A thousand years of fishing

Pale, autumn sunlight sifts through the morning mist, a thread of weak yellow in the grayish brown landscape..

Image by Arie Farnam

My hands are nearly frozen, gripping the side of a jolting wagon and a child between my knees. And this is just the beginning.

But there are thermoses of hot water for tea and bottles of rum for grog and if anyone will be warm it will be me. My task is usually tending the small cookfire on the dike.

It's the annual fish harvest in South Bohemia and we're on our way to the ponds, bundled up for several hours of frigid work. There is no snow yet and only a mild layer of frost but everything is wet and will get wetter. The land here used to be a marsh after all.

Each year we are pressed into service by my husband's family on the last weekend in October to help fish out the ponds that hold the winter's supply of carp and pike. It's a tradition a thousand years old. The men dress in hip-high rubber boots and old farm jackets and wade out into the muck of the partly drained ponds with giant nets spread between them. Then at the grandfather's signal, they form a line and heard the fish in to the center. 

Image by Arie Farnam

I am always struck by the odd beauty of this ritual. It is all about mud, cold and hard, dirty work. But the fact that the techniques used hundreds of years ago are still the most effective makes it magical. And the realization that the five-hundred-year-old network of fishponds and water channels has made humans an integral part of the ecology of this land make it beautiful. 

When the fish are drawn into a wriggling, silver-flashing mass in the center of their circle, the fishermen lift them with scoop nets, while others sort them into huge drums of water--one for the smallest immature fish, one for those that will be left to grow another year and one for the full-sized fish, which will be kept in clear water for a month to ensure that they don't smell like mud. Then they'll be served for holiday dinners.

Image by Arie Farnam

Dozens of people come to the fish harvest, many to work for a free fish, many just to watch from the dike. I hand out grog and tea. This used to be my mother-in-law's job and I was only her helper. This is the first year since she passed on. 

My children run wild in the pack of local children, splashing through the shallow black water and spattering themselves with that peculiar stinking black mud of the South Bohemian bogs that is nearly impossible to wash out of clothes and off of skin. But such family traditions are worth more than a set of clothes. 

I warm my reddened hands by the fire and watch as the sun emerges from behind the heavy clouds, briefly setting the autumn trees around the pond ablaze with color. 

Forging one's on solace

Almost nothing can be seen from my windows this morning. A few bits of trees poke out of the dense fog but everything else is shrouded in thick white. The air smells like wet compost and leaf mold. 

The contrast with the warm light of my fire and the dry, snugness of my little house is delicious. I tell my husband and children how fog was something so magical and exciting to me as a child, growing up in parched Eastern Oregon. Whenever we went on trips near the coast and drove into fog, I would shout, "We're in a cloud! We're in a cloud!"

My children are confused. I try to explain that fog is pretty much a cloud on the ground, but they insist that clouds are things with borders, skin and substance that you see up in the sky--not just white air.

My husband simply laughs at the idea of fog being exceptional in any way. He grew up in a marsh. 

I'll admit that fog has lost some of its magic for me. I am getting tired of the damp after eighteen years in this climate. I often long for the clean dryness of the high desert. Even after all these years, it hasn't left me.

Creative Commons image by Joshua Ezzell

But this particular morning I rejoice in the mist.

This week I had to draw the line in an unhealthy and manipulative relationship. Doing it required not just setting boundaries with one person, but choosing seclusion from a community--in fact a community that ties me to that high desert I love so deeply. 

I've spent so much of my life seeking community and struggling for inclusion that the act of choosing seclusion is boggling and yet on some level it is cathartic. The knowledge that you have a choice in every situation, even if that choice means exiting and taking the losses, is a bit of empowerment. 

I spent much longer at my morning meditation this morning than I usually do. Yesterday I missed it for the first time in many months, due to the pressures of rocky health and children.

And today I could not get settled. I felt a knot of anxiety and grief still in my gut and there was one distraction after another - the new-kindled fire threatening to go out (fog does actually make it harder to start a fire), the cat acting like it was going to vomit on my couch and so forth and so on. Even if you turn off your phone, sometimes the world just won't leave you alone. 

