I'll do as my children do

The first signs of autumn are tapping at the window in my part of the world. Whereas the sun used to be up half the night, The horizon is now only bruised with dim light when I rise at 5:30.

Creative Commons image by Latisha of Flick.com

Creative Commons image by Latisha of Flick.com

Yes, I get up that early even during the last days of summer vacation--actually especially during the last days of summer vacation. 

At 5:30, my energy is bright and focused. I write, do daily spiritual practice, read and even work in the garden once the sun is up. But all too soon the kids are awake. Usually by 6:30. I'm hoping against hope that this propensity to get up early will mean they'll be a bit easier to rouse in the mornings when they're teenagers.

But that's probably wishful thinking.

The kids have been with me for six whole weeks. Unlike most families in our area, we have no nearby grandparents to send them too. Their friends all spend their summers with grandparents, so our street is oddly silent. So, mostly the kids are pestering me, rather than playing.

Just now I hear them rustling awake and landing the first blows of sibling rivalry of the day. A howl and a screech... and the brief time for contemplation and writing is at an end.

And there's another sign of autumn: it's pouring rain outside, which means we'll be inside today.

I've almost made it to the end of the long summer full of often-sick, usually bickering children. School starts Monday. I'll make it. I'm planning autumn-themed stamp painting, baking chocolate-calendula muffins and Spot-It games for today.

But being forced to get up at 5:30 just so I can write a bit puts me in a certain mood, like this poem by an unknown author. It nails ten things that have happened in just the past twenty-four hours.

Watch out, kids. Someday there will be payback. 

When I’m a little old lady

When I’m a little old lady
Then I’ll live with my children
and bring them great joy.

To repay all I’ve had
from each girl and boy
I shall draw on the walls
and scuff up the floor;
Run in and out
without closing the door.

I’ll hide frogs in the pantry,
socks under my bed.

Whenever they scold me,
I’ll hang my head.

I’ll run and I’ll romp,
always fritter away
The time to be spent
doing chores every day.

I’ll pester my children 
when they are on the phone.

As long as they’re busy
I won’t leave them alone.

Hide candy in closets,
rocks in a drawer,
And never pick up my clothes
from the floor.

Dash off to the movies
and not wash a dish.

I’ll plead for allowance
whenever I wish.

I’ll stuff up the plumbing
and deluge the floor.
As soon as they’ve mopped it,
I’ll flood it some more.

When they correct me,
I’ll lie down and cry,
Kicking and screaming,
not a tear in my eye.

I’ll take all their pencils
and flashlights, and then
When they buy new ones,
I’ll take them again.

I’ll spill glasses of milk
to complete every meal,
Eat my banana and
just drop the peel.

Put toys on the table,
spill jam on the floor,
I’ll break lots of dishes
as though I were four.

What fun I shall have,
what joy it will be to
Live with my children....
the way they lived with me!
— Author unknown
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Arie Farnam

Arie Farnam is a war correspondent turned peace organizer, a tree-hugging herbalist, a legally blind bike rider, the off-road mama of two awesome kids, an idealist with a practical streak and author of the Kyrennei Series. She grew up outside La Grande, Oregon and now lives in a small town near Prague in the Czech Republic.

The door to the school

There is a single photograph of me from my first day of school back in 1982. In it my best friend and I embrace eagerly on the front steps of the red-brick school building. Our dresses are simple but bright. It looks like something out of Little House on the Prairie

But a glimpse of that photo brings a stab of agony. I can't remember the day itself, but I remember the sunshine of the summer before, the bike rides and the tree forts. Then I remember nothing

Creative Commons image by Diego Sevilla Ruiz 

Creative Commons image by Diego Sevilla Ruiz 

As if I had fallen and been knocked unconscious for several years.I remember only dizzy snatches, fleeting images, fear, confusion and terrible loneliness. I've written elsewhere about the extreme ostracism and bullying I experienced at school--due to a disability, unconventional family background and a stubborn personality. What I know of those experiences comes mostly from the testimony of witnesses rather than from my own memories, which are muddled but still not without their toll. 

Now I can't help thinking on that photo and the aftermath as I prepare to send my first child to her own first day of school in a few days time. I try to hold back my anxiety. It's natural that I should have my doubts, given what I experienced. Yet, my child does not have a significant physical disability. She is well accepted by other children and generally liked by teachers. She is suspected of having a learning disability, but that will have to come clear in time and most importantly we do not live in an isolated rural backwater where difference is a brand and a reason to be culled from the herd. 

Image by Arie Farnam

Image by Arie Farnam

No, we live in the middle of progressive Europe, where the school's motto is "a place for all." Sure, the school has some problems--very large, overcrowded classrooms, new and inexperienced teachers and a population steeped in racism and anti-foreigner politics. But my fear is surely larger than the hazards.

When I took my child for an evaluation to a specialist in learning disabilities, I was told that she is quite bright and probably only has a minor issue with attention that should pass within a few years. But then the specialist turned to me and suggested in completely innocent tones that I consider enrolling my child in the "Special School"  in a larger town, rather than in our local school.

