Prairie

I rode into the town where I currently live for the first time in the spring of 2000 for my job interview. I wanted to put Phoenix behind me. I’d gone there in love with the desert, and I still dream that landscape—the path I hiked every day in my last year there to the top of South Mountain, the rattlesnake’s tail-drumming, the ocotillo’s bright yellow blossoms, the feeling of being always on the edge. And I was on the edge in every way—the only safe place I had was that path, those walks—I needed to get out.

And so, of course, I fell in love with the flat nothingness immediately. The prairie didn’t feel like nothingness—after the mountainous, hot, suffocating desert, the prairie felt open and new and alive, but I wasn’t really seeing it. I saw pieces of the landscape—the corn’s floppy ears, the purple coneflowers straining their one-eyed, wild-haired faces toward the sun, the wetland’s pimpled-green, stagnant surface. If I had an eye at all when I arrived, it wasn’t a wood’s eye or a prairie eye, as Bill Holm describe them in his essay “Horizontal Gradeur”—it was a desert eye. The desert was beautiful in how much it held back, dangerous in how quickly it could enact violence. In contrast, the prairie was rich and full of wonder, its gems hidden in tall grass.

In college, I spent a lot of time sitting next to the Cuyahoga River, writing or lying around thinking about what I would write next, watching the leaves change and fall and the water move slowly toward the Ohio. The Cuyahoga had burned in my early childhood, so when I sat there, watching it heal itself, I thought about all the danger I had escaped by leaving home, how well I finally knew myself now that I had the space and time to feel my body, hear my thoughts. I didn’t know myself, really, but in that time and place I knew myself better than I had before, and that was enough to feel like I could do anything. Maybe my writing, or my work, whatever it might turn out to be, could create some kind of lasting change.

In Phoenix I was close to people involved in the green movement, advocating for more public transportation because the valley was trapping poisonous pollution. But in my mind, the danger in the landscape wasn’t about how humans had damaged the landscape, but about the extreme heat, the rattlers, the cacti. I tried once to press my finger against a saguaro’s needle and realized that any self-destructive urge I’d ever had was gone—I had left the bad relationship, the bars, the other dark places out of the intensity of sun where I’d slid back into a life on the edge like the one I’d had in childhood.

The longer I live on the prairie, the more I learn about the devastation industrial farming has waged on the people and the land. But the prairie feels safe to me in the same way the river-landscape did, though for different reasons. On the winding path through the woods along the Cuyahoga, I couldn’t see far ahead, so I felt both protected and excited about the next turn. Here, there is openness and possibility, and everything is clear. I have loved deeply here, but I also knew when it was time to ease myself out of the long-term partnership, to move on. I have loved many friends and students, too, but I’ve also learned to let them go, to let new people in, as they moved in and out of my college town. Even if the partnership, the friendships, didn’t last forever, there was hope and learning and wonder along the way.

When I visited one of my former students in Seattle, where she is working her first job out of college, She said, “I don’t get it. I miss the prairie.” She confessed that while she loved the mountains, “Sometimes I want to flatten the mountains and just see a little further, you know?” And then, she turned to metaphor, “But I know I’m seeing what I can, the next day’s work, and that’s where I am right now.”

Perhaps I moved to the prairie at just the right time, when I was finally confident enough in my own ability to move and see, finally ready to settle in a place where I could live openly. I love both the garden’s bounty in August and the six-foot drifts in my front yard in March—though I suspect if I knew they would remain all year around I’d love them less. I have changed my life here, become as much a teacher and an activist as I am a writer, committed myself to the people here in the same way my mother had committed herself to her people when I was a kid. I wonder how much the landscape’s openness, its turning and returning has influenced my decision to make this commitment, to weather the ups and downs in my work, to let go of living too intensely to live, instead, intently, day by day.

Still, I am not sure I could call this place home, even after eight years. My family’s three acres and much-too-big house, easily lost when my father fell on hard times, doesn’t feel much like home, never did, even though it holds the memories of my grandmother and mother, their passionate lives and slow deaths. Perhaps it has changed too much, from open, hilly farmland and a mossy lake to small, square lots surrounding a clear, watery hole.

