Our Son is 6

Our son is 6.

His 7th birthday is weeks away.

He will balance a seemingly insufficient number

of toes

on the tiny ledge made by 

our very old and tall floor trim

with hands flat on walls on either side and call out

"Mom. Look." as calmly and self assured as 

I am just as certain I never was.

We nod and toss the words

'stunt man' to linger in the air behind us,

and for his 7th birthday, 

discuss whether getting him stunt ramps

for his bike

is a good idea,

and how getting two is

probably better than just one,

because--he will go up very high as fast as he can,

and always gaining, shaving slights of seconds off his personal best 

and down again, 

but it will be smoother

than falling off a cliff.

A Couple of Girl Things

1. There are not many girls in my daughter's 1st grade class who have their hair done up cute.  They are a strangly, wispy, hair-falling-in-their-faces kind of crowd.  I am glad she is not the only one.  I am glad they all don't listen to their parents, that they forget barrettes every day, and go through their school day with reckless abandon for propriety and a fervent concentration on the task at hand.

2. I remember one instance in particular of a fellow student--a boy--sexually harassing me at age 10, under the guise of teasing.  Age 10 folks!  I guess he thought it was teasing.  He called my Girl Scout beret a nipple and said it looked like I was wearing a nipple on my head.  Here's why it wasn't teasing:

a. Using a part of girl's anatomy to shame her is not ok.  It's misogyny in fact.

b. Calling attention to a pre-teen's anything to make fun of it is not ok.

c. Calling attention to a way of dressing by making fun of it is bullying.

d. The Girl Scout organization exists to give girls confidence, inspire leadership, and create equality.  By mocking the uniform and physical representation of this, he not only undermined all those qualities for me, he disrespected a uniform.  Something his veteran family members would probably not be ok with either.  

e. I'd never heard him make fun of the Boy Scout uniforms seen around school.  If in fact he didn't make fun of them, it means he might have respect for a uniform, just not a girl one, and probably because he didn't see it as a "real" uniform.

And if you say it's because there was no girly beret, you can stop right there and look up #metoo.

And here is where I feel stunted: I should not have to list off these reasons.  

I can't believe I have to state this. Since the election I've been tongue-tied. I am stupefied by the insistence I have to make about things you shouldn't do to women.  I thought we were past it.  I don't have the words anymore because I haven't needed them. I'm open-mouthed and dumbfounded...and left looking like an idiot who can't speak intelligibly.  I could scream my angst but that would just look worse.  

Am I whining about how I have to relearn how to stick up for myself, poor baby?  

Damn right I am.  Y'all should have learned that lesson seven ways from Sunday by now.

It's taken a while to feel like I can go back to the basics enough, to be able to give words to why calling a girl in her Girl Scout uniform a nipplehead is not acceptable.  

I find myself going back through my life, suddenly thinking to count the #metoo events I might have had.  Because here's the other thing: my god, women don't even keep count anymore of the everyday crap they get.  It's only the egregious things that stay on her mind.  

But this kid, completely unaware of why what he was doing was wrong, set the stage for that dismissal. I remember being so ashamed that he had said that. To my face.  Out loud.  In front of people.  In a school room.  So many rings of where it should have stopped.

Where was the teacher?  I don't know.  Maybe it was before school actually started.  Maybe he was dealing with another bullying situation.  It doesn't matter.  The teacher can redirect each conversation they hear, or situation they see.  But they don't see everything. And isn't it how you act when no one's looking that demonstrates your true character?  

Why didn't the teacher intervene isn't the problem.

So this boy thought he was being funny.  He'd been taught that.  Or allowed to think it.  

But he calculated the use of a sensual word--nipple--to make me more embarrassed.  He understood the sexual nature of his teasing and the power that gave him.

And he didn't even hesitate to bully and discredit another human by abusing that power.  That's the real problem.

I felt it was my fault for wearing that hat.  Something I'd actually been quite proud of when I got dressed.  And then he made a crude observation and I trusted it, because we are taught to.  Boys are given more credit for their conclusions. And suddenly I felt so stupid for not having seen it first.  I should have caught that flaw before he had the chance to and not worn the beret. All this "she was asking for it" happening to a 10 year old girl.  Happening in her own head.  Without being raped, without being groped. It doesn't take an egregious action to engender and indoctrinate.  

It feels the same.  The shame, the undermining of self worth, the fault--it is the same track, just earlier in the road.  

