Even before we got here, my husband made sure we got a foretaste of paradise--the Saturday before our Monday flight we drove to Cologne to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The smaller stage at the Philharmonic barely cramped their style--they danced ecstatically, gorgeously, and seemed happily astonished by their effect on the Germans during the inevitable showstopper--Revelations. I've been watching Revelations since the 1970s and it seems to me that certain sections--"Oh, Sinner Man," have gotten faster and louder, but the spirit of the piece remains. And now here I am in New York with the family, and my daughter and I took a ballet class with Richard Marsden (Very Beginner Ballet, slow but strenuous) at one of Alvin Ailey's homes, City Center--and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Step off the plane, take a ballet class! We have enjoyed a nonstop schedule since arriving, and while the family sleeps, the mom types. The air conditioner is on, the sounds of the city muted, and the sense of having everything I want right in front of me, or just a New York minute away, is growing by the moment.
We flew Düsseldorf to London on British Airways, which was its competent and slightly stuffy self. Seating myself, I pulled out the barf bag "just in case" for my youngest, whose stomach is susceptible to airline travel. But I found that someone had left a moldy old cookie and some gum in there, and my oldest child asked the stewardess if it would be too much trouble to find us an unused one. Eyebrows vaulting to her hairline--we had not yet taken off--she barked, "Who was sick?" I assured her that it was none of us and she disappeared, returned with blue rubber gloves halfway up her arm (the kind the border guards at Kennedy routinely wear) and removed the offending item with a very British sniff.
Yesterday we got tickets to Les Miserables and felt miserable when the subway had delays and we got there only after hacking our way through hellishly loud stores and crowds twenty minutes late. But they let us in! Even though we missed "I Dreamed A Dream" we loved the show and of course I cried when they were singing "To Love Another Person is to see the Face of God!!" We arrived home in a moistly sentimental state and baked some expensive but delicious organic chickens, which the children were almost too tired to consume. And we watched the part we'd missed, the Susan Boyle version, on YouTube. A perfect evening. Day Three is dawning--Shakespeare in the Park? Good thing we didn't go last night, because the "Blow Winds And Crack Your Cheeks" part of the show was accompanied by just that kind of weather--the thunder and lightning nearly drowned out Susan Boyle. We hoped for tickets for the Bolshoi, which was sold out, but we did get discount tickets to Pippin. Now I remember the Ben Vereen version from the seventies, which had a certain elegance: this new production is faster, racier, and louder, but most enjoyable, and the actor who had played the original Pippin (the prince who doesn't want to be a prince) in 1972 now plays the king. We wandered lower Manhattan and managed the free ticket night at the 9/11 museum, whose recordings of memories of people who lived through the catastrophe, and memorial quilts, are very moving. I was less happy with the movie, which seemed to me an assertion of the rebuilding of empire: the new tower loomed onscreen such that we had to crane our necks to see the top, and I thought of the John Winthrop sermon on board the Arabella in 1630: building a city upon a hill. New York is our city upon a hill, as long as fortunes can be made and immigrants can be welcomed and everyone can just get along.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
The Critical Mom's Kid Meets Angela Merkel
So they just both happened to be in China at the same time, my oldest son with his Chinese class and Frau Merkel. And he got to shake hands with her and even talk to her.
"What was it like! What was it like!"
I'm bouncing in my seat in the car on the way home from Düsseldorf airport, and even my exceedingly patient husband can hardly wait to hear. We are big admirers of Merkel.
"Well, we were all shaking hands with her and I thought why not talk? I said hi or something. We talked about what it was like to learn Chinese. And she asked how many Chinese characters we had to know for the Abitur. And I said, like, 800. And then she said something like there were 24 letters in the German alphabet, right?
Here I interrupted him. "She was kidding, right?" No, she was just really every bit as jet-lagged as the tenth-graders were.
"And MOM, she's a physicist after all," said our tenth-grader.
He doesn't have to defend her to me. I think she's great.
"But what was she like?" Well, as I imagined. As her face shows.
"She was really just like a regular person. And also, you could see, yes, really the Mutti," he added--she is Germany's mommy, and oh, this country needs a Mom. Probably every country needs one; let me rile everyone by suggesting that women leaders have a natural instinct for diplomacy. Our son is home and gets to sleep off his jet lag in front of the Germany-Argentina soccer game, which is on right now. But Frau Merkel has to be at the stadium in the flesh, telling reporters how much everyone in Germany loves soccer, and sitting next to the probably inconsolable President of Brazil. My hat is off to her. You go, Mutti. Three years older than I am, and with fifty times the energy.
"What was it like! What was it like!"
I'm bouncing in my seat in the car on the way home from Düsseldorf airport, and even my exceedingly patient husband can hardly wait to hear. We are big admirers of Merkel.
"Well, we were all shaking hands with her and I thought why not talk? I said hi or something. We talked about what it was like to learn Chinese. And she asked how many Chinese characters we had to know for the Abitur. And I said, like, 800. And then she said something like there were 24 letters in the German alphabet, right?
Here I interrupted him. "She was kidding, right?" No, she was just really every bit as jet-lagged as the tenth-graders were.
"And MOM, she's a physicist after all," said our tenth-grader.
He doesn't have to defend her to me. I think she's great.
"But what was she like?" Well, as I imagined. As her face shows.
"She was really just like a regular person. And also, you could see, yes, really the Mutti," he added--she is Germany's mommy, and oh, this country needs a Mom. Probably every country needs one; let me rile everyone by suggesting that women leaders have a natural instinct for diplomacy. Our son is home and gets to sleep off his jet lag in front of the Germany-Argentina soccer game, which is on right now. But Frau Merkel has to be at the stadium in the flesh, telling reporters how much everyone in Germany loves soccer, and sitting next to the probably inconsolable President of Brazil. My hat is off to her. You go, Mutti. Three years older than I am, and with fifty times the energy.
Friday, July 11, 2014
The Critical Mom Goes to London
After braving Ryannair once more--they were just dandy, even if they were a whole ten minutes late--plus a punctilously officious border guard ("it's on moy back, innit, if they send you back!" he puffed) because my passport lacks my German residency permit, I was finally allowed to set foot in Albion. Still, it only took an additional ten minutes for me to convince him that I really do have a husband and children in Germany, plus the residency permit in my old passport, which is around on my desk somewhere.
Right now I'm in some bat cave reserved for Americans at the Clarendon hotel in Bloomsbury--outside my window a moldy cement square, the official drainpipe, and, when I look up, the fence at street level one flight up, atop some shaky-looking bricks. Plus a plant or two, hiding from the feet of passersby. T.S. Eliot would have loved to write about this--in fact, he did:
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile . . .
but hey, the bed's comfortable, the shower has hot water after a nanosecond or two, but not the extreme pressure I like. And although the internet connection remains unpredictable as British weather (and you have to pay for it), really, the place is not so bad. The very young staff, mostly Eastern European and Indian, are Upstairs Downstairs eager to please. I wish the breakfast were better than cold hard boiled eggs, cold everything except the toast in the weird little torture-rack of a thingie that seems designed to torment it into coolness . . . if they'd just put it on a plate some of the heat would remain in the toast which is, after all, in my book supposed to be toasty. And quiet, it ain't. A thin ceiling separates me from loud, and getting louder drunken laughter.
The rest of London swirls rainily around me . . . down the street at the Penn Club, where the gargoyles, my mother and my aunt, are staying, the breakfast includes stronger coffee, scrambled eggs, and oatmeal, which the British persist in calling "porridge." So okay, it still tastes good. But my aunt likes to tell my mother, "You were so D-R-U-N-K last night you said you couldn't dial the phone." Then my mother says, "Oh, yes I could!" Nodding at me she points to my aunt: "She's really slow. Can't hear anything either." My aunt shakes her head, "Well, my ex-husband was an alcoholic, so I'm sensitive to these things, and I'm worried that you might become one." Both of these ladies are in their nineties and nothing stops them. Not to be outdone, my mother asks: "Well, whatever happened to your former son in law?" My aunt shakes her head, "Well, of course, we haven't heard from him for years. He was C-D, YOU KNOW, A CROSS-DRESSER, BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE!" she brays. Details get thrown down like gauntlets: he was too drunk to visit the kid, the kid finally said, "it's his loss." The harpies stare at each other, out of steam for the moment. When they do this at breakfast, I order more coffee. At dinner, more red wine. While they drink, they remain silent. Since both seem deaf as posts, but insist that they don't need their hearing aids, they speak very loudly indeed. I like to tell myself that no car could ever run over the two of them--despite London traffic, you can hear them halfway down the block, each stridently insisting that the other forgot something or that YOUR PURSE IS TOO SMALL WE HAVE TO BUY YOU A BIGGER ONE.
Yesterday I went to a ballet class taught by Ian Knowles at the Pineapple dance studios--a dream come true, everything about the place from the perfect class (my back no longer hurts!) to the shabby gentility of its style--how it reminds me of New York in the late seventies, floors and all--was a dream come true. A lovely, placed class with a teacher whose dry wit--shades of David Howard--delighted me. Today I went to tap, and that was fun, too.
So now it's off to the "gimrack" shops, as the gargoyles say, to buy my children plaster casts of Big Ben, The London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. And that'll do . . . I'm too tired to visit the real ones.
I'm lying in bed contemplating another of those delicious dance classes but sometime I've just got to get the oldest kid a bobble-headed King Henry VIII to go with his bobble-headed Caesar. The younger son would like statues of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London Eye, all of which I'd rather buy than visit. My daughter would love a real cardigan, which is something I can't find in Germany, at least not a design-free one. I wandered through the Elgin marbles this morning with my mother, who wondered whether the Barbarians or the Christians had "chopped off the male members," as she put it. I don't know. Do you?
Right now I'm in some bat cave reserved for Americans at the Clarendon hotel in Bloomsbury--outside my window a moldy cement square, the official drainpipe, and, when I look up, the fence at street level one flight up, atop some shaky-looking bricks. Plus a plant or two, hiding from the feet of passersby. T.S. Eliot would have loved to write about this--in fact, he did:
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile . . .
but hey, the bed's comfortable, the shower has hot water after a nanosecond or two, but not the extreme pressure I like. And although the internet connection remains unpredictable as British weather (and you have to pay for it), really, the place is not so bad. The very young staff, mostly Eastern European and Indian, are Upstairs Downstairs eager to please. I wish the breakfast were better than cold hard boiled eggs, cold everything except the toast in the weird little torture-rack of a thingie that seems designed to torment it into coolness . . . if they'd just put it on a plate some of the heat would remain in the toast which is, after all, in my book supposed to be toasty. And quiet, it ain't. A thin ceiling separates me from loud, and getting louder drunken laughter.
The rest of London swirls rainily around me . . . down the street at the Penn Club, where the gargoyles, my mother and my aunt, are staying, the breakfast includes stronger coffee, scrambled eggs, and oatmeal, which the British persist in calling "porridge." So okay, it still tastes good. But my aunt likes to tell my mother, "You were so D-R-U-N-K last night you said you couldn't dial the phone." Then my mother says, "Oh, yes I could!" Nodding at me she points to my aunt: "She's really slow. Can't hear anything either." My aunt shakes her head, "Well, my ex-husband was an alcoholic, so I'm sensitive to these things, and I'm worried that you might become one." Both of these ladies are in their nineties and nothing stops them. Not to be outdone, my mother asks: "Well, whatever happened to your former son in law?" My aunt shakes her head, "Well, of course, we haven't heard from him for years. He was C-D, YOU KNOW, A CROSS-DRESSER, BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE!" she brays. Details get thrown down like gauntlets: he was too drunk to visit the kid, the kid finally said, "it's his loss." The harpies stare at each other, out of steam for the moment. When they do this at breakfast, I order more coffee. At dinner, more red wine. While they drink, they remain silent. Since both seem deaf as posts, but insist that they don't need their hearing aids, they speak very loudly indeed. I like to tell myself that no car could ever run over the two of them--despite London traffic, you can hear them halfway down the block, each stridently insisting that the other forgot something or that YOUR PURSE IS TOO SMALL WE HAVE TO BUY YOU A BIGGER ONE.