Little did the specialist know how well I know the Special Schools. When I first came to the Czech Republic as a rookie journalist twenty years ago, a harried editor slapped a thick folder of documents down on my desk and grumbled that someone would have to deal with it and it might as well be me. I picked up the packet that night--it turned out to be a government report on Special Schools--and read it.

All the way through. In one night.

That was because of what I found within the first few pages: a staggering admission by the government itself claiming that it was channeling almost all children of Romani (ethnic Gypsy) background into substandard schools designed for children with developmental disabilities. My article on the report was in the forefront of a flood of condemnation and criticism of the Czech government by the foreign press. I later produced a documentary about Romani children fighting for a rare chance to leave the segregated, substandard schools and gain a place at regular elementary schools. 

Documentary film 2000 - Czech Republic The stories of nine-year-old Karel and fifteen-year-olds Anezka and Pepino as they fight to escape from the segregated special schools

I spent years going into these Special Schools, watching with rage stifled into a hard lump in my throat as bright children were forced to study table manners and preschool motor skills in sixth through eighth grades--merely based on the color of their skin. I interviewed officials with a straight face and printed their self-damning words in foreign newspapers, quoted by Amnesty International and the European Commission in their judgments against the Czech state. I was a foot soldier in the wave of largely foreign pressure that finally broke the wall and forced through anti-discrimination legislation.

And eight years after the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Czech state to end such discrimination, a specialist suggested my adopted, Romani, slightly brown-skinned child be placed in a school for those with developmental delays, just after she assured me the child had no such delay. 

And now, I try to tell myself my fear is only paranoia based on my own hard childhood on the front-lines of another battle for integration on the other side of the world. I was a foot soldier of another kind then and I took many wounds--wounds I'd rather my child could escape. 

Just as I experienced as a child, legally mandated integration does not necessarily mean willing and welcoming integration. The first to integrate public schools in the United States--whether they were African Americans in the 1950s or disabled Americans in the 1980s--often paid a heavy price. Today the Czech Special Schools continue under slightly different names and most Romani children are still segregated in them. But the law says I--as the parent of a Romani child--can defy the social norms and send my child to a regular elementary school.

Image from the film Walls by Arie Farnam

Image from the film Walls by Arie Farnam

If I dare.

We attended a Romani culture camp and support group for a week this summer. During the adults-only part of the program in the evenings, we were told in no uncertain terms that we must admit the harsh realities to our children. Both psychologists and a very credible Romani man who rose from a ghetto kid to be the first Romani city council representative in his heavily divided city told us we must tell our children.

They are proud to be Romani. They sing Romani songs and know the Romani flag. Last spring my daughter proudly told her kindergarten class that she is Romani. They smiled. They don't know the word "Romani."  They only know the insult " Gypsy" and my daughter doesn't know it because we don't speak such words in our home any more than I'd use the N-word. 

Once my children came home talking about how some people called Gyps steal and saying they heard it at preschool. I gently explained to them about prejudice and poverty and social exclusion. But they clearly did not understand. I stopped short of saying, "They mean you. Don't you get it? They mean you."

I wanted to spare them the trauma. I wanted them to be proud of their roots... for just a little bit longer. The harsh words and judgments will come soon enough. I tried to get my kids to homeschool but my daughter refused. She thinks only about being with her friends all day.

And now the door is before us. Looming in my mind, hard red brick.  I know that behind that door bad things will happen. Maybe some good things too. But there will be pain.

Creative Commons image by Michael Davis-Burchat 

Creative Commons image by Michael Davis-Burchat 

So, I sit down with my little girl and tell her. I tell her that Gypsy means Romani. I tell her some people have a sickness in their minds that makes them believe lies about people who are a different color. I tell her about the school segregation. We've read about the segregation of schools in America. She has two great story books about Ruby Bridges and can quote the tale. I explain that when I first came to this country, that was the way it was here, that Romani people--like Black people in America--went through slavery and prejudice and school segregation in substandard schools. 

She turns to me, her face still unconcerned, and reaches a hand up to my hair, turning gray. "But, Mama,,that was a long, long time ago," she says.

Oh, my child. No, it was not.

The primary anti-discrimination law has just passed and it goes into effect September 1, 2016. That law mandates integration for children of all backgrounds and abilities. Because of that law, my daughter can have an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) if she does turn out to have a learning disability. And she cannot be barred from our local primary school based on ethnic background. But even five years ago, segregation was almost universal and today it is still widespread, due to the lack of legal knowledge and advocacy skills among Romani parents. 

My child, you will be the first Romani child to attend your school, much as I was the first child with a significant physical disability to attend mine. 

But I smile and give her a hug. "You will do fine," I say. "You are smart and you have many friends. Only remember that if someone says otherwise, it is against the law. The law is about them and the problems in their heads, not about you. You will do fine." 

We must both believe it.