When I went back to Ikaria, the island my parents are from, in 1998, I felt at home for the first time. Everything had changed since my last visit. There was a road going into my father’s village, which meant there was also electricity and heat. It seemed strange to see a tiny German car rolling into the village, teetering on the mountain’s edge, and my uncle, who had traveled most of his life by donkey getting out. Since then, I’ve made regular visits and I always gasp and tear up when the boat rolls into the dock—there is some elemental connection, genetic, I am sure. And yet my family doesn’t know me, not really, except in relation to my parents—my father’s anger and violence and work ethic and risk-taking, my mother’s deep love and laughter and enjoyment of life and early death. They can see all of these things in the way I live when I am with them, and they will tell me this directly at times—or sometimes, indirectly, calling me, accidentally, by my mother’s name. The language I’d known intimately as a child comes harder to me now, and my relatives poke fun, say I’ve gone too far away.

If only they knew. There is nothing similar whatsoever to the life my parents lived and the life I live now—not landscape, not language, nothing. And yet, in my most recent visits, I’ve felt, instead of loss, some kind of integrity, some connection between who I was before my birth and who I am now.

My daughter has no roots like these, so I know I am lucky. Her only home has been a landscape. “If I could forget everything about my life before this except the mountains and the ocean, I’d be happy,” she told me during her first week with me. Three months later, as her adoption date grows closer, she tells me she hates the mosquitoes, despises the winter cold. “But I’ll stay anyway, because this house is the only place I’ve ever felt safe in my life,” she said, offhandedly, the other day. She is in the process of acquiring things—friends, mentors, clothes, artwork, dolls and stuffed animals (to reclaim the childhood she never had), even a mom. I, in contrast, gave away several boxes of belongings in order to make space in my home for her. I have learned in my eight years here that nothing is permanent, but now, suddenly, I have someone who will be, most likely, a permanent fixture in my life until I die.

This is another lesson of the prairie—nothing is permanent, and yet, everything comes back. My own childhood suffering came back when I took her in, but I learned I could feel and remember without losing myself. My own rootedness came back when a rootless child came into my home, and I found, for the first time, integrity between the island-home that was never really home and this big-skied prairie.

Yesterday, my daughter and I walked the dog at the wetlands and admired the colors, purple and yellow and red-stemmed tall grasses, and the animals, dragonflies and butterflies and pelicans and geese. This could be my favorite time of year, but I feel the same way every year when the leaves change, and when the first snowfall sticks. It is easy, at least for me, to be in love with a place that changes somewhat predictably but still keeps me uncomfortable enough to take risks, to fall in and out of love, to open my heart to friends and students who will leave, to a child who doesn’t have any idea what it means, at all, to have a home, but is settling, slowly, into this prairie-life.

Retreat

When I lived in Cincinnati just after graduating college, I used to go once a month or so on a retreat at a place called Grailville. It was an all-women spiritual space, and back then, if I’m remembering correctly, I could get a room with a large window, a comfortable bed, an electric blanket and handmade quilt, and a small desk for about $15 a night. It was a beautiful place with walking paths in the woods, a meditation room, and a dining hall (with all organic meals and an indoor compost), or, if you preferred, a small kitchenette that was private. I’d go on group writing and spiritual retreats there, too, but I loved knowing that once a month, I’d have this time and space away from it all, on my own.

What was I escaping exactly? I can’t say for sure. I lived alone, unless you count my anti-social cat. But I had a wide circle of friends back then, friends that stopped over regularly, friends that were like family. I also had a few intense, short-term relationships that felt all-consuming, most of which ended amicably enough. It was a good time in my life in many ways—I was coming out, finally making my own money at a job related to my major, even if not ideal, I was connecting my personal/spiritual self to the larger social and political world in deeper ways than I had in college.

And yet, for whatever reason, I knew I needed those weekends of walking and reading and writing and being quiet.

