debboamerik

I have decided that the writer of The Twelve Days of Christmas was obsessed with birds. After all, one sees a partridge, hens, calling birds, turtledoves, geese a-laying, and swans a-swimming. It's possible also to include the pipers piping in the festive bird count. Honestly, through day 7, the only non-bird gift is FIVE GOLDEN RINGS.

Christmas has been good to me in most ways this year, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it's mostly been rather depressing and anxiety-inducing. Some of that has been health stuff, both mine and the wife's. There were a lot of cancelled trips and disappointments. For example, we planned on going to four lights displays, but only got to one. Therefore, I hereby resolve that next year, I will go to the following displays, come hell or high water:

1) Zoo Lights. This year was the first time it was free, and we didn't get there.
2) Winter Lights at Seneca Creek State Park. Stay in the car! It's warm!
3) Lights at Mormon Temple - I heard about this one just this year, and apparently it's fabulous.
4)Hampden Christmas lights in Baltimore, always a good time.
5) Garden of Lights at Brookside Garden - this is the most expensive one, and the only one we got to this year. It's also the only one that runs until the end of Christmas, because the people there have a calendar. (Their summer butterfly festival also runs through the fall equinox; these folks are no one's spoilsports.)

I hope you all have had a happy Christmas. Tomorrow night, I'm making a festive meal: chicken pot roast, some kind of tasty beverage, and possibly (!) cannoli for dessert.

Here are some of the best words I've heard in a long time. This is sweet and loving and oh so very hopeful. It's water in the desert.

So be warned!

I am currently teaching a very basic level of English, to five men, three of them Turkish-speaking. Today, one of my Turkish speakers came out with these two gems:

"I want to shit in class."

"At Ramadan, we eat cock."

Another of my students asked, "What does George mean?" The word he was asking about was "choice."

Late summer is a strange time. The weather is more like Los Angeles than the Mid-Atlantic. Days are warm. Nights are cool, breezy, and relatively dry. Some of the trees are just starting to change - including the very top of one maple. I'm worried about my life and the months ahead.

I just received a wonderful email full of great advice from a friend. We've worked together in the past. We have similar backgrounds. I'm amazed that people can see me in such a positive light. I'm grateful to be liked so much as well.

Last night, for reasons that I don't understand, I was overcome with terror when I got off the Metro. I could hardly stand to walk home, and walked as quickly as possible. When I told her about it, papertigers offered to meet me at White Flint when I get off work tonight. That wouldn't have even occurred to me.

I am lucky to be surrounded by thoughtful people.

I. (A dialogue between debboamerik and VeryProtestantBoss)
[Scene: debboamerik is getting her lunch out of the refrigerator. VPB stands in the kitchen doorway.]

VPB: I hear you go to a Russian Orthodox Church.

DA: Yes, I do.

VPB: Is it true that you have to pay to go to an Orthodox church?

DA [mystified]: No.

VPB: But you have to pay to go to the Greek Orthodox Church.

DA: No, you don't. You don't have to pay to go to any Christian church that I've ever heard of.

VPB: But they say you have to pay to be a member!

DA: Sure, but that doesn't mean what you think.

VPB: What does it mean?

DA: If you want to do things like run or vote for Parish Council, you have to contribute to the parish, and you have to be of age.

VPB: How much?

DA: That depends.

VPB: So do you have to pay to go to services?

DA: N... [repeats] You don't have to pay to go to services at any Christian church!

VPB: So... just to take Communion?

DA: NO! We let little babies take Communion; how could they possibly pay?

VPB: But you still have to pay to be a member.

DA: Yes, and not just in Orthodox parishes. Catholics do that, too.

VPB: [looks confused, is asked a question by someone else, walks away]


II. (Scene on the Metro)

Three young black boys were sitting on the Metro near me. The oldest one, who was about 16, was acting much younger than the youngest one, who was about 11. I was meditating on the classic style of the youngest one's clothes. He could have been from any era from the 1930s up, dressed as he was, and looked equally cute and stylish. The oldest of the three was being noisy and singing, and trying to get the other two to sing along, which, after a minute or two, they did. Then the oldest one took out his phone and started blasting music with it. I caught the middle child's eye and gestured that they should turn the music down. He gestured back in a class-clown sort of "I don't know" way, so I tried to gesture headphones. Same response. Finally, I caught the oldest one's eye and said, "Hon, you're going to have to turn that way down or turn it off. The rules are that you're supposed to use headphones on the train."

At that point, a skinny young white man stood up and started yelling at them, telling them that I was right and that they shouldn't be talking so loudly either. I ignored him and went back to my book. After all, I talk loudly with my friends on the Metro, and I am 32 years old. The kids waited a second, and then, looking at me rather than at the man, turned their music off. I smiled at them. They started talking (in an audible undertone) amongst themselves, saying that the man had to have a woman speak before he would dare say anything, which I found rather amusing.

When I got off the train at Twinbrook, I saw the people who had been directly opposite me on the train at the farecard machines. The woman said, "Thank you for saying something to those men! I was too shy to say anything myself."

"They were just boys," I said.

"What?"

"The oldest of them couldn't have been more than 16."

"Oh... I was too shy to look, like I said..." I had this lady's number, and she knew it and was embarrassed.

