Love is Showing Up

I was recently asked to put some thoughts into writing on the theme of love for two close friends who are getting married next weekend. So that's what I'm doing, but I won't speak only to marriage/romantic love, which is a limiting way to talk about love in my opinion. Marriage (especially with kids) could just be a vast government conspiracy to promote abstinence anyway, but that's depressing--especially on the eve of a wedding--so let's not go there. 

Instead, let's talk about showing up, which are the two words to which all forms of love can be reduced. I hesitate to quote Woody Allen, because he's gross and creepy. But he was right when he said (or supposedly said) that 90% of life is showing up. I'll take that a step further, to the conclusion that 90% of love is showing up.

Our time--especially our in-person time, is valuable and increasingly fractured. We parcel out tiny slivers of our time each day in service of smoothly operating and managing the machinery of our daily lives. We go through the perpetual motions of that grind, all the while distracted and diverted by pings, rings, and screens. 

Now more than ever, showing up for someone, in person and not distracted, is the ultimate expression of love, because it offers the single most valuable thing we as human beings have to give to each other: our undivided time and attention.

So what do I mean when I say love is showing up? There are lots of examples, but here are a few:

Love is sitting with someone during their chemo treatments. Love is driving to someone's house in the middle of the night when they're scared because one of their family members hasn't come home yet. Love is bringing someone their favorite magazines and candy just because. Love is helping someone pack up their belongings from their parents' house when their family disowns them for loving the "wrong" person. Love is listening with acute attention and empathy. It's accepting someone as they are--with all their limitations--and without trying to fix them or solve their problems for them. 

In short, love is taking the time to show up for people, and then following through. It's making the effort to set aside your own ego and priorities, and make someone else's life a priority for awhile. It's the ability to recognize the things that matter to other people, to know when you are needed and wanted, and then simply showing up to truly be present with them in those moments.

So yeah. 90% of love is showing up for someone. The other 10% is not getting mad when they pick all the M&M's out of your trail mix.

Shit My Kids Fought About This Weekend: A Highlight Reel

It always seems like just when I'm supposed to be having the most fun and making the best memories with my kids, reality intervenes to ensure that we all hate each other's guts by the end of the day. 

And welp, today was no different.

Earnest, Good Clean American Fun things like the Fourth of July inevitably turn into a hangry low blood sugar fest for me and a gross junk food bonanza for my kids. The diligence with which those two pursue and protect their burgers and peanut butter cups makes me all the angrier, because they act wholly incapable of taking the same serious and committed stewardship of literally ANYTHING else they own.

I admit I made several tactical errors, mainly driving to a parade when I usually walk, and I paid for it with EXTENSIVE whining from two children who live in a town where the worst traffic jam on the city's 60 miles of pavement is typically all of five minutes long.

Plus, none of us were well-resourced to deal with tension and conflict given the ridiculous arguments that preceded a level of parade traffic that made me want to abandon my car in the middle of the road World War-Z style. Here are the highlights:

1. Robin v. Stellar Jay:

Isaac: Look, a stellar jay is on our deck!

Paige: That's a robin. Its belly is red and stellar jays are blue.

Isaac: No it was a stellar jay, I saw it.

Paige: No you didn't, ISAAC.

Isaac: YES I DID!

Paige: NO YOU DIDN'T!

Isaac: YES I DIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDD! (wailing)

2. Paralysis 

Isaac: (jumps on Paige's back)

Paige: OW ISAAC DID YOU KNOW YOU COULD PARALYZE SOMEONE WHEN YOU DO THAT? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? IT MEANS YOU CAN'T WALK ANYMORE FOREVER!!

Isaac: No it doesn't.

Paige: YES IT DOOEEEES! (wailing)

3. The Squid in Finding Dory

Isaac: The squid in Finding Dory hurt Nemo.

Paige: No ISAAC, that was an OCTOPUS.

Isaac: NO, the purple squid at the BEGINNING. 

Paige: I KNOW, that was an octopus and it didn't hurt Nemo.

Isaac: NO I'M TALKING ABOUT THE SQUIIIIIIID!!!! (wailing).

Granted, this was nothing next to the domestic dispute I just witnessed between a 14 year-old girl and her approximately 30 year-old father over Chernobyl orange nacho "Que Bueno" brand cheese sauce from Costco (a.k.a. "the good stuff"). That argument involved a stream of profanity and required police intervention. 

So far, I've managed to avoid the latter.

"BUT ALASKA IS IN THE UNITED STATES!"

The woman just kept repeating it over and over again into her cell phone, just two days shy of America the Beautiful's birthday. 

I felt her pain.