The unsung deeds of teachers

Given that I"m a writer and a language teacher, many people might well be surprised to know that I got mostly Cs in elementary school. I was not considered a good student. I was often accused of not paying attention because I doodled instead of facing the blackboard. 

Creative Commons image by Latisha of Flickr.com

Creative Commons image by Latisha of Flickr.com

I couldn't see the blackboard and the fuzziness of the open air was very boring. I often "took notes" with my doodles. Before I could write, I drew diagrams of things the teacher talked about. My second-grade teacher recalls coming over to scold me for not paying attention during his lecture on the solar system, only to find that my doodle was actually a reasonably good diagram of the planets. 

To his credit, I vaguely remember his lectures on the planets, whereas I remember little else from my elementary school years. But most teachers did not have the patience to observe first and scold later, as he did. So mostly I was a very poor student. 

Because I had a physical disability, I had an IEP and when I was in the sixth grade someone put "typing" on my IEP because my handwriting was still atrocious. I still can't make out handwriting to this day with my eyesight. And that was how a special education teacher named Irene Froyd was assigned to teach me to type. 

We had an hour a week in an airless room in the basement of the elementary school with an electric typewriter. I remember hating those lessons. The room was stuffy and dim and the work was grueling. But I also remember going to them dutifully and without complaint. I knew in some deep part of me that it was necessary. . 

Still I was reportedly very difficult. I was stubborn and contrary and I didn't want to type difficult things. I gave the teacher grief. We agreed in September that I would type The Night Before Christmas as a holiday present for my mother, because it has so many semi-colons and plenty of difficult letters in it.

Okay, I remember agreeing to that, but I don't know for sure how much argument there was beforehand.

Creative Commons image by Jay Woodworth

Creative Commons image by Jay Woodworth

I did try. I remember sitting there sweating, picking out each letter, week after week in the dim, gray, overheated room. And I remember my teacher's endless patience. She was not terribly inspiring (how could she be with the task of teaching typing?), only kind and gentle and endlessly patient. 

My typing of The Night Before Christmas was not finished until Easter. But it was finished. 

And I knew how to type. I started typing my assignments for school the very next year. And an amazing thing happened.

I became a straight-A student. By the time I was in high school I was two years ahead in math and English. My GPA and test scores won me full-ride scholarship offers from several universities. 

Was Mrs. Froyd the only one? Probably not. I don't remember much of my teachers from middle school but childhood memory is notoriously unfair. Some were probably very good and they no doubt helped in this transformation. But when I see young children struggling so much in elementary school I often think of that stuffy gray room and the endless patience of the teacher who gave my fingers wings.

Self-respect and the old lady in purple

“I’m too old to be respectable,” the woman in the overlarge purple dress cackles. 

Creative Commons image by Moyan Brenn

Creative Commons image by Moyan Brenn

She reminds me of the poem When I’m an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple, which my mother framed and put by the bathroom sink in my childhood home. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been what they call respectable,” I reply and grin shamelessly. 

“Just so that’s settled,” she brushes wispy hair out of her eyes and crosses the road on wobbly legs.

I look after her and think on “respect.” As the year turns round to the autumn, I am always reminded of elders and the question of respect.

I understand what the old woman means. She is too old to be considered “respectable” in this particular society, a society where “respectable” means successful, solid, emotionally contained, self-reliant and standard in appearance. It isn’t false modesty. She really is too old for that. 

She cannot fulfill the requirements anymore, if she ever could. And I can’t fulfill them now, even though I'm not that old. My appearance is non-standard, no matter what I do.  It isn’t that I couldn’t wear dark glasses to hide my strange-looking eyes. I see even worse with dark glasses, but I still could. Many people do hamper themselves physically for the sake of respectability. 

No, it is more a general constitutional inability. I have tried for a standard image and I can hold onto it for a day if I really have to, but over the long-term... it just will not stick. 

And being emotionally contained. Well, that too. I can fake it, but only for so long. 

I am not successful by most measures. I don’t have a great career and my wealth is only just sufficient for a modest, environmentally friendly lifestyle. As for self-reliance… That is something I have thought about a lot recently because it is often listed as one of the key components of self-respect. 

I suppose it depends on what you mean by self-reliance. Today it is often used to mean a person who needs no one else, who may help others but never needs their help, who is so strong in self that while they may enjoy the company of others, they don’t need it. They love themselves and thus don’t truly need love from outside. 

I have a confession to make as a spiritual person. I don’t believe in that concept of self-reliance. 

Creative Commons image by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Creative Commons image by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

It isn’t that I’m against working hard and building your own life, being an adult and standing on your own two feet (or wheels as the case may be). I am all for the independent spirit. And I agree that you often have to “be  your own best friend,” i.e. get yourself the gifts  you wish others would get you and make time for self-care. 

But I don’t believe that real self-reliance actually exists. It is like how the ranchers who took over a federal bird refuge near my childhood home in Oregon last winter claimed to be rugged, self-reliant pioneers in the wilderness, asking for no handouts and insisting that others should be the same and thus abolish “big government.” And yet their key demand was to be allowed to use federal land for their cattle free of charge. 

