Vehicular Grumpslaughter

Driving home in the dark from a Rosh Hashanah dinner across the river, I grip the steering wheel like a vise. My kid’s Grumpies threaten to smog up the universe. “I’m mad at you, Shannon,” he tells me. I am a terrible mother because I won’t reach across the car while navigating the Beltway in order to roll up the front window the last quarter inch. He is cold. He is yawning. All he had for dinner was one piece of challah, two slices of granny smith apple, and half a gallon of Sprite.

“All right. This ain’t working. I’m singing a song.” I don’t give him time to respond, because I know he’ll just grump out another no.

“I got me a cat and the cat please me, I fed my cat under yonder tree. Cat goes fiddle-dee-dee.” I work up through a goose and a turkey and even a kangaroo. Silence from the peanut gallery. Like so many forms of resistance, it is admirable, but ultimately futile. I start yet another verse, my throat getting sore. “I got me a. . . “

Interruption from the back: “Tree!”

“Okay. I got me a tree and the tree please me, I planted my tree under yonder tree. Tree goes. . .”

Spooky wind noises blow from the back seat. Now he is giggling. “I got me a lantern!” he snorts.

“Lantern goes. . .?”

“Flish-flash-flish-flash!”

“I got me a. . . ?”

“Flag!” He is barely able to spit it out, he is giggling so hard.

“Flag goes. . . ?”

Apparently, talking flags sound like lab rats. A squeak from the rear: “I’m an American flag! I’m an American flag!”

Like “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” this epic song requires working back down through the kangaroo and hen and cat after each addition. The task requires concentration I should be using to stay between the white lines, but my kid is in hysterics and we’re zipping homeward without a Grumpy in sight. He adds a caboose to the mix and then he announces, “I’m done with this song.” We have made it as far as the I-66 spur, but we still have miles to go. I start in on a new one.

“Bubbaduffy, you’re the one!” This, to the tune of Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie.”

“Bubba-duffy.” Bug coos. I can feel the shiver of ecstasy from the back seat.

Here’s a little context: Over the summer, Bug and I went to a housewarming barbecue for some new friends. It was sure to be a short visit. As the Rosh Hashanah shenanigans demonstrate yet again, my turbo-charged kid revs hard and stalls quick at a grownup gathering.

Back at the barbecue, a pair of chinchillas swooped in like a pit crew to keep my boy in top form.

Our friends have kept two of these little furballs from becoming someone’s winter hat. Chauncey and Bubbaduffy Snappytart (I’m dead serious) entertained Bug for the better part of an evening while the adults – even this one! – carried on conversations lasting more than 30 seconds. Bug fed the little guys yellow raisins, watched them take a bath in volcanic dust, and became the chinchilla ambassador to the assembled humans. To each new arrival: “Do you want to come meet the chinchillas?”

The Sesame Street-inspired ode to Bubbaduffy was born that night. It lives on (and on and on and on) into the dark months. It soothes the Grumpies when they start to rattle the cage.

Mid-song, Bug shouts from the back seat. “Not Bubbaduffy. Rubber duffy!”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah! So people will think he’s made out of rubber, not fur!” He cracks up. I swear, my kid is going to hyperventilate back there. We are off 66 now, aiming in the direction of our neighborhood.

“No, no,” he chokes. “Chilla-duffy!”

“Chilla, because he’s a chinchilla?”

“No. He’s going to put on some sunglasses and sit in a lawn chair because he’s chillin’!”

And here is where I run the car off the road and land us in a ditch. Almost. Apparently, the warmup act is done and the headliner has taken the mic.

“Rocka-duffy!” Bug shouts. “He’s a rock star chinchilla. Give him a guitar and a stage and he can. . .” (cue the deepest, rolling-est growl you’ve ever heard from a four-year-old) “. . . ROCK OUT!”

Once upon a time, my kid would have to tell me to laugh. After saying something a little off, something he thought was funny, he would point to me and demand, “Laugh, Mommy.” I would attempt a chuckle. Bug would make an unpleasant face. “No. I mean laugh a for real laugh.”

Faking laughter is harder than you might think. Stopping a real laugh in progress? Impossible.

Against all odds, we make it home intact. We collapse in bed and sleep the sleep of lumberjacks. Who knew all it would take is a rodent and a song? Those Grumpies don't stand a chance.

Those dreams of summits,
a tricky comfort. I cling
to the contour lines.

