nothing is weighing on my heart. And maybe that isn’t possible, maybe a heavy, troubled heart is the universal condition of adulthood. Maybe I am asking for too much.

But still, I am asking. I need light. I need to not feel despair. I need to, for just a little while, feel like I did something right. Anything.

I’m not sure that is possible. But I need it, if it is. We all of us, in my family, need it.

What "Make America Great" Means to Me

The display shelves in a library are a way we librarians promote books for different reasons. We put books there to help draw attention to forgotten gems, to inspire someone to read something they might not otherwise, to winnow selection down from what might be an overwhelming choice. In my library, we have displays based on genre in fiction and on topic in non-fiction. We also have staff displays, where each librarian has a shelf to put out books he or she loves; filling my staff display shelf is one of my favorite parts of my job, and I think we each unknowingly have little fan bases who check our shelves first before wandering the rest of the library. Throughout the library there are also new book displays, where we put (YES!) new books.

A few weeks ago, a patron noticed that our non-fiction new book display had a grouping of books that shared a similar theme. There was one about common core, one about Gloria Steinem, one called The Essential Bernie Sanders. Two about Jesus: Rescuing Jesus is about how Christianity is changing to become more progressive and inclusive, while Jesus Behaving Badly attempts to look at Christ through an objective lens (was He a revolutionary? was He racist?).  Perhaps the two scariest books were Atmosphere of Hope, which discusses possible solutions to the climate change crisis, and What is Islam, which discusses how “Muslims have historically conceived of and lived with Islam as norms and truths that are at once contradictory yet coherent.”

This patron took a picture of these objectionable books and then posted it on her Facebook page. She felt driven to drawn public awareness to the biased, left-wing, ultra-radical ideals of the Library. Then, just to make sure we were all aware, she posted the picture to the library’s Facebook page, along with a link to all of the comments and objections her friends had made.

Reading these threads, I was stunned. Absolutely, jaw-droppingly stunned.

And not just by her failure to understand the concept of a “new book” display. Or to see the humor in it—it’s kind of funny that so many “left wing” books ended up next to each other on a shelf which is essentially random on everything other than publication date. She somehow got the idea that the new book display was managed by one specific librarian (who her friends called illiterate) who is obviously trying to poison and control the minds of all thinking people who come to the library. And sure, the general population might not understand that there are many librarians responsible for buying new books, not just one. Nor that we take our jobs seriously, and that one of our roles is to represent modes of thinking that reflect a wide array of people, not just one group. But there is a sign, a very large sign, right on the top of the display, that reads “new books.” It doesn’t say “our communist ideals” or “liberal forever!” It just says “new books.” 

No, what stunned me was the response of her friends.

One commenter said the books about Jesus were written by anti-Christs. Another said that the “anti-Christian and pro-Muslim, pro-feminism pro-communist and pro-climate-scam” display must have been put together by Obama. Several said something along the lines of “I no longer go to the public library because the books there are wicked.” Many suggested doing something to make the books unavailable for anyone to check out (scatter them around the library on the wrong shelves, check them out and then don’t return them for as long as possible, hide them behind other books).

Only their tone suggested burning them.

I didn’t know.

I really didn’t know that people like this truly exist. Don’t all people instinctively understand that society cannot only be made of one way of thinking? Or is it just that I choose to surround myself with more open-minded individuals?

Maybe it’s just that I don’t think I could stand to be friends with such close-minded people. I don’t know if that, ironically, makes me close minded. But I couldn’t ever find common ground with someone who fails to understand that there is a variety of ways of thinking about the world. Or that objectivity helps you to see things more clearly—yes, even Jesus (whom I love). Climate-change deniers make me almost unbearably angry; the argument is so head-in-the-sand asinine that, all apologies, if you seriously feel that way I’m not going to hang out with you. Not even on Facebook.

