Little icon lost

Our dear friend Tom visited us this past weekend. My former roommate, Matt’s former colleague, our groomsman, the Thomas I took to Haiti with me the second time I went, my date for the fanciest ball I ever attended, and photographer for many, many trips around St. Louis.  We used to get up early on a Saturday morning, to explore an old graveyard, or an abandoned house, or the train tracks in East St. Louis.  I would climb, enter, trespass, go up staircases and marvel at old peeling wallpapers, peer into chapel doors, and he would take photos.

Here is one shot he got at one of our favorite neighborhood places, a life-sized stations of the Cross, with holy grottos and various chapels, outdoors.  I don’t have anything else to say, just that I love this photograph, and feel like the little figurine looks like a storybook character gone lost and found.

Flotsam

Inspired by my husband (!), I will offer a numerated list.  In the spirit of blogging, even when I don’t have time to build a narrative.

1.  The students’ school play is next week.  And I would love to have one more week.  Maybe this is always the way.  I danced with the fairies today, in the empty gym.  They have added Shakespeare’s original words, “You spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedge-hogs be not seen/newts and blind worms do no wrong/Come not near our fairy queen,” (for example) into “Sweet Dreams” by Beyonce.  I think they think they sound pretty fierce, but in reality, especially in the gym with late afternoon light, all alone in their stocking feet, they sound awfully sweet.

2. I watch the Home Shopping Network, or QVC, in the middle of the night when I am too anxious to sleep.  I prefer handbags and jewelry. I like to hear all the ways they describe the pieces. I fancy that I would make a good on-air speaker about various pieces of sparkle.  I also like how they always have people (ladies, usually) calling in, even if it’s the middle of the night, to talk about what they just bought.  I lay on the couch, and listen to all of the ladies’ voices, and slowly turn the volume down, until I can barely hear them.  And after a few hours, I can go to sleep that way.

3.  I have found the perfect very cold weather warmth-fix.  I wear knee socks, and leg warmers, and soft tights, underneath pants.  And then I am pretty much set.  If it’s above 30 degrees, I’m comfortable with the three first layers and a skirt.  I can’t believe I went 30+ years without really dressing warm enough to go out comfortably.

3.5  I was sort of the ragamuffin kid who might have seemed mildly neglected by the school ladies.  I have several very embarrassing and specific memories about not wearing a coat to school, and being made to wear a coat from the lost-and-found box by the secretary.  I was mortified each time, and believed those coats to be dirty, and did not want to be seen in them.  Now, as a teacher, I wonder about those kids that don’t come to school in coats.

4. I always found Legos boring as a kid.  I just wanted to put them into a giant stack, one giant stack.  What was the big deal?  With wooden blocks, you could build doll- or stuffed animals-sized houses.  And if you stuck the wrong two shapes together with Legos, they wouldn’t stick.  My major playtime activity was playing school with my dollies, animals, and little sister when she was old enough.  I made class rosters, and attendance sheets, and had elaborate lessons. Jamie Leigh actually learned to read by age three, so I suppose my curriculum was successful.  I wonder if she has happy memories of those times, or just remembers me as bossy.

5. I wish I could play a musical instrument. I can sing, and I can even read music after several years of church choir, but I’ve always wished I could play the piano or some kind of instrument.  Is it too late?  It wasn’t too late for languages, so I hold out hope. But then I worry that it’s ridiculous for someone my age to be taking music lessons.  It’s like when I was in my late 20s and had two cats, to which I was heavily and dramatically allergic.  Twice a week, I’d go to the allergist to get two allergy shots.  In the waiting room, it’d be me and a whole bunch of schoolchildren.  I could either read _Highlights_ or _Parenting_ magazine; nothing in between.  I’m working up the bravery to pick up an instrument: let’s put it that way.

(photo detail taken at the Jefferson Market Public Library)

the Livery Lorax

Small confession: I really like to take a livery car to work.