And then to top it all off, they asked to be given food while they illegally occupied the buildings at the bird refuge. 

Those who believe they are self-reliant are invariably simply unaware of the beings they rely upon. Many great, pioneering businesses were built through environmental degradation, on the backs of others. Not self-reliance but reliance on stolen resources. Many who claim to be self-reliant had advantages they don’t even notice, privileges they assume everyone has but which actually rely on others. 

I grew up in a remote, rural area. We grew and raised a good deal of our own food. In a dry land, we had our own well and our own water. The winters could be so harsh that we were often cut off from the nearest tiny town of 250 souls by snowdrifts. 

One winter--the winter of the Great Ice Storm--we heard on the radio that our area was considered a humanitarian disaster area and officials were concerned that we must be starving because we had been isolated for a week and the electric power was down for many days. We weren’t starving. We had pantries and root cellars, as did our neighbors. My father and other men put on skis and went around to the neighbors to make sure no one was starving and no one was—not even the ancient man who lived alone with his goats.

Sounds pretty self-reliant, right?

Well, except for the part about checking on one’s neighbors. I have lived in a dozen homes since then and I have never lived in a place where neighbors relied on one another so much as we did there. We never even thought about “self-reliance.” 

Hunter-gatherer societies were built on community and mutual support. And rural communities are interconnected and generally much more supportive of their weaker members than are urban centers. We lived that reality, even though our neighbors were often not our best friends.  

And then, of course, there was our well. 

As I said, this was an arid land, officially semi-desert, even though we had pine and tamarack trees. The snow melt provides most of the water and it rains in the spring and then scarcely rains again for six, even eight months. A well in that country is a holy thing. 

Our well was 60 feet deep. When I was a teenager, I once went down to the bottom of it because I was small enough and my father wanted to put in a new kind of pump. I calmly did the work I was asked to do down there with a headlamp and then I made the mistake of glancing up just for a second before pulling on the rope to signal that my dad could pull me out. 

When they tell you not to look down when you’re up very high, you understand why. My father had told me not to look up and I was sure that was because he didn’t want dirt and sand from the walls to fall into my eyes. But when I looked up, I was gripped by utter terror.

It was night! I had not realized I had been down there so long. The moon was out, riding high and full in the sky. That was all my mind could think.

Then I realized that the moon was the opening of the well far above me. It looked so small 60 feet up that it was no larger than the moon in the night sky. I looked down again and gripped the rope as hard as I could. I was pulled up out of the well quaking with unreasoning fear and I never want to go down such a well again if I can help it. 

But here’s the thing that I’ve never forgotten about that experience: someone dug that well. 

Someone, long ago, before the time of electricity dug that well through rocky, hard mountain soil and lined it with perfectly fitted stones all the way down to the bottom. They had to spend a lot more time down there than I did.

My childhood home stood on the back of that anonymous stranger. 

Sure, my parents bought the land and the well fair and square. But still… I never could forget the neat rows of stones laid so carefully 60 feet beneath the ground in that narrow shaft.

So, I believe in self-reliance in a different way. I believe in being able to rely on yourself. I know what I can do and what I can’t. I am good with water and I can swim in strong currents. I was once sure-footed climbing rocks and trees. Now that I am older I am not so sure and I know my own limits. I know that if I do ever have to go down a long, dark well again, I can. But I will not look up. 

I know what my body, mind and emotions can handle. I can rely on that, including the weak spots. Self… reliance.

And I am not unconscious of the fact that my life is interconnected with others.

As for being respectable. That too has various meanings. What society today sees as worthy of respect is not necessarily what it has always been. There have been times and places where a person as old as the woman in purple would be respected for the achievement of having survived so many years. 

I have my own version of respectability and that is self-respect. As long as you have your self-respect and you live up to your own standards, then you are respect-able in the only way that really matters. 

The Great Divide of the Twenty-first Century: In search of mutual understanding between rich and poor

I have said my virtual hearth is open to any and all who seek a little comfort and soul nourishment. And I stand by that, because the ancient concept of hospitality is near and dear to me. Without lines of discrimination and without pre-judgment, you are welcome here. 

Creative Commons image by Urbansnaps-Kennymc of Flickr

Creative Commons image by Urbansnaps-Kennymc of Flickr

That doesn’t mean I claim to understand every perspective in the world which is not my own or to truly know all kinds of people. I make mistakes sometimes, make assumptions or simply have a set of priorities that is not the same as someone else’s. While I have been able to come to deep understanding with people of all races, nations and creeds without much trouble and I have embraced transgender, gay and lesbian friends, while I’ve made common cause with people who perceive the world in opposite ways from mine, there are perspectives I struggle to grok. I say “struggle,” because I do try.