Even more inexcusable to me is the blatant judging-a-book-by-its-cover in their responses. None of them know anything about the books, other than the covers. None of them would have likely bothered to even pick one up, read its cover copy, and think about its premise. I don’t understand this way of thinking, this refusal to look at anything other than the surface of things. To me, it is built on fear. If, for example, I really believed that climate change was a hoax, created by…well, I don’t know who is benefiting from this supposed hoax, or what they are gaining, but will go with that nebulous “someone” getting “something” from it…if I truly believed that, why would I be afraid to read someone else’s point of view? In fact, wouldn’t I want to read it, so I could have more points to discredit?

It is only when one’s belief or way of thinking is shaky that one is afraid of looking at different perspectives.

If I have learned one thing from being a librarian, it is this: a book is “good” or “bad” based only on individual readers. This is why we need many books with many different perspectives. The people on that Facebook thread are too narrowly defining what makes a “good” book: to them, the only good book is the one that reflects back what they already think. Everything else is bad, and as they are certain of it, their job now is to protect anyone else from reading such “bad” books. Because everyone else must think exactly like they think.

I stewed about that Facebook thread all day. I composed spiteful, sarcastic responses in my head; only my professionalism kept me from posting one. Then I went home and told Kendell about it, who laughed at the shallow thinking and reminded me that I can’t change them. People think what they think.

But oh, how I want to change them.

Because as the night went on—the night of Utah’s caucuses—I started equating the people in that Facebook thread, their vitriol and their fear, their narrow-mindedness and their surety that theirs is the only right way of being, with the supporters of Donald Trump. Doesn’t his slogan “make America great again” have to do with one answer? By “great” I think he means how it used to be in, say, the 40s or 50s, when American society was dominated by rich white men. When women were mostly in their rightful place—at home with the children—while men ruled the world. When black people knew their place, when Hispanics stayed on the other side of the border, when gay people kept themselves properly hidden. When handicapped people were the brunt of jokes.

“Great again” is a return to when the world made sense to one specific group of people, and the voters who support Trump want that world back. It hinges on the word “again”; it wants to go backward instead of forward.

They want singularity instead of multitudes. They want one way of being and everyone else can bugger off. They want the stereotype of “American citizen” to be the only American citizen.

They want one answer to be the only answer.

Deep down, that way of thinking doesn’t only disturb and anger me. It terrifies me. It reminds me of something Margaret Atwood said about utopias: “A union was a Utopian idea. So was Nazi Germany. So was Cambodia. And there’s a whole list of them, of people who thought, ‘Well, we have to build the perfect society, and we know what it’s like, but there’s a catch—we have to eliminate a bunch of people first, because they’re getting in the way.’”

An ideal society cannot be perfect, because “perfect” requires a single way of being right. An ideal society requires multiplicity. It requires messiness and upheaval and clashing ideas. Only one idea—that way lies genocide.

I think multiplicity is equally terrifying to some, because yes: our current way of being isn’t simple, old-fashioned American whatever. Living in a society with multiple mores requires that you understand your own mores. It means your ideas and beliefs will be challenged. It demands that you be flexible and open and even loving and accepting. It means becoming comfortable with the fact that your way of being is not the only way.

It’s challenging.

But it is also glorious.

It means that happiness, success, or goodness aren’t achieved by only one route—and that means more access to happiness, success, and goodness. It means that if you are afraid of feminism, you can continue being afraid of it because no one can take that fear away from you. It also means that I am free to continue believing in and promoting feminism. When we narrow ourselves to only one way of thinking, we remove other avenues to understanding and knowledge.

I want American to move forward in being great. Not to go backward to some idealized version of greatness. To something sanitized and monochromatic and very, very white. I think our greatness lies within our multitudinous aspect. We have always been a country of migrants, it’s just that now, the migrants are no longer white Europeans. Our greatness lies—or, it can if we allow it—in our ability to see things in many different ways.

Our greatness is found in libraries, where yes: we have left-wing books. We also have right wing, and moderate. We have books with completely whack-a-doodle theories, but if that’s your thing, it’s there for you. If your thing is bodice-rippers, if your thing is gentle fiction, if your thing is art history or wicca or crocheting with dog hair, it's there for you. My thing—literary novels, and poetry, and essays, and writing about women’s rights, and memoirs and how-to-run-well and quilting and gardening—my thing is there, too. That they are all in the same library, that they may even lean upon each other on the shelves: the fact that more than one way of thinking exists doesn’t damage any individual way of thinking.