Up where I live, there are no yellow cabs. There are pretty occasionally livery cabs, which are the shiny black towncars that one calls when one is “Calling a car.”  Technically (legally, I guess) they are not supposed to pick up “street hails.” In my neighborhood, that doesn’t matter.

[There is a separate post in here about the "unofficial livery drivers," who stand around the corner by the Dunkin' Donuts. If you can't find a real livery car, you can walk up to the group, and say, "Taxi?"  One of them will take you to their car or van, and drive you to wherever you want for ten dollars. I find this incredibly convenient. Matt is a little freaked out that I do this.]

Moving on…  Last night I slept through the night for the first time in several days. I haven’t been taking seroquel, because it makes me very sleepy of a morning, and I’ve wanted to get right up.  And I’m out of selexa, my daily anti-anxiety, and have been since the wedding. (Come on, health care bill!)  But I took some last night, and finally slept.

I woke up struggling to get really awake, and needing to rush. I also had brownies to take for my kids, and a giant piece of cardboard to fashion with the stage crew into a moon for Titania’s bed.  And it was snowing, snowing, snowing.

So I hailed a livery cab.  Actually, I think all the livery drivers around here know I occasionally take them, because often when one passes me, they honk lightly. If I want one, I turn my head and nod.

The snow was beautiful, and Leo (the driver) and I both mentioned it.  As we passed by the zoo and the botanical garden, I mentioned how pretty the snow-covered trees in the zoo were.  He gestured to the garden, and said that the garden was so beautiful.  I agreed, and said nothing as we drove by it, a long look at hundreds of trees, laden with snow.

He said, “You know that movie… the witch?”  (English is his third or fourth language, not his first.)  I said, excitedly, “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe?!  Yes!”  He said, “The garden looks…like that movie.”  ”Oh, yes, ” I agreed. It really does.

There was a beat while we exited, and turned onto our main boulevard.  I’m guessing he said what he said next based on the enthusiasm of my response to the Narnia movie.

He said, “Do you ever think… trees are… alone?”  I took him to mean, correctly, “lonely.”  They did look lonely, some of them, standing there in the snow.  ”Yes, sure.  I think maybe.”  He said, “Like… in the jungle they are… there are living things.”  I thought he meant that our city trees didn’t have much living habitation.

I said, “Yes, but I think— trees maybe have a different time. ”  I was thinking of the Ents in Tolkien.  I said, “Like, we humans are [gesturing rapid movement] rush, rush, rush, and animals are [gesturing] rush, rush rush.  And trees are [slowing voice] in a longer kind of time.”

“Yes, yes,” he said.  ”Yes.  But you know: the trees, they are living.”

“Yes,” I said, “You can tell– they’re living creatures like we are.”  He nodded.

He said, “I will tell you.  Yesterday? I saw a tree, I was walking?  I put my hand on it [he mimes this], and then I–how do you say? [mimes hugging]“

I said, “Embrace. You hugged the tree?”  He said, “Yes, yes.  I want… it feeling inside, I can feel.”

I said, “It’s like: it’s energy, and energy moving inside it– it can influence the energy in you.”

He nodded eagerly: “Yes, yes.”

We were quiet for a few blocks.  He said, “No one talks about this.”  I agreed that no one really does.

As we turned the last corner before the school, he expressed amazement that some people don’t believe in creation (“I believe in creation and evolution,” he said) and said that we must be egotistical.  Actually, he used a Spanish word for “egotistical” but it must be a cognate, because “ego” was its root, and I echoed, “Yes, egotistical.”  Leo thinks that we build robots and things, and want to be the only creators, and forget that we also are some sort of creation.

After I got out of the car, and he opened the trunk to get out my giant cardboard piece, he said, “It’s good to talk. It helps the thinking.”

For the rest of the day, every odd tree I saw, I thought, “No one is wondering about you, tree.”  Except for a very few.

What do you see when you look at this woman?

I have a great new blog to recommend. Here’s how it started:  One of our photographers, on her blog, posted a no-make up photo of herself, and noted how tired and bad she looked.  I commented, writing that she didn’t see what I saw, and wouldn’t it be interesting/powerful  if we believed what our women friends said about our appearances. That is: we are hard on ourselves, but maybe we’re not seeing ourselves accurately.

