It wasn't the usual sort of emergency that would warrant a call in the middle of the night. By the time I heard the phone it was on it's last ring. Her voice on the recording was enough to break through the REM stupor and my head began to swim in thoughts of her suffering alone in the greying Seattle twilight while I tried to fall back asleep in my tiny DC apartment.
So I called her back. Instead of a real hello her voice was all gratitude that I had called until she couldn't help but let the questions tumble out in a rant-like succession: "What have I done? What am I doing? What was I thinking? Why did I come here? How did I leave my family and friends--for this! What am I going to do now that I can't go back..."
***
Every September students of all kinds return to schools in a flurry of paperwork, their parents' emotions, and maybe a few autumn leaves. If we were to compare it to a season from the liturgical calendar, August would be like a warmer version of Advent: riddled with expectant and nervous hoping, mounting expectations, families of all configurations wild with the spirit of preparation, shopping, evaluating the needs, checking the lists, more shopping... We can't possibly be ready but we prepare anyway for the big day that comes every year. The First Day of School is to August what Christmas is to Advent; and for some of us it's almost as hallowed.
In the US we are certain that the day is coming and as for our children, we are certain that they are going, ready or not. As a professional educator my job is to think through the reasons for all the buzz. I am well aware of all the reasons students go to school: the youngest students are delivered to their pre-schools, some at a mere six weeks old, because their parents have the privilege of access to programming that will prepare them for a lifetime of learning. The majority of students hit the books because the law requires and their families believe in the power of a formal education. Some go because they've been told they will make more money if they pursue another degree. Others go because they will be the first in their family to break the binds of the American caste system. You'll see them at the coffee shop or vending machine in the afternoon so they can suffer through night classes. They can be seen dragging around a five pound intro to biology text book or highlighting sections on the train ride to work. Some want to go, some don't. Some have a choice, some don't.
This year I have all access to students of a different ilk. They are an unknown quantity to most of society. Their friends and families are befuddled by their decision to return to school this year. They find their only compassionate supporters in the small pockets of men and women who have already been through it... They are those we may affectionately refer to as the seminarians.
They untangle themselves from hard won community ties and lucrative careers. Some move thousands of miles from support systems comprised of church ladies, gym buddies, softball teammates, devoted parents and older siblings. Or they choose to bring the support system (and all it requires) along: packing up two dogs, two children and a loving spouse only to deliver them to a tiny apartment in a strange college town where there is little they can do but replace family and friends with 20 something babysitters and great beer.
And then they call, in the middle of the night, to ask those of us who have been there and done that to answer to the hardest question.
What do I do now that I can't go back?
They call because they have suddenly realized that this time a return to school burns the bridge between the present and the past. They have been through the first day of school so many times but this catches them off guard. When the school is a seminary, the going back to school means you can never go back to the life you knew. What is worse: they prepared diligently. Many are candidates for ordination so they have passed a battery of psychological exams, taken numerous tests, written introspective essays and spent a year or more in discernment. And then they come home from the third night of New Student Orientation knowing only one thing, prepared for only this: it's time to confess I don't know what I'm doing.
They want to quit but they can't. They can't quit because its not a job or an addiction; its a call. And thank God it is. It is at the request of the very communities they left behind, at the urging of their best friends, with the support of their parents and siblings--most of whom have no idea they ever requested, urged or supported this endeavor--that they have come. Maybe the call was audible, spoken aloud by a mentor. Maybe the call was more like a surrender to fate. Either way it was an irresistible, insatiable and unbelievable series of events that brought them here to the intersection of faith and knowledge. When the sun sets and the path goes dark it's all they can do to dial a familiar number--who cares what time it is wherever you are, as long as you are there for me when I need you.
I have my MDiv (obviously I didn't find my way out of this conundrum) which means all I have is empathy and habit to guide me. So I do what my days in seminary prepared me to do; I answer the call.