A Closer Look

In the afternoon haze, Bug and I walk the dog up the cul-de-sac.  He runs, squealing over the blacktop as Fenway lopes along behind. Suddenly, Bug stops, breathing hard.

“Do you want to touch the ivy, Mommy?”  I look where he is pointing. A froth spills over the top of the neighbor’s fence, the bubbling green corsage of delicate, airy leaves.

“How did you know it was ivy?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It just looks like it.” I consider this. This is unlike any I’ve seen before. It lacks that oiled, thick appearance and the deep green of forests. This is something with almost triangular leaves dancing on a light breeze.

“Can we touch it together?” I ask. We approach, each reaching to stroke a thin, veined tissue.  

“Oh!” I pull back. “It bit my finger!” Now the dog is interested, too, snuffling closer. Only now do I notice that all the leaves are facing outward, their limbs covered in a clever disguise. No one would have known if Mata Hari had smuggled knives in her skirts. With more care, we lift the demure chin of one leaf. Tiny thorns prickle along the spines and down the stems.

“Now, why would this ivy plant have prickers on it?”

“To hurt you?” Bug guesses.

“Maybe. A plant’s job is to grow and survive. I guess hurting me might keep me from picking it. How else might those thorns help a plant grow?”

“Hmm.” Bug puts his finger to his chin and squints his eyes in the perfect caricature of a professor. The dog still pants at the end of her leash.

After a moment, I ask, “How does ivy grow? How is it different from something that doesn’t have prickers, like that grass over there?”

“It climbs!” he says. His eyes are wide open. “Maybe the prickers help it hold onto the fence so it can climb up!”

“That sure could be it,” I say. We look together at the buds fuzzing to life with tiny leaves unfurling from their marrow.

Later, at home, we have brushes and big paper and watercolors spread out in the living room. “I am painting grass, and here is the water in the grass. Here is the rain coming down from the sky.” Bug narrates his strokes, painting brown soil down under the grass and broad blue swirls in the sky. He begins making an eerie whistling noise. “The wind is blowing all around, blowing the raindrops.”

Over in the corner of the page, I swipe my green and brown lines, tiny and careful things. I paint quietly, waiting for the image to reveal itself.

“What’s that, Mommy?”

“What does it look like?”

Bug pauses, his brush poised above the page, and gazes at my corner for a minute. At first he shrugs, looks away, then looks back. “It’s ivy!” He says, a grin brightening his face. “And a fence!”

“How could you tell?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It just looks like it.” His attention is back on his own painting. And then it is elsewhere altogether and we are putting the paints away, rinsing out our brushes.

When we walk the dog the next morning, Bug sees the spilling life at the fence again. “Let’s look at the ivy again and go home and paint it!” he says.

“That’s a great idea,” I say. “While we’re out here, let’s see what other plants we can find.”

We traipse through the grass, dew clinging like kisses to our sneakers. From the brush explodes a flowering mystery. Ghostly blossoms extend purple-gray hairs 360 degrees from cotton spindles.

“Do you want to touch it?” Bug asks.

“Let’s touch it together,” I say. We approach the furred wonder as its damp fibers reach out to greet us.

Good With Names

Nothing could follow the adrenaline rush of leading a kick-ass workshop on teaching for doctoral students last week. So, why am I so surprised to find myself bored at work today? This is supposed to be the way of university administration. Intensity ebbs and flows, as does pleasure in the tasks.

But seriously? Address checking? Our database gobbled up eight solid hours of the precious and shrinking cache granted to me for walking this earth. The Commonwealth of Virginia paid a creative, educated woman a day's salary to cross-check the address every single student in our doctoral program against the university's records. What a numbing use of the gift of gray matter.

It has to be done, though, and I am the one who suffers if I leave this little house untidy. Doing this work is really not so different from folding the laundry, except that it's less stimulating and harder on the eyes. Every working person faces unsatisfying aspects of a job. Artists complain about having to deal with gallery owners. Camp directors have to swim through tedious HR protocols during multiple hiring cycles in a year. Name your dream job, and I can find you some piece of it someone wants to hire out to a peon.

Sometimes, though, you can't get around being your own peon.

Our PhD program houses 160 doctoral students. Staying on top of their progress and providing them with accurate and timely guidance helps them (I hope) keep that final dissertation defense in their sites. Being a resource for the students is the fun part of the position. As I get to know them, I can tailor my approach to their personalities. What could be better for a dyed-in-the-wool extrovert? This may not my avocation, but parts of it sure fit my groove.