My meditation is a moderately active one. I don't sit and say "Om," though I know people who that works beautifully for. My mind chatter needs to be quieted, so I use recitation of poetry as well as simple ritual, candles and turning off all electric devices. Still I could not get settled, so I just did it anyway.

Of course, merely going through the motions is not really good spiritual practice, but "fake it til you make it," has its merits.

Finally I did make it, but not until I'd been at it for an hour (and I brought out the heavy artillery in the form of Tarot cards). Some days I don't have that much time. And today it was a near thing. 

But finally peace of mind came.

The fog closed around me and held me by my warm fire. The danger is at bay, somewhere beyond. I have forged my own solace--a chance for healing. And I do not need to struggle for now.

I know that when I step out again, I may have to face it all over. And soon I'll have to clean the school room and prepare for classes this afternoon.

But for now I have made solace by effort and design. This is woman-made peace without the use of mind altering substances or denial of harsh realities.

It's there somewhere. It can be forged.

Staring down my ballot

I envision Americans all over the world--Americans living abroad that is--sitting and staring at this letter the way I am. Americans abroad get to vote quite a bit early.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the envelope in front of me. I am glad it made it given the funky postal system these days. I'm also grief stricken. And terrified. I hate the damn thing. And I'm grateful that this at least remains to us.

A ballot.

How many people fought for this? Women. People of various colors. People with disabilities. Immigrants. If you belittle it, you are either an ass or just plain ignorant of history.

We all know that.

It's a great thing to have a ballot. My neighbors and my husband don't get one. The issue of who will be the next American president will impact them nearly as much as it impacts me. But they don't get a vote. I do.

And I don't know what in Hades to do with it.

I do know it's one in a hundred million. My ballot does not mean squat. If I ball it up and throw it away in disgust no one will care. Clinton will win or Trump will win, whether I do it or not.

I don't get political, I mean actually election-political, on my blog very often and I swear I'm not even doing that now. I'm not going to tell you how to vote because I don't know how to vote this time around. 

"Knock me over with a feather!" I can hear some of you shouting. "Arie doesn't have a political opinion for once."

Oh, I've got opinions. I've got a gazillion of them. That isn't the problem. 

I'm going to hazard a guess here. I'll bet I don't have very many readers who are Trump supporters. (Except you, Andy. And we love you anyway.) He's sort of a family member and you know how that goes.

But the rest of you... well, who reads my blog? According to my Google stats some people actually do, for which I am immensely grateful.

And from comments I'm guessing some of you are general treehuggers, like me, and you know you're not voting for Trump. Then there are the non-Americans who read my blog, and you wouldn't be voting for Trump even if you could. There are quite a few people with disabilities who read my blog and Trump would just as soon see us dead. Same goes for my Romani and otherwise non-white readers.

A lot of readers are also variously Pagan and Goddess inclined. Now one could theoretically argue about whether or not Trump will make America "great" again, but we know for sure he'll make it Christian-or-else again, so that sort of settles who Pagans aren't voting for.  

Therefore, I'm not going to tell anyone not to vote for Trump because it's pretty safe to assume that no one reading this is planning on it, except possibly that guy Andy. And he's only reading this to humor my mother.

Instead I'm going to commiserate with you.

Because if you aren't voting for Trump, what are  you going to do?

Okay, there's the question. Vote for Clinton or don't vote for Clinton? Clinton is one of the least popular politicians in history even before the election and with good reason. You may be one of those desperate people demanding that every decent person vote for Clinton because "if you don't, you're signing the country over to Trump and thus signing your own death warrant!" 

I get it. I really do. When I look at Trump. I think of course there's no choice. That Green on the ballot might as well not even be there. No real choice.

And then I put my head in my hands and cry. Because... remember all those people I mentioned, the ones who fought for this ballot. And now the ballot is as good as useless. There's no real choice. 

Every single election in my adult life (that's since 1996) I've been told, "There's no choice. Just vote AGAINST that guy!" whichever guy it was. Who I was supposed to vote for did not matter.