The other day I was observing two acquaintances of mine having an on-line argument about Social Security and poverty in the US. Both of the people involved are vastly wealthy by my standards and their argument was mostly about whether or not Hillary Clinton is bad or good news for poor people. Finally, one of them got fed up and said: “Never mind, you and I don't agree on this one, period. I'm going to Amazon to see whether I can buy something. Time to get rid of my decrepit 32" TV and upgrade to a 40" or maybe a 42".” 

Creative Commons image by Richard of Flickr.com

Creative Commons image by Richard of Flickr.com

This person’s avatar was a white, fluffy dog and I suspected she was being sarcastic. I put in some laugh emoticons for her apt joke, but suggested that upgrading one’s TV to a larger size is too cliched when making fun of the concerns of rich people. I suggested saying you were going to Amazon to get a load of books or kitchen utensils might be less likely to support prejudice. 

As it turned out Fluffy Dog was not being sarcastic. 

She was perfectly serious. Her TV was eight years old and she wanted a bigger one. She really did feel that was a reasonable change of subject in a discussion of the poverty experienced by older people who have worked all their lives and are still barely able to eat in retirement. 

She was offended because she thought I was implying she doesn’t read or cook enough. For the record, she says she also buys three times as many books as she can read and actually reads two books a week. She noted that she could outfit three kitchens, given her love of shopping for kitchen utensils. But she did not notice that my comment was supportive humor.

Needless to say she got mad and huffy and insisted that she knows what it’s like to be poor because she has traveled to 150 countries and volunteered four times at a soup kitchen, so she’s seen poverty.

Live simply that others may simply live - Creative Commons image by Dina-Roberts Wakulczyk

Live simply that others may simply live - Creative Commons image by Dina-Roberts Wakulczyk

Oh dear. Where to start?

I believe that mutual understanding between those with incomes over $100,000 and those with incomes less than $30,000 would be a good start toward the survival of our species—I.e. surviving climate change, the refugee crisis, ISIS, endless war and all the rest of today’s troubles. We must be able to understand each other, but at the moment it feels like we are speaking different languages, both made up of English words with vastly differing meanings. 

I failed to understand or to make myself clear to my acquaintance, who isn’t a bad sort at all, although possibly afflicted with an impaired ability to laugh at her own foibles. So, I have been thinking on how to explain the vast gulf of understanding between us. First, we must know that we are missing each other in order to ever come together.

The fact is that I would be considered “very poor” by anyone making over $100,000. I live a lifestyle that is far below the average income or consumption in the United States and Western Europe. It is altogether possible that all of humanity could live at a modest level like this (even all the millions in China and India) without causing great harm to the planet or necessitating a massive die-off (though we would still need to slow down our fertility to avert disaster). That said, I don’t look poor . Most people who live at this level don’t, unless they have been hit with a disaster or a crisis. Poverty is as much about relative vulnerability to crisis as it is about the day-to-day material standard of living. 

Mine isn’t a lifestyle you can sit back and enjoy. That’s true. You’ve got to use a myriad of smart and hard-working hacks to make it work, but I don’t spend my days in drudgery and hunger. 

Creative Commons image by Hernán Piñera

Creative Commons image by Hernán Piñera

It requires using and reusing whatever you can, considering second-hand clothes a non-issue, cooking mostly from scratch and growing as much of it as you can locally, using public transportation and finding fun vacations near home, using rainwater and solar for lots of things... It can be done and it can be done well. 

The only time my family notices we are "poor" is when we think about some major trips we'd like to take. That requires a lot of planning, but it is possible. We're currently working on a two-year plan to go to Corsica, where we will camp and cycle and have a blast without great expense. 

There are difficulties to be sure. Having a disability when you have little financial resources is hard. And it is much easier to do poverty well when you are part of a mutually supportive community that shares your troubles, rather than being isolated in relatively wealthy suburbia. 

But living in a country with sane, developed-world (and yes, that obviously means single-payer) health care and free, merit-based higher education helps a lot. But despite these advantages, we buy things at prices higher than those in the US, not lower the way you might think prices would be in a “poor country.” We simply live more simply and quite differently with different assumptions and priorities.

I’ve lived this way in the US too. The difference there is the feeling of constantly walking the edge of a precipice. I’ve seen those who did poverty reasonably well fall over the cliff and end in serious desperation. But as long as you’re lucky, you can live well on a modest income in most of the world. That’s the first thing I think rich people don’t understand. Living simply need not mean want and misery.

And what is it that I need to understand about the other side? Well, if I knew I wouldn’t need it anymore, would I? I do not wish to make jokes at another’s expense, but rather to laugh with others at our own antics and use it as fuel for change. I try not to be judgmental because even though my knee-jerk reaction is that "rich" people (by my standards) simply can't spend that much money without actually throwing it as confetti, I know from real conversations that this simply isn't true and that many people who have ten times the income we do feel like they are struggling.

What is the key to understanding? I start with this. All are welcome at my hearth, to be accepted and to find purpose. My aim is to feed souls and that hunger comes in many forms.

How to have a badass image

For those who were depressed by my last post, this one has a partial solution (even though it wouldn't really work in a rainstorm).