Monitoring the construction of 160 people's careers (while also attending to the 60-odd faculty members and two dozen bureaucrats working the scaffolding) is about as complicated as you'd think. I have days when I am right on top of things. I can field a call from a student in Nigeria about a small payment detail that needs to be resolved within the hour, and the student's situation pops to the front of my brain. That one happens to be a permanent U.S. resident in the 1-credit-per-semester dissertation phase of his research, an international student living abroad but not on a visa. I know exactly how to give him the right answer in the blink of an eye. On such days, I feel like I have the best job in the world.

Then I have moments like the one last week. The workshop brought in a manageable 10 participants, and I knew every one of them. They introduced themselves at the beginning. I had an RSVP list on my desk. You can imagine my mortification when I drew a complete blank on one student's name halfway through the session. This would only be a big deal if I were calling on people and trying to engage the discussion.. . . There I was, trying to model active teaching skills, and I not only forgot the student's name, I called him the wrong name.

I have only flipped the calendar thirteen times since the university first saw fit to hand me this title. Anyone can be forgiven for slipping on the details from time to time. Heck, this position doesn't require me to perform surgery or land airplanes or anything. The slip is actually a good reminder that I serve the students best when I learn who they are. In that moment, I could not have answered any question _blankname_ had posed to me about his next step in the program, because in forgetting his name, I also forgot everything about his research interests and his progress. I may love schmoozing and teaching and advising, but I also simply need to know who the students are. Their names are the keys that unlock those heaps of information stored in the file cabinets and, increasingly, in my own memory.

Today, it is true I am not doing anything more compelling than cutting and pasting data from one two-dimensional page to another. As the afternoon drags to a close and I slog to the bottom of the spreadsheet, something dawns on me. I know their names. I can look at any list of names anywhere, any list of thousands upon thousands of names of humans pulled from the phone book or even just the random sky, and I can tell you which among them belongs to a student in my program.

As I cut, paste, search, and check these records, I am looking again and again at the names of these 160 students who comprise my professional universe. I am learning them, the way a person memorizes passages of poetry or elements from the periodic table. Repeated exposure cuts pathways into the mind. Mnemonics form between names and the larger human composition. Simply by gazing for a day at this list of students, I place them in the larger geography of the planet as well as in the storehouse of my own memory.

Might it be the case that sitting still and attending to nothing more than a tiny collection of details, I become a better advisor? In addition to the critical task of creating order when chaos threatens, housekeeping may actually build capacity for both service and leadership.

It is a surprise and a delight to learn, once again, that the parts of my work I consider most mind-numbing might be anything but.

Powered Up

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

-Seneca

“Think of something that makes you angry,” the instructor says. “Close your eyes and get it in front of you. Do you have it?” The small woman nods, face tight. He places the soft bat in her hands. She grits her teeth and hauls back, knocking a padded bedroll from her partner’s grasp. Whomp! The class jumps. Such force from a tiny person catches us all off guard. The woman and the partner both let out shaky giggles.

“Close your eyes and let that go,” the instructor tells her. “Now, I want you to call up something that fills you with love. Not just something that makes you happy, but something that brings you true joy. Let the experience of it radiate through you. Picture it and feel it. Are you there?” The small woman’s shoulders drop. She smiles and nods gently. “Okay,” he says. “Now.” He hands her the bat.

She winds up again. With a clean, wide arc, she brings the bat down. Crack! The class draws collective breath, her partner lets out a cry, and the bedroll skids across the floor. “Woah!” the woman breathes. She is glowing.

“Man,” says her partner, nursing her hands. “You’re stronger than you look!”

It all seemed little silly at the start. Several of the participants have had to swallow back disdain at the metaphysical, "radiant symmetry" kind of language the instructor uses. However, we suspend disbelief for the sake of the course credit, engaging and observing.

Over and over, twenty-four separate goes, the scenario above plays out. Every participant tries each side of it at least once. And every time, every single time, the force of the latter blow is measurably stronger than that of the former. Both witnesses and participants note the contrast:  The angry hit is sloppy compared to the long, clean swing and satisfying contact of the joyous one. The tightness of the angry hit cannot compare to the way the loving one draws on an unleashed, wide-open momentum. Precision, force, and explosive success are evident in every joyous blow.