So, we grit our teeth and do our duty. We vote for slime, for lies, for candidates who care as much about us as they do about the gum they stepped on when they got out of their LImo last night. 

It's only harder this time because we had hope for a little while. I knew it wouldn't last. Admit it. So did you.

If we were right about the way the political system works, if you actually believed what Sanders was saying (including Bernie Sanders himself), you had to know that he would never be allowed to compete for actual votes cast by people.

He said the system is broken and rigged. And it is. So Clinton participated in a blatantly rigged primary to deny us our right to vote. And now we'll vote for her because... we have no f---ing choice!

I try to comfort myself. Clinton mentioned climate change. She actually MENTIONED it. Bernie did that at least. He has forced her to at least say a few taboo words. We all know she won't do what needs to be done, that she doesn't care and that these are all just words to her, but maybe I should throw my vote her way as a sort of "thank you" for the mention of the single most important security crisis facing us (according to official US military analysis and everyone else worth their salt). At least she didn't completely ignore reality. 

And I do have a daughter. She's seven and she's into Lego Friends, who first rush home to change their clothes and put on make-up every time they are called out to rescue endangered animals. Think about what it would mean if the president is a woman--a woman who does not even make coquettish noises every two sentences. My daughter could grow to her teenage years with this woman's face as the supreme power in the world. That is worth something isn't it? No matter how much of a liar and conscienceless shell she may be.

That is something to vote FOR, isn't it?

My gut feels like a sack of rotten potatoes. If you've ever smelled rotten potatoes--really rotten--you know what I'm talking about this election.

So, good luck when you get your ballots, America. You've got my sympathy which ever way you toss your lack of choice. Just remember that NOT voting is still part of the game and there may be consequences.

I'm going to go out tonight and wish on a star. I wish just once in my life to vote FOR a president, rather than against. Even if my choice doesn't win. Please just once. I want to cast my vote for a candidate I trust and admire. 

And that wish is light in the darkness. We may have to fight for the right to vote, really vote, all over again. Don't forget. It's been done before.

Inside the house of the model parent

"You're such an amazing mother! Your kids are so lucky!"

I couldn't believe my ears. And then I felt awful inside. Not only am I a bad parent, I'm a liar. Either that or I'm only "inspirational" because I'm legally blind but not a real "good mother."

That's how it feels when people tell me I'm a wonderful mother because I know what it really looks like at our house. I do something--one little thing--well and people are so impressed. But I know how much hair pulling, screaming and yelling, fighting with my husband and so forth it took to get that one thing done. And I know about the piles of laundry, the dirty dishes and the cobwebs that have fossil layers.

The parenting feat that attracted this latest gush of praise was the time I managed to put together a cooperative reward chart for the family that ended in homemade pizza. Not exactly super mom. More like lesson one from a parenting book. 

But I also know that looking from the outside it might well look pretty impressive. Things like that look impressive to me when other people do them. So, I'm going to let you peek inside this particular "model parent" moment.

Here's how it REALLY happened.

Problem 1: My husband and I are really out of shape. This is primarily caused by stress, jobs, kids, the demands of society, our kids' school and so forth. He has high blood pressure and I'm developing joint problems. 

Problem 2: We want our kids to learn responsibility. Our kids want to have animals but take no responsibility for them. The parents are tired of doing all the work and the remembering.

Solution: I made a chart that looks like a board game. At the start of it there were four stick figures. That's us. At the end, there was a crude picture of a pizza in a square pan (i.e. homemade, not going out). In between, there were about thirty little colored squares. The deal was that every time my seven-year-old daughter fed the cat in the morning without being reminded our little family star moved forward one place, every time my five-year-old son fed the ducks in the afternoon with only one reminder the star moved another place and every time a parent did an agreed-upon daily workout it moved forward. That's a total of four possible moves per day. 

