(Happy to host my friend and a wonderful writer, Tracey Bianchi, on Playing House. Her post, below, makes me think of “Big Yellow Taxi,” sung here by Counting Crows.)
Bruised Apples and Local Character
by Tracey Bianchi
Our local farmer’s market is a hub of activity every week. Lettuce, jelly, strawberries, nuns who bake bread. The old Greek guy selling olives is definitely my favorite. He takes plump, oval, gorgeous olives and crams them with soft bleu cheese. I don’t even like bleu cheese but his olives have made me a devotee.
The family that hauls heirloom apples up from the southern part of my state is another treasure. By late summer they truck in over two dozen varieties of apples. Brown Snout, Adina, Prairie Spy, Akane, Pink Pearl, Chisel Jersey. Did you know apples had these names?
My apple exposure comes from the pile at my local grocer. Granny Smith and Golden Delicious. Maybe on a daring day I dabble in a Jonathan Gold.
Grocery store apples are perfectly smooth, no bruises and quite hard. I arrive home and they don’t taste as stellar as they looked. Mealy and lackluster. These apples come from fabulously far away places like Washington State or New Zealand. I find this odd given the multiple apple orchards near my home. None of the apples in our stores actually come from these orchards (a common occurrence in food life).
Commercial apples are often plucked from the trees long before they are ripe, stealing their sweetness and color. A green apple at your grocer might actually, if left on the tree, become a yellow apple! And sweeter than the one in your cart.
On a recent trip to the farmer’s market my two youngest children were running from bin to bin picking their apples by yanking whatever looked tasty from the heirloom varieties.
Then they scurried over the the stroller where a canvas bag received their selections. At first they gently set the apples into the bag. It was perfectly idyllic. I was the uber eco-mom with the gentle kids and the awesome apples. But the moment quickly changed as competition and adrenaline suddenly took over.
They began racing back and forth, grabbing armloads of apples and throwing them into my bag. Beautiful apples bouncing around and bruising one another. I managed to stop the chaos for a moment so my 2.5 year old said “okay mommy, then let’s go buy our apples.”
Before I could harness his ambition he darted over to the stroller, grabbed the handle on our bag and yanked it with such force that the bag tipped and apples flew then bounced across the market lot. “Oops. Mommy?”
As we tucked them back into the bag I noticed, beyond our bruises, that each apple had such character. Traits you don’t see in stores. Odd colors, lumps, freckles and spots. Each had a story to tell. An heirloom apple’s worth of history, seeds from France, family secrets from Germany, local color from Illinois. These apples were ripe with more than flavor.
We relaxed enough to pay the farmer (who smiled and kindly said “happens all the time”) and I felt embarrassed of course. But, I also felt joy and history swelling through my little suburban veins. A small moment of triumph over the commercial food industry, victory for my kitchen.
I had a bag of odd shaped character and it felt a little bit like my life. Freckled, bruised and filled with stories. Like the lives of my children as well.
So I beg you to get in touch with your local growers this summer. Not as an act of hatred against grocery chains but a way learning and of growing. To put your hands on freckled apples is to realize that you are connected to the same bizarre, bruised world as our farmers and our food.
A way of living into the reality that we are all connected to our land, God’s land. Our food and ultimately to one another. May you find an odd shaped apple this summer that fills your heart and your stomach with a glimpse of God’s love and grace for this world and for your very soul.
Tracey Bianchi is the author of “Green Mama: The Guilt Free Guide to Helping You and Your Kids Save the Planet.” She is the mother of three and an author, speaker, and women’s ministry director. You can find more of her musings on life, faith and sustainability at http://traceybianchi.com. You can find her new book at here: http://tinyurl.com/3xzvpnx
I hadn’t been off the grid in a really, really long time. And, as Martha Stewart might say of a freshly baked blackberry pie, sweet potato latkes, or transferring dishwashing liquid into a pretty glass bottle, it was a good thing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We can’t get to Botswana so quickly.
Two days before Maun, Botswana, (or a day and a half…I’m not good with Time Zone Math), I left O’Hare, spent the few hours it took to fly to New York answering and deleting old email, and then, on arrival to JFK, immediately started tapping away at the tiny keyboard on my phone, texting the two friends with whom I was to spend the evening.
“james if you pass a duane reade or cvs…could you get me a bottle of rohto eye drops in a little egg shaped bottle that is green.”
“will get drops,” he replied as I sped towards Manhattan.
“thx.”
I shared news of the freezing rain I endured while waiting for my car, my misguided decision not to bring my trench coat, and other miscellany.
On arrival to my friend’s house in the Village, I was engulfed in the happy company of two of my dearest friends on the planet. There was excellent Pinot Noir. There was Thai food. And there was that comfortable conversation that you share with people who truly know and love you. We talked about strong faith and equally strong doubt and the way mutual friends were weaving through their lives and careers. And we laughed. A lot. Sometime during the evening, I took a deep breath and felt the few weeks of panicked packing, writing, editing, and parenting start to fall away.
I was starting to be…present.