She was standing in the corner of a supermarket foyer, having what I would describe as an "animated transactional dialogue." I knew from her tone, words, and body language what this call was all about, because I and everyone who lives here has had this same call at one time or another. 

Could be a bank, could be a cell phone company, could be Amazon. Perhaps a courier service, car dealership, or even the United States Postal Service itself. 

We can only hazard a guess at why basic geography and earth science have eluded enough American citizens such that they ask questions in Alaska like: "What elevation is this?" (when AT SEA LEVEL), "Why is the glacier so dirty and why don't they clean it?," "Do they take U.S. dollars here,?" and oh so much more.

So it was with no small degree of empathy that I eavesdropped on this woman's conversation, in which she was clearly trying to convince the person on the other end that Alaska was, indeed, one of the 50 United States of America. 

I knew this script from memory. A merchant tries to tell you they only serve the United States. You ask them if they mean the contiguous states, and they draw a blank at the word. Victorious, at least in theory, you try to reason with them with increasing desperation.

"BUT ALASKA IS IN THE UNITED STATES DAMMIT!! I'M TELLING YOU! ALASKA IS A STATE AND HAS BEEN SINCE 1959!"

Then you throw your phone across the room in a rage, and cut up a waxy $6 tomato for your sandwich.

"Jack and Dianne" by John (Cougar?) Mellencamp is Incomprehensible to a NYC Kid

Right around age 12, it started to dawn on me that music existed beyond whatever the shock jocks played on "Z-Morning Zoo," the obnoxious morning radio show on Z-100 (BROADCASTING FROM THE TOP OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!) that served as my school alarm clock every weekday.

I knew my parents listened to music that wasn't Debbie Gibson, Cyndi Lauper, the Culture Club, or Tiffany, but I had no idea why anyone would ever want to do that. Until suddenly (I don't remember how), I started getting into all this junior varsity, cheesy classic rock like Steve Miller Band, John Cougar/No Longer Cougar Mellencamp, REO Speedwagon, and shit like that.

One of the songs in this genre that always confused me at this particular juncture in my life was "Jack and Dianne," simply because I had no frame of reference for the lyrics.

"Little ditty about Jack and Dianne, two American kids growing up in the heartland." The heartland. I'd heard of that. It's a place somewhere in the middle of the country, where everyone looks and acts as if it's a modern day Little House on the Prairie. It's shaped like a rectangle, is sometimes described as "hardscrabble" (whatever that means), and there are grain silos and vast fields of corn, like that Stephen King movie, Children of the Corn. They eat Jello for dinner, go to drive-in movies, and are scared of where we live.

"Sucking down a chili dog outside the Tasty Freeze." What's the Tasty Freeze? Is that like Baskin Robbins or Carvel? Chili dog. That's like a Kosher hot dog but with chili on TOP of it? Weird.

Then all that stuff about hands between knees and the backseat of a car and going behind a tree. I knew what THIS was all about. But the closest I'd ever come to any of it was playing "mechanic" with another 12 year-old boy who was the son of one of my parents' friends. We'd lie in his bed and just breathe into each other's faces with our eyes closed while the adults drank wine and talked about boring shit in the living room. (How this dovetailed with the car repair theme I can't recall, but somehow it all made sense).

Then there was the Bible Belt part. "Let it rock, let it roll, let the Bible Belt come and save your soul." 

Well THAT wasn't happening. My parents were secular Jewish atheists of the Bernie Sanders variety, and they refused to let me go to Hebrew school when I asked. (I only wanted to go because my friends did). "You can do that when you're 18 if you want," my mom said. "Your dad and I, we just don't really believe in organized religion. It's basically another destructive way of dividing up humanity."

So needless to say the Bible Belt was like the heartland. Totally foreign. In fact, I think they were the same thing maybe? In the same place? I knew it wasn't an actual belt for your pants. I knew that much. 

"Hold onto 16 as long as you can, changes come around real soon make us women and men." I knew enough to be depressed by this. I wanted to be 16 so I could look and act like the teenagers who used to babysit for me, but 3.5 years was FOREVER. 

Changes schmanges. All I wanted were boobs and my period so I could be like Margaret in "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." But being a city child, I recognized intuitively that I was beyond God's reach. My period would just have to arrive without divine intervention.

"Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell Used to Make Me Cry and Now It Just Makes Me Want to Die in a Fire

We used to sing this song at summer camp, when summer felt like a year, and a year felt like a decade. At the time, this song was a cheesy, lame, warbly corn dog of an earworm that put hot tears in our eyeballs. We couldn't have known that years later, "Circle Game" (and really any song by Joni Mitchell) would make us want to die in a fire. 