Hopefully you will answer more eloquently than I did (I have a tendency to swear when impassioned). It was late, I was exhausted but I remember telling her she is right where she needs to be. She is not crazy to feel lost and alone. She is not crazy to think she can't do this one minute only to be sure she has to do this the next minute. She is right about one thing: she can not go back... but that is not nearly as big and bad a fact as her fear has led her to believe. "Is it me?" She wondered aloud as if to ask, am I offensive, is that why I feel so alone? I could almost swear I heard her sniff her armpits.
No, for the first time it's not about you. From now on it's not about your abilities or your goals; it's about a bigger picture and finding your place in it. This is a big task, you're not overreacting to the burden your choices have brought upon you. Your reaction is warning you that you are coming to the end of your comfort zone, closer to the edge of yourself and you will fall off the edge. You will fall in love with the new perspective you gain when you finally take flight into the future of the church, into the new view of God that this risk brings.
Soon it will be Fall again. Seminarians across the country will be back at school. They have been moving, preparing, coming closer to the end of the lives they have known. So when you hear the Convocation bells ringing like a midnight emergency, answer them: it's the future of the church calling and you have been here before. Fall again.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Please Come!
Let the Children Come: Faith Formation for Small CongregationsSaturday, October 13, 10am to 4pm, $30
At The Student Leadership School
sponsored by The Church of the Savior CommunitiesThe Festival Center
1640 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009
Contact Tim Kumfer to register
Phone: 202.328.0072
We not only inherit the faith from our ancestors; we also bequeath it to our children. We can leave our children with a stronger faith community than we were given...if we seek guidance, knowledge, and encouragement to do so.
This one-day workshop will give church leaders and teachers the opportunity to ask tough questions, discuss particular trials, and discover practical ways to guide our youngest members in anything from sacred practices to potlucks. Come to learn new and effective means for including the children in your midst. We trust that by doing so you will enliven the worship experience, deepen the faith of the congregation and authentically respond to Christ’s call to “let the children come.”
Abigail Vizcarra Perez, MDiv, is the former business manager of Jubilee Jumpstart. Previously a minister and teacher, she has extensive experience in faith formation with children and families.
At The Student Leadership School
sponsored by The Church of the Savior CommunitiesThe Festival Center
1640 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009
Contact Tim Kumfer to register
Phone: 202.328.0072
We not only inherit the faith from our ancestors; we also bequeath it to our children. We can leave our children with a stronger faith community than we were given...if we seek guidance, knowledge, and encouragement to do so.
This one-day workshop will give church leaders and teachers the opportunity to ask tough questions, discuss particular trials, and discover practical ways to guide our youngest members in anything from sacred practices to potlucks. Come to learn new and effective means for including the children in your midst. We trust that by doing so you will enliven the worship experience, deepen the faith of the congregation and authentically respond to Christ’s call to “let the children come.”
Abigail Vizcarra Perez, MDiv, is the former business manager of Jubilee Jumpstart. Previously a minister and teacher, she has extensive experience in faith formation with children and families.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Maybe they won't come back
The names themselves are lovely.
I don't mind that they have been assigned to me because my own name has escaped my grandmother's memory. My abuelita has lost most of her memories.
She has taken to calling me by names other than my own but that is quite all right.
It is a warm Miami midday and in the pool below the lanai a mother calls to her daughter who bears my name.
I say to my grandmother, "They call her Abi, like you called me."
The beautiful smile from my childhood reappears and she says, "that's right," the way she used to encourage me when I was ten years old rolling out tortillas properly from raw dough.
She became nervous when abuelito and Nathan went out for groceries. "Is that one a good man?" She asked.
"Yes, he is a very good, kind man,"I answer. "He will bring grandpa right back."
"Maybe they won't come back." She is resolved to worry.
They say she has dementia but she speaks of her fears so lucidly now: "I'm going to go look for them downstairs."
She insists although her feet are wrapped in bandages. I hold her by the shoulders and ask her to look at my face.
"Don't worry," I say. "I am not worried. They will be here any moment. They will return. Let's listen for the children playing outside or I will put on the music, the canciones, so that you won't worry so much." I place my hands on her shoulders to keep her seated because I fear her feet will hurt if she stands on them anymore today.