Yesterday I went to a ballet class taught by Ian Knowles at the Pineapple dance studios--a dream come true, everything about the place from the perfect class (my back no longer hurts!) to the shabby gentility of its style--how it reminds me of New York in the late seventies, floors and all--was a dream come true. A lovely, placed class with a teacher whose dry wit--shades of David Howard--delighted me. Today I went to tap, and that was fun, too.
So now it's off to the "gimrack" shops, as the gargoyles say, to buy my children plaster casts of Big Ben, The London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. And that'll do . . . I'm too tired to visit the real ones.
I'm lying in bed contemplating another of those delicious dance classes but sometime I've just got to get the oldest kid a bobble-headed King Henry VIII to go with his bobble-headed Caesar. The younger son would like statues of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London Eye, all of which I'd rather buy than visit. My daughter would love a real cardigan, which is something I can't find in Germany, at least not a design-free one. I wandered through the Elgin marbles this morning with my mother, who wondered whether the Barbarians or the Christians had "chopped off the male members," as she put it. I don't know. Do you?
Saturday, July 5, 2014
The Critical Mom's German-American Fourth of July: The Selling of America
First of all, nobody here knows it's the fourth. We're not planning a weenie roast--it's a working day. Shopping in the local supermarket, Aldi's, I noticed a pack of Trader Joe's cupcake mix, adorned with the Statue of Liberty . . . Aldi's, you see, the gigantic German supermarket that originated with two brothers who hail right from my little old neck of the woods in Northwestern Germany . . . Aldi's is now Trader Joe's. Or bought their label, which is why suddenly Trader Joe's is now imitation Betty Crocker. Where is the old Trader Joe's, the one with a fantastic granola and coffee and . . . well, nobody's talking about granola anymore. Organic fruit and cheese? Trader Joe's as I remember it in the Los Angeles of 1991 seems not to exist. The Aldi brothers imagine it differently.
The Statue of Liberty is selling "just add water" junk food cupcakes. Plus, Aldi's is now sprouting all over the U.S. . . the nearest one to my New York place is on East 117th street.
On July 4 weekend, the Supreme Court decided that corporations can use religion as an excuse not to provide women with birth control. The Statue of Liberty ought to be out there slamming her lamp down on the heads of the Koch brothers. Or at least the Aldi brothers.
Plus, now a new spy scandal is emerging, starring, allegedly, a German working for the U.S.A.
Do Americans have anything to celebrate?
Jesus wept.
The Statue of Liberty is selling "just add water" junk food cupcakes. Plus, Aldi's is now sprouting all over the U.S. . . the nearest one to my New York place is on East 117th street.
On July 4 weekend, the Supreme Court decided that corporations can use religion as an excuse not to provide women with birth control. The Statue of Liberty ought to be out there slamming her lamp down on the heads of the Koch brothers. Or at least the Aldi brothers.
Plus, now a new spy scandal is emerging, starring, allegedly, a German working for the U.S.A.
Do Americans have anything to celebrate?
Jesus wept.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The Critical Mom's Take on the Pope and the Mafioso
"So it's somehow cool to excommunicate the mafioso but not the priests who molested children?" I'm in the middle of a conversation with the smart teenager, whose argumentative skills are being daily honed by a stint as an intern in a lawyer's office.
"Well, hey, I mean . . . for a pope."
Yeah. There's the rub. He's a pretty good guy, Francis. For a pope. Which is not saying much, but the astonishing thing is that those mafia dudes really do seem to care about being excommunicated. Is this a my-dick's-bigger-than-yours thing or a help-Mommy-I-don't-want-to-end-up-in-the-tenth-circle-of-Dante's-inferno thing? And yeah, if the Ultimate Dad excommunicates them, they'll be stuck asking Mommy for help. And all she's ever been allowed to do in the Mafia world up to now is bake ziti, eat popcorn in front of the TV with the priest, and screw open fake cans of Campbell's soup to get Tony's cash. Okay, she gets to do more in Prizzi's Honor, but she almost never runs the show.
Now it really would make some kind of statement if the mafia returned to the matriarchy, at least in religious matters. I am already imagining something like the struggle between Henry VIII and Pope Leo X, with whom Henry was on fine terms while he was writing his Latin treatise on the Defense of the Seven Sacraments, which earned him the title of Defender of the Faith. But then, as we all know, Henry wanted to dump his wife and marry somebody else, and when the pope said he'd had enough of annulments, Henry said "I'll go make my own church, so there!" and Pope Paul III said, "and I'll excommunicate you, so there!" At which point the goddess wrung her hands, put Henry in the tenth circle on earth, what with the wives, the decapitations, the indigestion, the x-linked genetic disorder or the syphilis, not to mention the obesity and leg ulcers. No happy camper, this. Pope Paul didn't do so hot himself, what with the assassination of his son and all.
Now, why do these mafia dudes care about being excommunicated? I always thought they lived to break the rules. Lacking expertise in matters mafia, I turn to frequent displays of superstition on The Sopranos, which was said to be so true to life that crime rates in New Jersey plummeted on nights when the show was aired, since the mob was home, glued to the set. I recall a Sicilian mafiosa carefully collecting her cut fingernails, so that nobody could perform, what, witchcraft with them? And I recall Chris, who is eventually murdered by Tony, being spooked by a raven landing on an open windowsill during his ceremony of becoming a made man. Which has some bizarre elements of a twisted Catholicism--they're burning pictures of Saint Peter while he's swearing he'd like to go to hell if he ever betrays his buddies.
Ah. That's where the priest part comes in. It's convenient to be able to go to a priest, and confess everything, like maybe even "uh, I did just get wired by the FBI but I don't really want to do it and all. I'll say a zillion Hail Marys to feel better about this one."
Now, why doesn't the pope bother to excommunicate me? Because I'm nobody, and by the way did a pro forma conversion to Catholicism a few years ago. Not because I believe in any deity of any kind, even though from time to time I make half-hearted attempts at prayer, usually when I'm desperate. Because I love my husband, and we were at the time considering a move to Bavaria, back when the pope was German and very involved in the running of the university where I would have been applying for a job. There I was, unbaptized, and of Protestant descent. It wasn't looking good. So I did what the Jews did to get through the Middle Ages. I got baptized into the Catholic faith, after a conversation with an open-minded priest who wanted to find some "common ground" between his belief and my atheism and was willing to settle for my occasional Wordsworthian sense of feeling at one with the universe while swimming. More like it while having an orgasm but I knew that part would embarrass the guy, so I didn't mention it, and he did baptize me, and is there some cosmic significance in the fact that all this occurred on Al Capone's birthday?
Maybe, just maybe, there is. Meanwhile, stay tuned to find out whether Tony rises from the black screen to phone Dr. Melfi again, panic attack resurging at the thought of . . . not being able to go to confession and get it all taken care of.
"Well, hey, I mean . . . for a pope."
Yeah. There's the rub. He's a pretty good guy, Francis. For a pope. Which is not saying much, but the astonishing thing is that those mafia dudes really do seem to care about being excommunicated. Is this a my-dick's-bigger-than-yours thing or a help-Mommy-I-don't-want-to-end-up-in-the-tenth-circle-of-Dante's-inferno thing? And yeah, if the Ultimate Dad excommunicates them, they'll be stuck asking Mommy for help. And all she's ever been allowed to do in the Mafia world up to now is bake ziti, eat popcorn in front of the TV with the priest, and screw open fake cans of Campbell's soup to get Tony's cash. Okay, she gets to do more in Prizzi's Honor, but she almost never runs the show.
Now it really would make some kind of statement if the mafia returned to the matriarchy, at least in religious matters. I am already imagining something like the struggle between Henry VIII and Pope Leo X, with whom Henry was on fine terms while he was writing his Latin treatise on the Defense of the Seven Sacraments, which earned him the title of Defender of the Faith. But then, as we all know, Henry wanted to dump his wife and marry somebody else, and when the pope said he'd had enough of annulments, Henry said "I'll go make my own church, so there!" and Pope Paul III said, "and I'll excommunicate you, so there!" At which point the goddess wrung her hands, put Henry in the tenth circle on earth, what with the wives, the decapitations, the indigestion, the x-linked genetic disorder or the syphilis, not to mention the obesity and leg ulcers. No happy camper, this. Pope Paul didn't do so hot himself, what with the assassination of his son and all.
Now, why do these mafia dudes care about being excommunicated? I always thought they lived to break the rules. Lacking expertise in matters mafia, I turn to frequent displays of superstition on The Sopranos, which was said to be so true to life that crime rates in New Jersey plummeted on nights when the show was aired, since the mob was home, glued to the set. I recall a Sicilian mafiosa carefully collecting her cut fingernails, so that nobody could perform, what, witchcraft with them? And I recall Chris, who is eventually murdered by Tony, being spooked by a raven landing on an open windowsill during his ceremony of becoming a made man. Which has some bizarre elements of a twisted Catholicism--they're burning pictures of Saint Peter while he's swearing he'd like to go to hell if he ever betrays his buddies.
Ah. That's where the priest part comes in. It's convenient to be able to go to a priest, and confess everything, like maybe even "uh, I did just get wired by the FBI but I don't really want to do it and all. I'll say a zillion Hail Marys to feel better about this one."
Now, why doesn't the pope bother to excommunicate me? Because I'm nobody, and by the way did a pro forma conversion to Catholicism a few years ago. Not because I believe in any deity of any kind, even though from time to time I make half-hearted attempts at prayer, usually when I'm desperate. Because I love my husband, and we were at the time considering a move to Bavaria, back when the pope was German and very involved in the running of the university where I would have been applying for a job. There I was, unbaptized, and of Protestant descent. It wasn't looking good. So I did what the Jews did to get through the Middle Ages. I got baptized into the Catholic faith, after a conversation with an open-minded priest who wanted to find some "common ground" between his belief and my atheism and was willing to settle for my occasional Wordsworthian sense of feeling at one with the universe while swimming. More like it while having an orgasm but I knew that part would embarrass the guy, so I didn't mention it, and he did baptize me, and is there some cosmic significance in the fact that all this occurred on Al Capone's birthday?
Maybe, just maybe, there is. Meanwhile, stay tuned to find out whether Tony rises from the black screen to phone Dr. Melfi again, panic attack resurging at the thought of . . . not being able to go to confession and get it all taken care of.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
The Older Son, the Younger Son, and the Critical Mom
"Why did you fart?"
The son to whom my eldest had put the question had retired, hermit-like, to his room, and was pleased to be presented there with some cupcakes.
"I'm was just asking him a question, Mommy. That's all!" The elder had said to the younger, who had favored him with a fishy stare.
"Hey, please don't put your toe on the table. That's not polite," says my husband to our oldest son, who, with four guests sitting around the table for a traditional coffee-and-cake, had introduced his toe into the conversation. There it peeked over the edge of the tablecloth as if it, too, wanted some cake, while the teenager lounged with that inimitable air of "I'm gonna get away with this because you're not gonna stop me in front of other people."
"Besides," the older son added, gesturing to me, "She isn't polite either, right?" There's nothing like distraction to derail the parents. Why wasn't I polite? Because I had asked if he would play Tequila on the clarinet for our guests, when I was supposed to know perfectly well that he doesn't like to play in front of guests and by the way I shouldn't be pushing his sister (who was about to execute a Marcello piece on her violin with considerable charm) when she didn't want to play either.
How well I remember the younger son, age three, getting even with our eldest. The eldest had teased him and then gone upstairs to read. And if you hadn't known that he'd teased the youngest, you'd think the youngest a completely psychotic devil. Here's what happened. By chance I was going up the stairs right behind the three-year-old, who, unbeknownst to me, had plans. And we got to the top of the stairs and lo and behold, instead of heading into his own room, he went down the hall to his brother's room. Hmmm, thought I, following him. He was in fact so intent on his brother that he didn't notice that I was right behind him. He walked right into the eldest's room and here, though I did not see it, I can imagine the gloating look on the youngest's face. There sat his eldest brother, deep in a book, quietly facing the window, oblivious to the small person right behind his chair and the mother standing in the doorway.