Maybe libraries themselves are a metaphor for America’s greatness: a collection of many different ideas. As a librarian, part of my work is making sure that all of the ideas are accessible. As a citizen, part of my work is respecting the varieties of our communities. That is a greatness that Trump and his followers, that the commenters on that Facebook thread, are terrified of. Their narrow ideals would shape us into something equally narrow, rigid and unyielding. The very opposite of greatness.

I Hate Summer

Wait—who says that? Who could hate summer, with its flowers and its break from school and its long days of lingering sunshine? 

OK, maybe hate is too strong a word. Dislike. Am made uncomfortable by. Have a complicated relationship with.

I mean, it's not the kind of negative emotion I have for Valentine's Day.

Or even Mother's Day.

It's just...well, summer is my least-favorite season. Even though I love so many things about it: yes, the flowers, but also running that's rarely interrupted by weather, hiking, summer vacations, green everywhere, late-afternoon thunderstorms, mowing the lawn, backyard barbecues.

I love all of those things.

But sometimes the things I don't love about summer outweigh what I do. Namely:

1. Shorts. Seriously. I have been shopping for my entire adult life for shorts I look good in, and I have never found them. The length doesn't matter—what matters is that my thighs look enormous in shorts. There's something about pants that balances out my disproportionate quads (just a little...I am always self-conscious about my legs) but in shorts they just look awful. And this isn't limited to regular, every-day shorts; it's also a problem with running shorts. You know those tiny little swishy running shorts that most runners wear? Yeah. Those don't work in my thigh-touching world. But running shorts with any sort of looseness also look pretty awful on me. Like I'm an escaped junior-high PE teacher. It's kind of strange, but true: the only running shorts that don't look awful on me are the tight ones. The tight long ones.

2. Short sleeves. Nope...my summer clothing disagreements are not limited to shorts. The older I get the more aware I am of my chubby arms. In every other season I can manage this self-consciousness with one of my favorite clothing items, the cardigan. But even I (with my body's occasional inability, due to my unhappy thyroid, to properly manage my body temperature) can't go around in cardigans all summer.

3. It's hot. I don't like being cold, either. (Apparently this post is devolving into one big whine-fest.) But I have a tendency to be emotionally effected by the heat. And not in a good way. Translation: I can turn fairly quickly, in a hot room or building, into a raving psychopath. (It’s not as bad outside.) Being hot makes me grumpy, and it's usually not reversible like being cold is. You can always add layers but there are only so many clothes you can take off.

4. Hay fever. This isn't a problem every year. For reasons unknown (but which I could probably uncover if I went to an allergist), some years are really bad and some years I never sneeze once. This has been my worst hay fever summer for five or six years and I am not happy to be so forcefully reminded of how miserable the sneezing and the constant throat tickle and the always-burning eyes are. What makes it worse is I can't function if I take hay fever meds. Even the non-drowsy ones turn me into a sort-of living zombie. I did have a little bit of success the year I tried Singulair. No itchy nose or raspy lungs. Unfortunately it made me bawl. Random, unpredictable crying. Not as bad as Prednizone but close.

5. Swimming. I don't mean swimming in nature. But, you know, putting on a swimming suit and sunscreen and finding the goggles and the snacks and the beach towels and then going to a swimming pool. My kids love it (well...Kaleb still loves swimming. Jake & Nathan only want to do nothing. See #6.)  and I just...don't. I can remember loving it, especially the long afternoons Becky and I spent in the pool at the Landmark casino in Las Vegas. But now that I'm grown up, swimming annoys me. It has more than a little to do with the same reason I hate shorts (chubby thighs). Maybe if I had the slender legs of women whose thighs don't touch, I'd also love swimming. (And really. Don't even get me started on swimming suits. The one part of my body that isn't chubby is the only part I wish were, as well as the part that swim suits try to emphasize. If you have any. Which I don't.)