She finds comfort in the songs and sounds of her childhood. We watch the traditional dance to the quickened trill and sonorous thrill of the Mariachi version of La Bamba. It is like a secret we keep because it is hardly known since Ritchie Valens' version became popular. We watch rapt, as dancers in large white hats, flowing white skirts and high heeled boots lay a ribbon on the floor and tie it in a bow with their feet as they dance.
The next day a nurse comes for an initial consult and we are all surprised to be speaking in Spanish. We don't speak of it later but we all realize: it is more comfortable for all of us-- abuelitos, nurse, and me--even the Nathan who doesn't speak a word of Spanish seems relieved that we can all communicate, if only we will not pretend English is best. Although I was taught that Spanish is not my first language, should not be my preferred language, and is only an after-thought I shrug off this lesson (I must forget it!) because it is the only place I can turn now that my abuelita has forgotten so much, needs so much.
And I realize that for the first time in my life I need this part of my story; I need this part of my past because she needs us,
she needs us to speak
she needs us to speak for her, and
she needs us to speak Spanish.
She has come so far, through so many traumas that she is trying to forget and now she seems hungry for the sounds and words she used to form so readily--she no longer worries whether she is speaking English correctly. "Speak!" Her eyes cry, "Help me find the words." And so we keep on with our game of charades...
Because her memory is lost but she is not. She is not yet lost. In fact, she has returned. She has come back to her first language, her mother's tongue. This is the mystery of the migrant, the Spanglish which is not altogether a joke: these are not only the words we heard as children but they will forever be the words we loved as children.
Perhaps she worried, years ago, that we had outgrown her calling us corazones. There is a chance she thought we had neglected the traditional songs from Mexico, maybe there was shame in preferring them to English pop. But of all the past pains those worries are now forgotten; and so I confidently offer the old songs as a shelter, the old words as a necessity.
She has returned to a time when she was four years old and in need of a comforting presence, a mother or father figure, a forefather, a mother tongue. I too have returned to my days as a four year old, as I remember my face pressed to her breast and listening to her coo that I am her heart, the whole--not just a part.
It only took a few years for her memories to fade and while they did my little family crossed the country in search of employment. Having found a place to sell myself for a great bargain to an organization in need of my skills I am settling in, settling down and planning the next moves. We packed the belongings we couldn't sell or give away; the photos and books are all that remain of our former home. And then, upon landing here, we connected with the gifts we never expected and made a home, learned a new language and then took a deep breath.
This constant movement from one part of the country to the next, from one language to the next, from one name to another and then back again can weigh on even the sturdiest poet. We are more like migrant workers than we've ever been... and though it isn't very much like migrant work, it's much closer than I ever wanted to be.
One woman, whose name I have been assigned, the daughter my abuelita remembers--she is the woman who is yet to be forgotten by the matriarch of our little kingdom--and she urges me on.
"Live your life. Live in the present!"
And I am forced to remember
even as my grandmother forgets
that the present is a gift.
Remembrance is a privilege, the past will be subjected to our ability to piece it together time and again, the future is beyond my control
but the present is precious and I am filled with gratitude when I realize I have it.
I have a present
to share
with those I love.
I don't mind that they have been assigned to me because my own name has escaped my grandmother's memory. My abuelita has lost most of her memories.
She has taken to calling me by names other than my own but that is quite all right.
It is a warm Miami midday and in the pool below the lanai a mother calls to her daughter who bears my name.
I say to my grandmother, "They call her Abi, like you called me."
The beautiful smile from my childhood reappears and she says, "that's right," the way she used to encourage me when I was ten years old rolling out tortillas properly from raw dough.
She became nervous when abuelito and Nathan went out for groceries. "Is that one a good man?" She asked.
"Yes, he is a very good, kind man,"I answer. "He will bring grandpa right back."
"Maybe they won't come back." She is resolved to worry.