It took us well over two weeks. Not a perfect score by a long shot. Mama and Papa got less than seven hours of sleep a night, any night they got up early to exercise. There was cat food all over the back veranda at least six times. Everyone forgot the ducks at least two nights, but they did live. They just ate the cabbages instead of getting fed, so the cabbage from the garden is full of holes.

But we got there.

The day of the pizza arrived. It started with a fight between Mama and Papa about who had to go to the store to buy the salami Papa had forgotten to buy because Mama had forgotten his second reminder. The fight lasted 45 minutes and was loud and stressful. I cried in front of the kids again.

Then in order to fit making homemade pizza into the preparations for lunch, cooking for the week ahead and the harvest feast with friends planned for Sunday, I was chained to the kitchen stove for the entire Saturday. This, of course, made me a bit grumpy. I mostly spent the morning, trying to cook and clean while telling the kids to go outside and generally not doing quality time.

The kids hit and kicked each other, got time-out, ran away from time-out, got a reasoning talk about conflict resolution, unwillingly role-played talking out their needs, banged on the piano, hung onto my legs, got into the pantry and tried to eat cookies right before lunch while knocking two glass spice jars off the shelf, got sent outside again... and again.

Photo by Ember Farnam

I hoped to make the pizza with the children, but the seven-year-old was invited to a birthday party that afternoon. So, I planned to do it with just the five-year-old. But then the five-year-old collapsed on the floor screaming and crying for no discernible reason, while I was finishing up the dough. Trying to be a good mother, I put the dough aside, washed my hands and carried him upstairs, kicking and screaming.

We settled down in his bed to read three story books and by the end of the reading he was drifting off to sleep. He doesn't usually sleep in the afternoon but I was rejoicing inside. This would avoid the inevitable meltdown when the seven-year-old departed with Papa for the birthday party while he was left at home with me.

I returned to the pizza making.

The seven-year-old party goer went outside and started to screech with feigned glee directly under the window of the sleeping five-year-old. 

Mama came unglued. 

I force-marched the seven-year-old into the play room and ordered her to lay down on the couch and sleep, or else. I wasn't going to threaten to not let her go to the birthday party because 1. that would be punishing me as I was hugely looking forward to some peace and 2. this was the first non-parent initiated birthday party invitation she'd ever gotten and I never got even one such in my childhood, so going to the party was just law. 

The five-year-old woke up and came downstairs crying after only sleeping for five minutes, because he had been woken up. I put him back in bed.

And went back to rolling out the pizza.

The seven-year-old came out of the playroom. I made angry silent motions at her with a raised fist and she went back in and shut the door... hard.

The five-year-old came down the stairs shrieking that his sister gets to play and go to a party and it isn't fair. Then he ran into the stair railing from sheer exhaustion and bruised his knee.

I washed the flour off my hands again and took him back upstairs again. He continued to shriek. I put him in bed and left with him still shrieking. 

The seven-year-old ran out of the playroom and made it outside before I could do anything. The five-year-old continued to shriek. I got the dough rolled out and started to cut up things to go on it. 

After listening to shrieking from upstairs for ten minutes, I went upstairs and yelled at the five year old. Then I was consumed with guilt because yelling doesn't help and even so he was being punished for what--essentially--the seven-year-old had done. I let him come downstairs and be tired. 

The seven-year-old went to the birthday party, the five-year-old's neighbor friend showed up in time to cut the resulting tantrum short. I went to the store and got the salami. I finished the pizza. I had no bonding moment making pizza with my children. The kitchen was an utter disaster with dishes and half-eaten lunches piled on every available surface and flour in small drifts on the floor.

Photo by Arie Farnam

But the pizza was hot out of the oven when the seven-year-old returned home from the short afternoon party. There's that perfect parenting moment you were envisioning when I first mentioned the chart and the pizza. 

But it only lasted about ten seconds, barely long enough for me to take the potholders off my hands. Then the five-year-old came running in reporting that some neighbors were having an outdoor yard party and they said he could have a hot dog. He no longer wanted pizza.

Papa came up with the idea that we would take one pan of pizza to the neighbors and the kids could share it there with the neighbor kids. So, I took the pizza over to the neighbors with the kids.