Up went the small person's fist. Before I could even open my mouth to yell, "Stop," down came that little fist, right between the shoulder blades. WHAM!! The results must have been most satisfying to the younger brother. I could tell it hurt a lot and ran to the eldest to see if any real damange had been done, but apart from having the wind knocked out of him and a bruise that would fade in a day and considerable scraping of his dignity, he was fine. I proceeded to the room of the younger son, who was whistling a happy tune. He greeted me with a look of alarm. "You know, Mommy, it's the funniest thing," he invented. "I, like, came up the stairs, and somehow accidentally I went into, uh, you know, his room. And then like by accident my arm just happened to swing around and by accident it landed on him." He smiled. By the end of the explanation he believed everything he'd said.
Well, now that he's twelve and the other one is fifteen, I can leave the house without worrying that the two of them will kill each other. They'll play video games together about people killing each other instead.
The son to whom my eldest had put the question had retired, hermit-like, to his room, and was pleased to be presented there with some cupcakes.
"I'm was just asking him a question, Mommy. That's all!" The elder had said to the younger, who had favored him with a fishy stare.
"Hey, please don't put your toe on the table. That's not polite," says my husband to our oldest son, who, with four guests sitting around the table for a traditional coffee-and-cake, had introduced his toe into the conversation. There it peeked over the edge of the tablecloth as if it, too, wanted some cake, while the teenager lounged with that inimitable air of "I'm gonna get away with this because you're not gonna stop me in front of other people."
"Besides," the older son added, gesturing to me, "She isn't polite either, right?" There's nothing like distraction to derail the parents. Why wasn't I polite? Because I had asked if he would play Tequila on the clarinet for our guests, when I was supposed to know perfectly well that he doesn't like to play in front of guests and by the way I shouldn't be pushing his sister (who was about to execute a Marcello piece on her violin with considerable charm) when she didn't want to play either.
How well I remember the younger son, age three, getting even with our eldest. The eldest had teased him and then gone upstairs to read. And if you hadn't known that he'd teased the youngest, you'd think the youngest a completely psychotic devil. Here's what happened. By chance I was going up the stairs right behind the three-year-old, who, unbeknownst to me, had plans. And we got to the top of the stairs and lo and behold, instead of heading into his own room, he went down the hall to his brother's room. Hmmm, thought I, following him. He was in fact so intent on his brother that he didn't notice that I was right behind him. He walked right into the eldest's room and here, though I did not see it, I can imagine the gloating look on the youngest's face. There sat his eldest brother, deep in a book, quietly facing the window, oblivious to the small person right behind his chair and the mother standing in the doorway.
Up went the small person's fist. Before I could even open my mouth to yell, "Stop," down came that little fist, right between the shoulder blades. WHAM!! The results must have been most satisfying to the younger brother. I could tell it hurt a lot and ran to the eldest to see if any real damange had been done, but apart from having the wind knocked out of him and a bruise that would fade in a day and considerable scraping of his dignity, he was fine. I proceeded to the room of the younger son, who was whistling a happy tune. He greeted me with a look of alarm. "You know, Mommy, it's the funniest thing," he invented. "I, like, came up the stairs, and somehow accidentally I went into, uh, you know, his room. And then like by accident my arm just happened to swing around and by accident it landed on him." He smiled. By the end of the explanation he believed everything he'd said.
Well, now that he's twelve and the other one is fifteen, I can leave the house without worrying that the two of them will kill each other. They'll play video games together about people killing each other instead.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
"Beyond Sin" and Me
The ballet, that is. Personally, I haven't even tiptoed anywhere near anything the pope might be inclined to categorize as sin (which would be most things, now that I think of it.) Boris Eifman's marvellous ballet, Beyond Sin is, according to program notes, about The Brothers Karamazov, but you could have fooled me. Within the first five minutes of spectacular dancing, Russian style--and nobody does melodrama like the Russians--I knew it was about how tough it is to be gay in Russia, and my husband was murmuring, "Hmmmm . . . is this about repression?" There is that final scene of a lone priest hauling a large crucifix up a tortuously winding staircase. Official program notes say something along these lines:
Amid global crisis of values of the beginning of the ХХI century the choreographer turned to secure moral foundations and created a ballet about warring against God and seeking after God, about unbelief and belief, the nature of human depravity and spiritual salvation.
By intermission, it was obvious that the rest of the audience did not get it . . . that is, laughing loudly at one particularly histrionic moment, I realized I was the only one to have made any sound at all. So I followed the mood of the ballet and, well, repressed further giggles. In the intermission I just couldn't help myself and, for my husband's entertainment, imitated one of the frequently repeated overemotional pas-de-chat-like movements, resulting in my tumbling down the stairs and only slightly bruising my menopaused hip. Which is now fine, after a glass of red wine. Exiting the ladies room, I overheard the conversation of two dames who were approximately my age, but fancier: botox and bling had fixed them up. And what were they saying? "It's very . . . spiritual," said one to the other. Her friend nodded with an air of seriousness that was hilarious. If that's "spiritual," bottle the stuff. I'll take a little blood-and-thunder any day, the way I shake Tabasco sauce into my meatloaf, buy bigger jewelry, smear on redder lipstick, and rub in even more Oil of Olay. Give me Sensational, give me Stagy, give me Theatrical, give me Cloak-and-Dagger, Overdramatic! Bring it on, because believe you me, there's nothing like any of the above when the Russians are dancing it to the tunes of Wagner, Mussorgsky, and Rachmaninoff, according to program notes . . . music doesn't get bigger than that. Could have sworn I heard some Khachaturian in there--a dramatic waltz somewhere, but I was probably thinking of Spartacus, of which this ballet reminded me.
The piece didn't get great reviews in New York--probably they'd have had to call it Beyond Purity for that. That might at least arouse curiosity. I do believe it got better reviews where I am, but alas, where I am really does not matter in the international scope of things. Just to illustrate: to get to a really good ballet class, here's what I have to do: get to my local tram stop more than three and a half hours before I want to be home again, settling down by the TV with my husband, watching the news. So I got there and whaddaya know? A delay. Which meant arriving at the local Hauptbahnhof three nanoseconds too late for the regional express train that takes 12 minutes to the city with the good ballet class. Which meant taking the ICE, which also takes 12 minutes, but they found me and insisted I pay them an additional fourteen euros and some cents (never mind the three euro ten cent ticket I'd already purchased). I ambled off to class, but had to leave five minutes early to make the regional express back to my town. Never mind, it was a great class and all I missed was the reverance at the end. But I had to run, I mean really run, I mean, gang way, bulls of Pamplona run to get to track 11 in order to just make it to my train. Never mind. Ballet is lovely, the Russians endlessly inspiring.
Amid global crisis of values of the beginning of the ХХI century the choreographer turned to secure moral foundations and created a ballet about warring against God and seeking after God, about unbelief and belief, the nature of human depravity and spiritual salvation.
The piece didn't get great reviews in New York--probably they'd have had to call it Beyond Purity for that. That might at least arouse curiosity. I do believe it got better reviews where I am, but alas, where I am really does not matter in the international scope of things. Just to illustrate: to get to a really good ballet class, here's what I have to do: get to my local tram stop more than three and a half hours before I want to be home again, settling down by the TV with my husband, watching the news. So I got there and whaddaya know? A delay. Which meant arriving at the local Hauptbahnhof three nanoseconds too late for the regional express train that takes 12 minutes to the city with the good ballet class. Which meant taking the ICE, which also takes 12 minutes, but they found me and insisted I pay them an additional fourteen euros and some cents (never mind the three euro ten cent ticket I'd already purchased). I ambled off to class, but had to leave five minutes early to make the regional express back to my town. Never mind, it was a great class and all I missed was the reverance at the end. But I had to run, I mean really run, I mean, gang way, bulls of Pamplona run to get to track 11 in order to just make it to my train. Never mind. Ballet is lovely, the Russians endlessly inspiring.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The Critical Mom's Stormy Weather
I write to the sound of buzz saws cutting off the branches that are still hanging from last night's storm. Mother Nature was not feeling maternal.
Yesterday evening my husband barbecued and we ate on the patio; it seemed moderately cooler out there. When the clouds came, we were not alarmed, but we did bring in the laundry and the guinea pigs. By the time the lightning started and the sky turned green, it was raining so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think, and the trees bent alarmingly out my second floor window, to the point where I began to wonder about our roof tiles.
In the morning we could see the house next door a lot better . . . but it took my middle child to realize why: "Mom! The tree's not there anymore!" But it was . . . in pieces all over the street . . . and it's now been chopped into logs that will burn nicely in our fireplace next winter.
It took a trip to the grocery store to let us know how bad things were. On our way home from getting our rabies shots for our trip to Peru, we thought we'd buy dinner. But the grocery store was closed. Edeka, the local supermarket, had lost a big chunk of its roof, which lay in a tarry mess on the street in front of it. Across the street, I found a big plastic piece of what used to be the "A" in "Edeka." Trying to make our way home, we entered streets so clotted with fallen branches that we had to turn around, and saw a number of uprooted, large trees, one of which had crushed a blue car. Dazed, we finally got home via roundabout routes, and when I said the weather was "interesting," my daughter pointed out that it was "disastra-mazing," and my husband remarked, "This is the kind of weather you only see on the news." I thought of Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder, the beautifully illustrated Caldecott-Award winning children's book about a storm, and the calm with which the inhabitants of Maine handle it: "We're going to have some weather," they say, and "It's a comin'!" By the time the storm hits, the folks in Maine have already rolled towels and placed them by doors and windows.
But we didn't know it was a-coming, and we still don't quite know what hit us--a typical June storm, or a global-warming climate-changed storm? Some of those fallen trees were awfully big. I haven't seen anything like this since I was a ten-year-old inhabitant of a Vermont summer camp for girls. One July night it stormed, and the crack above our wooden cabin was so loud that three girls on the other side of the shack vaulted out of their beds, ran across to our section, and climbed in bed with us. We thought a tree had fallen on our roof. It turned out one had been split in half by lightning, but a ten minute walk from us, down by the lake.
Signing off, to the tune of sirens: the forestry and fire departments are busy today and tonight. Tomorrow, the kids have a day off school, and even the day after that, since apparently we're going to have some more weather. It seems to have been a really good time to get those rabies shots. I do have that very third-world feeling about what happened today: would not want to live in the land of Panem; hope the politicians will address global warming in a significant way, and that the five deaths in our region will be honored through significant changes in policy.
Yesterday evening my husband barbecued and we ate on the patio; it seemed moderately cooler out there. When the clouds came, we were not alarmed, but we did bring in the laundry and the guinea pigs. By the time the lightning started and the sky turned green, it was raining so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think, and the trees bent alarmingly out my second floor window, to the point where I began to wonder about our roof tiles.
In the morning we could see the house next door a lot better . . . but it took my middle child to realize why: "Mom! The tree's not there anymore!" But it was . . . in pieces all over the street . . . and it's now been chopped into logs that will burn nicely in our fireplace next winter.
It took a trip to the grocery store to let us know how bad things were. On our way home from getting our rabies shots for our trip to Peru, we thought we'd buy dinner. But the grocery store was closed. Edeka, the local supermarket, had lost a big chunk of its roof, which lay in a tarry mess on the street in front of it. Across the street, I found a big plastic piece of what used to be the "A" in "Edeka." Trying to make our way home, we entered streets so clotted with fallen branches that we had to turn around, and saw a number of uprooted, large trees, one of which had crushed a blue car. Dazed, we finally got home via roundabout routes, and when I said the weather was "interesting," my daughter pointed out that it was "disastra-mazing," and my husband remarked, "This is the kind of weather you only see on the news." I thought of Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder, the beautifully illustrated Caldecott-Award winning children's book about a storm, and the calm with which the inhabitants of Maine handle it: "We're going to have some weather," they say, and "It's a comin'!" By the time the storm hits, the folks in Maine have already rolled towels and placed them by doors and windows.
But we didn't know it was a-coming, and we still don't quite know what hit us--a typical June storm, or a global-warming climate-changed storm? Some of those fallen trees were awfully big. I haven't seen anything like this since I was a ten-year-old inhabitant of a Vermont summer camp for girls. One July night it stormed, and the crack above our wooden cabin was so loud that three girls on the other side of the shack vaulted out of their beds, ran across to our section, and climbed in bed with us. We thought a tree had fallen on our roof. It turned out one had been split in half by lightning, but a ten minute walk from us, down by the lake.