Very, very early the next morning, I got up to run on my friend’s treadmill before the marathon of flights (all the while doing the requisite NYC Rear-Window-watching of people who lived across the street as they primped and readied themselves for a usual Wednesday in the city), then a shower, then a few cups of espresso, and then a car back to JFK a bit more than 12 hours after leaving it the night before.
The driver of our car to the airport, by the way, was intent on sharing some wisdom with my friend and me. Wisdom about…combating the common cold. It was about 8 a.m. and we’d been up a few hours, aware that we were beginning a long journey. And, unwisely, at some odd moment, I sniffed. The driver, Asian-American, slightly portly, and about ten years older than me (53-ish), pounced on this. For the first time since we started out on Jane Street, he turned around in his seat, faced me.
“You have cold?” he said, accusingly.
“Nope. Just sniffed,” I said.
I looked at the shops outside, bars still pulled across storefronts. The corner grocers balancing red peppers and pears atop red peppers and pears. New York: the place I used to live.
“You have cold,” he said, removing the question mark, a diagnosis.
“You know what to do when you have cold? Right away?” He then commenced to educate us about not eating fruit or sugar for the first five days after realizing you have a cold. About not eating raw food. Or dairy. About resting. And, most of all, about drinking so much room-temperature water that we would “go to bathroom” ten times a day.
I made a lot of sense.
“Okay, thank you,” I said. “We’ll remember.”
But then he gave a continuing education course on colds. On how older people get pneumonia after drinking orange juice when they experience their first cold symptoms. “Maybe,” my friend, a New Yorker and less prone to engaging drivers in extended conversations, suggested. “Maybe there are other issues involved when elderly people get pneumonia.”
He waved her off, dismissively.
She and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“They drink orange juice and then they die,” he said.
Was this a warning I was meant to learn before going to Africa?
NO ORANGE JUICE, I thought to myself., putting the words in capital letters. Got it. Maybe this was a message from God: orange juice = pneumonia = death. Did my doctor in Wheaton, Illinois, really know what I’d be up against in Zambia? She never said anything about citrus.
“Okay. No orange juice if I have a cold,” I said. I started to wonder whether I did indeed have a scratchy throat.
“Or refined sugar. Or raw vegetables. Water. Room temperature. Go to bathroom ten times a day.”
“Okay,” I said.
“At least ten times,” he said.
Somewhere during this extended symposium, a white Sherwin-Williams van rear-ended our car.
(Another sign? I wondered.)
Orange juice. Paint. Traffic. Collision.
Wait — what?
As we righted ourselves, our driver shrugged and said, “You see? Not enough stop distance.”
And he drove on. The van driver, seemingly apologetic, pulled alongside us. Our driver waved him away like he had my friend a few minutes before.
“What he wants me to say? He not have enough time to stop. Don’t follow so close,” he said. And then, he laughed. I liked his attitude. And, a few hours before our flight to Johannesburg left, he safely deposited us at International Departures at JFK.
“Is your car okay?” I asked as he took our suitcases from the trunk.
“Sure. Okay,” he said with a smile, waving us toward the terminal.
There’s a man at my door. He is nice enough, not threatening. He holds a clipboard. He has a beard. He wears a while polo shirt and khaki pants. (Likely Docker’s.) In his left hand he grasps a pile of glossy, full-color flyers a few inches thick. He smiles with his eyes from behind wire-rimmed glasses. He’s about my age. Early or mid-forties. I am aware that he is doing a job he likely did not dream of doing when he was a little boy.
Times are tough, right?
“You can save on your energy costs,” he says, stepping toward my front door, crinkling his eyes as if to demonstrate authenticity and a kindly spirit. He begins to describe the services his company can provide. As he speaks, he leans forward, squints his eyes. Smiles more.
A buzzer goes off in my head. I never like that, that contrived credibility.
“I can’t talk right now,” I say. “But I’ll look at your flyer.”
I’ve only answered the door because it’s around now in the afternoon that a neighbor kid usually drops by. And if it had been her, I’d have opened the door and she’d have raced past me with maybe a quick glance toward the cookie jar (Anything? Homemade chocolate chip? Oreos?), and then out to the back yard to join my kids in their Whiffle-ball game.
“But you know,” Mr. Earnest says, “We can save you money on your energy costs. You can upgrade your attic insulation and and and…”
He is trying. And I am not the best audience. I really just want him to go away. As long-suffering as I’ve been known to be with Jehovah’s Witnesses (“Sure. Tell me more. Oh and that is a lovely illustration on your booklet.”) or replacement window folks (“Really? You can wash the outsides from inside?” like I’d never heard of that before), today I don’t have room in my mind for it.
“Thank you. No. But I’ll read your brochure later on if you like,” I say, softly.
“You see, many people don’t realize that an investment up front can save them money in the long term…” he continues, ignoring my pleas to Just. Get. Going.
I do what I do when I know I’m about to explode: I talk very quietly and very slowly.
“Thank you. I’ll take the brochure and look at it later. But. I. Can’t. Talk. To. You. Right. Now.”
I’m almost whispering. It’s like when I’m losing patience with my children or when the little cluster of five and six year-old kids in my Sunday School class start to get wild: the crazier I feel, the quieter I get.