6. The kids are home. OK, that sounds even more awful than saying I hate summer. I love spending time with my kids, and I love having them around, and I love that we don't have to worry about homework, grades, exams, forgotten projects. But Bad Mom syndrome starts setting in pretty quickly—it flashes up when I realize all that they've mostly done with entire days is watch TV, play video games, and eat snacks. (This article pretty well sums up what I mean. Really. If you're a mom with kids at home, you should read it. I'll wait.) And argue with me about the jobs they don't want to do. All of my Mom Failings are highlighted in the summer. At least for the rest of the year I make sure they, you know, go to school 'n stuff. I want to be one of those fabulous moms who has tons of activities planned for her kids...but usually that involves swimming. And, let’s face it: the teenagers don’t want to do anything else. They don’t want to go to the pool, the zoo, the mountains for a picnic. They’d rather nah. So then I feel bad that they don’t want to do anything, and I feel bad for not making them or I feel bad FOR making them, and I feel bad for Kaleb who ends up doing less stuff.

7. Sunburns. I used to love lying out in the sun. Used to, when my skin had the capacity to get brown. Now it just burns and peels, burns and peels, in an unending cycle that's only punctuated by the weird even-whiter dots I get instead of a tan. True, I do​ love peeling. Except, I don't love worrying about skin cancer and wrinkles. 

8. Miscellaneous annoyances. Bugs! (especially mosquitos, which love me, and flies, which I detest.)  It's too hot to cook my favorite meals. Traffic—one of the reasons I'm not a fabulous mom with tons of activities planned is that everyone else is also going, and the older I get the less I can deal with lots of annoying people everywhere. The electricity bill (hate it though I do, I'll happily pay it. Probably my neighbors and/or friends would be willing to pay it if I refused, because the cost of air conditioning is so much more bearable than a grumpy Amy). The untenable process of blowing your hair dry after a shower and even though you're paying a $*(#&$ fortune for air conditioning it is apparently no match for the heat of your blow dryer, which never seems to dry a damn lock of hair because the water from the shower just gets replaced with sweat.

As I wrote my list, I realized something: most of the things I dislike about summer are things I wish I could change about myself. Or maybe just accept with more grace. Maybe, in the end, that’s the reason I don’t like summer: it forces me to see more clearly my faults. They’re easier to overlook in the other seasons. 

I Don't Believe in Princesses

There's a regular patron at the library where I work who, whenever he sees me, says "hey there, beautiful princess." He's one of those people who think they are being solicitous but really comes across as slightly creepy. I mean, I'm not seven years old.

So the other day, he said "hey there, beautiful princess" and I said, "you know, I don't believe in princesses." He looked perplexed and said, "how can you not believe in princesses? Princesses are real things. That's like not believing in...trees."

I nodded and didn't explain. Except I've been explaining in my head ever since. Sure, real princesses both have existed and continue to exist today. I just don't understand the fascination with them. Especially because the focus is not often on their accomplishments, but what they wear and how they look and how hard their pregnancies must be! (It's rough to be pregnant and sick, I get it. Having a billion nannies and personal assistants probably makes it a little be easier though.)

And that's modern princesses. Even historical ones like Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth I, the ones who really did change the world, get a little bit short-shifted because they are exceptions, not the rule.

Don't get me started on princesses in fantasy novels. And don't even ever ask me about my opinions on most of the Disney princesses! (Actually, my opinion is fairly complicated, because even though I see the problems in their stories, a part of me still loves Aurora and Cinderella and Snow White.)

Haley & Belle, who is my favorite "princess," because books, but still...it's mostly about the dress, isn't it?

It's not like I can dismiss every princess, of course. There are examples of strong princesses who changed the world, both in history and in novels. But, in general, there's a princess ethos, and it's about being pretty. Princesses are pretty in delicate, traditional ways. They care about dresses and jewelry and romance. They are well-mannered and elegant. They are absconded by scoundrels, tricked by evil _____ (stepmothers, enchantresses, crones...), rescued by princes. They rarely act for themselves, but are acted upon.

I want to think this is the result of men ruling the world, but I think women are as likely to want to turn each other into princesses. Or themselves. The princess ideal creates an idea of what it means to be feminine that is both unattainable in its quest for perfection and just downright inane. Beauty matters to princesses. External appearances matter. How the world sees you is most important. 