Signing off, to the tune of sirens: the forestry and fire departments are busy today and tonight. Tomorrow, the kids have a day off school, and even the day after that, since apparently we're going to have some more weather. It seems to have been a really good time to get those rabies shots. I do have that very third-world feeling about what happened today: would not want to live in the land of Panem; hope the politicians will address global warming in a significant way, and that the five deaths in our region will be honored through significant changes in policy.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
The Critical Mom and the Forbidden Grand Plié
One of the things I miss the most about New York is the ease with which I could fit a ballet class into my schedule--there was always one somewhere, seven days a week, at all hours . . . and I could choose my teachers: if I wanted placement, I'd go to Maggie Black and if I wanted movement I'd go to David Howard. If I wanted Russian I'd go to Mme Nemtchinova, whose ballet studio in Manhattan's Beaux Arts masterpiece, the Ansonia hotel, was a homage to imperial Russia. Since most ballet schools took the bare bones approach (grungy linoleum, complete with cockroaches) occasionally I developed a longing for glamor. Then I'd go to the fantastically ornate Harkness Ballet school, to take class in rooms of such gorgeously glaring gilt-trimmed baby blue and pink that it was as though Barbie had designed the pavilion at Brighton.
The small city in which I now live cannot offer such varying delights. We do have a ballet school offering graded classes in the English system to children, and a very few evening classes for adults. The children look good--especially for kids who are not going to become professional dancers, they have nicely trained legs and feet and dance prettily in a style strongly influenced by Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor that remains elegant and vivacious, although too prim for my taste.
In the sort of gross generalization that is sure to be knocked down somewhere, English dancers are known for their effortless precision of placement, while the Russians are known for spectacular displays of hitting the position with unmatched melodrama (remember Pavel Dmitrichenko, known for dancing Ivan the Terrible, who just got six years in prison for hiring somebody to throw acid in the face of the Bolshoi director). If you want pyrotechnic power, take the Russians, but if you want "flow," head west. The East is all about extremes, just the way it is in politics. The West has a certain democracy: you don't have to have the perfect straight leg or the perfect arched foot. You might end up in modern or jazz or contemporary dance, or just dancing as a hobby, but nobody's going to do what the wonderful Mme Vera Nemtchinova did : she grabbed my not-too-well-trained teenaged and hyperextended legs with her still very strong eighty-three-year-old hands and tried to pull them into a perfect position. She genuinely believed that she could say: "Let there be a perfect position!" And in her universe, there would be one, because my leg would actually change shape under her hands.
The thing was my knees. They did not like this. As soon as I felt sure her myopic eyes could no longer see my feet, I resumed the slightly incorrect position that is possible for a dancer with hyperextended legs: the kind that didn't play back in Imperial Russia, but it'll do here in the democratic west. But we of the imperfect bodies all loved (at least a few classes with) Mme. Nemtchinova, because who else would have you link arms with two other students and dance a spirited troika across the floor? Who else wore their hair in a bun that dipped over the ears like Alexandra Danilova, like Carlotta Grisi, we muttered when she couldn't hear us? Who else wore an elegantly transparent floral chiffon ballet skirt in which was allegedly concealed a little flask of vodka? Who else provided the legacy of the Ballets Russes, of Diaghilev, of Nijinsky, of Pavlova? Who else, according to legend, stopped onstage in the middle of doing thirty-two fouetté turns and announced: "You wait. I do again. Better." She did do them again, and got a standing ovation. She took the same gutsy approach when applying for American citizenship. Asked to name three American generals, she answered: "General Electric, General Motors and General Mills."
It was great to watch her, to hear her accent--but in ballet, as in all fields, one must ultimately think for oneself, no matter what the teacher says. Perhaps the only stereotypically American quality she possessed was her ability to say "no" to age: from the legs down, you'd clock her at under thirty, and she had the spitfire energy of a teenager. Most important for a teacher, she had a vision--hers was delusional, but inspired: by molding imperfect legs in her tough little hands, she'd make them straighten out. After a while I went to teachers with different visions: a vision of how you get the feeling of being completely on your feet. For this, I'll bless Maggie Black forever. Another vision: of how you never stop moving, especially when you are standing absolutely still. For this, I bless David Howard.
Now, none of these folks had degrees. They had their eyes. They were, all three, observers of the highest order: they knew what they wanted to see and they did everything in their power to see it, by making us students perform a series of exercises at the barre designed to bring that vision to fruition. They also watched us--they geared comments to individual legs and feet, and thought up exercises just for those particular legs and feet.
Nowadays, I have teachers who--never rising to the visionary brilliance of my former instructors--did have some wonderfully original ideas which they now seem to be polluting with academic theory. One of my teachers insists on an aerobic "warm-up," justified with the notion that the "heart rate" must be raised in order to begin barre work. How often I have wanted to ask her whether she would enjoy this so-called "warm-up" which she forces upon us, and which just jerks my muscles around. Her partner subscribes to the latest scholarship on pliés (did you know they're bad? Because the quadriceps this and the patella that and too much strain according to. . . some dude who never did a plié but who has an advanced degree). A little learning is a dangerous thing: my teacher has glommed on to scholarly theory like a Calvinist to his dogma; has he noticed that I am not a statistic? He's actually gone so far as to ban the grand plié, substituting it with a demi-plié into a roll up.
But you see, I can't get on my legs unless I do a grand plié. Especially now that I am fifty-seven and have had three C-sections. So now I do them in the dressing room before class, after a bunch of tendus and about sixteen cloches. And I do them at home. Don't let them bean-counting rule-makers get you down, girls! The Critical Mom does a grand plié:
Here I'm almost on my legs. Two more pliés followed, by which time I had my tailbone down and was able to keep my stomach in. Next time I'm in New York, I'll enjoy classes with Richard Marsden, whose calm, placement-oriented approach reminds me very much of my former teachers. Surely grand pliés will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of my New York ballet teachers forever . . .
The small city in which I now live cannot offer such varying delights. We do have a ballet school offering graded classes in the English system to children, and a very few evening classes for adults. The children look good--especially for kids who are not going to become professional dancers, they have nicely trained legs and feet and dance prettily in a style strongly influenced by Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor that remains elegant and vivacious, although too prim for my taste.
In the sort of gross generalization that is sure to be knocked down somewhere, English dancers are known for their effortless precision of placement, while the Russians are known for spectacular displays of hitting the position with unmatched melodrama (remember Pavel Dmitrichenko, known for dancing Ivan the Terrible, who just got six years in prison for hiring somebody to throw acid in the face of the Bolshoi director). If you want pyrotechnic power, take the Russians, but if you want "flow," head west. The East is all about extremes, just the way it is in politics. The West has a certain democracy: you don't have to have the perfect straight leg or the perfect arched foot. You might end up in modern or jazz or contemporary dance, or just dancing as a hobby, but nobody's going to do what the wonderful Mme Vera Nemtchinova did : she grabbed my not-too-well-trained teenaged and hyperextended legs with her still very strong eighty-three-year-old hands and tried to pull them into a perfect position. She genuinely believed that she could say: "Let there be a perfect position!" And in her universe, there would be one, because my leg would actually change shape under her hands.
The thing was my knees. They did not like this. As soon as I felt sure her myopic eyes could no longer see my feet, I resumed the slightly incorrect position that is possible for a dancer with hyperextended legs: the kind that didn't play back in Imperial Russia, but it'll do here in the democratic west. But we of the imperfect bodies all loved (at least a few classes with) Mme. Nemtchinova, because who else would have you link arms with two other students and dance a spirited troika across the floor? Who else wore their hair in a bun that dipped over the ears like Alexandra Danilova, like Carlotta Grisi, we muttered when she couldn't hear us? Who else wore an elegantly transparent floral chiffon ballet skirt in which was allegedly concealed a little flask of vodka? Who else provided the legacy of the Ballets Russes, of Diaghilev, of Nijinsky, of Pavlova? Who else, according to legend, stopped onstage in the middle of doing thirty-two fouetté turns and announced: "You wait. I do again. Better." She did do them again, and got a standing ovation. She took the same gutsy approach when applying for American citizenship. Asked to name three American generals, she answered: "General Electric, General Motors and General Mills."
It was great to watch her, to hear her accent--but in ballet, as in all fields, one must ultimately think for oneself, no matter what the teacher says. Perhaps the only stereotypically American quality she possessed was her ability to say "no" to age: from the legs down, you'd clock her at under thirty, and she had the spitfire energy of a teenager. Most important for a teacher, she had a vision--hers was delusional, but inspired: by molding imperfect legs in her tough little hands, she'd make them straighten out. After a while I went to teachers with different visions: a vision of how you get the feeling of being completely on your feet. For this, I'll bless Maggie Black forever. Another vision: of how you never stop moving, especially when you are standing absolutely still. For this, I bless David Howard.
Now, none of these folks had degrees. They had their eyes. They were, all three, observers of the highest order: they knew what they wanted to see and they did everything in their power to see it, by making us students perform a series of exercises at the barre designed to bring that vision to fruition. They also watched us--they geared comments to individual legs and feet, and thought up exercises just for those particular legs and feet.
Nowadays, I have teachers who--never rising to the visionary brilliance of my former instructors--did have some wonderfully original ideas which they now seem to be polluting with academic theory. One of my teachers insists on an aerobic "warm-up," justified with the notion that the "heart rate" must be raised in order to begin barre work. How often I have wanted to ask her whether she would enjoy this so-called "warm-up" which she forces upon us, and which just jerks my muscles around. Her partner subscribes to the latest scholarship on pliés (did you know they're bad? Because the quadriceps this and the patella that and too much strain according to. . . some dude who never did a plié but who has an advanced degree). A little learning is a dangerous thing: my teacher has glommed on to scholarly theory like a Calvinist to his dogma; has he noticed that I am not a statistic? He's actually gone so far as to ban the grand plié, substituting it with a demi-plié into a roll up.
But you see, I can't get on my legs unless I do a grand plié. Especially now that I am fifty-seven and have had three C-sections. So now I do them in the dressing room before class, after a bunch of tendus and about sixteen cloches. And I do them at home. Don't let them bean-counting rule-makers get you down, girls! The Critical Mom does a grand plié:
Here I'm almost on my legs. Two more pliés followed, by which time I had my tailbone down and was able to keep my stomach in. Next time I'm in New York, I'll enjoy classes with Richard Marsden, whose calm, placement-oriented approach reminds me very much of my former teachers. Surely grand pliés will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of my New York ballet teachers forever . . .
Saturday, May 24, 2014
The Critical Mom and the Rains
It's poured. As we located umbrellas and left for ballet class, I used an expression my German-American child had not heard: "It's raining cats and dogs."
"Well, Mommy, it's actually more like cats and cows." As the rain bounced off the road, as we got soaked from the thighs down, despite umbrellas, she added, "Make that cows and horses!" I knew it was raining too hard not to stop, and sure enough, by the time we'd ridden eight minutes underground, shivering in our wet clothes cooled by the air conditioning that seems only to exist in tram stations in our part of the world. . . the sun was out.
Today I've danced the put-the-clothes-out-to-dry, haul-'em-back-in-again Schuhplattler a bit too much for my taste, but now it is only overcast, and the guinea pigs are out in the yard gorging themselves on recently-sprouted dandelion. Our part of Germany is lush these days, partly because of all the rain and partly because we're in the merry month of May and I'm finally able to wear summer clothes to work most days. When I drink from my Global Warming mug (filled with hot coffee, it shows receding coastlines) I'm happy to see that Germany will still be around even if New York sinks, and even though our Winter was all but snowless and felt more like Fall.
"Well, Mommy, it's actually more like cats and cows." As the rain bounced off the road, as we got soaked from the thighs down, despite umbrellas, she added, "Make that cows and horses!" I knew it was raining too hard not to stop, and sure enough, by the time we'd ridden eight minutes underground, shivering in our wet clothes cooled by the air conditioning that seems only to exist in tram stations in our part of the world. . . the sun was out.
