Picking My Battles

Most Sundays we head to Bob’s Diner in Manchester to fuel up before gardening and woodstacking.  I’ll go write at a nearby cafe for a few hours, and when the kids wake up, the Big Guy will phone to say they’re leaving.  I usually get there first and, after getting our name on the wait list (there’s always a wait),  I claim the privilege of taking the seat with a view of the door.

I have a strong aversion to sitting with my back to  the door in any public place.  probably the result of being on the receiving end of a home invasion and relying on heavy doses of televison to manage the PTSD that followed(any fictional commando or special ops expert will tell you to keep your eye on the door).   For some reason, I harbor a deep need to be able to wave at a hypothetical incoming armed assailant before I kiss my kids and my butt goodbye.

Thing1 and Thing2 trade off sitting next to Mom.  The need to sit next to Mommy only emerges when we’re in a restaurant, but it’s pathological.  If we only go out to eat once a week, it’s pretty easy to keep track, but if we’ve had a busy week of museums and diners and cafes, I forget where we are in the rotation.

Last Sunday was one of those days and, predictably, the debate over who got to set next to Mom threatened to get them driven home without breakfast (a threat we have not had to carry out in several years but still keep in our arsenal).  Finally, deeming it way too early in the day to be brokering peace treaties, I issued sanctions against both parties and announced that I was sitting with the Big Guy.  The Big Guy had already arranged himself with his back to the door.

I ignored the annoyed faces of my children and snuggled into the seat next to my husband, no longer worried about not seeing whatever might come through the door while we ate our pancakes.   The fragile detente in front of us – strained by the appearance of cups of chocolate milk just waiting to be knocked over during a bilateral shove or a poke – was way scarier than any imaginary maniac I could possibly imagine.

A quick trip around the garden and yard this morning quickly explained why the neighborhood bears have come back to visit.

A couple days ago, I blogged about liberating myself from the pressures of trying to measure up physically to the standards of people who would never grant approval.  The mention in that post of some of the people who had bullied me about my appearance (among other things) sparked a separate conversation on Facebook between a group of friends from that same school who still harbored strong feelings about their time on the receiving end of similar bullying.

We each recalled favorite moments – one person remembered a death threat in a yearbook.  I remembered seeing some of the most disgusting anti-Semitic behavior I had ever seen in real life directed at a girl who would become one of my best friends. I know we all remembered being laughed at one morning as our group of social rejects waited for early rides home as we mourned the suicide of a friend the night before.

One person offered a quote that I’ve heard many times since those days – “Living well is the best revenge,” and I thought about the people who had joined the chat.  One, despite years of verbal abuse by the ‘in’ crowd, has gone on to get her PhD in Biology.  Another, an amazing artist who endured a severe beating for the crime of being suspected of being gay, has gone on to work at a school helping foster the creativity of other artists. Others who did not join our conversation but have, despite living through four years of racial or anti-Semitic slurs, gone on to top-notch schools and are doing great things.

We are all living well. But the bullying stays with us.

I don’t think any of us wants or ever wanted revenge (well maybe I had a few fantasies). But living well doesn’t diminish the impact of those years on our psyches and self-confidence, and it got me to wondering.  What ever happened to the bullies?

I know they were never punished in high school, even though they often perpetrated their abuse in full view of the ‘grown-ups’.  The culture of ‘boys will be boys’ was still in its hey-day, and  bullying was a rite of passage for the so-called strong.  I reject the idea that some kids need to be cannon fodder in order to build up the confidence of others, but I also feel pity for those who built at least part of their identities on torturing others. Do they even remember their actions or understand the hurt they caused?  Does it bother them, or do they just accept it as part of ‘growing up’?  Do they think of themselves as good people despite the very intentional hurt they caused and the pleasure they seemed to derive from it or do they know that they are in fact bullies?

I don’t know, so even though I’m not very religious, I offer this prayer for them.

I pray you feel some remorse for the pain you inflicted when you laughed at a group of misfits as they mourned the suicide of friend the night before.

I pray when you do feel remorse that it only makes you a little uncomfortable and does not give you even a fraction of the pain you caused us.

I pray your child never experiences the misery of knowing someone like you were.

I pray you forgive yourself if he or she comes home crying because someone has the same things to them that you said to so many others.

Most of all, I pray that you and I will stop this cycle of bad acting and teach our children, above all, to first be kind.

It looked like the perfect bag for my purposes, but I wasn’t sure if it would hold everything just right. So I marched the toiletries kit over to the makeup counter and began pulling out the paper stuffing and shoved in the sketchpad and journal I always carry in my purse.  The sales girl (she looked like she was barely out of high school) watched me with a bemused smile.

“I’m not shoplifting,” I said.

“Making sure it all fits?” She said and smiled wider. “I take a lot of makeup too.”