The man with the brochures and the Sharpie pen in his hand then makes a significant tactical error. He throws off the crinkly eyes and goes sarcastic. He regards me with a hard look and then stage whispers, mimicking me: “Is. There. A. Time. I. Could. Stop. By?”
Seriously, now I want to harm him.
To my credit, I shake my head and close the door.
It’s been a day.
Three days after returning from Zambia to my own bucolic suburb, the slow burn of what I’ve seen, the ways my priorities have been re-shuffled, are settling in. No, I don’t really want to spend a minimum of $2,000 on upgrades on my house that would reduce my electrical bills for “years to come.” In fact, I’ve already implemented ways to spend $10 less here and there so I can buy more malaria nets.
I am keenly aware of how much I have. It feels, well, obscene.
Please. Don’t. Try. To. Sell. Me. Things. I. Don’t. Need. Not right now. And certainly don’t fail to realize that if I’m smiling a tight smile and being cautiously polite, it’s only because I want to slam the door. Or worse.
Okay?
Okay.
Seriously.
 Ring around the rosie
a pocket full of posies
ashes, ashes…
We all fall down!
Do you remember when you learned that “Ring Around the Rosie” (that giddy, hand-clutching, spinning game we played as five year-olds) actually referenced the plague?
(Um…you did know that, right?)
A short history, given on Brainz.org says, “This rhyme dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1665. The symptoms of bubonic plague included a rosy ring-shaped rash, which inspired the first line. It was believed that the disease was carried by bad smells, so people frequently carried pockets full of fresh herbs, or “posies.” The “ashes, ashes” line is believed to refer to the cremation of the bodies of those who died from the plague.”
Yipes.
That site details the dark origins of other nursery rhymes, too.
For instance, ever give much thought to “Mary Mary Quite Contrary?”
Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row
Wait a minute…What could “pretty maids all in a row” have to do with growing a garden?
The rhyme is a reference to Bloody Mary, the 16-century English monarch. Mary’s “garden” is a cemetery, full of the bodies of the Protestants she murdered in her efforts to re-establish Roman Catholicism in the country. The silver bells? Thumb screws that crush the thumb between two hard surfaces. Cockle shells? An an instrument of torture attached to the genitals. The pretty maids refer to “maidens,” or rudimentary guillotines.
Remember how charming those bells and shells and pretty maids used to sound?
Do a search on “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater” and, on most sites, you’ll learn the innocuous fact that it’s an American, not English, nursery rhyme as pumpkins weren’t grown then in England. (Oh.)
But read the lines more closely and find a sinister warning that if you, like Peter’s wife, are hard to “keep” (or are unfaithful), you could end up in a pumpkin shell. How could a person fit into a pumpkin shell, one wonders?
So these rhymes about plagues, torture and dismemberment are what we sing to our children, blissfully unaware of their gruesome beginnings.
What little songs or games will kids play in another 400 years? A game to be played in swimming pools that references deck chairs, violin players, and icebergs?
A few weeks ago, driving in the car, my 10 year-old daughter suddenly gasped. I turned and saw she was holding her breath. She had an incredibly focused “Don’t ask!” look on her face. Sometimes she and her siblings make a game of holding their breath when we drive past cemeteries. When they were very young, someone told one of them that if you don’t do so, ghosts will glide out of the graveyard and into your body.
But we weren’t near a cemetery when she grabbed a hold of her breath.
In a few moments, she exhaled.
“Well?” I asked.
“It was nine-eleven,” she said, matter-of-factly, pointing to the clock on the dashboard. It read 9:12.
Nine-eleven. That number, now weaving its way into kids’ imaginations.
Again, a few nights ago, all six of us were sitting at the kitchen table eating a late dinner. In the middle of telling us a story, my daughter interrupted herself, shouted her sister’s name, and pointed at the clock on the microwave. Both girls held their breath until the numbers changed and it was 9:12.
My older daughter was born in 2000. She doesn’t remember “the events of September 11,” as we now delicately call them, but ever since she’s been in school, the day is commemorated. Every year she understands a little bit more about what happened on that day and the events that followed.
Maybe, like kids innocently singing “Ring Around the Rosie” about 350 years after the horrors of the Great Plague of London, 24th-century kids will recite sing-song rhymes that reference 9/11.
Maybe they’ll hold their breath whenever they notice those numbers together and they won’t even know why they are doing it.
 Wait? What? They just welcomed us as the parents of the graduating class of 2014.
2014?
No, that can’t be right. That’s only four years away. My head is spinning – my little boy will be going to college in four years? College? And then, almost pushing aside the other speakers, a man stands beside the podium indicating he has urgent news for us. The other school counselors nod gravely, step aside. His message is about…signing up for driver’s education.
(Driver’s education?!? You mean like learning to drive a car? My son is 13. And there is no way he’s graduating from high school in four years. Four? As in…four?) No wonder all the teachers smiled and greeted us so warmly as we walked past them on the way into the school. I’d joked nervously with my husband, “They’re treating us too gently. What are they going to do with us once we’re in there?”