They say she has dementia but she speaks of her fears so lucidly now: "I'm going to go look for them downstairs."
She insists although her feet are wrapped in bandages. I hold her by the shoulders and ask her to look at my face.
"Don't worry," I say. "I am not worried. They will be here any moment. They will return. Let's listen for the children playing outside or I will put on the music, the canciones, so that you won't worry so much." I place my hands on her shoulders to keep her seated because I fear her feet will hurt if she stands on them anymore today.
She finds comfort in the songs and sounds of her childhood. We watch the traditional dance to the quickened trill and sonorous thrill of the Mariachi version of La Bamba. It is like a secret we keep because it is hardly known since Ritchie Valens' version became popular. We watch rapt, as dancers in large white hats, flowing white skirts and high heeled boots lay a ribbon on the floor and tie it in a bow with their feet as they dance.
The next day a nurse comes for an initial consult and we are all surprised to be speaking in Spanish. We don't speak of it later but we all realize: it is more comfortable for all of us-- abuelitos, nurse, and me--even the Nathan who doesn't speak a word of Spanish seems relieved that we can all communicate, if only we will not pretend English is best. Although I was taught that Spanish is not my first language, should not be my preferred language, and is only an after-thought I shrug off this lesson (I must forget it!) because it is the only place I can turn now that my abuelita has forgotten so much, needs so much.
And I realize that for the first time in my life I need this part of my story; I need this part of my past because she needs us,
she needs us to speak
she needs us to speak for her, and
she needs us to speak Spanish.
She has come so far, through so many traumas that she is trying to forget and now she seems hungry for the sounds and words she used to form so readily--she no longer worries whether she is speaking English correctly. "Speak!" Her eyes cry, "Help me find the words." And so we keep on with our game of charades...
Because her memory is lost but she is not. She is not yet lost. In fact, she has returned. She has come back to her first language, her mother's tongue. This is the mystery of the migrant, the Spanglish which is not altogether a joke: these are not only the words we heard as children but they will forever be the words we loved as children.
Perhaps she worried, years ago, that we had outgrown her calling us corazones. There is a chance she thought we had neglected the traditional songs from Mexico, maybe there was shame in preferring them to English pop. But of all the past pains those worries are now forgotten; and so I confidently offer the old songs as a shelter, the old words as a necessity.
She has returned to a time when she was four years old and in need of a comforting presence, a mother or father figure, a forefather, a mother tongue. I too have returned to my days as a four year old, as I remember my face pressed to her breast and listening to her coo that I am her heart, the whole--not just a part.
It only took a few years for her memories to fade and while they did my little family crossed the country in search of employment. Having found a place to sell myself for a great bargain to an organization in need of my skills I am settling in, settling down and planning the next moves. We packed the belongings we couldn't sell or give away; the photos and books are all that remain of our former home. And then, upon landing here, we connected with the gifts we never expected and made a home, learned a new language and then took a deep breath.
This constant movement from one part of the country to the next, from one language to the next, from one name to another and then back again can weigh on even the sturdiest poet. We are more like migrant workers than we've ever been... and though it isn't very much like migrant work, it's much closer than I ever wanted to be.
One woman, whose name I have been assigned, the daughter my abuelita remembers--she is the woman who is yet to be forgotten by the matriarch of our little kingdom--and she urges me on.
"Live your life. Live in the present!"
And I am forced to remember
even as my grandmother forgets
that the present is a gift.
Remembrance is a privilege, the past will be subjected to our ability to piece it together time and again, the future is beyond my control
but the present is precious and I am filled with gratitude when I realize I have it.
I have a present
to share
with those I love.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Better late than never
I'm so sorry this was missing among the archives at the old skinnytree.
Without further ado...
Visitation
Without further ado...
Visitation
she asks if there is anything she can
bring
I think first of the tree under her nest:
of the tiny maple,
the dwarf lemon
but most tenderly
the tall olive tree
(a mere branch leaning down across the soil
when she brought it home bowing, like a blessing
to her lover)
bring
I think first of the tree under her nest:
of the tiny maple,
the dwarf lemon
but most tenderly
the tall olive tree
(a mere branch leaning down across the soil
when she brought it home bowing, like a blessing
to her lover)
bring a branch from the olive tree, my dove:
my heart has been afloat too long now.