And here is my deal. I don't care how old you are. You can be that slightly-creepy 80-year-old charmer at the library, or a 45-year-old peer, or the friend of my teenage son. I don't care if you see me as beautiful or ugly. I care if you see me as intelligent. As a capable person who gets stuff done. As a runner and a writer and a creative person. As someone you could talk to about important, meaningful topics or someone you could laugh with; someone with a sarcastic edge and a tender side. As someone who, sure, likes clothes and make up and jewelry, but not because of you. Because of me.

In the end, the reason I don't believe in princesses is because princesses are made up. They are very carefully created versions of women, idealized and plastic. To be a princess is to pull on a mask made up not of individual forms of beauty, but of stylized and regulated ones. To be a princess is to fulfill a role created by society, not to live inside of a personality created by experiences.

I don't believe in princesses because I believe in myself, and who I am is focused on strength and intelligence and rescuing myself. 

from the Old Moms to the Young Moms

​I followed a link from someone's Facebook feed (I can't remember whose now!) to this article this morning, and it's been driving me crazy ever since. She makes some important, true points, especially about it being OK to tell the truth about motherhood not always being easy. We all need to be gentle with each other and take care of instead of criticizing each other.

But as the "be grateful for this time" isn't a criticism, it also triggered my "yeah, but" reflex.

I know it's A Thing. I did it once and was swiftly rebuked and I haven't done it again. It's just not cool, as the mom of teenagers (when did I get this old?), to tell a mom of young kids that she should be grateful for her experiences, or that she should savor the time she has with her little kids, even when she's covered in poop and as thoroughly exhausted as she could ever imagine being. Who would be grateful for those days when your kids are little, and you feel like all you do is change diapers and nurse the baby while you're playing with Fisher Price toys with the toddler and the preschooler is drawing flowers on the kitchen wall with metallic Sharpies? When there are no adults around except you, and no possibilities of a break, and yes, even when you do get to bed there's often a little body already there, one who takes up an impossible amount of space for all its seeming tininess. When days are long and downright boring sometimes, and if you have to have one more tea party where you sip imaginary tea and eat imaginary cookies you might just lose your marbles.

And then some stupid old mother, with all of her kids at school all day, tells you you should be grateful? Have all of the old mothers forgotten just how hard it is, taking care of a bunch of little ones? Have their memories of tinies been filtered of the hard, exhausting, boring, repetitive details, leaving only the blissful ones, when the baby is clean and sleeping, and the top of her downy little head is the softest and most heavenly thing imaginable?

Of course we didn't forget.

Because here's a truth: being a mother is always hard. We didn't forget how hard those days were. We just know that harder things are coming. Not the early school years—those, in general, are pretty good. I'm talking about the universal truth you don't learn until it's too late: you didn't have a baby. You just had a premature teenager.

Changing diapers all day long is hard. Never feeling like you can leave that nursing baby who refuses to take a bottle is hard. Mothering little ones is hard, hard work. But I promise: you meet an entirely new kind of hard when you start raising a teenager. Because then it's not just poop. It's shit. The difficult parts of raising teenagers are life changing. If they don't keep their grades up their chance at a scholarship will be ruined. If they don't figure out why their best friend suddenly hates them, they'll feel like a social pariah. If they don't dress right, have the right hair or make-up or clothes or car or shoes or cell phone or ___________ (insert whatever is currently popular) they feel like freaks. There is heartache and backstabbing and pissy teachers and overwhelming amounts of homework, the Amazonian piranha nightmare that is junior high and high school. Plus acne and boobs and armpit hair and what the hell is my body doing.

As a mother of teenagers, you still don't get any sleep. Sure, no one crawls into bed with you anymore. And yeah, they sleep through the night. Sort of—if you count staying up till 1:45 a.m. finishing a homework project and then getting up at 5:00 because it takes time to look this good as "sleeping through the night." But you don't, because of worrying. And there are a million different worries. Are they smoking pot in secret? Are they having sex with their girl/boyfriends? Are they looking at porn despite all your best filtering efforts? Are they drinkers or bulimics or cutters, are they depressed or manic or just normal adolescents? Is their social life proof you raised a Mean Girl? Is the _____ sports team too much or not enough? How will their current choices help them in the future that's rapidly smacking them in the face?