I'm told that my family thought I was a whiner when I was a child. My feet always hurt and I always cried about it. I grew up being told I had low pain tolerance. As it turned out, I don't. I have problems with the bones in my legs and they hurt... a lot when I walk more than a mile or two.

But believing that I had low pain tolerance I was sometimes confused. When I was in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador writing an article for The Christian Science Monitor on the construction of oil pipeline and the environmental fallout, I ran my foot into a metal grate and sliced a three inch gash across my big toe. The thing bled like you wouldn't believe but it didn't hurt that much. A storekeeper ran out and poured dry, instant coffee mix on my wound, which did make it stop bleeding. 

My interpreter was in shock and panicking. He got a taxi and we drove to a local clinic. When I looked out the window, I saw a rundown, dirty, Third World clinic and by then my brain was starting to kick in. This was the rain forest, an area with super bacteria. I had been told by other gringos that I had better not get hurt while I was down in the jungle or I'd be in deep trouble. And this was only the second day of my two-week stay in the humid, bacteria-rich rain forest. I could not afford an infected foot. 

I refused to go to the clinic and instead went back the little sweaty room where I had stashed my pack, including a very good first-aid kit. I cleaned and disinfected the wound with iodine and then bandaged it while my interpreter watched, wide eyed. Finally at the end he said, "You're badass." I blinked at him in surprise.

I am? What was I supposed to do? Cry? It wasn't that bad, just a little blood. Seriously.

I poured iodine on it and changed the bandage three times a day. I didn't get an infection and never felt like the cut was too painful. But the bones in my feet ached from all the walking I did on the rain forest paths. I still thought I was just sort of a wimp about that. 

Later I was told by a doctor that all that hiking I had done with backpacks had caused micro-fractures in the bones of my feet because they were positioned just a tad wrong and thus couldn't absorb the repetitive impacts of walking very well. As I've gotten older the pain has gotten worse and it's compounded by the fact that I'm visually impaired, so I can't drive and I have to walk a lot more than most. It isn't a good combination. 

Creative Commons image by Brent of Flickr.com

Creative Commons image by Brent of Flickr.com


So, I was delighted to discover the idea of an electric scooter. I need something that can go as slow as a brisk walk (so it doesn't go faster than I can see and cause me to run off the edges of curbs) and which is small enough to go on the sidewalk. This week my first electric scooter came and I took my kids to preschool for the first time without pain. The scooter is tiny, a two wheeled contraption that hardly enlarges the area I take up on the sidewalk. It requires a bit of balance to ride but fortunately balance is one thing I can do. It doesn't really get me places faster because I have to ride on sidewalks and go really slow but it will mean that I can go many more places than I could before. I may have to push it up the particularly steep hills around here but it is going down the hills that bothers my feet, not going up. 

Euphoric from my first school run with the scooter, I sat down to work and started sorting emails. Then I got a message from the users of a forum I frequent with a question of uncanny relevance: "Are disabled people giving electric scooters a bad image?" The author of the question explained that he likes the look of these little scooters, which are actually widely viewed as a bit nerdy. He wanted to ride one but was afraid that people might think he was disabled if he did because so many people with disabilities are now riding these little gems.

My reaction went from joy that I could tell someone about my awesome scooter, to irritation that this clod thought that someone assuming he might have trouble with his legs was such a terrible thing and finally to dawning realization.

Oh, I get it.

So, here's what I wrote in reply: "I’m sure you meant to ask “Are disabled people giving mobility scooters a badass image?” Because disabled people aren’t bad and can’t give anything a bad image. Using a mobility vehicle that doesn't contribute to climate change and not letting a little health problem keep you out of the fast lane is badass, no? I mean when you see that disabled person riding down the sidewalk, carefully avoiding toddlers and pets, you think 'Dude, that lady is badass and hot too. I hope I’m that cool when I get to be old and not so mobile. Now I even want to get one of those scooters so I can be kinda like her and maybe she’ll even ask me out.'"

I'm in far too good a mood at the moment to let some unthinking comment get me down. Electric scooters look geeky but they get the job done. I don't really know or care if anyone except the preschool set thinks I'm badass anymore (at forty), but I do often look at people and think, "That's badass!" when they are pushing their limits and finding hacks to get around troubles. There is plenty to be cynical about in the world and I often am, but it's nice when a mix of technology and creative problem-solving takes away a burden.

Overwhelmed? There's one choice we always end up making

I walk my kids to preschool in the pouring rain. It’s about a mile and a half and it wouldn’t be so bad except the main road through town and the buildings on either side of it are a couple of hundred years old. This means that massive regional traffic is now being squeezed through a single-lane road that was originally meant for nothing more than the occasional farmer’s handcart. To get around this bottleneck my kids and I would have to walk an extra couple of miles.

A deluge of mud and water sprays across a narrow sidewalk from the wheels of a passing bus. Creative Commons image by Matt Biddulp.

