hostages.
Joan Didion once told an interviewer that she didn't think it was possible to have children without having a sense that you've failed them. "You are always failing them, and they are always your hostages." It's a stark, arch observation. I don't know what it would be to lose my daughter before I die--Didion's daughter was just 39 when she died--but one of the central paradoxes of parenting, for me, has been wanting both to protect my children from terrible things and to nurture them into worldly people, critical thinkers who learn to navigate pain and loss and pleasure and purpose. I remember when Cameron was a baby, holding his small, warm perfect body next to mine and almost weeping at the unbearable thought that he would someday grow up and be out of my eyesight and be exquisitely vulnerable.
But I digress. When Didion says our children are our hostages, she means something different than the outside world pitching in, as it does, to insult and injure our children as it does, in due time, as a matter of course. She must mean that we hold them hostage with our own personal failings--when we are selfish, or self-centered, or, perhaps, even possessing a self (is that not the real injury, that we fail them when we dare to break the warmth and steady dream state of the womb and the well fed body, a body which has never known cold, or distress, which we do from the moment and in the moment of birth)--we don't offer them a choice of mothers or fathers or parents. My five year olds chant: you get what you get and you don't get upset.
I don't know, Joan. Hostage is hard for me--it conjures up for me alternatives. Pay the ransom and you will be returned to what? What is the ransom, where is the before? It's too Freudian or Jungian or Lacanian for my tastes.
Always failing them, now. That's a construct I recognize. And forgive. If you know me, you know that I think consistency is overrated, that I assume my children will be in therapy, about me, before they turn thirty. I fully expect to be forgiven for my almost remarkable list of failings--I failed to protect them from divorce, I worked late, I didn't check the homework, I found it much easier to have a short list of things to which I would say no, rather than battles when I said no and couldn't enforce things, I spoke openly and broadly about grown-up things when they might have preferred silence, I didn't have enough money at any of the critical moments, I had babies when some of them were teenagers, I was a young mom, I was an old mom, I stayed home, I worked. We never went to Disney. But God, I tried. I just loved them and love them fiercely, and it is in that love that I hope, I'll admit, expect to be forgiven.
But this, getting cancer now and really introducing death into all of our lives. I feel phenomenally, illogically, deeply guilty. How can I do this to them? How can my inopportune disappearance--right when they start to marry, to have their own children, or, and my breath catches, right when they are in first grade, or second grade, if I am lucky--how can I be forgiven for that terrible, terrifying abandonment and how much love can I bank against that moment?
I know. It's not my fault I have cancer. It really doesn't matter. It's unforgivable. I know that. And don't even get me started on what I am doing to my parents.
I went to the Social Security office in Lowell today. I don't think that sentence needs any embellishment for you to know exactly how hellish that two hours was. Except that right before I walked in and punched in some numbers and received my slip of paper with the number 376 on it, someone pooped in her chair. And somehow there was poop everywhere. That's the word we used, all of us affected by this poor woman's inability to keep herself together: poop. Apparently there was poop on the floor in the bathroom. In the sink. On several chairs. And the social security office had a security guard. And people at the different numbered booths. But they had no one designated or willing to clean up that poop. And none of us customers were willing. So we all just sat in this big room, which literally smelled of shit, poop, excrement, you got it, and patiently waited for our numbers to be called.
I was there because my birthdate in the social security system is June 30th. And my birthday is May 30th. I mean, that's what I think, and my mother agrees. But the system has it wrong and it is not simple to fix and the glitch matters now that I am sick and suddenly eligible for social security benefits. Actually, the fix should have been simple, but when the exhausted man behind counter number 12 took my birth certificate, his brow furrowed (as I knew it would--you all knew this wouldn't work out from the moment you heard about the poop, or maybe even from the moment you heard I was in Lowell, which really isn't fair--they have a wonderful folk festival and Miss Kim, my savior, is from Lowell). My birth certificate is the original--how I have managed to hold on to it all these years is anyone's guess--it's yellowed and folded and it's awfully thin. And it looked like a forgery to booth number twelve. It is so old that it contains an ancient warning to get immunized for whooping cough but NOT the issuance date, and thus it is not compatible with the social security computer system. Next in line?
With tears of frustration in my eye, I left the office today knowing I will return again, soon. It just took five minutes to order a new birth certificate from Alameda County. Next time I will sit next to someone else while I wait my turn. Today I sat next to a woman who had witnessed the pooping and she just could not get over it. She would lapse into disgruntled quiet, but every few minutes she would mutter under her breath, "Who poops in public like that?" With her muttering, she seemed like the crazy one after awhile and I just wanted her to be quiet.