"Kids are dumb," I shrugged. Anyone over age 25 would have agreed, so the woman did. I helped her and her husband work the farecard machines, and they gave me their trade-in farecards. Then I went to the grocery store.

This was a great weekend. Not a perfect weekend, but a great weekend.

Friday night we went to see Twelfth Night at Shakespeare Free for All.

Yesterday, we had a wonderful brunch of cheesy scrambled eggs, biscuits with butter and boysenberry jam, bacon, and coffee.

Today, we went swimming and grilled potatoes and onions and turkey burgers (in Trader Joe's incredibly good barbecue sauce - the only bottled sauce I've ever had that was actually good) on our Notebook Grill. One of the best parts was sitting quietly on the bench with papertigers watching the grill heat up.

We've been reading and snuggling and enjoying the nice weather.

These are the sorts of weekends when one is just happy to be alive.

I did not sleep well last night, and this morning my eyes felt gritty and tired and my feet felt like lead. This is a necessary part of the story I am about to tell, which is mostly about how I am an idiot.

I dragged myself out of bed at the appropriate time. I put on clean clothes and deodorant. I ate breakfast, fed the cats, watered the plants, and brushed my teeth. Then I walked to the Metro. The first train to arrive was crowded, but I looked at the time on my phone and decided to take it to Grosvenor, there to change to a less crowded train. I did so. I sat in a nice seat, put my phone on my lap so that I could check the time without moving much, and promptly fell asleep.

I woke up just before my station, grabbed my work bag and my purse, and got out of the train. No sooner had I left the train than I realized that I had left my phone, which had been in my lap. Cursing my idiocy, I went to the station manager, who gave me Metro's standard "check with us in 5-7 business days" form. I asked if he could just call ahead and have someone take a look in the car; he said, "No, I can't. I'm doing all I can." That upset me further, since it was patently untrue. (For the record, I've had a station manager call ahead and retrieve my book before now; why not a phone, given a full description?)

All day long I have been upset about this. It's not just the phone... it's the other things. papertigers got me this phone for our anniversary. It has a special ring tone for her calls. It has all my phone numbers in it. She got me a special chip and a USB cord and headphones suited to my phone's unique ports, all so that I could use my phone as an MP3 player. I had only just begun to do so. It's an expensive phone. It has a full keyboard. It's the nicest thing of its kind I've ever owned. I feel incredibly stupid for leaving it like that. It's also my only link to potential jobs (though I think I can check my voicemail from other phones, thank God).

Sometimes I am just not the brightest or the best.

This post is mostly me musing on myself, but I'm making it public because people might have things to add.

While making dinner tonight, I found myself thinking back on a disturbing episode involving unwanted physical contact that happened a few years ago. I'm still very disturbed and deeply ashamed of this episode, and I did a little thinking about why. After all, I was raised on the philosophy of "my body is my own." Why hasn't that translated into a stronger sense of my own personal boundaries, and more ability to stand up for myself?

I think maybe it's not enough to teach kids that they can say no or talk to a trusted grown-up. I think a kid also needs a sense of his or her own body as a worthy object of protection. I developed, somehow, a deep dread of appearing selfish and making demands on others, at a very young age. I also developed a lot of shame about my body, and a feeling that the mind was the worthier part. I could point to a lot of reasons for this, but most likely it was a combination of all of them, plus some that I haven't thought of. I have been lucky to have, in papertigers, someone who helps me to understand that I am allowed to feel angry and ashamed.

It also makes me think of a parallel incident, when I was in Mauritania. In this situation, a young boy of between ten and thirteen years old hit me on the back with a stick while I was walking down the street. Mauritanians find this sort of thing tremendously funny. I found it deeply shaming. When I told one of my friends about the incident, she told me that of course I felt ashamed, that racially-motivated violence in general is meant to keep people down by making them feel ashamed. I'm not sure that I agree with her whole analysis of the situation, but I know that it gave me a new perspective, not just on my life, but on my own society. That perspective has been really important because it has allowed me to see how people work, consciously and unconsciously, to control each other and keep those they see as their inferiors down. It's given me insight into myself and my own less-than-beautiful motives, too.

Yet all the insight in the world can't keep me from feeling somehow responsible for being hurt. Why is that? I wish that one could conquer pain by understanding the reasons for it, but it takes more than that.

As it turns out, not going to Uncle Bobby's funeral isn't going to be the drama I was dreading. The funeral is on a Wednesday, so unless I wanted to miss a week's work (and therefore a quarter of my monthly income), there was no way to do it. I'll be saying a rosary on Tuesday while they have his rosary service at Holy Cross, and I'll try to take a half day on Wednesday so I can go to the noon Mass at St. Matthew's here in DC and do a funeral pray-along. (My family is mainly Catholic - French, Irish, and Italian - so this is an act of solidarity with them.)

I actually had a conversation with my dad today. He's pretty down about losing his only older sibling, and is expressing it in angry terms, as he often does. He says he's lost four pounds this week, and with the way I was eating and sleeping on Wednesday and Thursday, I believe it. He and my little cousin A., who is going into her Senior year of high school and was really, really close to Bobby, are going to do the eulogies. I am proud of my cousin for being strong enough to make herself so vulnerable.

I am still very upset. We will miss him very, very much.