I feel hot, itchy tears start rolling out of the corners of my eyes. Both eyes. Those allergic kinds of tears that sting as they travel down my cheeks.
The counselors and school principal keep talking and I scribble notes in the booklet they’ve given us. First lunch period is at 10 a.m. Schedules must be completed by March 7. Something about technology electives. And about how having foreign language credits on your transcript is a “nice perk.”
I squeeze my husband’s leg, hard. He’s paying attention to the speakers, ever the good student. I lean over and whisper, “Can you believe this?” He nods and smiles at me politely and then returns his gaze to the people at the front of the auditorium.
I escape into correcting a page in the booklet, making edits so the text is written in AP style. My husband notices and whispers, “You really like your work, don’t you?” I start to tell him, in sniffly whispers, how I’d rather edit the booklet right now than think about how these next four years are going to fly by and how before we know it, our son, with his big hazel eyes and strawberry-blonde hair, will be out the door. He nods, but doesn’t let me finish. He pulls away so that he can hear the rest of the presentation. I cross out “website” and jot in “Web site.” I make a comma into a semicolon. I spell out the number five.
My husband pats my knee.
We walk out of the auditorium an hour after walking in. It feels like we’ve been there for weeks, months maybe. We hurry out into the bitter cold.
At home, our son is eager to hear about the night. “It’s great. You’re going to do great,” I say. “They talked about driver’s ed.”
“Wow. Really? Driver’s ed!” He laughs. “Can I see the booklet?”
“Sure. And you’ll be relieved to find that your Mom edited it. Now it conforms to AP style,” my husband says with a dark smile.
Our son shrugs and takes the book up the stairs to his room.
Starting today: a new type of blog post on “Playing House.”
I’m calling it “Life Hacking.” The term echoes a phrase used by computer programmers – According to Wikipedia, “The term life hack refers to productivity tricks that programmers devise and employ to cut through information overload and organize their data.”
So, in an age when parents are bombarded with information (recommendations — too often conflicting ones — about their children’s health, nutrition, education, activities…), I thought, with a few word replacements, life hacking could employ that definition and provide “productivity tricks that parents devise and employ to cut through informational overload….”
In other words, tricks and tips that have worked for my family.
(Insert disclaimer here: No I’m not a doctor, a psychologist, or, really, an expert of any kind. Follow suggestions at your own risk. Consult doctors, school principals, or wise grandparents before making life changes. But, for what it’s worth, I do have four children, a husband of 21 years, a mutt named Shiloh, a skink named Pharoah, a life in the Chicago suburbs that includes raising children and working as a freelance journalist, marketing consultant, and editor. All to say, along the way, I can’t help picking up a few “productivity tricks.”)
So…first Life Hacking topic: The Efficacy of Applying Vapor Rub on the Soles of Sleeping Children’s Feet to Stop Their Nighttime Coughing. Subtitle: “I don’t know why this works, but it does.”
(Snopes is still trying to figure it out, too.)
Okay, first a true story:
Last night, as I was chitchatting online with a brilliantly creative friend in Durham, North Carolina (see Fullsteam Brewery and Strips of Spam), I heard a weird sound. At first, I ignored it — delighted as I was with Sean’s newest strip that illustrated a spam email I’d received less than an hour before. I thought the sound was the scrape of a snow plow a few streets over. Or our next door neighbors dragging their garbage cans to the house. Or a strange hum as my techy husband worked on a computer downstairs.
It continued, at odd intervals, so I went to check on my sleeping children. I re-tucked them, listened at their windows, and all seemed to be well. But, as I closed the door to my 13 year old son’s room, I heard it again and realized it was his new, older person, cough. His voice changed recently and, well, I’m still getting used to the sound of it.
His new cough came from very deep down in his chest, a cough trailing at the end of a cold. He, as ever, slept through it but on hearing it up close, I realized it was a bad one. One that would leave him exhausted and hoarse by morning.
So I did what I’ve done for the past few years in such situations. I got the vapor rub. (And, as a frugal person of Scottish origin, I used the Walgreen’s brand but you can use Vick’s if you’re a purist.) I then pulled his (now enormous – how this boy grows) feet out from under the covers, slipped off the socks he was wearing, and generously applied the rub on the soles of both his feet, yanking the socks back on and pushing the feet back under the covers. He didn’t even wake up. And, happily and has always been the case when I use this trick, after about 3 minutes, the hacking stopped.
He seemed surprised when I asked him how he was feeling today before school.
“Fine. Good. Why?” he said.
I didn’t even bother telling him about what I’d done.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ~Anaïs Nin
Years ago, my brother and I took a field trip to the Art Institute in Chicago to see the work of one of his favorite artists, painter Gerhard Richter. This was before the stunning new Modern Wing opened. (Visiting the new wing last spring introduced me to another of my favorite artists, Cy Twombly.)
We hurried through the hall of arms and armor toward the exhibit. My brother joked that we needed to prepare a little quiver of well-chosen words to release in the presence of art aficionados as we moved from painting to painting.
“Ambiguous,” I suggested.
“Incongruous,” he said.
“Nuanced.”
“Restless.”
“Lucid.”
We laughed at ourselves.