When you arrive, carry in your mouth the proof,
tell me
there are trees again
bursting from the horizon.
Tell me silently that the earth reaches out her arborized hands, and leafy fingers,
hoping to hold you up, proudly (loving your tiny toes curving around her fingers)
where you perch and play
and perform your miracles.
If there is solid ground again, a place to make a home,
I know you will tell me and you will bring a bit of it
wordlessly, weightlessly
leave leaves with me, my peace, my piece of home.
my heart has been afloat too long now.
When you arrive, carry in your mouth the proof,
tell me
there are trees again
bursting from the horizon.
Tell me silently that the earth reaches out her arborized hands, and leafy fingers,
hoping to hold you up, proudly (loving your tiny toes curving around her fingers)
where you perch and play
and perform your miracles.
If there is solid ground again, a place to make a home,
I know you will tell me and you will bring a bit of it
wordlessly, weightlessly
leave leaves with me, my peace, my piece of home.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Working it out
I knew the whole story. The pillow case in question had come from a home wherein resided 3 powerful women, one of them only just recently four years old. It had been placed on a pillow left in our classroom by a young hispanic boy who has since departed for a different school. A loving teacher placed it, the one and desirable pillow on the cot of a boy with the disposition of a 14 year old, the body (read: tear ducts) of a four year old and emotional responsibilities that rival those of any decent 34 year old.
He told me in no uncertain terms that he was a boy and didn't want a pillow with flowers on it. I said it was given to him to use if he wanted it.
To which he turned away and added, as though he were instructing me to add a pinch of salt to the recipe: "Then you're a b*&^#."
I needed a moment to think this over.
This is not the first time I have been called this... nor is it the first time I have been called such by this person. Questions raced through my mind:
Am I mad? Am I a b*&^#? is this laughable? Should I scold him? What would be the point? Which male figure in his life who speaks this way? What kind of power does that man hold? What would the other teachers do? What do I want to do? What does it mean anyway? Is there some translation guide for pre-K swears or do I need to write that myself? Should I move it up toward the top of the to-do list?
Yes. I should.
I took his little hands in mine. We walked away from the group of 16 busy bees readying for a rest time and I set his muppet sized shoulders back so his little posture would be powerful and proud as I spoke to him. I said to him I would sit but he should stand when I tell him this and then I told him
I'm so sorry.
If it hurt your feelings when you saw that pillow, I am sorry. You don't ever have to use that pillow. It's just like when I give you green beans and you don't like them. You remember that?
He told me that he doesn't like the outsides but he likes the little ones inside the green parts and asked me if I remember the little pieces inside the shells.
Yes. I remember the seeds inside the greens.
But please remember, I said, Sometimes I make a mistake. You don't have to use the words you used. They were not kind words and I know you are a kind person. You can just say, Miss Abigail, I don't like that pillow.
And we practiced using kind words instead of swear words.
I really was sorry to have offended such a smart and wonderful person. It's not that I'm a b*$^#... or that I'm not. The point is that he was trying to tell me something really important about gender identity forming and personal preferences and roles and rights and privilege...
and I had to figure out how to listen in between the words and my bias toward the words he has at his disposal.
Plenty of folks would disagree with my style of reprimand.
Some would say I'm too liberal, that he'll probably do it again or that he will never learn he can't talk to a teacher that way. They may say I've let him get away with disrespect and bad behavior. I say we all get away with disrespect and bad behavior every day. I say there are words that hurt more than swear words and a teacher better learn to listen regardless of how her students speak to her. I say he probably will do it again, in fact, I hope he does because it will give me another chance to pull him aside and legitimate his frustration with the way the world works.
Only when we are honest about frustration can we honestly express it and really move through it.