The two moms organizing the party gave me grim, unfriendly looks when we approached. Then they told me this was their party and they hadn't really wanted a bunch of people, regardless of offering my son a hot dog. I offered to take my kids home. They feigned indifference. I started herding my kids out of their yard despite the beginnings of a double tantrum. But one of the moms questioned why I was making the kids leave as if she hadn't just shamed me for coming and the other gave my kids juice. I couldn't very well spill the juice, wrestle two screaming children out of there over the host's protests (feigned or not) and carry the giant pan of pizza at the same time, so I left both pizza and children and went home.

I ate the other pizza alone with my husband and thought grim thoughts about perfect parenting.

That, my friends, is the true story of my super mom moment. For me, the lesson is to be careful what I assume about the parenting of others. Perhaps the little yard party put on by my grumpy neighbors was the fruit of hours of frustration and frantic juggling too. That might explain a few things.

Why I get up at 5:00 am

It's still very dark when I roll out of bed at 5:00 am. The town is silent and cold below my window, lit by the misty pools under orange street lights. The occasional early commuter zips by on the main road down the hill. The waning moon is high in the clear autumn sky.

I throw on a sweater and slippers and tiptoe downstairs to make tea. The mornings have suddenly gone from thankfully cool to a bit too chilly and there's a hint of frost in the air when I close a window left open. The popping of the kettle and the crow of the morning's first rooster punctuate the silence. The kitten scratches at the door. I let her in and light the fire I laid the night before.

Creative Commons image by Jeremy Monin

While the kindling sputters, I set up my meditation space, light candles and smudge with sage. The smells of herbal tea, wax and sage smoke surround me with a sense of well-being. When my meditation is finished, I settle down in my rocking chair by the fire, drink tea and do a bit of reading on ancient goddesses, which is my current unnecessary indulgence of the day. 

I do a joint-friendly workout and shower. By 6:30 the first gray light is coming out of the east. It feels wrong to wake children up so early but I have to. In the winter, the light will come even later.

Feeling a bit guilty I pull their clothes on over their heads while they try to burrow back under the covers. And the morning routine is well and truly started.

It isn't always easy for me to get up this early. I won't claim that I do it purely for pleasure. I'm sure there are some who do and I can see the attraction. The stillness and peace of early morning is matched by very few other moments, especially if your head is clear from sleep rather than muddled by an all-nighter. 

But like most people, I used to think 7:00 was a respectably early hour to rise. So what changed? Why do I get up so early?

Well, I also used to think daily spiritual practice was an incredible feat only possible for monks living in isolated mountain monasteries--far from the stresses of professional jobs, election years and children. But then I started doing my thing some weekday mornings after the kids were in preschool.  I felt much better on the days when I could fit it into the schedule, usually between 7:00 and 8:00 am. But on weekends--with the whole family home and going places--it seemed impossible.

Then after about two-years of doing mostly daily spiritual practice, I wanted it even in the summer and on weekends. The relief from stress outweighed even sleep deprivation. So, I started getting up before everyone else,

Z. E. Budapest writes in Grandmother Moon that we each have a certain time of the twenty-four-hour cycle which is our personal golden hour, and that it tends to be directly opposite to our most lethargic time of the day. I'm most tired and frustrated at about five in the afternoon, most of the time, regardless of what I've been doing all day. According to Budapest, this means my body's own rhythm is primed to be up at 5:00 am. 

The theory entirely rests on my ability to keep an early bedtime in a world where most people are still functional far past 10:00 pm and most of the internet is just getting fired up at that hour in my time-zone. 
 
So, it's not without it's struggles. There are times when I don't get to bed early enough and it is hard to get up in the morning. But the rewards of making it work are enormous.

We need a stress-free hour without the demands of children or work. And I want to use my freshest moments for something stimulating, rather than sink it into the bottomless pit of the daily grind.

The Problem with Asking for Help

Just a few weeks into the school year, I was almost late taking my first grader to school. But on my way back, I heard screaming from inside a car in a neighbor's driveway. 