The exhibition was called Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting. The Art Institute has a number of Richter’s paintings in its permanent collection, now housed in the Modern Wing.
His Photorealist paintings, based on pictures that he has found in family albums and newspapers, look from a distance like greatly enlarged black and white photographs. Up close, the images seem to dissolve into the canvas.
Others look something like paint chips at a giant’s hardware store, bright, colored rectangles in neat rows. But even these resist staying in one place to be easily understood. As you stare at the colored planes, your eyes play a neat trick on you and you see moving gray patches in the white space between the blocks of color.
A few works on exhibit unmistakably prove that his skills rival the masters in his portrayals of subtle light, the interaction between a mother and her infant, portraits and landscapes, and exquisite arrangements of flowers.
Other paintings are abstract, the paint scraped with a straight edge from one edge of the canvas to the other, the results unplanned, unexpected, and to say the least, nonrepresentational.
Walking through the exhibit, I was stunned to turn a corner into the next room and find another series of his paintings, as striking as the ones in the room before, but in a wholly different style.
In the galleries, I observed a thoughtful grandmother and her squirming four year-old grandson looking at the pictures. She respectfully answered his questions and tried to summarize the painter’s work.
“You see, he painted the ones in this room because he wanted to show that people have the right to disagree with their governments.”
The boy spun himself in circles, tugged at her arm, and let his body drop like dead weight to the floor.
A group of what looked to be high school students in an art class reverently followed their only slightly older — and hip — tour guide. She wore the requisite nose-ring and tight hip-hugging jeans with her decorated navel squinting over the waistband. She said the word “like” a lot.
Just after a section of the audio tour ended its commentary regarding the seascape we all stood facing, the guide gave her thoughts. She talked about the kids in the group, how some of them appreciated the work because they grew up near the ocean.
“Okay, like I saw Beth really connect with it. She’s like from Florida and so she has all these, like, associations with the ocean,” the tour guide said. “But, like, Brian’s from here and he just walked by, like, whatever.”
Isn’t it a funny thing about us as humans? We feel a terrible compulsion — when faced with something that moves us — to want to summarize, categorize, explain away the mystery of the thing. Or, in the case of the young guide, make it all about us.
In life, too, we like to look back over our past and explain away whatever loose ends or complexity we find. We want to explain all the tricky stuff away instead of just regarding it, like a person can regard a painting. I left the exhibit, moved by the power and the beauty of what I saw, but also lost in thought about the way I view the works that compose the body of my own life’s work: memories, stories, friendships, and everything else I’ve helped to create.
Some of the works of my life are like the blown-up portraits of people and places, black and white and a bit fuzzy. Others are exquisite moments, like a few of the paintings Richter has made of his wife and infant son. And others are massive patterns of color that took as much time and focus to create but defy explanation.
 On my kitchen counter are three pieces of paper. “Scratch paper,” as we call it. Odd spreadsheets and memos from my husband’s office on one side and my seven year-old daughter’s neat printing on the other. She handed me these pieces of paper this morning before school, looking into my eyes somberly, asking me to take good care of them. They are lists of party ideas for her 8th birthday next month and a proposed list of guests.
The first page: Bear, Pig, madagazcar, dog, Snoopy, ladybugs, cats, Enchanted. These are the top party theme contenders she’s chosen from her favorite Web site.
The last piece of paper is a list of names, the girls she wants to invite to her party. There are almost 20 girls on it; we’ll need to cut the guest list by half, somehow.
She reminds me that we can’t invite one of her good friends because the girl’s family doesn’t celebrate birthdays or holidays. “Don’t send her an invitation,” Mia warns. “She might get into trouble if you do.”
After her breakfast, and after her three older siblings go to school, she finds herself with a half hour in the quiet house to continue the party planning. We chat about the day. I run downstairs and start a load of laundry. I slice up a cucumber for her lunch. She taps her pen on the counter, crosses out “Bear” and puts a star next to “Pig.” I smile at her, glad that on this bright, sunny winter day her mind is full of thoughts of balloons and party favors and fancy cake toppers. That’s as it should be for a little seven year-old girl.
My mind, though, is troubled. I’m waiting on news of a young woman who attends my church and is spending the year in Haiti. In Port Au Prince. In a residence very near to the presidential palace. Since the earthquake last night, emails among parishioners have been flying back and forth. So far, there is no news about Mallory. And I’m feeling agitated, distracted, anxious.
Like all of us, I just want to hear that she is all right. And even then, I know she’ll have been through something she will never be rid of, to have been in the midst of that earthquake, to have seen the horrible loss of life.
She will be, if she wasn’t already, “ruined for life.”
I’m struck, for what feels like the millionth time, with the disparity between how the rich and poor and those in the north and those in the south live. My daughter and her party themes. Children in Haiti, even before this tragedy, barely managing to survive from day to day. How do we even wrap our minds around the stark contrasts of our world?
I wonder: Should our family boycott birthday parties, too, in solidarity with how so much of the world lives?
I think not. Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn seems a better way to me. And we can work to affect change by supporting local and global organizations which help those in need. That seems more effective – and compassionate – all around.