So often, we equate power with aggression. Power dominates, and powerful people use force and fear to gain ground. To win. 

Yet, as I sit in this decidedly inside-out kind of class, I watch as aggression falls short. A mightier power overtakes it, outpacing anger and dominance every time. Joy and love win. 

How is this possible?

The purpose of this course for conflict resolvers is twofold. First, we learn to identify the physical manifestations of stress. Second, we develop a physiological aptitude for staying grounded in the midst of highly charged conflict situations. 

Traditionally, social workers, mediators, and other practitioners learn numerous verbal, mental, and even emotional skills to navigate stressful interactions. We think we have a full toolbox at our disposal, but we may not realize the ways our bodies can sabotage our best thinking. Self-protective mechanisms kick in when faced with danger, real or imagined. These reactions are built into our DNA. We feel stress, and our posture contracts. Blood flows away from the brain, our breath quickens, our muscles tense. All of these physical processes prepare us to fight, flee, or submit.

They protect us, certainly, but they do not allow us to provide good attention for the people we aim to serve.

They also don't make us very smart. 

The exercise with the bat and bedroll is just one of many during the two-day class. Each experience illustrates a stunning, measurable link between the body, the brain, and an expansive kind of power. Clearly, calling to mind an experience of joy has an impact on the physiology. The more surprising discovery is that physical choices have a parallel effect on thought. 

 

We breathe deep in our bellies while keeping our stance strong and our eyes open. Doing this, we notice how much more we are able to stay calm and keep our wits about us when someone is hurling insults at us. Paying attention to just these three details – breath, posture, and vision – allows us to keep thinking well, even when someone strides up, snarling into our faces.

By the end of the class, even the swaggering young Palestinian dude and the tough Chicana with the attitude are speaking with excitement about using these skills in practice. Experiencing the contrast repeatedly over two days whittles down our resistance.We may face disdain from peers and scholars, but most of the participants leave the class a little high on the possibilities.

Being able to tap the knowledge available to us even under stress is quite a talent.We are better at what we do when we attend to our physical state. We are able to take in more information about our environment. We are attuned to our surroundings and more perceptive to the opportunities available to us. We can serve. We can lead. We can succeed. Attending to the body, it can be argued, might even make us smarter. 

And with that kind of resource available to us, we are powerful indeed.

Bearing Gifts

September arrives
bringing seven days of rain
and the first stink bug.

Random Acts

On our walk, my son figures out how to wrap the retractable leash around the dog’s legs to make her trip. I catch him at this as he stands by the fence where the neighbor’s pooch is sniffing furiously through the posts. Bug keeps his back to me as he bends to twist the leash into a tangled knot. Fenway tries to stand but ends up hopping around in an erratic circle, finally plopping back down. She implores me with her big eyes.

I am at the fence in three strides, taking the tether from my child and releasing the dog. I do the latter with much more tenderness than the former. We march home, Bug whining, "But I want to hold the leash!" while I lecture him about kindness and care.

It could be the divorce, his developmental stage, the lack of a sibling who forces humility. Perhaps we have overbuilt his confidence or underemphasized compassion. Whatever the explanation, I cannot avoid the facts: my son is displaying all the characteristics of a playground bully.

It chills me to admit this out loud. I would prefer to gloss over the encounters I witness.

Bug sits at a doll house with another boy at school, telling him repeatedly, “No, this is how it is going to be. You have to do this.” The other boy slumps in frustration, eventually giving up and walking away.

The cousin from Germany comes for a visit. He is a bigger kid with more physical prowess than Bug. Regardless, Bug manages to determine the rules of every game and every interaction. Several times a day, the older cousin dissolves into tears. Bug shrugs and juts out his chin, sauntering away as his cousin cries.

A primal, self-protective instinct surges through me as I see these things. What have I done to create this monster? The spotlight glares directly on my failings. I can almost hear the smug whispers of the people with intact homes whose kids organize canned food drives. It is so easy to project my own distress onto the tabula rasa of the collective witness. To the deaf court, I want to shout, but I love him well! I guide him and teach him with all the focus I have in my possession! He is a good kid, really, under all that!

This first response is useless, though. Self flagellation is just another manifestation of self absorption. Dig down and I unearth a complicated parenting instinct: tough love. Helping a child succeed in the long term means hard choices in the now. Ultimately, the objective is not diagnostic or even punitive, but prescriptive.