Besides who am I to make pre-K anything less than a social laboratory? Why not let him try to work it all out over and over again until he learns that this is not a very helpful word around these parts, even if it does carry weight at home or abroad? If this were a math problem I'd give him multiple chances. It's a social emotional problem and he needs all the chances he can get.
Even if it does feel really good to let it fly, it can hurt those he loves. I want him to learn this while he is yet surrounded by love instead of in search of it.
Had I returned his disrespect for my position of power with a disdain for his familial vocabulary or disrespect for his expression it would have been more confusing than corrective even to his little brilliant mind. All this is confusing enough even before we start limiting his vocabulary.
In my classroom there are no such thing as bad words, but there are lots of unkind ways of expressing your opinions. It isn't the opinions that offend in and of themselves, it is the disrespectful and disdainful expression of those opinions that causes such strife in our community. I don't want to defend my opinion of swears or pillows as though it is the only opinion or the most truthful. I even try to apply this logic to arguments over abortion, marriage equality and child-rearing... which is why I'm still learning how and when to tell you what I really think. I'm learning from four year olds--they are great teachers. When you look around my classroom you see little faces of real people on the front lines of these battles: there are folks who use my students as proof that their mothers are in search of a welfare check, that their parents should be denied basic rights as a family unit or that a single mother will never be able to raise a child on her own.
If you are still learning how to offer opinions about topics such as this, you're in good company and welcome to my classroom any time. That is the real moral of this story anyway.
Pre-K is a grandiose and functional place to sort things out. And I don't ever want to lose sight of that... if it seems as though I might, dear readers, you have every right to remind me; and I say so knowing that you will use any words you have at your disposal.
He told me in no uncertain terms that he was a boy and didn't want a pillow with flowers on it. I said it was given to him to use if he wanted it.
To which he turned away and added, as though he were instructing me to add a pinch of salt to the recipe: "Then you're a b*&^#."
I needed a moment to think this over.
This is not the first time I have been called this... nor is it the first time I have been called such by this person. Questions raced through my mind:
Am I mad? Am I a b*&^#? is this laughable? Should I scold him? What would be the point? Which male figure in his life who speaks this way? What kind of power does that man hold? What would the other teachers do? What do I want to do? What does it mean anyway? Is there some translation guide for pre-K swears or do I need to write that myself? Should I move it up toward the top of the to-do list?
Yes. I should.
I took his little hands in mine. We walked away from the group of 16 busy bees readying for a rest time and I set his muppet sized shoulders back so his little posture would be powerful and proud as I spoke to him. I said to him I would sit but he should stand when I tell him this and then I told him
I'm so sorry.
If it hurt your feelings when you saw that pillow, I am sorry. You don't ever have to use that pillow. It's just like when I give you green beans and you don't like them. You remember that?
He told me that he doesn't like the outsides but he likes the little ones inside the green parts and asked me if I remember the little pieces inside the shells.
Yes. I remember the seeds inside the greens.
But please remember, I said, Sometimes I make a mistake. You don't have to use the words you used. They were not kind words and I know you are a kind person. You can just say, Miss Abigail, I don't like that pillow.
And we practiced using kind words instead of swear words.
I really was sorry to have offended such a smart and wonderful person. It's not that I'm a b*$^#... or that I'm not. The point is that he was trying to tell me something really important about gender identity forming and personal preferences and roles and rights and privilege...
and I had to figure out how to listen in between the words and my bias toward the words he has at his disposal.
Plenty of folks would disagree with my style of reprimand.
Some would say I'm too liberal, that he'll probably do it again or that he will never learn he can't talk to a teacher that way. They may say I've let him get away with disrespect and bad behavior. I say we all get away with disrespect and bad behavior every day. I say there are words that hurt more than swear words and a teacher better learn to listen regardless of how her students speak to her. I say he probably will do it again, in fact, I hope he does because it will give me another chance to pull him aside and legitimate his frustration with the way the world works.
Only when we are honest about frustration can we honestly express it and really move through it.