I knew the one. There is only one car there now, where there used to be two. That one belongs to a mother with three little girls, one barely more than a toddler. They were always known for being quiet and keeping to themselves but things have been hard in the last few weeks.

Creative Commons image by Damian Gadal

Her husband left her just before the first day of school. And she works at a school as well. Still she's late. Really late, if I was nearly late and I'm already back.

I hope my face shows my concern and empathy. But she probably just wishes no one was witnessing her family struggle, her kids screaming and fighting in the car, the lateness, the frantic stress. 

She's a very private person. I am on good neighborly terms with her, trading waves and gardening tips. But she has never been open to deeper friendship. I only know her husband left because my kids overheard a gossiping neighbor and brought the tale home to me. The woman herself has not told me, and I don't think she'd appreciate anyone approaching the subject from the outside.

And yet, I wish I could help. And I could. My kids went by there a few times in the past weeks and found a paid babysitter with her kids, something almost unheard of in this country, where parents and grandparents are expected to be on hand and babysitting isn't an industry. I could watch her girls for an afternoon and it would mean only a bit more attention than just watching my own kids. I could water her garden in a pinch.

I could just listen and make her a cup of tea. Easily. My life is hectic but that much I could do.

Yet I can't do much at all, if she keeps up the appearance that everything is fine, if I know of her trouble only through unwanted gossip. And when I ask her if she would like to come to tea, she just looks harried and too busy. She says, "Sure, sometime. I'll let you know," but she never does. 

I suppose this is what people mean when they say that many people don't ask for help when they should. I've heard it so often in the past few years, that it is becoming annoying. Whenever experts talk about 'self care" or social skills these days it seems like they always tack this on to the end: Ask for help.

Creative Commons image by Jon Marshall

"Overcome your aversion to asking for help and just ask."

The connotation is that help will be readily offered.

And yet I know full well why this woman does not ask for help. Help often isn't forthcoming. If she asked for help, she would have to ask many times--embarrassing herself, damaging her reputation and exposing her children to potential ridicule--before running across someone who would help.

You doubt it? You think most people will readily help?

A recent UNISEF video documented an experiment conducted with a six-year-old girl. The child was dressed in ragged clothes with messy hair, in order to look like a homeless child and positioned on a busy street in a major city. A team o adults watched from a distance and filmed the child standing alone amid the hurrying crowds. No one stopped to ask if the child was lost or in need of help.

Then the child was dressed in expensive, fashionable clothing, combed and clean, and positioned in the same place. As soon as the child was alone several people, primarily women, stopped to ask if the child was lost or needed help. Some started calls on their cell phones seeking help for the child from authorities. 

Next the experiment sent the child into a restaurant, first in the expensive clothing--in which she was engaged cheerfully by diners and praised as she wandered among the tables--then in the ragged clothes. When the ragged child moved around the tables in the restaurant, she was insulted and told that she had to leave and never come there again. This, even given that the child did not touch anything, speak or do anything but walk around and sometimes make eye contact. 

Eventually the insults and harsh words were too much for the six-year-old and she fled from the restaurant crying and continued to sob even while being comforted by familiar adults. The experiment had to be called off, given the potential for emotional trauma. An eerie follow-up took place when the video was posted on social media, in which the large majority of comments make illogical excuses for the negative behavior of adults toward the child. 

Most of those who did not make excuses in their comments professed shock when they saw the videos. But I'm not shocked.

Today I return from the school with a heavy heart. There is a school choir my daughter wanted to be in, but the school building for some of the first graders--including my daughter--is several streets away from the main school where the choir practices are held early in the afternoon. Because I can't drive, I would have to go three miles on foot to bring my child to choir practice in the middle of the day and then return to teaching my own classes. My work schedule won't allow it. I have strategized and shuffled things around every which way. But it won't work. 

I asked the school for help--the classroom teacher, the aids, the extracurricular coordinator, the choir teacher. They insisted that it is the responsibility of parents to transport their kids between school buildings, and that the fact that many first graders have their classes in the building with extracurricular activities but my child doesn't is simply my own problem, rather than an unfair disadvantage. I asked other parents too. No one is willing to help though some will drive their own kids to choir.