My daughter taps away on the laptop, searching for crafts to do at the party and I remember something I once read by Frederick Buechner, about compassion:
“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
That’s what Mallory’s been doing – now in Haiti and previously in other places such as Uganda. She’s dedicated her life to helping those in resource poor areas, living alongside them, working so that they may have peace and joy.
She’s been compassionate.
At 9 o’clock, I load up my daughter’s back pack with her lunch and water bottle and little container of popcorn for a snack. I help her zip up her coat, pull on her hat and gloves, and take her to school.
“Don’t forget to order my party supplies,” Mia says, grinning, as she gets out of the car.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t.”
—————-
Update: A short article in today’s Chicago Tribune about Mallory with comments by our rector, George Smith.
—————-
Update: More than 24 hours after the earthquake, Mallory Holding was able to call home! She is alive and well in Haiti, staying in a tent. I don’t have more information, but am so happy to know she is well.
Dear Santa,
There’s flour on my sleeves and dark brown gingerbread dough under my fingernails as I write this to you. I should stop and wash my hands before pounding away at my laptop, but I’m in the middle of making cookies, the kids will be home soon, and I realize that time is short. Christmas is in a week and I’ve got a problem.
I realize it’s a hectic time for you, but I had to write. Last night, I learned that my seven year-old daughter has a Christmas wish that I knew nothing about – and she is counting on you to bring it.
Remember Rudolph’s girlfriend Clarice from the movie that details his life? I don’t know whether Clarice is a composite of Rudolph’s other young loves or if she is truly a historical figure, but my daughter has decided she wants a plush toy version of her.
Last night, she held up a folded piece of paper for me to read. It was a note to you, with one request: “a stuft animal Clarice.” My heart started beating fast. I mentioned other toys, hoping to divert her from this idea. She just smiled.
Earlier, she’d asked me how to spell “Clarice;” I’d thought nothing of it.
I thought I was all set for Christmas. Meaning you no offense, I really thought that anything you brought my kids would just be icing on the cake. But now this!
I realize it’s late for us to make such a request. I know you had a lot more lead time last year when she asked for that brown teddy bear with the brown ribbon around its neck. (She loved it, by the way. Thank you.) And the way you had the bear stuffed into the top of her stocking so when she ran down the stairs on Christmas morning it was the first thing she’d see – nice touch!
It’s not that I think that children should receive everything on their Christmas lists. Most kids around here are richly blessed no matter how you look at it. They have homes and families and beds and more food and toys than most of the world’s children can even imagine. And I think most of them belong on the “nice” list, including my daughter.
Like last week, for instance, in my Sunday School class, I was telling the kids about Zechariah and how Gabriel came to visit him to announce that Elizabeth would bear a son. They’d always wanted a child so you’d think Zechariah would be thrilled. (This son would be John the Baptist, not that I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.) But Zechariah, because of his old age, thought the angel’s message was nuts. For his disbelief, Zechariah was rendered unable to speak until the baby was born. (In Zechariah’s defense, it would be like somebody telling you that Mrs. Claus was expecting. Crazy, right?)
And then this little kindergartner who has big brown eyes and honey-colored hair raised his hand. (He’s been a very good boy this year, by the way, and said he wanted “a peanut machine that shoots peanuts all over the room” for Christmas. Just a head’s up.)
Anyway, the boy said that God loves us and answers our prayers, even if it doesn’t seem like it or even if it takes a lot longer than we think it will. He said that if we don’t get what we want for Christmas, maybe we’ll get something better and it might even be a long time later. Another boy interrupted him and said, “Yes, that’s right. Except I really want some Matchbox cars.”
My point is that kids won’t stop appreciating the blessings in their lives if they don’t get what’s on their Christmas lists. So, no worries if your elves no longer make Clarice or if you have something else in mind for my daughter. But, it would really be fun if you do make such a toy. She’s little and life is pretty magical to her. First snows. Fairies. Elves. Leprechauns. She delights in them all.
Oh, and it would be especially great if you’d hang it out the top of her stocking again. Like that brown bear.
Wishing you a very merry Christmas,
Jennifer Grant
I had the great honor of att ending the World AIDS Day prayer breakfast hosted by World Vision earlier this month in New York. I blogged about my weekend in New York and, as was my assignment, reflected on my spiritual life for Fullfill, a new online magazine.
One of the highlights of the breakfast was hearing Kerry Kennedy give the keynote address. Although the statistics she gave about HIV/AIDS globally did not surprise me, as horrifying as they are, I have to admit I was shocked to learn about the prevalence of the sexual abuse of women in the U.S.
And I loved her call to action — “Our work is here; let’s do it,” she said.
Later that day, walking down a chilly sidewalk, I did as she suggested and composed a list of my “Jane”s — friends who had been sexually assaulted as girls or women. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Without even scouring my mind, seven faces popped into my head. More would emerge as I gave it more thought.
The next day, sitting in a restaurant with a dear friend, drinking cappuccino and eating a spinach omelet, I told him about Kennedy’s remarks and the “Jane”s. He said, almost incredulously, “But do you really know that many women who were victims of sexual violence?” And I began to name my Janes. My friend sat, shaking his head.