Last week, S’s college friend who cares for her while I’m at work came over for her usual five hour shift, and I asked if she could stay for eight. She agreed. Instead of going to work, I checked into a local hotel for the day, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. I got a reduced rate and a tiny, dark room that smelled faintly musty. It was hardly the picturesque cabin space I used to get at Grailville, and even with my reduced rate (inflation taken into account), it was probably more expensive. But I intended to do nothing outdoors, not even open a window—as it was, I felt as if I had to skulk into the place, as the town is small and it would be hard to explain what in the world I was doing there.

For some reason, I knew I needed to rekindle my reserves, to find my center again. I was tired. I was snapping at S. I knew I was at an edge, dangerously close, even though there hadn’t been a clear trigger. Yes, I’d had some bad news, but it was the kind of bad news that is distant and therefore not completely real or fathomable, about death and grief and sickness among people no longer close to me, whose lives I could not touch. Maybe it was this helplessness that made me want to retreat—this realization that there are limitations to what one can do for others, for the world. Maybe it was simply exhaustion.

As I sat in my little room, totally blank at first, unable even to write, I remembered that I’d lived in this hotel for a few weeks when I first moved to Morris, while I was searching for a place to live. My cat and I had settled into a routine; I’d leave in the morning to look for a place, taking a sandwich with me; I’d take a break in the afternoon to go to my new office and unpack one of the boxes of work-related books; I’d come back to the room in the evening, eat something at the hotel restaurant, stare blankly at the television, fall asleep. I remember being unable to settle my mind except when I was in the room; it was racing with all my new job responsibilities, with the overwhelming task of getting settled, finishing syllabi, etc.

Eight years had past, yet the décor at the local hotel had not changed a bit. I felt the same strange calm as soon as I entered the room. Two summers ago, around this time, I took a desperate retreat in a room not unlike this one in a similarly mediocre, décor-challenged hotel in the Twin Cities. I needed space and time to heal from the break up, and all I could think to do—I tried some nicer retreat spaces, only to be turned away because of short notice—was to check into a dark, dingy room and not leave for a week. Strangely, it worked. Little by little, I went from weeping in bed to doing yoga to venturing outside. I never turned on the television, hardly wrote a word. But somehow, I worked my way into a place from which I could move forward.

I always figured I’d find another Grailville wherever I went, but I really haven’t. In graduate school, about once every three months I’d go up to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon for a weekend by myself, something I managed to do even in a period when I was in an abusive relationship. The canyon was beautiful; I learned how to avoid the touristy areas and was able to enjoy hiking along its rim and (not too far) into it. Still, when I went, it was again a dingy, stale-smelling hotel room where I did my best thinking and writing. The hikes were amazing; there were coffee shops in Flagstaff that would have made excellent writing spaces; but somehow I was attracted to a place that was clearly not intended for comfort or warmth but simply for convenience.

I’ve been here eight years and just now realized that besides the week in the dingy hotel in the Twin Cities two years ago, this is the only true retreat I’ve ever taken. Now, having said that, one can hardly feel sorry for me. I took a two-week trip around Greece on my own in 2005, writing, thinking, visiting sites that only someone with my particular interests—the feminist movement during the Greek civil war-- could possibly find interesting. I wrote a draft of a novel that I’m still working on, here and there, without any specific plans to finish it. And I am now much better than I was at earlier times in my life about taking breaks each week—hiking at the wetlands, driving out into the country, doing yoga in the morning—or at least I was before S. came into my life. Now I take an hour every night to do nothing, which sometimes results in writing poetry, or surfing the internet, or reading a book, usually one I’ve read before. I know I need this time—but perhaps I also need those longer reprieves—maybe not a week, maybe not a weekend, maybe just a day here and there—to do nothing at all.

I remember at Grailville that after about my third visit I learned to expect nothing. One weekend I wrote drafts of all the poems that got me into grad school; another weekend during winter I spent most of the time under the electric blanket, in and out of sleep; another time I went to the meditation room but couldn’t stay still, so I walked and walked and eventually fell into a long, deep sleep for more than 15 hours. Once I sat still in the meditation room for almost an entire day. Somehow I was able to let my body and mind go and do what they needed to do.