When toddlers make a mistake, you have to reach for some paper towels or the vacuum or sometimes even the phone to call the doctor. When teenagers make a mistake it changes their lives.

And those are just the things you worry about. There's also the way you look at them and your heart still, fifteen years later, does that fluttery thing when you can't believe that such a person as this amazing creature exists, and you helped to create him—and then he looks at you with the deepest contempt, or annoyance, or superiority. When every question is answered with a half-grunt, or a shoulder shrug, or a body language that is screaming silent epithets at you. Or you finally have to realize that the little girl who used to adore drinking imaginary tea with you would rather have her fingernails pulled off—her hair shorn—her cell phone taken away than spend any actual, real time with you. (Unless the mall is involved, but then only because you have the credit card.)

And that is why, dear young moms, we old moms tell you to be grateful. To savor. It's because sometimes we'd like to trade our hard for yours. It's because you cannot know until it happens: the little days don't last forever. That is both a blessing and a devastation. Yes, it is nice to be on the other side, the diaper-bag-free, everyone-is-potty-trained-and-can-feed-their-own-damn-selves side. But it isn't easier. It's just hard in a different way.

It's not that we old moms think you young moms shouldn't feel what you feel. The hard parts are as real as the happy parts. It's not monstrous to feel what you feel. We just want you to see that the hard parts aren't the only parts. And sure: probably no one would ever tell the mom of teenagers to savor these days. To be grateful for them. To be happy that you're so mad at your kid you just threw a block of cheese at him. Except, you know...I tell myself that. Because for all of the hard things, there are still blissful moments. Like when you're driving down the road and a song comes on that you both love (which is a miracle in itself!) and you both sing along, loudly and badly, but with laughter. Or when your teenage son gets a glint in his eye and then tells you a joke that is maybe slightly off-color but not too much. Or when you find the right bit of advice to give your teenage daughter, and she tries it and it works and then she says thank you. When you find the perfect prom dress or the girl says yes to a date. When you see them fail but keep trying, when you see them succeed, when you see them begin to stride out into the world, wearing the identity you helped to shape—those are the best savoring moments.

But I also try to savor the hard times. Or perhaps savor is too strong a word. Just not lose myself in the utter misery of them, because there is also another worse thing: they leave. You think you will always have them with you (sometimes you think you will never be free of them) but you won't. You will always be the mother of your children but you won't always be actively mothering them. They grow and grow and grow, and then they are grown up. And they leave. This time, with whatever hardness it holds, is always worth savoring. It is always worth being grateful for. Because it will always, always pass by.

The suggestion of old mothers to young mothers that they savor, that they know they are blessed and lucky even in the hard moments, doesn't come from a place of condescension. It isn't because we've forgotten. It's not because we're know-it-all jerks who want to be the boss of you. It's not because we're unstable weirdos who want to cuddle our teenagers. (They're pretty smelly.) It's just because we're farther into this journey of motherhood and we know just how quickly the time passes, and how swiftly the end comes, and because we want you to be able to look back and know you felt, thoroughly and utterly felt, the moments you were given.

It's because we want that for ourselves, too. And because sometimes, eventually, it will be too late, and the moment—good, hard, blissful, boring, mundane, extraordinary—will be gone.

My Take on the Modesty Issue

Lately, with all of the furor over those edited yearbook photos, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about modesty. Then I spotted this post on several different friends’ Facebook statuses. I’ve found myself having a fairly intense imaginary conversation in my head about modesty, and it’s not ending any time soon. 

So I’m writing it down. (Plus, Kendell is getting sick of listening to me rant about it!)