Soon, Jodie had written a new post, in response to my comment.  She put up a photo of me, and of another woman, and asked for comment.  It was wonderful– wonderful to first hear my own self-criticisms, and then see what commenters (mostly strangers to me) had to say about what _they_ saw when they looked at my photo, and then so cool to see how many women said, “We need this,” “I’m going to do this with women I know on my blog,” “This is amazing.”

Clearly, Jodie had hit a chord.  Now, there is in fact a new blog devoted to this project: The Fresh Reflection. It’s really incredible.  In today’s photo, the subject herself commented– and she mentioned her “Jay Leno chin,” which she dislikes. Which is incredible because: when I (and others, obviously) see her photo, we see so much beauty.

It gives me pause. What if I have children, what if I have daughters? Is there a way to keep that negative inner voice from ever beginning, to stifle self-criticism about one’s own beauty?  The women I know, and have as friends, are a force: they are every one gorgeous, and also brilliant, amazing, resilient, and kind. Generous. And physically attractive? YES.  And yet, I have heard _each one_ of them disparage her own physical beauty.  What is up with us?

As I asked Jodie in a comment, “How would we move through the world differently if we believed what our women friends told us about ourselves?”

Images

I don’t want to write about Haiti, or talk about it.  I was getting my nails done when the news came on last Tuesday. Wolf Blitzer actually, God help us, asked someone there if he could hear any children crying for help.  Later, Pat Robertson’s take on the situation made my blood boil, and I was unable to sleep for the anger.

I’ve been watching old episodes of _The West Wing_ of a morning, instead of listening to the radio news.  I’ve de-friended two friends on Facebook because of bone-headed or thoughtless comments that made me so angry that de-friending them was better than responding.

Maybe in a few months I will write about what I am thinking, and the people I am thinking, about up on a mountain north of Petionville, and the feelings of complicity, shame, anger, and despair that tinge every thought and experience I’ve ever had with Haiti.  For now, here are some photographs of children and places I know.

Looking down a mountain at Tom, former roommate, middle school teacher, and med student.  The plots on the opposite mountain are farmed by hand.

A ruin.

Tigga with bubble.

Steven, taking his turn.

Steven, joyful.

Josephine.

A school boy.

Soccer in Fermathe.

Learning the alphabet.

Teaching.

View of Port au Prince from a roof top.

View down a street in Petionville.

These children live at and are supported by Wings of Hope, in Fermathe, Haiti.  It is the only orphanage of its kind in Haiti, and serves street children, and abandoned disabled children, along with its sister orphanages in Port au Prince and Jacmel.

My hands

This past weekend, I started making many things with my hands. I’ve been using a lot of Elmer’s Glue.

For the wedding, I’m making all of the mens’ buttonholes, to save a bit of money on the florist, and to make flowers they can actually keep.  I’m using pages from an old copy of _The Horse and His Boy_ (the invitations had colored Narnia pages as envelope liners) to make paper flowers.

I cut out petals, looking at the words and phrases on the pages as I go.  I make strips of paper into fringe, and wind them around a green wire, to make a fluffy stamen.  I glue petals on two or three at a time.  Occasionally, I rub my gluey fingers on my pajama pants, to keep my fingertips dry and nimble.  When I grow weary of petals, I make leaves, and glue them onto long strips of green wire.  When they’re dry, I’ll curl them slightly.

Next Sunday is the Christmas pageant at the church where I still teach.  Once again, I’m having a child-centered Nativity scene, where they choose their own parts and animals, and we bring whatever gifts we have in our own hearts.  Along with this comes costumes, and halos to fashion.  The main costume I’ve been making from scratch is for a tiny lamb.  I used one of Matt’s old white shirts, cut the sleeves shorter, and cut down the collar.  Little Terri will wear it backwards, like children wear shirts as painting smocks.