The little room at the local hotel felt like a cave to me. There was nothing at all aesthetically pleasing about it at all, but I was able to sleep, to do yoga, to write and pray. I felt like a new person when I left at 6 and met S. at her horse lesson. S’s little annoying habits, which I generally weather very well, were starting to make me snap at her--no longer.

But immediately I was faced with some challenges I hadn’t anticipated—challenges that definitely would have pushed me past my limits if I hadn’t taken my little retreat. That night I had to confront S. about something inappropriate she’d posted online, to give her consequences. For the first time in weeks, she had a meltdown, showed some old, self-destructive behaviors. But then she apologized, took the consequences, and by the end of the night she was hugging me again, saying she was glad I was her mother.

And then the real bad news came a day later, the news I must have somewhere in my body and mind been anticipating--S’s biological mother wants to get her back. This will delay the adoption date. I also learned that her two biological brothers will not be adopted after all, at least not by the families that seemed committed (in one case) and interested (in the other). I can only imagine their heartbreak. I can only hope the families did what they needed to do for themselves, acted with care, knew their own limits.

This news was hard for me on so many levels—pure terror—what if I lose her? –anger at the system for allowing an abusive woman who won’t take responsibility for what she’s done the opportunity to delay the adoption—sad for S’s brothers, and for her, because I know she wants me to take them and of course I can’t--worried about how much of this, if any, to share with S.

It’s as if my body and mind knew what I would be facing this week, knew I needed to increase my reserves. I need to do this more—to carve out the space and time each month to take a day off, a real day off, and not to feel guilty. For so long I have been so sad when I have to be away from S., so glad when we’re together, and I’m seeing her grow into a completely different person than she was when she arrived. I thought I’d miss the things I used to do, my old life, more than I do. This is a good thing—but I need to be realistic and realize that even if I don’t feel that I do, I do need breaks, and not just breaks to get work done or to see friends (though of course both of those things are incredibly important). I need settling-in time, time to be present with myself. I am committing now to finding a way to work that time into my life.

Post-note: I have been working on this during a very busy week paragraph by paragraph. Since I wrote it, S. has learned the bad news about her family. She is taking it well. She wrote her brothers beautiful letters. She says she knows that I am hers and she is mine, no matter what the courts have to say about it, forever. And so, we go on…

The other day, on a walk with our dog, a daycare provider in town who has taken a special interest in S. called to us, invited us to sit with her and the kids and have a popsickle. S. entertained the kids with the dog, and she asked how things were going.

"It's been a rough week," I said.

"What are you doing to take care of yourself?"

I told her what I hadn't told anyone else (except Lisa's caretaker, who needed to know where I was that day): what I'd really done last week. She laughed and gave me a high five. "If you know yourself well enough to do something like that, you'll be OK," she said.

Marriage

I have gotten into the bad habit of reading old e-mails and/or surfing the web after S. goes to bed. I had planned for the one or two hours between my bedtime and hers to be my writing time—at least, when I didn’t have extra work that needed to get done. I haven't sent anything out for publication in over a year, and I’ve yet to return to the novel-in-progress--but I am finally writing poetry again, which feels good. Anyway, I digress...

Tonight was a web-surfing night—I couldn’t get my head clear enough to write, partly because my daughter refused to go to bed until she'd talked to her boyfriend. The house has thin walls, and I confess I have a hard time tuning out her phone conversations. So, although I tried to surf the web, really I ended up listening to one of many conversations that are always part heartbreaking, part hilarious, and part frustrating. For instance, today’s went like this:

P! Are you listening?
P!
What kind of wedding do you want, formal or semi-formal. P! P! Are you listening? What are you doing? Well, stop watching T. V. and listen!
I’m talking about our wedding, P! Who else's? Listen to me. What kind of wedding do you want, formal or semi-formal?
I'm talking about our wedding. Listen, P!

OK, I’ll stop there, but you get the picture.

S. recently cut off contact with her foster family—though I suspect this won’t be forever—after learning the truth about how they really felt about her. (This is a long story for another entry). Most of the time, she is happy to be here, and can recognize the incredible progress she’s made. But she’s not quite ready to completely separate herself from her past, and the way this manifests is through a one-sided relationship with a boy named P.