Today I've danced the put-the-clothes-out-to-dry, haul-'em-back-in-again Schuhplattler a bit too much for my taste, but now it is only overcast, and the guinea pigs are out in the yard gorging themselves on recently-sprouted dandelion. Our part of Germany is lush these days, partly because of all the rain and partly because we're in the merry month of May and I'm finally able to wear summer clothes to work most days. When I drink from my Global Warming mug (filled with hot coffee, it shows receding coastlines) I'm happy to see that Germany will still be around even if New York sinks, and even though our Winter was all but snowless and felt more like Fall.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Critical Mom and The Cracked Tooth
It's 6:30 p.m., time to break out the red wine and the four hundred milligrams of Ibuprofin. I just got back from the dentist and surprise, surprise! It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Instead of twirling his mustachios (I always expect him to grow them and he never does) and sadistically chuckling while brandishing a mammoth drill, and clicking his Prussian Nazified boots, which of course he does not wear . . . he spoke kindly and extensively to me about what he was going to do, while wearing perfectly pleasant white Gore tex sneakers, just what you'd expect a nice suburban dentist to wear.
I was wondering, while undergoing the dread occasioned by sitting in a dentist's chair, whether he'd be doing the same stuff my New York dentist used to do, and whether it would be a good idea for him to do that stuff or not. Naturally, I Googled "differences German American dental practices" but did not find much. My hunch is that the American dentist--the last time I saw him, sometime in the nineties, he made a great show of sterilizing everything, since Kimberly Bergalis had gone on C-Span claiming to have acquired AIDS through contact with her HIV-positive dentist---would have prescribed an antibiotic. They were always prescribing antibiotics. The German dentist took X-Rays for which my health insurance will pay, and says that he can find no inflammation or sign of infection, and believes that most of the pain on my lower left side comes from the exposed bottom of the tooth, which somehow irritates the nerve . . .meanwhile, on the upper right side, I did crack a tooth. And I know just when I did it: I had purchased a cheese sandwich on a baguette to eat en route to Rome on Ryannair; I was determined to eat it and then close my eyes and ears for the rest of the flight in order to avoid being charged for somethingorother. My plan succeeded, except that as I crunched down on the sandwich, I felt a sharp pain. But it vanished within a few minutes and did not reappear until last week. When I began to feel pressure while chewing somewhere around my lower left molar, next to which is one of those silver fillings I have, dating from the late sixties or seventies.
But that ole filling's going to stay right where it is! So long as the cement that my dentist packed around the exposed lower part of the tooth fends off further irritation to the nerve. And the upper right? That's a bigger deal involving re-doing the filling, but apparently not one involving needles, Novocaine, or more than two hours. There's an efficiency about German dentistry that I like, along with a pleasant failure to adhere to sadistic stereotypes
. . . like the one I'm thinking of right now, the dentist in the Dustin Hoffman movie, oh, yeah, Marathon Man. That's the one about which I am trying not to think. High time I drag the kids away from the TV, read to them, and make dinner for my husband. It'll be risotto tonight . . . I ought to be able to chew that on the less painful side.
. . . I did. And all was hunky-dory until I suddenly awoke at 1:30 a.m. Imagine excruciatingly bad menstrual cramps, or worser yet, labor pains, only in your gum right around the area of your molar. I popped one more 200-miligrammer, wrote a few e-mails, and when the pain had subsided to a dull roar, went back to bed. Breakfast included one more 200-miligrammer and the dentist says this may go on for three or four days, but I'm seeing him next Wednesday anyway, to take care of the cracked tooth on the other side. Little-old-ladyhood never looked so near before . . . American dentists, please weigh in.
I was wondering, while undergoing the dread occasioned by sitting in a dentist's chair, whether he'd be doing the same stuff my New York dentist used to do, and whether it would be a good idea for him to do that stuff or not. Naturally, I Googled "differences German American dental practices" but did not find much. My hunch is that the American dentist--the last time I saw him, sometime in the nineties, he made a great show of sterilizing everything, since Kimberly Bergalis had gone on C-Span claiming to have acquired AIDS through contact with her HIV-positive dentist---would have prescribed an antibiotic. They were always prescribing antibiotics. The German dentist took X-Rays for which my health insurance will pay, and says that he can find no inflammation or sign of infection, and believes that most of the pain on my lower left side comes from the exposed bottom of the tooth, which somehow irritates the nerve . . .meanwhile, on the upper right side, I did crack a tooth. And I know just when I did it: I had purchased a cheese sandwich on a baguette to eat en route to Rome on Ryannair; I was determined to eat it and then close my eyes and ears for the rest of the flight in order to avoid being charged for somethingorother. My plan succeeded, except that as I crunched down on the sandwich, I felt a sharp pain. But it vanished within a few minutes and did not reappear until last week. When I began to feel pressure while chewing somewhere around my lower left molar, next to which is one of those silver fillings I have, dating from the late sixties or seventies.
But that ole filling's going to stay right where it is! So long as the cement that my dentist packed around the exposed lower part of the tooth fends off further irritation to the nerve. And the upper right? That's a bigger deal involving re-doing the filling, but apparently not one involving needles, Novocaine, or more than two hours. There's an efficiency about German dentistry that I like, along with a pleasant failure to adhere to sadistic stereotypes
. . . like the one I'm thinking of right now, the dentist in the Dustin Hoffman movie, oh, yeah, Marathon Man. That's the one about which I am trying not to think. High time I drag the kids away from the TV, read to them, and make dinner for my husband. It'll be risotto tonight . . . I ought to be able to chew that on the less painful side.
. . . I did. And all was hunky-dory until I suddenly awoke at 1:30 a.m. Imagine excruciatingly bad menstrual cramps, or worser yet, labor pains, only in your gum right around the area of your molar. I popped one more 200-miligrammer, wrote a few e-mails, and when the pain had subsided to a dull roar, went back to bed. Breakfast included one more 200-miligrammer and the dentist says this may go on for three or four days, but I'm seeing him next Wednesday anyway, to take care of the cracked tooth on the other side. Little-old-ladyhood never looked so near before . . . American dentists, please weigh in.
Friday, May 16, 2014
The Critical Mom and Bedtime
When they were little, I got them to bed earlier. I used all kinds of tricks.
"First one to brush his or her teeth wins!!"
Yay! Up the stairs they go. This worked a whole lot better than It's-Time-To-Turn-Off-The-TV-Wait-A-Minute-Mom.
Scream, yell and the "I'm-Just-Saying-Goodnight-to-Daddy-and-then-to-my-older-brother-and-then-to-my-younger-brother-and-then-to-each-guinea-pig" routine. (with an aggrieved air).
So now they're tweens and teens. They don't fall for stuff like, "Here's a dab of Barbie lipsick, one teeny dab, and you'll feel great and be able to run all the way to the soccer field to pick up your brother!" (One smear of Mom's lipstick).
Or, "Here, you can have your tomato back!" (Child screaming; wants not another one, Mommy, but the one Daddy just swallowed). At which point Daddy affects to vomit up a cherry tomato that he's concealed in his hand, and tantrum ends abruptly. Child very impressed with Daddy.
Well, now it's more like this:
Me: "Okay, Sweetie, turn it off at 8:15!" 8:20 and 8:30 roll around, I run down to switch off the set and it's "You did NOT say anything about turning it off then!"
Meanwhile, the nine-year-old pretends not to be able to get into bed without standing precariously on the mattress.
"Just sit down!" says I, anticipating broken ankles or heads. Three minutes go by before she does. Endless goodnight kisses. Back to brother. Oh, he's finally upstairs but BRING ME MY RETAINER.
Then there's the fifteen-year-old. We send him upstairs with strict instructions to be in bed, lights out, by ten . . . it's a school night. Weekends he can go to bed when he wants.
So last night around 11:09 I knock on his door, because I'm hearing loud laughter and giggles from the computer. And from him.
"Waitasec!" and he unlocks the door and just as I'm opening my mouth to say, "It's a school night and you're supposed to be in bed because you have to be up by 6:15," a very sweet girlish voice with an enchantingly unplaceable accent wafts out of the computer: "What did your mother say?" she inquires.
I address the computer: "His mother says it's a school night and it's bedtime!"
"My microphone is off!" yells the fifteen-year-old.
"Please! Go to bed!"
"Leamealone. I will."
And so I toddle off to bed, and my husband and I think it's nice the girl sounds so nice, and we fall asleep. And it is possible to rouse the kid in time for school in the morning, so I guess everything ended happily after all.
"First one to brush his or her teeth wins!!"
Yay! Up the stairs they go. This worked a whole lot better than It's-Time-To-Turn-Off-The-TV-Wait-A-Minute-Mom.
Scream, yell and the "I'm-Just-Saying-Goodnight-to-Daddy-and-then-to-my-older-brother-and-then-to-my-younger-brother-and-then-to-each-guinea-pig" routine. (with an aggrieved air).
So now they're tweens and teens. They don't fall for stuff like, "Here's a dab of Barbie lipsick, one teeny dab, and you'll feel great and be able to run all the way to the soccer field to pick up your brother!" (One smear of Mom's lipstick).
Or, "Here, you can have your tomato back!" (Child screaming; wants not another one, Mommy, but the one Daddy just swallowed). At which point Daddy affects to vomit up a cherry tomato that he's concealed in his hand, and tantrum ends abruptly. Child very impressed with Daddy.
Well, now it's more like this:
Me: "Okay, Sweetie, turn it off at 8:15!" 8:20 and 8:30 roll around, I run down to switch off the set and it's "You did NOT say anything about turning it off then!"
Meanwhile, the nine-year-old pretends not to be able to get into bed without standing precariously on the mattress.
"Just sit down!" says I, anticipating broken ankles or heads. Three minutes go by before she does. Endless goodnight kisses. Back to brother. Oh, he's finally upstairs but BRING ME MY RETAINER.
Then there's the fifteen-year-old. We send him upstairs with strict instructions to be in bed, lights out, by ten . . . it's a school night. Weekends he can go to bed when he wants.
So last night around 11:09 I knock on his door, because I'm hearing loud laughter and giggles from the computer. And from him.
"Waitasec!" and he unlocks the door and just as I'm opening my mouth to say, "It's a school night and you're supposed to be in bed because you have to be up by 6:15," a very sweet girlish voice with an enchantingly unplaceable accent wafts out of the computer: "What did your mother say?" she inquires.
I address the computer: "His mother says it's a school night and it's bedtime!"
"My microphone is off!" yells the fifteen-year-old.
"Please! Go to bed!"
"Leamealone. I will."
And so I toddle off to bed, and my husband and I think it's nice the girl sounds so nice, and we fall asleep. And it is possible to rouse the kid in time for school in the morning, so I guess everything ended happily after all.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
The Critical Mom's Mother's Day
Could not have been nicer, except for one little surprise: "Visitors," as pediatricians' nurses coyly call them. Yes, our youngest had been scratching. . . . but I'll get to that.
I came downstairs at 8:00 a.m., having been allowed to sleep two whole hours longer than usual, and found that our youngest . . . who hadn't slept that well . . . was still sleepy, but before I could make my way back to bed she decided she was hungry after all. We all trooped downstairs, except for the eldest, who was still in Italy on a class trip uniting young members of the E.U. And there were two vases, one filled with a gorgeous red-and-yellow bouquet of roses, tiger lilies, and marigolds, and the other with three long-stemmed marigolds, one for each child.
I made blueberry pancakes and we ate heartily; I got presents! A couple of red lipsticks, my favorite bath salts, and a necklace made of blue-and-white delft bits that my husband and I had pieced together at our favorite jewelry store some time ago . . .
But then our youngest started scratching. Now, this actually began a week ago . . . and though I looked with a magnifying glass and my husband did, too, we found nothing . . . and wrongly believed it was just that she'd washed her head with liquid soap. The cleaning lady helped me hunt and nabbed one of the culprits.
We have decided to try the olive oil treatment. You can use mayonnaise or Vaseline instead, but olive oil has two advantages: it's good for the scalp, especially the itchy scalp, and it washes out easier (use vinegar!) than either of the others. But all three deprive lice of air. And, said our cleaning lady, "First it's like a guy who drank too much cognac . . . they stagger. And then they sleep." She let her head droop and closed her eyes. But I was thinking of a Simpsons episode in which lice are represented as beleaguered, noble, struggling for survival . . . well, at least the part about struggling for survival is true.