A deluge of mud and water sprays across a narrow sidewalk from the wheels of a passing bus. Creative Commons image by Matt Biddulp.

The sidewalks are often no wider than a sheet of printer paper (and sometimes they’re entirely non-existent). Add in overloaded drainage systems and the fact that most of the inhabitants of the hilly country around our town drive large vehicles and live lifestyles in which walking is considered eccentric (and voluntary).

All told, it isn’t very pleasant to get to the preschool or to the medical center on the other side of town. 

An endless stream of cars roars by, pushing and then exceeding the speed limit even though there isn’t much space between them. Each one in turn sends a wave of dirty, oily water spraying across my legs and across the torsos of the children. Each driver would have to look in their rear view mirror to see the spray of water they have personally hit us with. But they can all see the car in front of them squirting the sludge on us.

If they looked... if they thought at all, they would know that their car is going to do it too. They don't think or they don't care. Hard to say which.

We come to a tiny cramped parking lot for three vehicles in front of a shop. I go in front, keeping my children behind me as I carefully make my way around their bumpers, just inches from the zipping, roaring traffic. Sure enough one of the parked cars jolts into motion without warning just as I step behind it. The driver was probably trying to get into a tiny break in the traffic on the main road. He slams on his brakes and I jump backward but his bumper still comes in contact with my leg. I make my way toward the front of his car, to get around in the gap he has now left there. (Yes, he turns out to be a man.) We exchange angry words.

“People shouldn’t walk out in this. It’s ridiculous!” He looks frazzled and he is obviously not thinking about the fact that I’m carrying a white cane. If I want to get to work, get to a doctor or get my kids to school, I have to walk. 

We continue down the tiny sidewalk--walking the gauntlet of deafening noise, noxious fumes and greasy spray—with the very real possibility of sudden death only inches away.
I’m juggling a white cane and an umbrella against the pouring rain, but my small daughter takes my hand anyway and when the sidewalk broadens enough that we can walk side by side, she asks, “Mama, why are people so mean?”

A woman holds an umbrella to try to block a gush of muddy water showering her from a passing car. Creative Commons image by Brett Jordan. 

A woman holds an umbrella to try to block a gush of muddy water showering her from a passing car. Creative Commons image by Brett Jordan. 

I’m already having enough trouble with my emotions and I clench my teeth, unable to answer without saying something hateful that a child shouldn’t hear. 

But right then the car coming toward us on the road slows remarkably. The driver doesn’t slam on the brakes, but simply slows to a more reasonable speed. There is nothing else around except us in the narrow road and the street is open and empty in front of the car. The frustrated drivers in the cars behind the slow one crowd up on the bumper, but that one vehicle goes past us without spraying dirty water. I can only tell it’s silver. I can’t see anyone behind the windshield or even the make of the car. 

But it gives me the chance I need. “They aren’t all mean,” I tell my daughter, while I reach back to make sure my five-year-old son is still right behind us. “Did you see that car slow down?”

“That was a nice one,” my daughter says.

“That’s right. We get to choose if we’re kind or cruel,” I tell my kids.

Your Choice

When a kid grows up with any sort of significant disadvantage, she'll necessarily have some limits on her choices in life. But this is one thing my kids get to choose, even if they don't have all the privileges bestowed by wealth or white skin. One day they will be adults in this hectic, crazy-making world and they'll get to choose to be thoughtful about their actions and words... or not. They'll get to drive and slow down when they see someone trapped between a gutter of water and a wall... or not. They'll get to carefully avoid racially loaded language, ablelist metaphors and national slurs... or not. These are all part of the choice to be mindful of our impact in the world (or not). 

Here is a truth. I actually don’t think all the people rushing by and drenching us want to be cruel. I know how hectic and pressured their lives are—bait-and-switch professional jobs, kids who have to be all-stars in order to even be considered for the college track high schools, rising prices, bills to pay, health troubles of their own. There is virtually no one who doesn’t have to struggle. 

And to have the presence of mind to slow down in order to avoid drenching someone at a narrow spot in the road? It isn’t easy. 

Another thing. White people don't want to be cruel when we accidentally assume the one person at the meeting with brown skin must be the maid or when we let racist rhetoric slide in our professional, social or religious circles and pass it off as "a difference of opinion." Most white people today, if they stop to think, know better. But thinking... taking action in a group like the driver who made sure several other cars slowed down and didn't splash us... takes mindfulness and focus. And it is damned hard to focus with what's going on around us--in life and in the media. 

Presence of mind is key though. It isn’t enough to want to be a benevolent. We must also cut through the chaos and focus enough to see where we may unwittingly do genuine harm. Being mindful of our impact both on other people and on the environment (and thus on future generations) is no small thing. But it is what differentiates kindness from cruelty and often defines self-respect.

A Mindfulness List

Some of us like to make lists and lists can help us to remember, not just to buy bread, but also to remember the things we are aware of sometimes but need to be mindful of all the time. Mindfulness lists might include changing habits of speech that have become offensive in society, doing less harm in our consumption, moving and relating in ways that don't hurt others and so forth and anything else where you've thought "I didn't mean to hurt anyone by doing that but I did."