Miss Kim is Kim. She lives with us, when she isn't spending weekends with her parents in Lowell or at their lake house. She is our nanny and our dear friend, and she has become family. She takes care of the boys, and she takes care of me, and lately, she has begun taking care of our house, because she can't, I think, bear the chaos and the very real chance that any one of us could be buried under the accumulating art work, permission slips, medical bills, IEPs, newspapers and cards. If you have been to visit, you have probably met Kim. (The boys call her Miss Kim, and sometimes I mistakenly call her that and feel silly). She is quiet around strangers, but she is whip smart and funny and loves the boys and has become one of my closest people. I am so grateful to have her, and we both say, it takes a village.
Joan Didion never struck me as someone who had a village. She presents this life--this charmed, doomed writing life which is populated by famous and near-famous people, who are artists and writers and film stars. But you don't hear a lot of stories that make it seem like Joan's house needed cleaning, or that Quintana needed a Miss Kim, or that Joan really was grateful for all the baked macaroni and cheese her friends sent over after her husband died. I guess I assume she never really ate because she looks like a wide-eyed bird to my gallumphing horsiness, or she had exquisite tiny meals delivered to her on bicycles making their way through darkened, rainy Manhattan streets.
I told the social security man in booth twelve that if it was going to make my paperwork come out okay, I would be glad to change my birthday to June 30th. He declined my offer.
If this was a science fiction story, he would have agreed. And then some sort of reverse butterfly theory/chaos magic would have happened. I would have noticed it first with my mother at tea after the social security office. She would suddenly seem like a stranger to me, even though she looked the same as my real mother. Perhaps her hair was slightly darker, or was I misremembering? Then I would have driven home and the landscaping would be different. Perhaps there would be a house built in what is now the corn field next door. And gradually the reader would realize that in changing my birthday, I had changed the course of my life. It was just off by a month--one would think such a thing wouldn't matter at all, to quote Dr.Seuss, who just had a birthday himself last week, but it would. I would have the same life, but it would all be slightly different, askew: enough to bother me, enough to make me feel like my family was filled with strangers, that the dresses in my closet were not the type I would have chosen. And how would the story end? Would I be muttering too, "This is not my house? this is not my beautiful wife?" Or would it be more sinister to have me go to sleep uncomfortable, fretting, and awake refreshed in the morning, feeling like it was all a bad dream, of course this is my life, of course these are my people.
No matter. I'm stuck with May 30th, stuck with cancer, stuck with massive failings and stuck with hoping for forgiveness. And my children and parents, because presumably they will have to live with me dying, will indeed become that much more worldly, that much more attuned to loss and grief and love and purpose. I think they will come through fine, if only because they have each other (and of course, therapy). I don't know if I would forgive me though. I certainly haven't yet.
Maybe hostage isn't so far off. But perhaps it is hostages with Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages who cannot help but fall in love with their captors, hoping against hope that the rescue never comes, that they are never returned to that state before, with their more perfect mothers and fathers, instead of these criminals who have stolen them away.
But I digress. When Didion says our children are our hostages, she means something different than the outside world pitching in, as it does, to insult and injure our children as it does, in due time, as a matter of course. She must mean that we hold them hostage with our own personal failings--when we are selfish, or self-centered, or, perhaps, even possessing a self (is that not the real injury, that we fail them when we dare to break the warmth and steady dream state of the womb and the well fed body, a body which has never known cold, or distress, which we do from the moment and in the moment of birth)--we don't offer them a choice of mothers or fathers or parents. My five year olds chant: you get what you get and you don't get upset.
I don't know, Joan. Hostage is hard for me--it conjures up for me alternatives. Pay the ransom and you will be returned to what? What is the ransom, where is the before? It's too Freudian or Jungian or Lacanian for my tastes.
Always failing them, now. That's a construct I recognize. And forgive. If you know me, you know that I think consistency is overrated, that I assume my children will be in therapy, about me, before they turn thirty. I fully expect to be forgiven for my almost remarkable list of failings--I failed to protect them from divorce, I worked late, I didn't check the homework, I found it much easier to have a short list of things to which I would say no, rather than battles when I said no and couldn't enforce things, I spoke openly and broadly about grown-up things when they might have preferred silence, I didn't have enough money at any of the critical moments, I had babies when some of them were teenagers, I was a young mom, I was an old mom, I stayed home, I worked. We never went to Disney. But God, I tried. I just loved them and love them fiercely, and it is in that love that I hope, I'll admit, expect to be forgiven.
But this, getting cancer now and really introducing death into all of our lives. I feel phenomenally, illogically, deeply guilty. How can I do this to them? How can my inopportune disappearance--right when they start to marry, to have their own children, or, and my breath catches, right when they are in first grade, or second grade, if I am lucky--how can I be forgiven for that terrible, terrifying abandonment and how much love can I bank against that moment?
I know. It's not my fault I have cancer. It really doesn't matter. It's unforgivable. I know that. And don't even get me started on what I am doing to my parents.