I used styrofoam peanuts that came along with some wedding gifts. I made rows of fabric glue, and glued down the white, /S/ shaped peanuts.  I covered the entire back of the shirt.  Then, I added some more school glue, and then shook out some pale pink and gold and silver glitter.

I like glitter, and I think little Terri does, too.  She is two, and last time we got the costumes out, she fell in love with an extra halo and an old bakelite necklace. The necklace is also part of her lamb costume.  I still need to make some sort of lamb hood/hat for her.

Sometimes, I have dreams where I’m trying to do something very, very small and precise, like a dollhouse-sized collage.  In the dreams, my thumbs are oversized and I can’t hold carefully what I need to hold.  I wake up frustrated, and then remember that it’s a dream.  Sometimes, I even scrape my fingernails against my thumbs, to reassure myself.

When I find myself making collages, or gluing small things, I remember the dreams.  I’ve also been making small gifts for a Secret Snowflake exchange at work, and have been gluing tiny typed letters onto cards.

I like using scraps of paper from my drawers, and old cards, and magazines I’ve been saving. I like seeing a yellowed book actually blossom into a three dimensional flower.  There are probably fancier supplies I could buy, but I use the same scissors I’ve had for more than a decade, and a big bottle of Elmer’s that I always use.   Mostly, I like that I can picture something (how a petal should curve a bit) and make it happen with my own fingers.

Sometimes I like to have perfectly manicured nails, and please myself throughout the day by looking at the shiny smooth ends.  Sometimes, though, I don’t mind if I have dried glue in my cuticles and in the creases of my palm.

Sarokwel

Okay, disclaimer: I intentionally misspelled the name of the drug I’m talking about, because I have mixed feelings about writing about it.  And I don’t want my post to come up in searches for it on Google.

It’s technically an anti-psychotic. People who are schizophrenic, or very bi-polar take it, to help them not be manic through the day.

I first started taking it two years ago this past summer.  I had not slept through the night in months.  With my first dose– a “baby” dose, or “granny” dose, according to my doctor–I could sleep.  It was incredible, and life-changing.

Earlier this year, we had dinner with another couple: dear, sweet friends from my school.  I mentioned my anxiety.  Neither of them could understand: “What do you get anxious about?  I mean, what makes you anxious?”  It’s hard to explain, how irrational things suddenly loom and have so much power.  I actually had a hard time understanding how someone could _not_ understand what anxiety is like.

Here’s an example.  That summer, I was working in my school’s development office. Sometimes, I would file.  The filing room was on a floor by itself. If you are part of a long-wealthy city family, with tons of money to donate, and have donated for generations, you might have a file there.  Any correspondence, letters from the president, Christmas cards from your family, small donations given in someone’s name… copies all go into the file with your name.

My colleagues would give me a stack of correspondence to take up to file.  I would file them, name by name, date by date.  At my own pace, easy, singing to myself in the warm, dusty sunlight.

A dozen hours later: 3AM.

I am suddenly afraid that I have misfiled something.  I imagine, instantly, that they will need the file in a year or so, and not be able to find it.  I don’t wake up and start thinking about it, I am already in a panic, heart racing, when I wake up. It’s as if my body is reacting to the worst that can happen, before reason can intervene.

I had a similar problem reshelving books at the library. What if I reshelved something wrong, and it was lost for decades?

So: 3AM, I’m in a panic. Adrenaline rushes through me, I’m sobbing, I can’t breathe, I feel sick and floaty.  I’ve been dealing with various forms of this, with various insistent reasons to panic, since I was 17.  But two summers ago, it was the files.

I decided that to keep this from happening, I would just memorize each name of the file that I filed. And the file cabinet in which I put it.  This way, I [mis]reasoned, if I heard anyone complaining that they couldn’t find a file, I would remember exactly where it was.

I have a good memory. I’m good at remembering many things, and many words, and many languages.  For a few days, with a lot of stress and effort, I was able to keep this up.  A few dozen filed documents, and files, and file drawers.  But then– a new middle of the night would happen, and I would realize that I couldn’t, in fact, keep up.  Commence brand new panic.