Women so rarely tell, for so many reasons.
May the statistics and stories Kennedy tells be a call to action to vote, to make noise, to support organizations which seek to empower and protect people in the most vulnerable situations. And may we raise our sons and daughters to respect the dignity of every person, as the liturgy challenges me to do every week.
Below, please find her comments:
World Vision 2009 December
World AIDS Day Prayer Breakfast
Remarks by Kerry Kennedy
Speaking truth to power is the key to addressing the world wide AIDS pandemic, especially when it comes to women and children. 20 million people have died from AIDS world wide. Half of those now infected are women and children, and that percentage is on the rise. As Amnesty International points out, “women and girl’s lack of power over their bodies and their sexual lives, supported and reinforced by their social and economic inequality, make them particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS.
Women are fighting both a virus and systemic discrimination in trying to overcome the threat of HIV/AIDS. Across the world, they face a number of circumstances which increase their risk of HIV infection in gender-specific ways. Many women are exposed to sexual violence and coerced sex inside and outside marriage, including through harmful traditional practices such as genital mutilation, early marriage, and wife inheritance. They frequently lack information on and access to HIV prevention measures and to health care as well as to support and medication after infection. They are denied property and inheritance rights, employment and access to finance – denials which make them dependent on men – and are frequently excluded from participation in policy-making and implementation, including on issues which primarily affect them.
However women are increasingly campaigning effectively for their rights. Grassroots activism by women, including in particular women living with HIV/AIDS, has grown for years with some striking successes – and in the face of a multitude of impediments.
The HIV pandemic is increasingly viewed as a strongly gendered health, development and human rights issue. It is a preventable disease yet some 40 million people live with the virus and the proportion of women affected is increasing. A comprehensive rights based approach is needed to effectively tackle the pandemic, its causes and consequences because of the gender-specific factors which put women at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and of the consequences of contracting HIV/AIDS which women face:
- Violence against women and other forms of gender-based discrimination increase women’s likelihood of contracting HIV;
- Gender-based discrimination also hinders women’s access to prevention methods and to treatment;
- Agendas for an effective response to HIV/AIDS agreed by the international community – including UNAIDS human rights guidelines, the Cairo Programme of Action, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and others – have yet to be implemented effectively;
- International cooperation is needed to tackle the global inequities surrounding HIV prevalence and lack of access to treatment.”
I think there is no time in the last 30 years that our work in human rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS has been more closely aligned.
Last year, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. After World War II, in reaction to the Nazi atrocities, the nations agreed that there are certain rights which are held by every human being on earth, and that these rights are so sacrosanct, that no government could violate them, or take them away.
The Declaration, and the human rights covenants that followed, are divided into political rights, like the rights to free expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote, and economic, social and cultural rights—these were thought of as aspiration—the right to food, the right to an education, the right to health care.
During the cold war, the West held up the political rights, and the communists proclaimed the importance of the economic rights. We won the cold war, and today you can sue a government if it violates political rights. But it is far more difficult to hold a government accountable for its failure to provide economic, social and cultural rights, like the right to health care. And that’s where the fight for human rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS are joined.
The cutting edge work in the field of human rights today is the work of making rights like the right to health care, justiciable. If we can make denial of healthcare capable of being settled by a court of law, we will have gone a long way in solving the pandemic, because governments will understand that they must provide these services or face the consequences.
The fact that women in general, and women living in poverty in particular, are vulnerable to human rights violations, further exacerbates the AIDS pandemic. Women in poverty have little access to health care. They are not tested, and if they are tested, they do not have the access to or the resources for financing anti retroviral drugs. Even if they do miraculously get the test, and the drugs, they are vulnerable because they probably have no access to clean water- which makes the healing process far more challenging.
Then, there is a higher impact of HIV/AIDS on the wage earners in house holds- this has an adverse impact on the entire family. Furthermore, the family’s recourses are likely to be diverted from education to treatment—creating another cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
In the United States, one in five women is sexually assaulted by the time she reaches 21. Globally, one in three women is sexually assaulted during her life time. Because of acceptance of violence against women, women are far more likely to become victims of HIV/AIDS through sexual assault. And then, to be ostracized by their communities first for the assault, and then for the HIV/AIDS which follows. And of course, women make up the burgeoning sex trade, near guarantor of premature death through HIV/AIDS. All of these are violations of women’s rights. And so, if you want to address HIV/AIDS, you must empower women.
Violence against women is the greatest challenge faced by the international community today. Violence against women is the inevitable extension of acceptance, world wide, of discrimination which denies equality and allows women’s’ bodies to be appropriated for sexual gratification and political power.
Violence by family, Violence by employers, violence by strangers, violence by government officials while in the military or in prison, violence suffered by civilians during war. And the failure of governments to stop the violence makes discrimination all the more pervasive.