How can I help my son learn the skills necessary to care for others?

This is the much more complex task. My boy will live a very lonely life if his sense of entitlement grows unchecked. How his behavior reflects on me is irrelevant when he is the one navigating the social universe. I desperately want my kid to know how to make friends and how to be a good friend, but Bug ultimately must learn the costs and benefits of his methods of interaction. He has no idea yet how important people outside his family will be to him.

I know very little about the mechanics of compassion. Nel Noddings has written in detailed and surprisingly rich ways about caring. There is much more to it than what comes "naturally" to us. In order to thrive, the relationships in which a person lives must be strong and balanced. Each person has responsibilities to maintain the well being of those relationships. Such simple things as doing chores and following the rules etiquette are versions of care, and they can be done without "feeling" caring.

I don't know if Bug is at a stage yet in which he can feel or act on surges of compassion. The mysterious depths of  my son's mind and heart belong to him alone. All I can do is name the expectations, live them myself, and follow through on enforcing them. If I do this with care, perhaps he will learn the same.


The past few days, I have been on Bug's behavior like a hawk. I took him to his favorite park over the weekend -- the one with the train and mini golf -- during a pause in the rain. He was on the playground, frolicking nicely for all of three minutes. Then he began lording over the other kids. My lovely boy cut in line for the slide, elbowed other children out of the way as they protested, then lied straight to my face about it. I warned him that he needed to back down or no mini golf. He continued to jut his chin and ignore me. So, I did the thing no parent wants to do: I hauled him off the playground while he sobbed. We got right back in the car for home. No mini golf, no train. Our entire outing was over and the engine hadn't even cooled.

With each repetition of this scenario in different venues, we dry the tears then talk about what could have happened differently. It stuns me to hear Bug list his alternatives. Every suggestion he offers up has to do with how to "make" the other kids do what he wants. The egocentrism of the four-year-old should not surprise me, I suppose, considering how hard it is for many adults to navigate these tricky waters.

I understand now that this will be a long journey indeed. We will need to practice showing kindness in a variety of settings. We will have to reflect on what comes of our approaches, and be awkward as we attempt new vocabularies. We will have to get it wrong, and keep on loving each other regardless.

My son will need to learn to hold the leash. I will need to learn to trust him to do so. Thankfully, the dog has the patience of Job. I could use a little of that as we three set out on our walk together.

Spoils

He is fast asleep
wrapped around a wooden sword
damp with dragon blood.

Before the Yes

Bear one thing in mind:
He is not going to change
In the ways you want.

In Decision

He has just started the program. One week of classes are not even yet under his belt. Is now the right time to be asking? It is the only time, I suppose, but the uncertainty seems both late and premature. He wonders if this is the right decision, if the financial outlay will reap future benefit, if the career trajectory he imagines is just a fantasy. What of the girlfriend who wants to start a family, what of the student loan debt he already carries?

I walk him through a reasoned assessment of the costs and benefits. He has come to me for information not exhortation, and I provide it with care. Eventually, I lean back in my chair. This is hard for me. The lion in me wants to lean in and bare my fangs. Courage, man! Take the leap! Instead, I draw breath and offer up the deeper questions of his motivations. My restrained interrogation asks him to consider the increased credibility an advanced degree brings. For the kind of contribution he wants to make, does it help him to have that level of expertise in his field? How might the doctorate itself – aside from the depth of knowledge it requires – provide currency for establishing the future he envisions?

He is a builder of things, a doer, yes. But also, he contemplates. He explores. He questions. These latter gifts may be his downfall if he does not consume them in moderation. He can contingency-plan himself out of any plan at all. The allure of the right approach is one of the devil’s craftiest tricks. Security is an illusion, after all. Foxholes are safe. They are no place I would want to live.

In the end, I do lean in. I adjust my posture and my gaze by mere inches and tell him that this is his moment.  The door is wide open. None of us, not even he, has an endless supply of these. He has what it takes not just to do but to lead, to create, and to engage in the great conversation. He is at the threshold of a journey that few are offered and even fewer will complete. Scholarship and time and funds (meager though they may be) are on offer just for him. Starting now – and maybe never again – he can dive deep into the heart of what moves his world while also gaining capacity to provide for his not-yet family.

All of this is here, now, right before him. The investment may pay off and it may not. The question, of course, is not how to find the perfect way forward. It is how to choose a path suited to one’s feet, and to walk it wherever it leads.