Besides who am I to make pre-K anything less than a social laboratory? Why not let him try to work it all out over and over again until he learns that this is not a very helpful word around these parts, even if it does carry weight at home or abroad? If this were a math problem I'd give him multiple chances. It's a social emotional problem and he needs all the chances he can get.
Even if it does feel really good to let it fly, it can hurt those he loves. I want him to learn this while he is yet surrounded by love instead of in search of it.
Had I returned his disrespect for my position of power with a disdain for his familial vocabulary or disrespect for his expression it would have been more confusing than corrective even to his little brilliant mind. All this is confusing enough even before we start limiting his vocabulary.
In my classroom there are no such thing as bad words, but there are lots of unkind ways of expressing your opinions. It isn't the opinions that offend in and of themselves, it is the disrespectful and disdainful expression of those opinions that causes such strife in our community. I don't want to defend my opinion of swears or pillows as though it is the only opinion or the most truthful. I even try to apply this logic to arguments over abortion, marriage equality and child-rearing... which is why I'm still learning how and when to tell you what I really think. I'm learning from four year olds--they are great teachers. When you look around my classroom you see little faces of real people on the front lines of these battles: there are folks who use my students as proof that their mothers are in search of a welfare check, that their parents should be denied basic rights as a family unit or that a single mother will never be able to raise a child on her own.
If you are still learning how to offer opinions about topics such as this, you're in good company and welcome to my classroom any time. That is the real moral of this story anyway.
Pre-K is a grandiose and functional place to sort things out. And I don't ever want to lose sight of that... if it seems as though I might, dear readers, you have every right to remind me; and I say so knowing that you will use any words you have at your disposal.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
signing on
Such a thing (imagine it, please, as spoken by an aging and shocked yiddish Bubela: "Sawchuh Theing!") as a contractual obligation does exist.
I was ushered into the realm of promise keeping by my father very early in life. Once he made me promise to never walk too close to the creek that ran behind my house. When I ditched one too many classes (that is, I found, the one way to get caught in the act) as a freshman in high school he addressed the issue with militant aplomb as we sat in the cab of his truck: "You're not going to do that again, are you?" To my shaking head he replied, "Well, then we don't have to talk about it again." It was a preliminary sketch of grace to be fleshed out by a steady hand over the life of the issuer.
Then, before I knew it I had signed student loan promissory notes, a marriage license and a mortgage. How does it all happen?! Terms and conditions apply to a promise. Take, for example, marriage vows: "For as long as we both shall live." But live what? Why, this life, this way--of course.
There is much consternation about folks walking away from properties--entire neighborhoods-- in foreclosure [now so far under water they are more like Atlantis than their owners ever hoped], marriages [now shadows of their former selves and partners of the same hue] or lucrative careers [now viewed from 6 months in to be more like missionary positions in the lands of remote deserted cubicle].
We keep signing on, signing up. The promises are made so that another (an other) person will know that I'm good for it, in it to win it, for the long haul. I know I'm trustworthy so it is easy for me to predict my own fidelity.
And yet... I am only looking for someone who will remain faithful to me...
But not because I need a house of my own, more money, or an ideal partner. No. I sign the dotted line because I like to make promises. I really like it, in fact.
The act of promising something is personal, basic and a means to establishing selfhood.
When I make a promise I do so knowing that I can't control anything or anyone but myself. Most promises are made in the midst of heated perceptions weaving and waving like the sight of a Death Valley highway in the noonday sun. The illusion of a solid road ahead is just enough and so I trust that I have eyes more assuredly than I trust that the road is real. I am promising to use my eyes even if the road turns out to be little more than rubble on the horizon. And in making that promise to you, I make a promise to myself, I commit to myself.
I have broken a lot of promises and reveled in the guilt of it, narcissistically so. It was much easier to focus on the guilt I conjured by speculating the other person's esteem for me had hit an all new low. The harder task was to deal with the pain of facing the reality that in doing so I was also breaking a promise to myself.