In the (prevailing) LDS culture, a lot of energy is spent on teaching a concept we call “modesty.” We teach lessons about it to our teenagers and children. We make sure that all youth activities have dress codes. We hear talks on it from the pulpit and from conferences. We take it upon ourselves to point out when someone isn’t being modest, even going so far as thinking it’s OK for children to point out to adults “you shouldn’t go running in that tank top.” (That isn’t cute, or precious, or preternaturally wise. It’s rude.) 

We pat ourselves on the back for our modesty, which we interpret as: covered shoulders, covered thighs, covered bellies, covered backs.

We forget something, though: dress is only part of what modesty is. Look it up: modesty is the quality of not being proud and flamboyant about yourself, your abilities and possessions and appearance. I know plenty of Mormons who won’t let their daughters wear tank tops and so consider themselves to have taught their children about modesty, while living in a gobsmackingly large house and driving a giant SUV. Girls in their cap-sleeve Ts and modest shorts who backstab and gossip and get all Mean Girl with their friends? That, to me, is not modest either, because it sends the message “I am so awesomely wonderful and important that being mean is TOTALLY OK behavior.”

“Not dressing in a way that draws sexual attention” is only one part of modesty, yet we seem to have forgotten that.

And listen: I get it. There is a lot of skin in the world. So I’m going to focus on that part of modesty now.

Two weeks ago I went to my niece’s wedding. When we were leaving, Nathan spotted one of the bridesmaids, who had changed out of her fluffy bridesmaid’s gown into a very tight and very short dress. Her bum was barely covered and she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Look, Jake!” he said. “That girl is so hot.”

(I had the strangest reaction to that moment, which doesn’t really related to this post but which I’m sharing anyway: part of me was horrified that despite my lofty goals, my 14-year-old son still saw a girl in a tiny, tight, sexy dress as a sex object. Part of me was embarrassed to realize I never looked that good and I never will.)

I confess that I only could sputter. Part of me (and I’m not very proud of this part) was judgy: wow. Could that skirt be any shorter? And part of me was thinking Nathan! Just cover your eyes! And another part was all you are too young to notice her. And there was even a small part that thought I wish she wouldn’t dress like that because look what she’s done to my kid. So I sputtered and didn’t really say anything (then…we talked about it later) because there were so many things I wanted to say, but in my heart, even in all of those warring responses, what I know is this: he’s fourteen, he’s going to notice a hot girl in a tight dress.

 And really, that is the foundation of my philosophy on modesty. We notice each other’s bodies. Instead of prescriptive rules about skirt length and sleeve style, why aren't we teaching our teenagers how to deal with the thoughts and emotions and ideas that come into our minds when we see each other?

I refused to teach my daughter that she needs to dress a certain way in order to help a boy control his thoughts. When she was five and six and seven, I let her wear sundresses that showed her shoulders. When she was eighteen we were still seeing her shoulders. She wore a two piece bathing suit. She wore tank tops and shorts that didn’t cover all of her thigh. And I talked to her. I talked to her about picking clothes that made her feel pretty and self-confident. I talked to her about modesty in dressing. I talked to her about her body—that she should love it and take good care of it and be proud of it. I talked to her about dressing in ways that please her, rather than pleasing boys, or trying to draw a boy’s attention.

Mostly I wanted her to know the same thing about her clothes that I did with nearly everything in her life: it isn’t about getting a boy to like you. It’s about doing the things that make you happy. Because she doesn’t exist just to catch a boy. Her life doesn’t only have to be about romance. She is made for so many different experiences, love being one of them, but not the only one. I don’t want her to make any choices that are based on “what would make a boy like me.”

Which in a way sounds like I am saying the same thing that the church does: your clothes don’t exist to draw a boy’s attention.

But really it’s not the same thing at all.

Take this recent very popular video. In theory, I get it. It’s about letting girls know that there are boys who will like them even if they don’t wear short skirts or tank tops. That is an encouraging thought. As I listen to it, though, I get madder and madder. You’ll like the girls who dress modestly? Awesome. What about you like a girl because she is smart, kind, funny, athletic, energetic, whatever. You know…like her for who she is, not what she wears.

And these lyrics that make me insane:

“Being the way that you are is enough”

 

“If only you saw what I can see, you’d understand why I need your modesty”

 

“Virtue makes you beautiful.”