When I asked, one lady even said, "Do you expect me to pity you or something?"

No dear, I asked for for help, not pity. Somehow our society has become confused about the difference. 

Creative Commons image by Erizof of flickr.com

I don't mean to be depressing. I try to make my writing uplifting and nurturing. So, this is the nurturing part. If you are like me, you have heard many times that you need to learn to ask for help at times. You've heard it from experts, from from the media, from self-help books. So, you end up feeling inadequate yet again. Not only do you fail at meeting the ideal of perfect independence and emotional self-sufficiency. You aren't even any good at asking for help, otherwise, the experts imply, you would have it. 

Well, they're wrong. It isn't you. It's the times. 

I'm not saying don't ask for help. Do ask. There are people who want to help, not out of pity but out of the knowledge that a strong community is our best protection in hard times and the most important thing in a survivalist kit. It is not your failing that not everyone has that knowledge. 

Keep asking for community and be assured that no matter how small your means or how difficult your physical life, there are ways you could help a neighbor or a stranger in need. Find them. Make yourself interdependent. That is strength that lasts.

I'll be on the look out for a chance to help my neighbor with the three little girls. Today I'll call a mother who's in her ninth month of pregnancy and offer to pick her son up from preschool and keep him a couple of hours. And just this week, a migrant woman who speaks little of the local language admitted to me that her husband has been beating her severely and I was able to connect her with a specific counselor at a reputable organization with shelters and legal aid.  

As for my daughter's school, the principal asked me to help her find someone from an English-speaking country who would like to be a semi-paid volunteer in their English teaching program for a year.

And I can help in their search because I know many English-speaking people. Sometimes even school administrators must learn a lesson and this one is about community.
 

Exceedingly clean fun

Firefighters, trucks and hoses fill the village square amid screaming children. And a strange white substance floats on the wind, clinging to bodies and clothes and piling up in a mountain on the cobblestones.

At first glance, it looks a bit like a disaster zone.

Image by Arie Farnam

But on closer inspection, the screams turn to shrieks of delight. The children run toward the white spray and hurl themselves into the mass of foam.

As a foreigner at this spectacle years ago, I was initially a bit disturbed and concerned for the children's health. However, the foam turns out to be mild bubble bath. And this has become almost an annual event in our small town now.

The volunteer firefighters come to the square during some special occasion and fill it with a huge cushion of foam. Then the children romp in it. 

Is there anything more aptly called "clean fun?"

I stand back against the a railing and watch, though I can't see much with my eyesight, just a white blur and the wriggling shadows of the children. There is a slight distance between me and the other watching parents.

I am a foreigner and that "odd lady who teaches English and grows herbs." I'm a reasonably well-tolerated modern version of the village witch. They even call my house the "Gingerbread house" because it has red-stained wood siding and white window frames. It also stands at the edge of town near abandoned land. 

I have mixed feelings about this community, which has not so much taken me in as allowed me to exist in a foreign land. There are a few people in town--now after 12 years--who might come up to me and talk, if they were here. But most who know me won't and I cannot see them, so I don't even know which of them is present. 

I am not the only one who suffers from the cold edges of this community. Many of the elderly are left alone and when I greet them in the street and stop to talk, they are at times bitter and at times simply astonished to be acknowledged. 

Still I am glad to see that there are those here who struggle to build community. The firefighters are among them. They are volunteers in a country where volunteerism has a bad name--an aftertaste of forced community service under threat from the old Communist regime of a generation ago.

And now the firefighters have started this new tradition--one they care enough about that even though they were called out on a fire and an auto accident this very afternoon, they managed to come to the village fair as promised. We had given up hope and started for home when we heard about the accident. 

We all came running back when the trucks came down main street and the children cheered as the sun touched the horizon. And I know they will remember this all their lives. The children will remember that the firefighters are good, not scary, and that they keep they're promises. 