One look at the lyrics, and anyone over age 25 will see why they'd literally rather perish from smoke inhalation while cowering behind a dresser in the corner of a second story bedroom than hear this song ever again:

Yesterday a child came out to wander

Caught a dragonfly inside a jar

Fearful when the sky was full of thunder

And tearful at the falling of a star

First of all, who catches dragonflies in jars? Fireflies, sure. I can see catching fireflies (and I don't mean that catalog of shit ass made-in-Hong Kong Halloween costumes that keeps coming to my mailbox), because fireflies light up and are therefore super cool. But a dragonfly? Dragonflies are a gross, hideous cross between a giant fly and a prehistoric moth. And yeah, I can see being afraid of thunder I guess, but who CRIES when they see a falling star? (And don't even get me started on "wandering."). I have never seen anyone, young OR old CRY when they see a shooting star. It's more just like "Hey, did you see that? A shooting star!" And then, "Nope, missed it." I'd also point out a meteorological impossibility here: a thunderstorm and a falling star would never co-exist in the same firmament. If there's a thunderstorm it's too cloudy to see stars, JONI.

Then the child moved ten times round the seeeeeeeeasons

Skated over ten clear frozen streams

Words like "when you're older" must appease him

And promises of someday make his dreams.

Ok, I get it. The kid is ten, but at least in 2016, ten consecutive frozen streams are a non-starter. Good luck finding ten years in a row where a stream freezes anymore. It's called climate change, JONI. And I don't know this kid or his parents, but "promises of someday" do not make my kids' dreams. I tell them the truth: enjoy childhood while you can, when you don't have to fill out a time sheet or a leave slip, and your biggest responsibility is MAYBE being forced to wipe up some spilled Honeynut Cheerios. Because honestly, "someday" you will have to file a health insurance claim for a preventative colonoscopy, climb a ladder to power-wash green mold off the siding of your house, change countless flat tires, and repay a student loan for a useless masters degree. That's what happens "when you're older," kids!

Years go by and now the child is twenty

Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true

There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenteeeeeeeeeeee

Before the last revolving year is through.

Oh yeah. A kid's dreams "lose some grandeur," that's for sure. But I can't promise there will be plenty of new or better dreams before you die in your sleep in a nursing home in Fort Lauderdale. Basically you might have your own kid, and then literally your only dream is for them to outlive you and for you to live to see them become semi-competent adults. And maybe Joni doesn't get it because she's Canadian. But the American Dream boils down to this: go through puberty, fuck a few peeps, buy a flat screen TV and a Weber kettle grill, visit another country (if you're lucky), squirt out 2.5 kids, and die. The end. But it's the chorus between each of these verses that really, really makes me want to die in a fire:

And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on a carousel of tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime

We can't return we can only look

Behind from where we came

And go round and round and round in the circle gaaaaaaame!

Now THAT's more like it, Joni! Yup. The years keep zooming by. And not just the years, but your bleak, monotonous days too. Where you wake up, go to work, walk on the elliptical for 30 minutes, come home, eat a microwaved Amy's frozen burrito while standing up, go to sleep, and do it all over again for 30 years until you retire and do all the same things listed above minus the going to work part. At least you have that to look forward to! Call it a carousel with painted ponies if you want, but it's really just like a real life documentary version of the movie Groundhog Day, where nothing ever really changes except your face which looks like a raisin, your back which keeps telling you to get an MRI, and your hair which either falls out or turns into squiggly, coarse white wires. 

And the whole time, you've watched as Cheeto Jesus and his ferret weave, burnt umber face, and Chicklet veneers rose to power and destroyed the world as we know it.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, JONI!

Welp, Now I've Really Gone and Done It: I Bought a Romper, and There isNo Going Back

There are certain things in life that once you do them, you cannot undo them. For example: setting your ex-boyfriend's truck on fire, eating a double-chili cheese dog with onions from Sonic, and buying a romper. Today I can say that I have--irreversibly--done at least one of these three things. 

A romper. I just bought a romper. Let me say it again so that I really and truly believe it, out loud, and so the whole wide world knows it. It makes it more real somehow. Those four words that are so small, yet so significant. 

I. Bought. A. Romper.

A romper. A FUCKING ROMPER. Romper romper romper romper romper romper romper. Maybe if I just keep saying it and typing it, my purchase of a romper will become normalized somehow?

A romper, as in Romper Room, the children's TV show from the 80's and also article of clothing from the same time period. An article of clothing currently popular among people who wear non-adult diapers and super models. Because really those are the only two categories of people who can really and truly and even remotely pull off a romper. 