I scratched my head and nodded but didn’t say anything.  I wasn’t wearing any makeup, and my hair looked like I had just rolled out of bed (just so we’re clear, I was doing the messy look at least a decade before the style became fashionable – it just wasn’t intentional), but I suppose even at my frumpiest someone might generously have thought I needed a small suitcase to carry the spackle and putty knife I’d need to make myself presentable on vacation.

But how could I tell the perfectly coiffed and made-up sales lady that I had other less noble intentions for this bag and that the only paint in our house is destined for our walls?  How would someone so seemingly-effortlessly attractive understand the perspective of someone who had never been comfortable with her appearance?  She probably never knew the sting of having other people tell her they were uncomfortable with her appearance?

I wish I were kidding when I say a guy in high school told me once for about three years in a row that when I grew up my Native American stripper name should be ‘Dances for Dog Biscuits’ (and that was one of the kinder comments).  I wish I could say I was and am mature enough to have let the barbs roll off my back, but there were enough of them from enough people that they did sink in, and I eventually wondered if I had one of those faces that only a parent or a very near-sighted husband could stomach.

I spent a few years trying to improve things, but after spending more money than the pentagon on hair extensions, makeup, failed fashion ventures, and all the other things that help a girl attract a guy with low standards, I threw in the trowel and decided to wait for the afore-mentioned near-sighted husband in the form of the Big Guy.

Throwing in the towel is actually quite liberating. It allows you to focus on other priorities like losing weight for your health or – gasp – finishing your education so you can stay gainfully employed.  The Big Guy tells me what I need to hear, and when Thing-One came along, he changed my priorities.

Now with my own eyes going off the rails, I realize that my face doesn’t look nearly as asymmetrical, but it doesn’t distract from what I’ve learned makes life complete.  I’m still weight-obsessed so that Amtrak doesn’t charge me for a second seat on our trip, but it’s not so I can fit into the next size down.  The dress.. uh jean size doesn’t make me a better parent, it doesn’t improve my writing, and it doesn’t make drawing or painting anymore fulfilling.

I’m sure the neanderthals who tortured me in high school (and beyond) are still neanderthals and would say the same thing if they saw me on the street today.  I’ve gained weight over the years, and the improved hearing that comes with the extra poundage has enabled me to truly enjoy all sorts of comments by complete strangers about how little respect I (like all overweight people) have for myself.  I think they’re wrong.  I think the fact that I no longer let a quest to achieve someone else’s definition of beauty define my life is anything but a lack of self-respect.  It’s a just a different set of priorities.

So as the cosmetic lady offered me a compact case and a mystery bottle of beauty glop to test the size of my mini suitcase, I shook my head and grinned.

Actually, I’m using it for my art supplies,” I said.  “I’ll just pack my toothbrush and toothpaste in a Ziplock bag.”  Her smile faded a bit, and then she nodded, turning to help another customer who might still be saved from misplaced priorities.

Our Common Threads Give Away is underway, and this month’s guest artist, Karen Heenan of the blog, Sewing By the Seat of My Pants, is offering a stuffed lion.  Made from recycled sweaters with a t-shirt jersey fringe you can win him.

 

To enter the Common Thread Give-a-way, leave a comment on her blog at  Sewing By the Seat of My Pants,and then visit each of our other artists:   Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, Kim Gifford and Jane McMillan!

 

Most of the time living off grid here on Minister Hill is easier than being connected.  We never lose power, our wood stove heats water in winter and the sun heats it in summer.  Ironically, spring is one of the few times when we feel a bit disconnected.

Normally it’s not that big a deal – I save my showers for after a workout when I’m hot anyway (gardening, cleaning, chasing the kids).  Thing1 does his part by taking cold showers, Thing2 is more than happy to skip them altogether, and we get through shoulder season – that time of year when we get too much rain to heat the water with solar and too much heat to want a fire in the woodstove – without too much pain.

Except this year.  Our dishwasher died which meant for about six weeks during the resuscitation attempts, burial and cash-ectomy for a new one, we were back to doing dishes by hand.  The Dishwasher-less Experience during shoulder season involved an introductory week or two of choosing to use hot water for washing a pot or the crew.  Then, in an effort to preserve a few drops of luke warm water for the shower – I began heating water for dishes on the gas stove a la Little House on Minister Hill.

We adopted the dishwasher when we went off grid after learning that it actually used less water than doing dishes the old-fashioned way and deciding five years of hand washing was enough of the Little-Old-House-in-the-Big-Woods experience.  Watching the pile in the sink grow for the better part of two months, I regularly wondered if I should continue doing my part for behavioural science by seeing if our teenager (who is assigned to the emptying of the dead dishwasher) would move himself to wash a dish before we ended up using paper plates or if I should just call the experiment a washout.  Like my clutter-based child psychology experiments, the answer to the question of who will deal with the mess when it gets bad enough is ‘Mom.’