In other words, it may take more than one olive oil treatment before we go the the chemical-laden shampoo, which, here in Deutschland, is called Goldgeist ("gold spirit") and has on the label a picture of a big black bubbling cauldron (bubbles actually rise from its surface) standing on claw legged posts. A rather violent fire blazes beneath, and the active ingredient is Pyrethrumestrakt, and here are some of the side effects that popped up when I Googled the chemical: coughing, wheezing shortness of breath, runny or stuffy nose, chest pain, difficulty breathing. Rash, itching, blisters. Long term effects: distrupts the endocrine system by mimicking the female hormone, estrogen, thus causing excessive estrogen levels in females. In males, the estrogen feminizes, leading to abnormal growth of breast tissues, development of breasts in males and cancerous breast tissues in all sexes. Carcinogenic. And I could go on . . . I think we'll stick with olive oil, no matter how many times I have to apply it, even if I have to wash her sheets three times in as many nights . . . her mattress has been in a plastic bag for at least six hours; is that enough? Happy Mother's Day: I'm still young enough to have a kid in grade school, although, confidently, I am old enough to be the other moms' grandma.
P.S. Now we've got an innovation in Lice treatment. After the olive oil and the vinegar and three shampoos, I wanted another layer of olive oil overnight. My daughter didn't like that idea and we compromised: yes, garbage bags . . . four of them--tightly tied over her scalp, twisted into odd shapes and held in place with hair elastics.
But then we woke up at midnight and panicked that it would cover her mouth or nose or both. And I discovered, as I took it off, that it was on so very tight that I pulled her hair getting it off . . . and then, since the olive oil treatment takes at least three days and the kid wanted to go to school, we resorted to The Evil Chemical Shampoo. But wrote the obligatory note to the school lying that she'd felt nauseous . . . otherwise, you have to go to the pediatrician to get a note declaring you lice-free, which is a big waste of everyone's time. But we hadn't counted on one problem: no sooner had my daughter, who is exceedingly popular, arrived and said, "Don't hug me because I've had a cold," than they all hugged, and one of the little mean things said, "I smell that lice shampoo on your head! Did you have lice?" Her face crumpled as she told me, "I had to tell her, but you and Daddy said to say I had a cold . . . . " It hadn't occurred to her that the kid who sniffed out the shampoo had to have had quite a few encounters with the stuff herself. . . . ."But don't worry , Mommy, my friends won't tell."
So she's lice-free, and the school is getting the "Our Daughter Had a Cold and Tummyache" letter. Stay tuned.
I came downstairs at 8:00 a.m., having been allowed to sleep two whole hours longer than usual, and found that our youngest . . . who hadn't slept that well . . . was still sleepy, but before I could make my way back to bed she decided she was hungry after all. We all trooped downstairs, except for the eldest, who was still in Italy on a class trip uniting young members of the E.U. And there were two vases, one filled with a gorgeous red-and-yellow bouquet of roses, tiger lilies, and marigolds, and the other with three long-stemmed marigolds, one for each child.
I made blueberry pancakes and we ate heartily; I got presents! A couple of red lipsticks, my favorite bath salts, and a necklace made of blue-and-white delft bits that my husband and I had pieced together at our favorite jewelry store some time ago . . .
But then our youngest started scratching. Now, this actually began a week ago . . . and though I looked with a magnifying glass and my husband did, too, we found nothing . . . and wrongly believed it was just that she'd washed her head with liquid soap. The cleaning lady helped me hunt and nabbed one of the culprits.
We have decided to try the olive oil treatment. You can use mayonnaise or Vaseline instead, but olive oil has two advantages: it's good for the scalp, especially the itchy scalp, and it washes out easier (use vinegar!) than either of the others. But all three deprive lice of air. And, said our cleaning lady, "First it's like a guy who drank too much cognac . . . they stagger. And then they sleep." She let her head droop and closed her eyes. But I was thinking of a Simpsons episode in which lice are represented as beleaguered, noble, struggling for survival . . . well, at least the part about struggling for survival is true.
In other words, it may take more than one olive oil treatment before we go the the chemical-laden shampoo, which, here in Deutschland, is called Goldgeist ("gold spirit") and has on the label a picture of a big black bubbling cauldron (bubbles actually rise from its surface) standing on claw legged posts. A rather violent fire blazes beneath, and the active ingredient is Pyrethrumestrakt, and here are some of the side effects that popped up when I Googled the chemical: coughing, wheezing shortness of breath, runny or stuffy nose, chest pain, difficulty breathing. Rash, itching, blisters. Long term effects: distrupts the endocrine system by mimicking the female hormone, estrogen, thus causing excessive estrogen levels in females. In males, the estrogen feminizes, leading to abnormal growth of breast tissues, development of breasts in males and cancerous breast tissues in all sexes. Carcinogenic. And I could go on . . . I think we'll stick with olive oil, no matter how many times I have to apply it, even if I have to wash her sheets three times in as many nights . . . her mattress has been in a plastic bag for at least six hours; is that enough? Happy Mother's Day: I'm still young enough to have a kid in grade school, although, confidently, I am old enough to be the other moms' grandma.
P.S. Now we've got an innovation in Lice treatment. After the olive oil and the vinegar and three shampoos, I wanted another layer of olive oil overnight. My daughter didn't like that idea and we compromised: yes, garbage bags . . . four of them--tightly tied over her scalp, twisted into odd shapes and held in place with hair elastics.
But then we woke up at midnight and panicked that it would cover her mouth or nose or both. And I discovered, as I took it off, that it was on so very tight that I pulled her hair getting it off . . . and then, since the olive oil treatment takes at least three days and the kid wanted to go to school, we resorted to The Evil Chemical Shampoo. But wrote the obligatory note to the school lying that she'd felt nauseous . . . otherwise, you have to go to the pediatrician to get a note declaring you lice-free, which is a big waste of everyone's time. But we hadn't counted on one problem: no sooner had my daughter, who is exceedingly popular, arrived and said, "Don't hug me because I've had a cold," than they all hugged, and one of the little mean things said, "I smell that lice shampoo on your head! Did you have lice?" Her face crumpled as she told me, "I had to tell her, but you and Daddy said to say I had a cold . . . . " It hadn't occurred to her that the kid who sniffed out the shampoo had to have had quite a few encounters with the stuff herself. . . . ."But don't worry , Mommy, my friends won't tell."
So she's lice-free, and the school is getting the "Our Daughter Had a Cold and Tummyache" letter. Stay tuned.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
The Critical Mom's Budget Tuna Casserole
Nostalgic for Betty Crocker? Or Betty Draper's cookbook? This'll bring you right back, raise your cholesterol along with your nostalgia, but not break the bank. You'll need two 5-oz. cans of tuna (remember when they were 7-oz? Well, you can always cheat and add another). 7 oz. is around 200 grams of canned tuna, Europeans.
So drain those, and set aside.
Slice and boil some potatoes--at least a cup, but more if you like. They shouldn't be squishy--just soft.
While those are boiling, get out your large frying pan and some olive oil (if you use plant or corn oil, I won't tell) and chop into it the following:
Two yellow peppers (or green, or red, if that's all you have)
One small zucchini
One red onion
A cup of frozen peas.
Sautée all until they look nicely done. Haul out a big baking pan. Drain the potatoes and pour them in. Add the veggies. Stir all. Add tuna and mix in.
Crack two eggs into a big bowl, beat them with a whisk, and add two small containers of cream. Beat a little more. Yes, heavy cream, the kind with massive amounts of fat.
Stir all into the potato-veggie-tuna mix.
Now, chop up several slices of Gouda and add. Or if you've only got Cheddar or Gorgonzola, that'll do, too. Or a soft Danish cheese. Something yellow. The Gorgonzola may not appeal to children, but it will taste good.
Mix all.
Grate a big chunk of Parmesan over the whole shabang. Toss on a little garlic salt. Bake for an hour at about 190ºc or 375ºf. You can put on the whirling heat at the very end for a few minutes if you like.
Remove from oven and serve with chilled white wine or a good red. Salad on the side is nice, too.
So drain those, and set aside.
Slice and boil some potatoes--at least a cup, but more if you like. They shouldn't be squishy--just soft.
While those are boiling, get out your large frying pan and some olive oil (if you use plant or corn oil, I won't tell) and chop into it the following:
Two yellow peppers (or green, or red, if that's all you have)
One small zucchini
One red onion
A cup of frozen peas.
Sautée all until they look nicely done. Haul out a big baking pan. Drain the potatoes and pour them in. Add the veggies. Stir all. Add tuna and mix in.
Crack two eggs into a big bowl, beat them with a whisk, and add two small containers of cream. Beat a little more. Yes, heavy cream, the kind with massive amounts of fat.
Stir all into the potato-veggie-tuna mix.
Now, chop up several slices of Gouda and add. Or if you've only got Cheddar or Gorgonzola, that'll do, too. Or a soft Danish cheese. Something yellow. The Gorgonzola may not appeal to children, but it will taste good.
Mix all.
Grate a big chunk of Parmesan over the whole shabang. Toss on a little garlic salt. Bake for an hour at about 190ºc or 375ºf. You can put on the whirling heat at the very end for a few minutes if you like.
Remove from oven and serve with chilled white wine or a good red. Salad on the side is nice, too.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
The Catholic Church Does the Canonization Two-Step, Or "Two, Four, Six, Eight: Time to Transubstantiate!"
The best definition is still John Donne's in his poem, "The Canonization," Donne being after all Catholic (although a reluctant Anglican priest) plus great-great nephew of the Catholic martyr Thomas More. For Donne, a canonization is all about love, and he means a love that is passionate, sexual, and loyal:
FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;
And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."
This remains one of the best defenses of canonization against that devil's trident of privilege, power and politics--the mainstays of the Catholic hierarchy of bishops and pope. Donne advocated "true religion," by which he meant what you know in your heart and conscience to be right. The next-to-last verse spells out that a terrific orgasm ("We can die by it, if not live by love," the term "die" meaning what the French call "petit mort," or the really great feeling of passing out after a climax) is what "canonizes" you for love. We can take any big bang of inspired enthusiasm as part of Donne's definition of canonization.
In a way, this is an American point of view, America being a land in which the big bang of 17th century Protestant reformation galvanized the Scots and Ulster Covenanters who landed in Virginia and Pennsylvania with Presbyterians and other non-conformists. Their ways--self-denying, hard-working, extreme in feeling, impulsive--fueled the Declaration of Independence as well as the Civil War. Along with them came the various religious revivals--the First Great Awakening, Puritan preachers like Jonathan Edwards discarding empty ritual in favor of deep anxiety about personal salvation--the Second Great Awakening, the Third, the Fourth (one loses track of them after a while, but they all involve an imagination for hellfire, an idea of Jesus as a personal savior, and a suspicion of any rote elements in religious ritual). The mood of these movements invariably involves inspiration and innovation over rote ritual--the ossified ritual of some Catholicisms.
One of America's greatest satirists, Tom Lehrer, makes a similar point in his rollicking attack on hypocrisy, "The Vatican Rag".
Vatican II was all about commercializing the church, selling it to more people, making it accessible, appealing, even fun. Which is like today's one-two punch. It's a bargain. Buy one, get one free! Not just John XXIII but John Paul II as well.
Eamon Duffy, a professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, characterizes the two wryly as "The man who took the lid off and the man who tried to put it back on." To have a canonization you've got to have a saint (or even two) and by John Donne's standards, neither of these dudes cuts it. John XXIII Vatican-Twoed the church and whether that meant a move in the right direction or just a solid business judgement only his own conscious could reveal, so I'll take Tom Lehrer's version of events. John Paul's spin doctor, JoaquÃn Navarro-Valls, claims that the “purity of his thought” made it difficult for the pontiff to accept that priests could abuse children. Please. The pure in thought don't become popes--and our text for today is George Bernard Shaw.
In his Preface to St. Joan (1924) Shaw remarked,
At best very few popes have been canonized, or could be without letting down the standard of sanctity set by the self-elected saints.
No other result could have been reasonably expected; for it is not possible that an official organization of the spiritual needs of millions of men and women, mostly poor and ignorant, should compete successfully in the selection of its principals with the direct choice of the Holy Ghost as it flashes with unerring aim upon the individual. Nor can any College of Cardinals pray effectively that its choice may be inspired . . . The saints and prophets, though they may be accidentally in this or that official position or rank, are always really self-selected, like Joan.