Over several nights of this, I get more brittle during the day.  I’m tired, and stressed, and the little things that usually don’t bother me start to be really taxing.  Occasionally, I start to cry during the day. I know it’s anxiety, I know it’s chemicals in my brain, and adrenaline in my bloodstream, but I can’t reason myself into feeling calm.  I dread going to bed at night, because I know the panic is coming.

It was such, such a relief, the first night I took sarokwel, and began to get sleepy an hour or so later.  Matt started reading to me from The Hobbit at that same time, in an attempt to give my bedtime something sweet and good, instead of dread.  Night after night, I’d take the sarokwel, settle in to listen to The Hobbit, and get sleepy in due time, and sleep through the night. It was amazing, and peaceful, and healing.

Now, I only take one half of that original small dose; I bite a pill in half each night.  Sometimes, I even take one quarter.  If I wake up and feel panicky, I take a half and suck on it under my tongue, until I feel sleepy and calm.

It has a few minor drawbacks. I’ve gained weight while I’ve been on it, as many apparently do. And, I’m not as alert in the morning with it– I have a harder time waking up, and feel sleepier for longer.  I’ve felt bad, when we have overnight guests, or when we’re with family for the holidays, because I’m always the last one to wake up.

But, still: it’s been an amazing asset to my life.  I am thankful for it. Sometimes I even thank God for it when I pray–that’s how different my nights are.  And my days: the little things don’t pile on when I am rested. It’s just easier to be reasonable.  Do I still get anxious, and more than the average person? Yes.  Do I still wake up anxious and inconsolable?  Sometimes.

That’s all, really. I just wanted to write about sarokwel.  I have some guilt that I take something every day, that I can’t snap myself out of it, that being in therapy for more than half my life hasn’t been enough to rewire my synapses. But mostly, I’m thankful to get sleepy at night, and hear Matt read, and get sleepier and sleepier, and finally fall asleep, knowing I will sleep through the night.

First childhood memory

I have a writer and journalist, Leslie, coming to work with my students after school once a week.  They love it, having a “real writer” come and talk to them.  Sarah, who writes long stories about invented hybrid animals, shows her a new piece of writing every week.  The all have their hands in the air, waiting patiently to tell the writer something, or ask her something. Hairo begins with, “I have _three_ questions…”  They hog her attention.

We are working up to taking a trip to the zoo to interview the zoo professionals.  (Did you know they feed the tigers bloodscicles in the summer?  And yes: they are exactly what they sound like.)  Yesterday, Leslie interviewed me, asking me three questions.  She and the kids took notes, trying to catch everything I said. It was a practice in learning how to write in a personal shorthand, in catching what is important, in follow up questions. They compared notes afterwards, and Leslie showed them her note-taking sheet, so they could see how she shortened words, and scribbled quickly.

The second question they asked was, “What is your earliest childhood memory?”  I remember the green trailer we lived in, the one with the mirrored living room walls.  My bedroom was immediately off to the right. I had a Holly Hobby toy box, and a small wooden bed. (I have a photograph of me sitting on my bed, in Bert and Ernie slippers, so I can remember what it looked like.)  My parents used to let me have Christmas lights strung around my bed year round, and I kept my bottle as long as I wanted (through kindergarten.)  I must have been three in this trailer, because I started going to kindergarten there, and I went to kindergarten when I was four.

I have some bad memories there, too.  My earliest memories of my parents fighting are there, and I fell out of a window once, and I hated going to kindergarten.  I also have a really scary memory of my mom, where she pretended to be blind, to see what I would do.  I panicked, of course, and cried, and finally figured out that the inside of the phone book had important numbers.  When I figured out that I could call someone for help, she reassured me that it was just a game.

As I was walking to the train this morning, I was thinking of that bedroom, and the little wooden bed in the picture, and the Holly Hobby toy box.  I remember jumping on the couch in front of the mirrored walls, to my parents’ music (Rolling Stones for sure, and Joan Jett maybe?  Whatever people were getting high to in 1980). I began to believe in elves in that trailer, a belief that lasted for years.