Which means it's earlier in the road for him too. By not standing up to him, by allowing him to think he was only teasing, downplaying the severity of his actions, we raise these boys.

Don't.  Don't do it anymore.  

​If you want better girls, encourage them, don't belittle them.  Listen to your girls.  Listen to me: If you want a better world for your girls--for everyone--raise better boys.​

Are You Hip With The Young Kids?

I work in Books.  So the continual question of Are bookstores still valid? is ever present.  Do you have an online presence?  If you don't, you must be sunk.  How is your social media?  How many followers?  And the always grody question: Are you hip with the young kids?  (Gag me with a spoon, but it had to be said.)  Those young kids now being Millennials.  And everyone is scrambling to find out who they are, what they like, how to tap into their world.  They are as big as the Baby Boomers are.  My generation is sandwiched between 2 incredible, vastly different buying super powers.

At my job, our Marketing Dept is also having an on-going brainstorm about Millennials and just like every church seems to be, we are trying to figure out how to draw in young people.  People not necessarily attached to their parents.

It started with this idea of M's rejuvenating local shopping and neighborhood places.  Independent bookstores are seeing an upswing if you can believe it.  More are opening, and more of those by young people.  It's natural; people grow up and eventually start to do adult things.  But there has been a marked revitalization of a neighborhood mentality, of community, of shopping locally, keeping dollars in the area, partly because of this younger crowd.  I came of age with big box stores being awesome, then the fight to keep the little guys.  M's have grown up with an easy balance between online shopping, (not the horror to them it was to some of us,) and local stores.

Our discussion evolved to coming off the idea of your choices and habits being open to the possibility of being "hacked"--not literally, more that your options are subject to someone else's preferences than your own--by the new Amazon practice of allowing anyone to win the bid on a Buy button, possibly pushing publishers off of their own book sales.

One coworker commented that Millennials think nothing of the fact that once you put it out there, yeah, it's on the internet, so what? because they have grown up with this.  People of even slightly older generations might be worried about their information being actually hacked, or find the notion that choices are being fed to them via unseen algorithms disconcerting, but Millennials accept this and even use it themselves, or appreciate the suggestions.  Not that they are mindless--not at all.  They are simply aware that this is the process and are unafraid of it.  Older generations are alarmed at finding themselves in an information bubble whereas Millennials are like "Duh.  Of course there are bubbles."

So, to continue this thread, I had a new idea to throw into the mix:

If Millennials have grown up in this way, with a greater awareness and acceptance of this, does it also make them more capable of unplugging?  For example, is unplugging as natural for them as their acceptance of internet culture?  Are they better at it because it's natural?

And does that inform our marketing efforts of physical books, an atmosphere, a non-internet experience, when they choose to have it?

-- 

Kindly Optimism

I've been exposed recently, through a lecture and some podcasts, to the newest generation of young adults.  Which is not to say that people 18-25 aren't a part of my normal day, as they are for anyone living in the world, but I've been specifically subjected to their collective point of view through a couple pointed circumstances.

The first was a lecture, during a Sunday morning gathering.  My place of worship is not the normal church--not a church at all really--and that's part of what attracted this young woman to our group.  So when I say Sunday morning service, I don't mean, "at church".  I mean the place where me and bunch of other people go and sit through the semblance of a standard church service program like readings, gathering words, an offering, etc.  But the community is values based rather than doctrinal so any mention of Jesus holds as much power for us as Martin Luther King or Rumi.  Being values-based was the point of her talk and the reason for her visit.  And this was one of her points.  The talk was about Millennials and their search for humanitarian rather than religious spirituality.

And it exposed me to a mind set that, although I think myself enlightened for being part of this Sunday group who is concerned with the root values rather than the dogma, was an eye-opening experience into kindness as a way of life.

I am a mixture of cynicism and optimism. I love the scathing set-downs of 19th century literature but I am also and generally an upbeat person.  So I thought.  Being grounded in literature, irony is like air.  So a sunny disposition is always paired with a foible, however small.  Being compassionate and kind is at the heart of every teaching of my Sunday gatherings and I try to follow closely.  But it's more of a call to action, a challenge to consistently remember. This young woman brought kindness as I know it to a new level.  It wasn't a personal struggle, not an epic battle to try to find commonality with enemies.  She and her generation just feel it's always better to remember to give the benefit of the doubt and that opposing opinions have value.  My struggle emerges from an evolution of Christian doctrine: love thy enemy.  Her doctrine is 1 step beyond that.  Her perception comes from seeing values as the first step, not an evolved second step.