I went to the Social Security office in Lowell today. I don't think that sentence needs any embellishment for you to know exactly how hellish that two hours was. Except that right before I walked in and punched in some numbers and received my slip of paper with the number 376 on it, someone pooped in her chair. And somehow there was poop everywhere. That's the word we used, all of us affected by this poor woman's inability to keep herself together: poop. Apparently there was poop on the floor in the bathroom. In the sink. On several chairs. And the social security office had a security guard. And people at the different numbered booths. But they had no one designated or willing to clean up that poop. And none of us customers were willing. So we all just sat in this big room, which literally smelled of shit, poop, excrement, you got it, and patiently waited for our numbers to be called.
I was there because my birthdate in the social security system is June 30th. And my birthday is May 30th. I mean, that's what I think, and my mother agrees. But the system has it wrong and it is not simple to fix and the glitch matters now that I am sick and suddenly eligible for social security benefits. Actually, the fix should have been simple, but when the exhausted man behind counter number 12 took my birth certificate, his brow furrowed (as I knew it would--you all knew this wouldn't work out from the moment you heard about the poop, or maybe even from the moment you heard I was in Lowell, which really isn't fair--they have a wonderful folk festival and Miss Kim, my savior, is from Lowell). My birth certificate is the original--how I have managed to hold on to it all these years is anyone's guess--it's yellowed and folded and it's awfully thin. And it looked like a forgery to booth number twelve. It is so old that it contains an ancient warning to get immunized for whooping cough but NOT the issuance date, and thus it is not compatible with the social security computer system. Next in line?
With tears of frustration in my eye, I left the office today knowing I will return again, soon. It just took five minutes to order a new birth certificate from Alameda County. Next time I will sit next to someone else while I wait my turn. Today I sat next to a woman who had witnessed the pooping and she just could not get over it. She would lapse into disgruntled quiet, but every few minutes she would mutter under her breath, "Who poops in public like that?" With her muttering, she seemed like the crazy one after awhile and I just wanted her to be quiet.
Miss Kim is Kim. She lives with us, when she isn't spending weekends with her parents in Lowell or at their lake house. She is our nanny and our dear friend, and she has become family. She takes care of the boys, and she takes care of me, and lately, she has begun taking care of our house, because she can't, I think, bear the chaos and the very real chance that any one of us could be buried under the accumulating art work, permission slips, medical bills, IEPs, newspapers and cards. If you have been to visit, you have probably met Kim. (The boys call her Miss Kim, and sometimes I mistakenly call her that and feel silly). She is quiet around strangers, but she is whip smart and funny and loves the boys and has become one of my closest people. I am so grateful to have her, and we both say, it takes a village.
Joan Didion never struck me as someone who had a village. She presents this life--this charmed, doomed writing life which is populated by famous and near-famous people, who are artists and writers and film stars. But you don't hear a lot of stories that make it seem like Joan's house needed cleaning, or that Quintana needed a Miss Kim, or that Joan really was grateful for all the baked macaroni and cheese her friends sent over after her husband died. I guess I assume she never really ate because she looks like a wide-eyed bird to my gallumphing horsiness, or she had exquisite tiny meals delivered to her on bicycles making their way through darkened, rainy Manhattan streets.
I told the social security man in booth twelve that if it was going to make my paperwork come out okay, I would be glad to change my birthday to June 30th. He declined my offer.
If this was a science fiction story, he would have agreed. And then some sort of reverse butterfly theory/chaos magic would have happened. I would have noticed it first with my mother at tea after the social security office. She would suddenly seem like a stranger to me, even though she looked the same as my real mother. Perhaps her hair was slightly darker, or was I misremembering? Then I would have driven home and the landscaping would be different. Perhaps there would be a house built in what is now the corn field next door. And gradually the reader would realize that in changing my birthday, I had changed the course of my life. It was just off by a month--one would think such a thing wouldn't matter at all, to quote Dr.Seuss, who just had a birthday himself last week, but it would. I would have the same life, but it would all be slightly different, askew: enough to bother me, enough to make me feel like my family was filled with strangers, that the dresses in my closet were not the type I would have chosen. And how would the story end? Would I be muttering too, "This is not my house? this is not my beautiful wife?" Or would it be more sinister to have me go to sleep uncomfortable, fretting, and awake refreshed in the morning, feeling like it was all a bad dream, of course this is my life, of course these are my people.
No matter. I'm stuck with May 30th, stuck with cancer, stuck with massive failings and stuck with hoping for forgiveness. And my children and parents, because presumably they will have to live with me dying, will indeed become that much more worldly, that much more attuned to loss and grief and love and purpose. I think they will come through fine, if only because they have each other (and of course, therapy). I don't know if I would forgive me though. I certainly haven't yet.
Maybe hostage isn't so far off. But perhaps it is hostages with Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages who cannot help but fall in love with their captors, hoping against hope that the rescue never comes, that they are never returned to that state before, with their more perfect mothers and fathers, instead of these criminals who have stolen them away.
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