These days I sign on for gym membership, a year long certificate of deposit at a laughable financial institution or an annual contract to work at an impossible job and all these are not exactly the picture of interminable nor are they the type of commitment to keep me awake at night--whenever they do I know I'm living a life dangerously off balance anyway. I still do make the daily promises that make up life in a capitalist society and the daring commitments that determine a tradition or maybe a future but the promises that mean the most are those I can make first to myself, then to you: to be myself, to tell the truth, to be right and wrong and human and wild which means sometimes I must walk away when you wish I would stand my ground. It means sometimes I must sit still when you thought I would run to your side...
Because if I do I will also understand that you must sometimes also.
Sometimes, when the sky is clear and the restless Starlings quietly pruning, the Cricket busy with his midday chirrrrrupping, I miss the train, miss the phone call, spill the coffee and all the stuff of life's mess is close to my skin and then
I myself am,
the very someone I was looking for when I went in search of someone who will remain faithful to me.
I was ushered into the realm of promise keeping by my father very early in life. Once he made me promise to never walk too close to the creek that ran behind my house. When I ditched one too many classes (that is, I found, the one way to get caught in the act) as a freshman in high school he addressed the issue with militant aplomb as we sat in the cab of his truck: "You're not going to do that again, are you?" To my shaking head he replied, "Well, then we don't have to talk about it again." It was a preliminary sketch of grace to be fleshed out by a steady hand over the life of the issuer.
Then, before I knew it I had signed student loan promissory notes, a marriage license and a mortgage. How does it all happen?! Terms and conditions apply to a promise. Take, for example, marriage vows: "For as long as we both shall live." But live what? Why, this life, this way--of course.
There is much consternation about folks walking away from properties--entire neighborhoods-- in foreclosure [now so far under water they are more like Atlantis than their owners ever hoped], marriages [now shadows of their former selves and partners of the same hue] or lucrative careers [now viewed from 6 months in to be more like missionary positions in the lands of remote deserted cubicle].
We keep signing on, signing up. The promises are made so that another (an other) person will know that I'm good for it, in it to win it, for the long haul. I know I'm trustworthy so it is easy for me to predict my own fidelity.
And yet... I am only looking for someone who will remain faithful to me...
But not because I need a house of my own, more money, or an ideal partner. No. I sign the dotted line because I like to make promises. I really like it, in fact.
The act of promising something is personal, basic and a means to establishing selfhood.
When I make a promise I do so knowing that I can't control anything or anyone but myself. Most promises are made in the midst of heated perceptions weaving and waving like the sight of a Death Valley highway in the noonday sun. The illusion of a solid road ahead is just enough and so I trust that I have eyes more assuredly than I trust that the road is real. I am promising to use my eyes even if the road turns out to be little more than rubble on the horizon. And in making that promise to you, I make a promise to myself, I commit to myself.
I have broken a lot of promises and reveled in the guilt of it, narcissistically so. It was much easier to focus on the guilt I conjured by speculating the other person's esteem for me had hit an all new low. The harder task was to deal with the pain of facing the reality that in doing so I was also breaking a promise to myself.
These days I sign on for gym membership, a year long certificate of deposit at a laughable financial institution or an annual contract to work at an impossible job and all these are not exactly the picture of interminable nor are they the type of commitment to keep me awake at night--whenever they do I know I'm living a life dangerously off balance anyway. I still do make the daily promises that make up life in a capitalist society and the daring commitments that determine a tradition or maybe a future but the promises that mean the most are those I can make first to myself, then to you: to be myself, to tell the truth, to be right and wrong and human and wild which means sometimes I must walk away when you wish I would stand my ground. It means sometimes I must sit still when you thought I would run to your side...
Because if I do I will also understand that you must sometimes also.
Sometimes, when the sky is clear and the restless Starlings quietly pruning, the Cricket busy with his midday chirrrrrupping, I miss the train, miss the phone call, spill the coffee and all the stuff of life's mess is close to my skin and then
I myself am,
the very someone I was looking for when I went in search of someone who will remain faithful to me.
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