But now, thanks to Francis, saints will be equivalent to bureaucrats in the church, wrote one of my favorite commentators on the New York Times article about the canonizations.
Shaw knew that the bureaucrats win in any business--and that true religion is always deemed heresy by those who can't make money out of it, or who find it shocking.
Notice how the New York Times shrewdly uses the language of business to describe these "canonizations" that remain business deals, two-pronged efforts to galvanize the faithful with yet another tired serving of miracles plus some nicely-sauced saints on the side. The Times observes that John Paul "streamlined the canonization process," and Francis "waived the requirement" for evidence of two whole miracles. Like any good businessman, he realizes people are getting harder to fool and some other tack had best be taken (Don Draper, please call home). Francis is the folksy pope but he's still a businessman canonizing other businessmen. A saint would purge the pedophiles. A saint would let priests get married. A saint would bring in women priests and prepare the way for a woman pope. A saint would hold gay weddings in St. Peter's. A saint would hand out communion wafers with a smile to divorced Catholics who want to remarry within the church. And a saint would smile like St. Sebastian, turning every other cheek, when the bad guys who have no imagination come after him. A saint would go the roots of the church, to the meaning of "Catholicism" as "all-embracing."
Let Oscar Wilde have the last word: "The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;
And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."
This remains one of the best defenses of canonization against that devil's trident of privilege, power and politics--the mainstays of the Catholic hierarchy of bishops and pope. Donne advocated "true religion," by which he meant what you know in your heart and conscience to be right. The next-to-last verse spells out that a terrific orgasm ("We can die by it, if not live by love," the term "die" meaning what the French call "petit mort," or the really great feeling of passing out after a climax) is what "canonizes" you for love. We can take any big bang of inspired enthusiasm as part of Donne's definition of canonization.
In a way, this is an American point of view, America being a land in which the big bang of 17th century Protestant reformation galvanized the Scots and Ulster Covenanters who landed in Virginia and Pennsylvania with Presbyterians and other non-conformists. Their ways--self-denying, hard-working, extreme in feeling, impulsive--fueled the Declaration of Independence as well as the Civil War. Along with them came the various religious revivals--the First Great Awakening, Puritan preachers like Jonathan Edwards discarding empty ritual in favor of deep anxiety about personal salvation--the Second Great Awakening, the Third, the Fourth (one loses track of them after a while, but they all involve an imagination for hellfire, an idea of Jesus as a personal savior, and a suspicion of any rote elements in religious ritual). The mood of these movements invariably involves inspiration and innovation over rote ritual--the ossified ritual of some Catholicisms.
One of America's greatest satirists, Tom Lehrer, makes a similar point in his rollicking attack on hypocrisy, "The Vatican Rag".
Vatican II was all about commercializing the church, selling it to more people, making it accessible, appealing, even fun. Which is like today's one-two punch. It's a bargain. Buy one, get one free! Not just John XXIII but John Paul II as well.
Eamon Duffy, a professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, characterizes the two wryly as "The man who took the lid off and the man who tried to put it back on." To have a canonization you've got to have a saint (or even two) and by John Donne's standards, neither of these dudes cuts it. John XXIII Vatican-Twoed the church and whether that meant a move in the right direction or just a solid business judgement only his own conscious could reveal, so I'll take Tom Lehrer's version of events. John Paul's spin doctor, JoaquÃn Navarro-Valls, claims that the “purity of his thought” made it difficult for the pontiff to accept that priests could abuse children. Please. The pure in thought don't become popes--and our text for today is George Bernard Shaw.
In his Preface to St. Joan (1924) Shaw remarked,
At best very few popes have been canonized, or could be without letting down the standard of sanctity set by the self-elected saints.
No other result could have been reasonably expected; for it is not possible that an official organization of the spiritual needs of millions of men and women, mostly poor and ignorant, should compete successfully in the selection of its principals with the direct choice of the Holy Ghost as it flashes with unerring aim upon the individual. Nor can any College of Cardinals pray effectively that its choice may be inspired . . . The saints and prophets, though they may be accidentally in this or that official position or rank, are always really self-selected, like Joan.
But now, thanks to Francis, saints will be equivalent to bureaucrats in the church, wrote one of my favorite commentators on the New York Times article about the canonizations.
Shaw knew that the bureaucrats win in any business--and that true religion is always deemed heresy by those who can't make money out of it, or who find it shocking.
Notice how the New York Times shrewdly uses the language of business to describe these "canonizations" that remain business deals, two-pronged efforts to galvanize the faithful with yet another tired serving of miracles plus some nicely-sauced saints on the side. The Times observes that John Paul "streamlined the canonization process," and Francis "waived the requirement" for evidence of two whole miracles. Like any good businessman, he realizes people are getting harder to fool and some other tack had best be taken (Don Draper, please call home). Francis is the folksy pope but he's still a businessman canonizing other businessmen. A saint would purge the pedophiles. A saint would let priests get married. A saint would bring in women priests and prepare the way for a woman pope. A saint would hold gay weddings in St. Peter's. A saint would hand out communion wafers with a smile to divorced Catholics who want to remarry within the church. And a saint would smile like St. Sebastian, turning every other cheek, when the bad guys who have no imagination come after him. A saint would go the roots of the church, to the meaning of "Catholicism" as "all-embracing."
Let Oscar Wilde have the last word: "The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Oscar Pistorius as South Africa's Rorschach Test
What do Jani Allan and Gerrie Nel have in common, besides both being
South African? They both project their fantasies onto Oscar Pistorius. Jani Allan, a flamboyant borderline personality and South African journalist who apparently had a series of sexual encounters with Eugene Terre'blanche, thinks he's just like Oscar Pistorius. She thinks they both cried crocodile tears, and insists Pistorius took acting lessons.
Could any two men be more different? Terre'blanche's very name, "white world," proclaims his political position--a white supremacist politician* who drank hard, believed in violence to maintain white minority rule, waved a flag with a version of a swastika on it (he called it a triskelion, but no, it does not look like the one on the Isle of Man flag) and got hacked to death on his farm by a black man. In looks, you might compare him to Santa Claus, but with a malevolent expression.
Now, Oscar Pistorius is, first of all, young. He is not known for possessing opinions, political or otherwise. And I would wager that If the kid took acting lessons, he's got an enormous amount of talent that never showed before.
I think we can cross the slightest suspicion that he did so off our list. But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that he took them. Or deportment lessons. Does anyone really think he could be trained to remember to keep his hands from fidgeting, or his nose from running--or even coached to spout not just tears, but floods of them?
Then there's the prosecution, Gerrie Nel. When I heard him say it was unbelievably unlikely that Pistorius could not have known his girlfriend was in the bathroom, I wondered if Nel had ever slept in the same bed as another human being. Now, the record shows that Nel has fathered children. I suppose that his having done so need not have entailed any act of slumber after the fact, with or without a partner. He might even have achieved fatherhood in a vertical position. But for your information, Mr. Nel, I have, on many an occasion, and not even in a pitch-black room, slept through my husband getting up and going to the bathroom. And woken up to find the bed empty and thought, "Gee, is he downstairs having coffee already?"
A little alcohol, a few horizontal gymnastics, and you tend to sleep like the dead. But even if all you've been doing is running as fast as Pistorius every day, you do tend to sleep hard.
So I look at Pistorius and ask myself, not for the first time, what's going on. Was it an accident, and if it wasn't, was it a murder? Or an impetuous rage fueled by sudden taunting from a beloved woman? Now comes my own personal projection: Pistorius makes me think of the North Carolina ballad, "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley," about a crime of passion, in which a young man stabs his beloved to death because she refuses to become his wife:
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang down your head and cry,
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Poor boy, you're going to die.
Met her in the morning,
Said she'd be my wife
But the gal deceived me,
So I stabbed her with my knife.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley . . .
My father hailed from North Carolina, and sang such ballads, and knew the impetuous, hot-tempered ways of a self-denying, hyper-religious folk. My hunch is that Pistorius is guilty after the fashion of Tom Dooley; he barely knew what he was doing and he could not honestly tell anyone. I think it possible he didn't know he was shooting her and I think it possible he fired knowing she was right in front of him but not being able to take in the fact that she would die. Flip a coin. The poor boy regrets it, but he's not lying. The poor girl's mother is lately quoted as saying he "smirked." If he did, I think William Blake has an explanation for that:
Excess of sorrow laughs.
*He said "separatist" and believed that was different.
Could any two men be more different? Terre'blanche's very name, "white world," proclaims his political position--a white supremacist politician* who drank hard, believed in violence to maintain white minority rule, waved a flag with a version of a swastika on it (he called it a triskelion, but no, it does not look like the one on the Isle of Man flag) and got hacked to death on his farm by a black man. In looks, you might compare him to Santa Claus, but with a malevolent expression.
Now, Oscar Pistorius is, first of all, young. He is not known for possessing opinions, political or otherwise. And I would wager that If the kid took acting lessons, he's got an enormous amount of talent that never showed before.
I think we can cross the slightest suspicion that he did so off our list. But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that he took them. Or deportment lessons. Does anyone really think he could be trained to remember to keep his hands from fidgeting, or his nose from running--or even coached to spout not just tears, but floods of them?
Then there's the prosecution, Gerrie Nel. When I heard him say it was unbelievably unlikely that Pistorius could not have known his girlfriend was in the bathroom, I wondered if Nel had ever slept in the same bed as another human being. Now, the record shows that Nel has fathered children. I suppose that his having done so need not have entailed any act of slumber after the fact, with or without a partner. He might even have achieved fatherhood in a vertical position. But for your information, Mr. Nel, I have, on many an occasion, and not even in a pitch-black room, slept through my husband getting up and going to the bathroom. And woken up to find the bed empty and thought, "Gee, is he downstairs having coffee already?"
A little alcohol, a few horizontal gymnastics, and you tend to sleep like the dead. But even if all you've been doing is running as fast as Pistorius every day, you do tend to sleep hard.
So I look at Pistorius and ask myself, not for the first time, what's going on. Was it an accident, and if it wasn't, was it a murder? Or an impetuous rage fueled by sudden taunting from a beloved woman? Now comes my own personal projection: Pistorius makes me think of the North Carolina ballad, "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley," about a crime of passion, in which a young man stabs his beloved to death because she refuses to become his wife:
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang down your head and cry,
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Poor boy, you're going to die.
Met her in the morning,
Said she'd be my wife
But the gal deceived me,
So I stabbed her with my knife.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley . . .
My father hailed from North Carolina, and sang such ballads, and knew the impetuous, hot-tempered ways of a self-denying, hyper-religious folk. My hunch is that Pistorius is guilty after the fashion of Tom Dooley; he barely knew what he was doing and he could not honestly tell anyone. I think it possible he didn't know he was shooting her and I think it possible he fired knowing she was right in front of him but not being able to take in the fact that she would die. Flip a coin. The poor boy regrets it, but he's not lying. The poor girl's mother is lately quoted as saying he "smirked." If he did, I think William Blake has an explanation for that:
Excess of sorrow laughs.
*He said "separatist" and believed that was different.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Race, Gender, Love, and Oscar Pistorius
O.J. Simpson's defense attorney, Robert Shapiro, has already weighed in with two comments: That he withholds judgement (withholding judgement while watching a trial is the way to get to the truth) and that he never hesitates to ask a client whether he or she actually committed the crime or not. Shapiro offers no opinion on the guilt or innocence of Oscar Pistorius. And his advice for the downfallen South African "blade runner?" It is what he tells any accused celebrity: "To keep his mouth shut."
"You talk, I walk," is what he'd do if it were all up to him.
Pistorius has motor-mouthed his way through most of the trial.
I'll take Shapiro's advice and withhold judgement on whether Pistorius's killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was premeditated or not. I've seen enough to believe that Pistorius feels horrified and sickened by what he did, that he profoundly regrets it--weeping until he chokes and veins bulge, sweating through his shirt, leaking tears and snot, vomiting copiously. But I'm not convinced that he'd be able to restrain his impulse to shoot again if he got angry and had a handgun.
The facts I keep shaking around in my head, and rolling out in front of myself like so many dice, are these:
•Pistorius has had a number of violent encounters with his own impulses, including falling asleep at the wheel on a rampaging drive to settle an argument with a girlfriend.