 

“We don’t know why you’d want a guy that only cares what he sees with his eyes.”

It’s that last one that gets me the most. It makes me want to punch all those smug faces right in the sunglasses. Because no one is seeing the logical flaw: those boys are singing about caring what they see with their eyes. If they didn’t only care about what they see, they would be able to see the person underneath immodest clothes. This is a song written in praise of modesty in dressing, which is just as much about what someone sees with their eyes as immodesty in dressing. If a boy looks at a girl, and sees she’s modestly dressed, and thinks, hmmmm, that’s a girl I think I should ask out because of how she’s dressed it’s the same as him seeing a girl in a tank top and thinking, hmmmmmmm, now that’s a girl I should ask out because of how she’s dressed.

It’s a false dichotomy and it all based on the exactly wrong things we should build a relationship on. That we should build our characters on.

I don’t want my daughter to think she has to make choices to please other people. I want her to choose what works for her. I want her to date boys who see her for who she is, not for how she dresses, no matter how appropriate or modest it is.

And who is teaching boys that? How much time do we spend on teaching girls the “right” way to dress modestly? And how much time do we spend teaching boys how to treat girls? How much time was spent by those rich white boys to make that video that inversely does the same thing as the bridesmaid at the wedding: teaches that how you look is what matters most? Teaches, in essence, that a girl only is what she looks like. By connecting integrity and virtue with clothing, we (again) turn women into objects.

So this is what I try to teach my sons: girls don’t exist just so you can look at them. They are people, just like you. Sure, they have boobs. They also have thoughts, ambitions, dreams, and goals. They have a long life history and many stories to tell. They are more, much more, than their sexual possibilities.

And I also teach them this: you are responsible for your own thoughts.

I know. That’s a hard thing to control. I know it is natural for boys to see girls in a sexual light. And maybe I’m being naïve, but I also think it’s entirely possible. I think Nathan can learn that the hot girl in the tight dress is a person, and the way she dresses is her choice. (Hopefully her mother also taught her to dress to help herself feel pretty, not to catch someone’s attention.) Most likely, her choice doesn’t have a single thing to do with him. He doesn’t have to jump into bed with her in his mind just because she’s there in her dress.

I had this conversation with a very close friend once, a friend who thinks differently than I do about this topic. She talked about wishing that girls would think about how their clothes affect the boys around them. That is what the song lyric “you’d understand why I need your modesty” refers to—the idea that a girl is doing the boys around her a courtesy by dressing modestly. And, I suppose that’s true: it is easier for a boy to not let his thoughts wander if he’s not surrounded by skin. But I reject the idea that he needs her to dress modestly in order to control his thoughts.

And that is the other truth: he needs to learn. Because certainly the world is filled with girls’ knees and shoulders and thighs and backs. He will see girls like the hot girl at the wedding every day of his life. And if all he ever learns is dressing like that is bad, then all he ever learns is judgment. Instead, what I am desperately trying to teach him—and wish, I confess, what the church would also teach him—is that he’s going to see chests. He’s going to see shoulders. But if all he sees are body parts instead of people, he is failing in part of his humanity. Because the chests and the shoulders belong to people, and as a grown up, functioning adult man, he will interact with people who are women. Who happen to have woman parts. But who also have ideas and creativity and input. I want him—want all my sons, and all of their friends, and my nephews, and the boys down the street—to know that women are people. And it is only by seeing a woman’s humanity (instead of just her woman parts, covered up or not) that you are truly treating them with respect.

Nathan told me the other day about a video he’d seen, where someone had taken the titles of Disney movies and censored them. So, instead of Finding Nemo, for example, it was ****ing Nemo. Isn’t it funny how, by covering something up, it changes your perspective? Just what is being done to poor Nemo?

All of the proclaiming of modesty does the same thing. It draws attention to something that doesn’t have to be the focus of our thoughts. Our actions should be the focus of our thoughts. How we treat people. That is what matters most. Not how long our shorts are, or how much shoulder we show. Not if we have visible cleavage. How we act.

I wish we’d put more focus on that.