My first childhood memory is an image, of the light of Christmas lights, and the pink bed from the photo, and my Fred Flintsone bottle, and some sharp sherds of being desperately afraid, and waiting for Hector and Victor (the elves) to come to my pillow at night.  This is hard to put into a sentence or two, for a practice interview.  I talked about the bed, and the bottle, and the Christmas lights.  More than a day later, I’m still thinking about that trailer, and my four-year-old self.

I wonder where those memories are– are they in the deep fatty tissue in my brain?  Do they get renewed, or created whole, when I look at photographs from that time?  Would my mom remember that awful blindness game?  When I think about Hector and Victor today, is the old memory re-varnished, or is a new experience: me walking to the train, thinking of the elves?

Underdressed

I went to a benefit last week, in my capacity at my journal.  It was incredible, an amazing evening, I was moved to tears, inspired, and made lots of great connections.

When I walked into the very famous, architecturally wow setting, though, I flinched because I was ever-so-slightly underdressed.

Actually, I didn’t “walk into” the venue.  A man in “dinner clothes” saw me coming up the walk, and opened the door for me.  He even had a carefully handlebarred mustache.  Did he grow it because he knew he’d be pulling the tab on a pop-up storybook dinner every evening? Or did he have it, which led him into this job?

As the door swung open, I saw first golden glasses of champagne. It looked more yellow than I remembered, and the platters swung towards me in pleasing arcs.

I had taught all day.  At home, I thought about the event. It was to benefit a group that trains and fosters teens who live in conflict areas, to dialogue with other teens from the same area, but from the “opposite side.”  For example, white and black kids from Johannesburg, Catholic and Protestant kids from west Northern Belfast—where there are apparently still walls that separate neighborhoods.

I thought: young people, dialogue, interfaith stuff, charity, education.  I knew I had to dress up, but it didn’t occur to me to dress like I would for a formal evening wedding, for example.  In sum: I did not wear a dressy dress with stockings.  I wore a pretty dress, in a slinky material, with slouchy little leggings underneath (not tights, but again, slinky like.)  I wore a moss colored jacket over the dress, and topped the whole thing off with a hand-embroidered scarf from Palestine.  I wore my black Mary Jane crocs down, but had some gold flats in my bag. (They’re actually my wedding shoes, and I need to break them in.)

I should have worn one of my black dresses, with stockings, and some fancy jewelry that I have. No hand-embroidered anything, and not so many layers.

After the champagne, I noticed who was there, and what they were wearing. I saw many very slender older ladies, in shoes whose names I know from magazines, but cannot spell from memory.  In knit black dresses with trim jackets.  I saw young women with shiny, shiny hair, and chic little bags.  And the photographers!  They were all sidling around behind everyone, in opposite arcs from the passed hor d’oeuvers, snapping away at people smiling at each other.

The first time I ever felt undressed was in the 8th grade.  My English teacher, Mrs. Van Winkle (who had gone to school with my grandpa and taught my mother and all my uncles, and would go on to teach my sister and all my cousins) took me, as a treat, to St. Louis to the Fox Theater, to see a production of The Nutcracker Suite.  At the time, my dad was still laid off from the coal mine.  I hadn’t had new shoes (nor had my classmates) since the first lay offs.

I had dresses and many skirts. Despite my unchurched parents, Sugar Camp Missionary Baptist Church had been picking me up in the church van every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, for years.  I also loved to wear skirts to school, and had slightly fancier dressed from yearly Christmas pageants at school, and singing competitions. In hindsight, I should have worn one of those dresses, some tights, and some shiny black shoes. It was winter, after all.

I had never been to a play, or anything with live music, and had rarely been to St. Louis.  For some reason, I thought that white pants, with white shoes, with no socks, would be just the most elegant thing.  Perhaps _Miami Vice_ influenced the white pants and no socks with shoes thing.  I definitely felt very elegant and “city.”  For the top, I wore a turquoise sweater. I parted my hair on the side and curled and hairsprayed my bangs.