•Pistorius threatened a former athlete, Marc Bachelor, that he'd "break your legs!" and the incident involved a woman.
•Pistorius, like many South Africans, sleeps with a gun under his bed, because he is terrified of an intruder, and more terrified when his prostheses are off, as they are when he goes to bed at night.
•Pistorius lived in a fortress-like gated community with an almost spotless security record, but such communities are never immune to violence, especially in South Africa, where gruesomely violent rapes, dismemberments, decapitations, are reported daily. There are at least fifty murders per day in the country.
•Pistorius's mother used to tell him daily, "your brother puts on his shoes, and you put on your legs!" and he feels she was wise, gently pushing him to do his best. She told him, "train, but don't strain." Did she push too much? Any mother will tell you this is the hardest question to answer, or to answer honestly.
•Pistorius was "besotted" with his girlfriend of three months, Reeva Steenkamp.
•She expressed fear of his jealousy, and wanted protection, not jealousy, from him.
•It was Valentine's Day.
•An experienced, 67-year-old black, female judge will decide the fate of a young white man in South Africa
•Reeva Steenkamp's mother says she cannot tell whether Pistorius is lying. She sits behind him and watches him in the courtroom every day.
•The neighbors insist that they heard a woman's high-pitched screams around the time of the gunshots, and believe that they were Reeva Steenkamp's screams, and that he knew he was shooting his girlfriend.
•Margie Orford, an award-winning, white South African crime writer, says Pistorius's defense relies on the idea of a "third body," by which she means "the imagined figure of a threatening black stranger that has driven many South Africans into fortress-like housing estates." She sees middle-class whites carrying guns and panic buttons as being trapped in trauma, the "pernicious" apartheid narrative of "swart gevaar" (the black peril), as justification for extreme violence.
She says it recalls the old macho attitude of "it's either us or them".
•It's not easy to get statistics on race and crime in South Africa. Google that phrase, and you get Oscar Pistorius.
The more I roll out these dice, the less they add up, so I try to imagine scenarios that seem likely to me. Pistorius's threat to Marc Bachelor ("I'll break your legs!") and his own lack of legs, and fear that he cannot protect himself or a girlfriend without them, might have been enough to fuel an intentional murder if Ms. Steenkamp had been provoked enough by his jealous rages to have snapped, "I'd rather have a man with real legs!" or something of that sort.
Alternatively, what if those high-pitched screams came from Pistorius himself, not Reeva? What if he really didn't know she was in that bathroom? What if the moment he realized what he'd done, he howled? He does say that's what happened. At the extremes of human experience, vocal ranges are also extreme, so that it can be hard to tell whether a man or a woman is screaming. The greater the anguish, the higher--or the lower--the pitch of the voice. It would not surprise me if a neighbor, hearing a man shriek in horror, thought that the screaming voice belonged to a woman.
But no matter what the judge decides, we'll probably never really know. To me, the O.J. Simpson case was much clearer--so clear, that after he got off scot-free, New York magazine boasted a cover with him smiling and waving bloody hands.
No one will smile when Pistorius is judged, whether he gets off or not. I can't now think of a job I'd envy less than that of Judge Thokozile Masipais. No matter how much she has seen, and thought, and done in her life, no matter how carefully she deliberates, no matter what she decides--she cannot emerge untormented from this case.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
The Critical Mom Goes to Rome
It all started with Ryanair, which offered a flight under a hundred euros, round trip, so long as I kept my check-in bag under 15 kilos, something I could manage for a three-day trip. The airline did not try to charge people a whole British pound to use the toilet ($1.66, about 40 cents less in euros)--the notion that this is one of Ryanair's usual charges having been allegedly aired by management on the theory that negative publicity brings in customers. But halfway through the two-hour flight, the stewardess announced that the toilets were "blocked" and asked that passengers please not use them. I was glad we landed on time and the Ciampino airport proved a mere half-hour bus ride to Rome's version of Times Square, namely, the Termini. Named after the Baths of Diocletian, it looked Grand-Central-Stationish, and a comfortably hectic air reminded me of that very much missed icon of New York as I stood online for a taxi. There the resemblance to my favorite city ended, for the driver spoke no word of any language that I could manage, including English, and demonstrated--by waving around an actual paper map--that he remained clueless about the address to which I had to repair posthaste.
"Uh, do you speak English?"
"Eee-talia!" he said. "Leetle bit, okay!"
"Deutsch?"
"Eee-talia!"
Once he'd studied his map, he got me there after a ride no more wild nor wooly than that of your average New York cabbie, and seemed ecstatic, practically falling at my feet, when I rewarded him with a tip of one euro.
I was visiting a dear old friend and her lovely new husband, and we enjoyed a delicious meal of Cacio e Pepe, pasta with a whole lot of melted butter, pecorino romano, and coarsely grated salt and pepper. That hit the spot, as did the wine. Rome is, like Paris, once of those places where it's almost impossible to get a bad meal--you have to try really hard, and I didn't try at all, so ate very well indeed.
First stop the next morning was the Colosseum, that ancient ampitheater where gladiators fought to the death and became freemen if they survived a certain number of rounds. Centurions paced the grounds, charging to be photographed with tourists and checking their cell phones. Many hidden catacombs followed--some formerly secret training grounds of gladiators, and then the Basilica of San Clemente, a mosaiced wonder with a second century Mithraic temple beneath it. Layers upon layers of civilizations interlard Rome, just like the layers of olive oil and cheese in most of the delicious food.
We spent some time seeking the exact spot on which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death, a grassy hill plastered with homeless men. We shopped--oh, what a paradise for leather and linens! A gorgeous briefcase, complete with butter-soft leather and piping, was found for my friend's husband, and I almost bought a lovely red leather knapsack that continues to haunt me.
We visited Villa Torlonia, on the scale of New York's Frick, which was rented by none other than Mussolini from an eccentric banker for one lira per year. Frescoes of mythological figures--including a Leda who could never have inspired Yeats, since she's got the swan firmly tucked under her elbow, and his beak, at the end of a weak, skinny neck, seems in a desultory way to be pecking as if for a single grain at the corner of her mouth. An "avian dildo," is how a visiting professor acquaintance described the poor bird. The walls featured photos of Il Duce himself fencing--going by his size, he sure needed the exercise! Art exhibits of Italian painters from the nineteen-forties and earlier graced the upper storey. The Casina delle Civette, or Owl House, a 19th-century Swiss chalet on the grounds, included William-Morris-like wallpaper, stained glass that looked very Tiffany, and a host of increasingly odd and delightful rooms. There is no escape like Rome, the city of ruins and hidden beauties--and my kids loved the bobble-headed Caesar and mini-models of all the ruins I hadn't managed to see.
"Uh, do you speak English?"
"Eee-talia!" he said. "Leetle bit, okay!"
"Deutsch?"
"Eee-talia!"
Once he'd studied his map, he got me there after a ride no more wild nor wooly than that of your average New York cabbie, and seemed ecstatic, practically falling at my feet, when I rewarded him with a tip of one euro.
I was visiting a dear old friend and her lovely new husband, and we enjoyed a delicious meal of Cacio e Pepe, pasta with a whole lot of melted butter, pecorino romano, and coarsely grated salt and pepper. That hit the spot, as did the wine. Rome is, like Paris, once of those places where it's almost impossible to get a bad meal--you have to try really hard, and I didn't try at all, so ate very well indeed.
First stop the next morning was the Colosseum, that ancient ampitheater where gladiators fought to the death and became freemen if they survived a certain number of rounds. Centurions paced the grounds, charging to be photographed with tourists and checking their cell phones. Many hidden catacombs followed--some formerly secret training grounds of gladiators, and then the Basilica of San Clemente, a mosaiced wonder with a second century Mithraic temple beneath it. Layers upon layers of civilizations interlard Rome, just like the layers of olive oil and cheese in most of the delicious food.
We spent some time seeking the exact spot on which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death, a grassy hill plastered with homeless men. We shopped--oh, what a paradise for leather and linens! A gorgeous briefcase, complete with butter-soft leather and piping, was found for my friend's husband, and I almost bought a lovely red leather knapsack that continues to haunt me.
We visited Villa Torlonia, on the scale of New York's Frick, which was rented by none other than Mussolini from an eccentric banker for one lira per year. Frescoes of mythological figures--including a Leda who could never have inspired Yeats, since she's got the swan firmly tucked under her elbow, and his beak, at the end of a weak, skinny neck, seems in a desultory way to be pecking as if for a single grain at the corner of her mouth. An "avian dildo," is how a visiting professor acquaintance described the poor bird. The walls featured photos of Il Duce himself fencing--going by his size, he sure needed the exercise! Art exhibits of Italian painters from the nineteen-forties and earlier graced the upper storey. The Casina delle Civette, or Owl House, a 19th-century Swiss chalet on the grounds, included William-Morris-like wallpaper, stained glass that looked very Tiffany, and a host of increasingly odd and delightful rooms. There is no escape like Rome, the city of ruins and hidden beauties--and my kids loved the bobble-headed Caesar and mini-models of all the ruins I hadn't managed to see.
Friday, April 4, 2014
The Critical Mom and the Chinese President's Wife
For weeks, my husband and I looked forward to a performance. It was important enough to be on our calendar along with reminders to remember it--because the Chinese President's wife was coming to our boys' school. A superstar singer of treacly hits who, according to my smart fifteen-year old, dared to trill, "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead," right after Mao Zedong died, she's now trying to make sure Chinese girls in villages get an education. And our boys are getting a model education, she believes, along with many girls in their school, which went co-ed not too long ago.
But we weren't going to hear her sing. We were going to hear our boys sing to her in Chinese, and the elder was going to narrate a play in Chinese, plus play Chinese songs on his clarinet.
Alas, we didn't get to go! Less than a week before the event for which we'd cleared our calendar, we learned that a mere seventy policemen could be assigned to the event, since the lady had no official security clearance, and all students would have to empty their pockets, open their musical instrument cases, answer questions (No jokes! I told the smart fifteen-year-old, who was brimming over with wisecrack answers to security questions).
The kid has been learning Chinese all year, and speaks it fluently enough so that I believe he'll be able to understand waiters at the Columbia Cottage restaurant we like to visit on trips to New York. I told him he should tell his Chinese teacher about the Chinese guys who deliver take-out on bikes, and who know one word to blurt into the intercom, "Food-ee!" The kid does not think his teacher would appreciate this anecdote, and it has occurred to me that had the kid been educated in the Chinese style, he would not disagree with me so much.
China is building bridges with the U.S.A and Angela Merkel is trying to build them too, but she couldn't get Ai WeiWei a passport three years ago. At the moment, his exhibition, "The Evidence," is at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, one that I bet the singer would love to visit.
A Chinese friend who studied in Germany made the mistake most Chinese students I teach make: he memorized everything he read for his oral exam, and when the examiners asked what he thought about a particular text, he began reciting.
"No, what do you think?" they asked. "Not the critics you read. YOU!"
Confusion. "Ahh, uh, ahh . . . "
I know this confusion. I ask my university students, not only Chinese students, for their own thoughts. And they answer, "You mean what I think? You mean, really, my opinion?" They seem astonished. The worse the German high school they attended, the less they've been asked to have an opinion and to express it. But students raised anywhere in Asia, especially Chinese students, have usually been taught to parrot the opinions of others, or of their teacher, or to determine the opinion of the group, or to make sure that the group has one unified opinion, and to express that opinion with as little individuality as possible.
The friend all but failed his oral exam. Next time around, he criticized the teacher and got an A.
I'm imagining the school visit the way it should have been. Not kids getting frisked and security forces guarding the doors. Just parents coming to see their kids, and the lovely, relaxed atmosphere of other concerts we've attended--which are so good that even folks who don't have kids at the school attend them. Mom-baked muffins and sandwiches and quiche for sale with wine in the intermissions. And a conversation with Peng Liyuan, the wife, in which I ask: "How are you? And do you like Ai WeiWei? Do you hate him? Why?" And in my dreams, she would have a very clear opinion of her own, the opinion of a girl who had been educated in the Western style, with exactly the type of education she is promoting right now for girls, the kind in which the teacher asks you for your opinion, and you actually have a very clear, considered opinion, and you articulate it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)