Giselle Bundchen, and my daughter when she was a toddler. She can't even pull off a romper now, because she's in second grade, no longer in diapers, and does not walk the runway for Victoria's Secret, at least not yet. There is no caveat, loophole, or exception for 38 year-old mothers of two in romper wearing.

But when I looked at my iPhone and saw the weather in Athens, Georgia, where I will be spending the better part of next week at a wedding and associated events, I noted the temperatures there were forecast at 104 (one hundred and four) (one-zero-four) degrees. 

It was then I knew only a romper would do to clothe a New Yorker-turned-Alaskan in a part of the country whose summertime climate is akin to the surface of Venus. It had to be done. I'm not happy about it, but it had to be done.

Please miss me with the "oh, a romper is so cute and sexy!" It's not. It's a FUCKING ROMPER and I totally cringed when the lady in the store was trying to sell me on it like, 'blah blah blah, especially with a ROMPER." I heard the word "romper," and she might as well have said "moist slacks." 

Yes. I might as well have bought a pair of "moist slacks." That would have been better than buying a romper. But unlike moist slacks, ideally my thighs will not be Krazy-glued to each other in a romper all day.

So buy it I did, and there's no going back now. I am now--and forever will be--a non-super model and non-toddler who walked out into the street, into a store, and out of the store with a romper that she bought and paid for of her own volition and while not under duress or the influence of drugs or alcohol.

And I guess that's just something I'll have to learn to live with.

Tolerating Intolerance

According to a report in yesterday's Juneau Empire, there is going to be a prayer rally in Juneau today, brought to us by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. 

Franklin Graham, president/CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and son of televangelist Billy Graham, is traveling to every state capital in the U.S. in a tour bus because he "believe[s] that the country is in a lot of trouble and the only answer to the problems we're facing would be to call the church back to God and to prayer." 

One of this organization's platforms is that homosexuality and transgender identity are "sinful," that they can be prayed away, and that people "don't have to live like that anymore." That they can be "changed," "set free," and "forgiven."

The rally comes at a time when the Juneau assembly is considering an LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinance supported by the vast majority of Juneauites. A spokesperson for a Juneau LGBTQ association quoted in the Empire article doesn't have a problem with the rally or the organization sponsoring it, because (and I'm paraphrasing slightly here) everyone has the right to peacefully express their opinions as long as folks remain respectful of each other and are not trying to make our community less understanding, compassionate, or diverse.

Given that, I'll express my own opinion on this topic, and I'll try to do it in a way that's rational and respectful, as opposed to angry and sarcastic, which is my usual M.O.

Let's take the organizers and participants involved in this rally at their word: that basically they're concerned for the future of America and are genuinely worried for the souls of LGBTQ people; that their prayers are well-intended, and that they feel marginalized themselves. 

Let's also agree for this purpose that it's unproductive and unfair to label this position on sexual orientation and gender identity as bigotry. 

Let's also take it as an inviolate constitutional principle of American civics that the organizers and participants in this rally have the right to express and protect their own religious beliefs. 

There's one problem though, and unfortunately it's a pretty big one.

The problem is that no matter what you call it, the public propagation and promotion of this particular position--that homosexuality and transgender identity are sinful and can and should be fixed--has led to the horrific marginalization, abuse, and deaths of many Americans. 

It's a fact that LGBTQ people have higher rates of murder, suicide, and substance abuse directly attributable not necessarily exclusively to God's wrath, but to human persecution based on nothing other than who they fundamentally are as human beings, whether they "choose" to "fix" that or not. 

It's a fact that religion has been--and continues to be--used as a cudgel to justify that persecution, shame and antagonize LGBTQ people, and make them extremely unsafe in public and sometimes in their very own homes. And that this cudgel becomes that much more dangerous and insidious when it's presented, packaged, and promoted as a salve.

It's a fact that religion was used in this very same way not so long ago to justify slavery, segregation, and racially "pure" marriage in this country, for many of the same reasons and with much the same language and logic applied to LGBTQ people today, with similar violent and often fatal results, in ways that would be unthinkable (not to mention illegal) in 2016.

It's also a fact that the Bible advocates love, peace, and compassion certainly as much (and arguably more) than it advocates "fixing" anyone's sexuality or gender identity. The Bible might well be "a book of good news," as one of the rally's organizers told the Empire, but the way his organization chooses to publicly interpret the Bible is arguably pretty bad news for LGBTQ people.

So public prayers that are well-intended but have the indirect consequence of propagating hatred and violence against fellow human beings are, just maybe, something about which religious leaders should perhaps think more carefully, and reconsider as truly being part of God's work. 


Photo: Juneau Empire (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)