We went in Mrs. Van Winkle’s car. It was a Lincoln Towncar.  It had leather interiors, maroon.  And I noticed that it was much less bumpy inside than any car or truck I’d ever ridden in.  Later, my dad did ask me what the inside of the car was like.  I sat in the back seat, so perhaps Mr. Van Winkle came along with us, although I don’t remember him.

The Fox Theater is incredible.  I can’t remember how interior design critics describe it.  Think: lots of gold, gilding, high baroque, tiling, cabochon jewels in every cranny. Sweeping staircase, drapery, ornate carpets.  Even now, I find it gorgeous. But twelve-year-old me?  It was the fanciest, most rich place I’d ever been. It was like every glamourous ball I’d ever read about, better than two dozen Little House on the Prairie town-bought Christmas presents and a party for the Little Women girls thrown in.  It was the kind of party the master of The Secret Garden would throw.

Other little girls were with their families.  They had on Christmas dresses with cute little wool coats–red and black and grey–over their dresses.  Oh, I had refused to wear a coat that night. All I had was a denim jacket, and it didn’t match.  My parents, typically, didn’t insist.  I hadn’t ever yet been in a suburb, and hadn’t ever yet met the kind of people who had dress coats, or who took annual family trips to The Nutcracker.

It’s hard now, looking back, to separate what I felt when I walked into the lobby, with what I know now about suburban middle-class St. Louis, or what I have experienced about the kinds of families that take annual family trips to the ballet.  And I definitely know about and have a “dress coat.”  But I knew, when my white shoes stepped onto that gorgeous carpet, that I had worn the wrong thing.

I had already felt the cold air on my ankles and legs, and reassured Mrs. Van Winkle that I wasn’t cold, on the way from the car.

Soon, though, I was in my seat, the lights went down, and I saw my first live performance. I pretended Mrs. Van Winkle was my mother, and I had a very fancy bedroom at home.  All the way home, I pretended this, and fell asleep in the car imagining that I rode in it all the time.

Pro-life, except for the people I shame on Facebook

I read the most disturbing thing yesterday in a friend’s LiveJournal post.

(Actually, the _most_ disturbing thing I read yesterday was that one half of all children in this country will at some point in their lives be on food stamps.)

But then, I was reading my friend’s LJ entry, and he described the following scenario:

He has a FB friend who he has defriended once because they don’t share views, and FB Friend sometimes posted the kind of stuff he’d rather not read. But FB Friend re-friended, with the awkward, “Did you defriend me?” so to keep the drama to a minimum, he keeps her as a friend.

FB Friend knows someone in real life who is getting an abortion later this month. FB friend has been posting status updates, calling the woman out by name, like the following: “Jane is getting an abortion on Nov 15th!! PLEASE PRAY!!!”

In his LJ comment box, I told my friend, “You should defriend that person. Not only is she publicly shaming someone (very unChristian like, in my opinion) but if anything–God forbid–happens to this woman after her abortion or on that day, this ‘friend’ is culpable.”  I also told him that he should copy her status updates to the local Planned Parenthood, police precinct, and ACLU.

I personally have very strong and deeply conflicted and emotional opinions about abortion. And I think that it doesn’t matter, in this post, whether or not I think it’s moral or should be legal.  But I think that it is a legal, medical right, and in this country our medical histories and rights are strictly protected by law, and to be private.  And we all have the right to exercise our legal, medical rights without being open to threats or publicly shamed.  My friend’s FB Friend is doing something akin to crying “Fire” in a crowd, and it’s really irresponsible, and immoral.

I ranted to Matt for a while, and then consoled myself by imagining the comments I would write on FB “Friend’s” wall when she makes those posts.  Like, “Christianity is about mercy, not shame.”  ”Jesus would never endanger someone he didn’t agree with.”  ”Those who incite judgment and violence do not inherit the earth.”