Under international law, and in many countries, domestic law, the state has a duty to protect women from violence committed not only by agents of the state but also by private individuals and groups. States must exercise due diligence to secure women’s rights to equality, life, liberty, security, and freedom from discrimination, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. States must have policies and plans to protect people from abuse of these rights, and to provide redress and reparations when those rights have been violated. (AI June 2004 TURKEY)
Still, across the globe, women who are badgered, beaten, brutalized, mutilated and raped can expect police, judges and prosecutors to humiliate victims, fail to investigate cases and dismiss charges.
WHO reports that up to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partners. Worldwide, at least one of every three women – over one billion women- will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
In the USA there are:
- 4 million domestic violence cases per year
- Every 15 seconds a woman is battered (AI USA)
- Every day 4 women die as a result of murder by husbands or boyfriends, but there are still MORE animal shelters – 4 times as many (US Surgeon general)
Sexual assault is nothing less then epidemic. In the US, 700,000 women are raped each year, and 1 in 5 women are subjected to sexual assault by the time they are 21. That is 1 in 5.
Think it’s hard to believe? Count up the number of women you know personally who have been sexually assaulted. I did. I know 15 women who were raped in the United States. Let me tell you about them. I’ll call them all Jane:
- Poor and black by her drunken father
- Wealthy and white by her drunken father
- Jane by her grandfather over and over
- Ivy league dorm, asleep after a party
- Au pair, at a friend’s house, asleep after a party
- Jane and Jane in
- Stalked
- Under anesthesia
- Father’s best friend
- Boss
- Superior officer
- Stranger, stranger, stranger.
All told me, “I can’t go to the police.”
All of these women told me. Only one told the police.
Her case was dismissed.
Go ahead and count the women you know who have been raped. If you can’t count them, then, statistics show, it’s not because it didn’t happen, it’s just that they were too ashamed or too frightened to tell.
Now imagine what it means to be a victim of rape in Pakistan, where women who are raped are considered to have compromised their family’s honor. Fathers, brothers and sons see it as their duty to avenge the offense, not by pursuing the perpetrator, but by murdering the victim: their own daughters, sisters, mothers.
More than eight hundred women were murdered in one year in Pakistan in the name of honor. In Jordan, almost every female murder is an honor crime; the sentence for murdering a sister raped by a relative is as little as six months.
Sexual violence – warfare. Girls and Women from Liberia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone have reported massive rape and sexual mutilation as a military strategy for ethnic cleansing. As a result, tens of thousands have contracted HIV/AIDS, been forced into sexual slavery, and have been displaced from their homes.
Women are subjected to rape by family, strangers, and the enemy in times of war. They are also victims to assault by their own governments, while serving in the military, while in prison, and even when attempting to obtain health care.
Across the country, barriers are placed on preventive health care services for women, and in many states, women must pay for contraceptives while Viagra is covered by insurance for men.
Discrimination against women is pervasive in our country. Today women earn 79 cents on every dollar made by men. The numbers get significantly worse when you compare men to mothers.
We are blessed to be living in a country born of revolution where institutions are capable of change because of citizen activism. We must participate in the political process if we truly seek change. And we abdicate our right to vote at our peril.
This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China. 200 women in Bangladesh will be horribly disfigured when their spurned husbands or suitors burn them with acid. More than 7,000 women in India will be murdered by their families and in-laws in disputes over dowries. (AI USA)
In Russia women are denied the right to work in 400 professions.
In Saudi Arabia women can neither vote nor drive automobiles.
In Bolivia, sexual harassment is not illegal.
Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two thirds of its work hours, receive one tenth of the world’s income and own less than one tenth of the world’s property.
What a waste. Imagine what would happen if we actually took advantage of the talent of women everywhere—talent we are now squandering. Who among them would cure disease, stop war, feed the hungry, love a child?
Reflecting on the magnitude of violence based on sex, it is easy to give in to futility—and it is tempting to retreat into our own contained demanding worlds, but I’d like to share with you encounters with a few of the defenders from Speak Truth To Power which clarified my thinking and inspired my work.
I spent time with Elie Weisel and Desmond Tutu and Marian Wright Edelman and Digna Ochoa. They all say that we have to be angry enough to speak out…
Women like Digna who survive torture or abuse and go on to take up the cause of human rights, and have never given in to the forces of futility nor the temptation to violence, inspire us to embrace our beliefs and hold fast to our dreams.
I grew up in the Judeo Christian tradition where we painted our prophets on ceilings and sealed our saints in stained glass. They were superhuman, untouchable, and so we were freed from the burden of their challenge.
But here on earth, people like these are living, breathing human beings in our midst. Their determination, valor and commitment in the face of overwhelming danger, challenge each of us to take up the torch for a more decent society. Today we are blessed by the presence of certain people who are gifts from God. They are teachers, who show us not how to be saints, but how to be fully human.
I would like to end with these lines from a poem by
The most famous woman poet, anonymous:
Today is ours; Let’s take it!
And love is strong; Let’s give it!
A song can help; Let’s sing it!
And peace is dear; Let’s bring it!
The past is gone; Don’t rue it!
Our work is here; Let’s do it!
The world is wrong; Let’s right it!
The battle is hard; Let’s fight it!
The road is rough; Let’s clear it!
The future vast; Don’t fear it!
Is faith asleep; Let’s wake it!
Today is ours; Let’s take it!!
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