And I speak broadly about her generation because she herself cited other published and recognized people in her global age group. 

I realized that although I think of myself as an optimist, I don't maintain the idea that world will get better and better.  I don't hold out hope that it will, believe that reality is possible.  And she does.  What's more, she's not sure how she and her fellows will get there, but they believe that the way will open for them.  And not naively.  Perhaps with unadulterated buoyancy, but not without understanding the problems of the world.  These young people are not ignorant, nor are they ignorant in their assumptions.  They did not grow up with "Do or do not. There is no try."* They know there will be setbacks and they accept this as part of the process. They are simply undaunted.  In a way that I am daily...not.  They don't see the world as kind-hearted; they know better.   But they go kind-heartedly into the world.  It's the difference between me telling my son, "Every time you don't recycle when you could have, you are ruining your future!" and her saying, "We need to reach out to people and help make recycling easier so that everyone can do it." 

*To be fair to Yoda, and his whole universe which I still love, his point was to be all in.  Make up your mind that this is what you are going to do and keep doing it until you get it.  Believe that you can and you will.  So essentially the same thing as what my lecturer believes.  It's all semantics of course, but isn't that part of the point, how the message gets delivered?  What helps to shape your mindfullness?

I like this view.  I'll expose myself to more of it.  I'll be curious to see how my pre-teen son grows into young adulthood and what optimism looks like then.

Being Young

I am young.  I know this.  I knew it at 16, when my grandparents couldn't believe how fast I'd grown up.  I knew that I would one day say the same thing of some young person.  I was never naive enough to think I wouldn't one day be a grandparent as well, or a great aunt, and have those same thoughts.  I didn't know how it would feel, to see a baby I could remember stuffing cake into her mouth at her 2-year old birthday party suddenly almost graduating from high school, but I knew enough to know that someday I would feel it.

I knew it at 25 when my insurance rate went down and I suddenly felt like an adult with responsibility, wise and with a car.  I knew this was lie and I was actually still young and when someone, a co-worker maybe, 50 years old, told me, "You're still just a kid!"  And they were right.   I knew they were.  I was young, but 50 wasn't old.  Fifty was just later.  80 was old.

Now I am 42 and I know that I am still young.  I know that I am almost the people I thought were middle aged when I had my first child at 30.  I am almost middle age.  Might be except Middle Age is now older than 42.  But the 81 year old scoffs.  "You're so young!"   And now, 81 doesn't seem old.  91 maybe...

And I will know when I'm 92, even while I am that daffy old lady relegated to the comfy chair in the corner, thankful to not to have to pay attention so closely and left to doze off if I want,   I will know that in my heart and mind I'm really only 60.  92 is the new 60.

Even this, my vision of my 92 year old life, proves that I am young.  Only the young would assume that there is time to rest on the horizon.  For at each age, do we not find that there is always something more to do?  Some other cause to put our efforts to?  We are never dozy.  Tired from exams, yes.  Exhausted with a new baby, yes.  Fed up and frustrated with those we think should act according to their age, position and status--yes.  But to just wander off in a dream?  No one but the young think this frivolity is what is waiting in the land of Getting Older.

Paying rent terrified me when I first had to.  It terrified me that I would need to come up with and pay $400 a month for a place to live.  How was that accomplished?  How did adults garner such sums?  I was young.  I didn't realize that saving money is not the same as making it.  Squirreling away birthday checks and chore money, babysitting fees over a period of months does not compare with a job and earning potential.  Rent represented a leap of faith in a world I had not experienced but was expected to assimilate into.  And it happened; I did it. I worked 40 hours; I paid $400 dollars.  And more.  Because there are other adult things like the price of gas per gallon and soup on sale.
Parenthood is exciting.  I was not scared about being a parent, just hopeful that I could be consistently as kind and inspiring in reality as I envisioned myself to be when imagining imparting advice and guidance to my little ones.  Paying rent prepared me I guess.  Or Life keeps happening, whether you pay the rent or not.  If the baby is on the way, it will be here whether you are prepared or not.  I am young, but I know these things.  I know I don't completely understand them.  But even in this there is wisdom: be open-hearted; be willing.  In this there is a kernel of what we always know, even before we learn it.  I cling to the kernel, try to remember that I know it, that I can recall it when I need to, whatever my age.  I am young; be young with me.