I have no illusions that this means the community will be healed of all the wounds of the past. There have been many. (It has taken 12 years but finally someone whispered to me that the reason we have no Roma in our town--except in my family--is that there were pogroms against them 20 years ago and they were all forced to flee.) 

Yet community leans back and forth between exclusion and inclusion. This is part of a shift toward inclusion and community strength. It is somewhere to stand.

What ableism does

This isn't a whiny post. I swear. In fact, I'm actually a bit delighted to have run across such an elegantly simple example--a way to show what mundane, everyday and--yes--even well-intentioned ableism does. 

Photo by Arie Farnam

Here's the scene. I  recently met a lovely woman at a workshop. She has a son my kids' age. They share a lot of traits in common and enjoyed playing in the kids' part of the workshop. At the end of the workshop we exchanged contact information, chatting lightly about how we would get together sometime.

I do usually follow up on such contacts but only rarely ever see the person again. There are good intentions and then there is the chaos of family life, jobs and the daily grind. 

But this time, the contact came through. This woman was eager to see us. I had invited her to bring her family to my place and she took me seriously. Finallly, the date was set and they came, including her hsuband who I had met briefly at the end of the workshop.

At the workshop I used my white cane because it helped to persuade people to identify themselves verbally. He had seen that and seemed a bit cold when we were introduced. 

The family arrived while I was cooking lunch. My husband was at work and the kids were running wild about the place. I welcomed the guests and brought them into the kitchen. Then I returned to the stove. 

"See," the woman said gleefully to her husband. "She can cook just fine." 

He mumbled something unintelligble and she turned to me.

"He didn't think you'd be able to cook," she told me.

I feigned confusion and laughed. "I know people say Americans can't cook, but I've been in Europe for nearly twenty years. I'm civilized now." 

The man shrank back a bit more and seemed ready to flee. 

The woman corrected me. "No, he wondered how you'd cook with a white cane." 

I put my arms out as if I was holding a stick and stirring a giant cauldron. "You use a very big pot and stir," I said. 

We all laughed. 

I went back to the stove. I had to make gravy for the chicken-pasta thing I'd made. Nothing fancy. The kind of gravy I've made a hundred times before. This was a day with kids and I had chosen not to wow my guests with anything fancy, but rather to make bland, kid-friendly food. 

Still I'm not sure what happened. Maybe my hands shook just a bit. Maybe I was distracted by chatting and nerves. Maybe on some level, I wasn't really laughing, even though I didn't feel bad about our light exchange. The husband of my new friend warmed right up and we were soon in the midst of lively conversation about parenting.

But for the first time ever, my gravy clumped. My mother used to warn me about clumps in gravy but I've been fortunate that even when I first started out, I never had problems with lumps in my gravy. This time, the flour solidified into hard little globs, not lumps so much as gravel. 

I felt my face flush and my hands really did start to shake. My throat closed with fear. 

Over lumpy gravy. 

But I gritted my teeth and thought fast. I found a slotted spoon, strained the gravy and finished the lunch. All was good. The guests barely noticed my anxiety.

But here is the thing.

If the gravy had been lumpy and the hostess was not blind, it would have been just a bit less than perfect. We would have laughed about it and muddled through. It was because I had been told that there was a question about whether or not I could cook because I was legally blind that it mattered. 

Sure, no one would have said anything. But they would have gone on believing that I couldn't cook well because of my vision, rather than that I am a less than perfect cook because I have other things to focus on.

If a Hispanic person at a gathering is addressed as the maid by accident, it isn't just a social gaff. And if a child from a poor background is mistaken for a slow student, it isn't just a misunderstanding. These things have deeper roots and wider ranging consequences.

There is a reason they're called "loaded" issues. It's the difference between a gun that's loaded and one that isn't. 

I had fun with my guests and the kids had a blast. It was one of only two real playdates all summer and I was glad for it. I was also utterly exhausted by the end. The strain of making sure I don't fulfill someone's stereotype takes it out of me. 

That is what harmless, everyday, well-intentioned ableism does.