Here are a few examples of the things I want to remember to be mindful of myself—despite how overwhelmed or frazzled I might be with my many hats and roles in life. This is my personal list--not the most important things in the world. Many things that are important I am already am mindful of. That's why I don't have avoiding racially stereotyped language or recycling on this list. Those were on my list twenty years ago and now I'm constantly mindful of them. Here's my current list:

  • Say hello to and thank people in low-status jobs, such as cleaners and catering staff.
  • Whenever possible buy from companies that pay their employees a living wage no matter what country they work in. 
  • If I want to ask a person of color to speak on their ethnic group, make sure I've asked them to speak on an area of professional, academic or other expertise unrelated to their ethnic group in the past.
  • If I'm around when someone makes a dismissive or belittling comment about a disadvantaged group or uses derogatory language (even if they don’t mean anything by it), I  want to be someone who speaks up. Educate gently at first, then firmly if necessary. 
  • Speak to children, foreigners and people with developmental disabilities in a normal voice. Take a smidgen of extra time to make sure you’ve understood them. 
  • When attending a racially diverse meeting, make sure someone of a background different from my own has been heard from before speaking up for a second time. 
  • Notice when I accidentally judge and jump to conclusions about another. Stop and reconsider. Weigh the known facts and toss out assumptions and statistical probabilities, when it comes to another person.
  • Don’t swat honey bees or bumble bees, use a rag to swipe them back outdoors. (I know that one sounds trivial by comparison but in the scheme of things, who knows. It's my current environmental awareness goal and it's hard because of my vision impairment and moderate bee allergies.)

What's on your mindfulness list?

We won’t be perfect. Life can be crazy and we're often trying to do things more long-range than these as well. These are just acts of mindfulness, not anything that will change the world. We also want to do serious work for positive change. 

Maybe that is the most important thing I wish to remember. 

  • Expect that everyone you meet is probably pretty frazzled and usually for reasons beyond their control. Cut people some slack.

Keep trying to be the sort of person you respect.

Simple Living in Suburbia

I roll out of bed at dawn, put a jacket on over my pajamas and stumble outside. I take a quick look to make sure the ducks and the rabbit are okay. I open the greenhouses so the plants won't get fried. Then I pick fresh spinach for my husband's sandwich and herbs for the day's cooking. Then I go back in to see if my kids are up and dressed yet.

Ani kitten.jpg

No, I'm not a farmer and I don't live in the country. Other than the tangled empty lot next to us, we pretty much live in suburbia. My husband and all of the neighbors head off to work between seven and eight in the morning and drive into the city to professional jobs. After I get the kids off to school, I sit at a computer and do a professional job or teach classes. 

But now that we have poultry I think I can finally claim to be a real urban homesteader. That's a new movement that tries to take the better parts of the old 1970s back-to-the-land movement and make it compatible with professional, middle-class lifestyles. 

It's a tall order. But our gardens do have a lot more fun gizmos that the dirt-poor back-to-the-landers of yesteryear. Half of my garden is now watered automatically by gravity flow from stored rainwater. 

The thing is that for most of us the desire to grow our own food comes from more than just the avoidance of pesticides and vague feelings that a smidgen of self-sufficiency is good security. It comes from a deep-seated need for a simpler and less frazzled way of life. 

When I went to pick up my kids today, I almost got run over by a guy pulling out of his parking space in to horrible traffic. Later I talked to a woman who runs a modest company and barely has time to eat a regular meal once a day. Most of the kids I see in my ESL practice are already chronically tired and stressed--by the age of nine. 

What does this have to do with raising ducks and growing lettuce?

Blue eyed kitty.jpg

Everything actually. 

Studies show that fifteen minutes in a natural environment has measurable health effects on everything from blood pressure to immune function. My brief morning scramble to do what most needs doing on our urban homestead first thing in the morning vastly improves my day. I feel better. I don't get depressed as I used to. I wake up worrying about six things and by the time I'm done with the outside bit, I'm ready to stop worrying and just deal. 

Yes, you can theoretically get the same thing out of just having your breakfast out on the back deck, if you have one. But the fact is that you won't when the weather turns bad. I go out early every day--rain, sun or snow, because I have to. My body naturally falls into rhythm with the sun, because there are things that matter that are governed by that rhythm. Simple living doesn't work too well unless its enforced. Apparently, we have a natural human tendency toward hectic stress.

I'm glad to see that it can be done, even in suburbia. It has taken ten years to build our little oasis of simple living, but now it blooms with life. The latest addition is a kitten--a replacement for our hardworking cat (akka, mouse hunter) who has gone to the great sunbeam couch in the sky. There is something about a kitten that epitomizes simple living. Kittens have no appreciation or respect for professional careers, but they really don't demand that much. A tickle here and there, a pant-leg to climb, a bit of food multiple times a day. And for your trouble, they'll keep you in a simpler rhythm.