Well, maybe it’s not completely one-sided. I wouldn’t know; she tried to arrange twice for us to meet during my pre-adoption visits, and both times, he chickened out of showing up, or his family made the decision for him—or something.

Based on the conversations I overhear, he is as immature, if not more so, than she is. He's also an abuse survivor, and an adoptee, though he was adopted by a relative. S’s former therapist told me he was kind to her, able to calm her down, and that he did at least briefly consider her his girlfriend—though S. herself admits they only kissed on the lips a handful of times, and that she enjoyed it more than he did.

Sometimes, S. says she wants to marry him at 18 and start having babies--and becomes outraged when I explain why I don't think this is necessarily the best plan. Whether he has this vision—or thinks of her as a girlfriend at all now—is questionable. There were a series of conversations about the status of their relationship—yes, you can date other people, no, you can’t, etc.—and now, S. insists they’ve come to some kind of agreement to stay together forever, something I can’t verify, of course.

There was, however, the letter her wrote her, one sentence: “Have faith.” It may have meant "have faith that we will be together," or "have faith that your life will work out," or—most likely, he doesn’t even know what it meant. It was a response to a long, heartbreaking letter from S. begging him to be more engaged in their conversations, more attentive to his future. He sent her letter back with these two words, scrawled in giant letters on the letter’s reverse. Talk about cryptic--but it was enough to convince her that a wedding, babies, etc. were in her future.

When she’s not talking about marriage and babies, she’s talking about college, career options, waiting to have kids. Or else she’s talking about becoming a famous singer, and how P. will follow her everywhere and sometimes sing duets with her. The dog is also in this fantasy, and I’ve been told that if she ever gets that rich, she’ll buy me a mansion. The next day, she’s back to looking up colleges with horse programs on the internet, talking about what it would take to have a career working with horses, saying, “My good grades are definitely the first step, right, Mom?”

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to whether she is talking realistically or unrealistically about the future. I have noticed, though, that after a particular success she will often regress--return to fantasy talk, go from calling P. once or twice in a week to insisting on calling him every day. I am still negotiating how to limit their conversations—which are clearly not as interesting or important to him as to her—without making her feel as if I’m cutting her last lifeline to the past. Unlike her other fantasies/unrealistic stories, I am unable to give her a reality check because I don’t have a firm grasp of the reality.

So anyway, I was clicking through old e-mails, the mass-mail ones that I get at work, decide to read later, and usually end up deleting months afterwards, unread--and listening to this wedding conversation, frustrated beyond belief. "Why does this girl who is doing so well right now—who has lots of concrete, positive things going on in her life—feel like it’s to her benefit to spend time having a one-sided conversation about how formal her wedding will be to someone who has never showed any interest, as far as I can tell, in marrying her?" I asked myself as I clicked on yet another unopened e-mail.

And there it was—the photo that woke me up. There in the center of my screen were two old women—very old women, there's no better way to say it—getting married. The headline read, “Marriage in California.”

Now, I’d written the obligatory letters, made the obligatory calls—even with S. in my life, I’m able to stay politically active to this extent at least. I vaguely knew the California measure had passed, and of course I thought this was good news—but something about the photo made this reality concrete in a way that completely surprised me.

Without any warning, I was sobbing. It was sudden and fierce, but there was something so raw and beautiful about the photo—how the woman on the right, the one with white hair, leaned forward, her smiling cheeks a sea of wrinkles, her eyes straining to see her partner. Their hands clasped together. Her partner, lips pressed together, eyes closed, weeping. The witnesses were weeping, too—two middle-aged women whose identities, like those of the marrying couple, are not revealed on the site. The minister, a young man, smiled ear to ear, a little awkwardly.

S. came down then, saying something annoying like, “Well, you can’t stop true love, it always means long conversations. P. and I were planning our wed....”, and then, she saw my face. She sat down beside me, read the screen. “I want to see more,” she said, and so I kept clicking. We watched a video of a stream of couples walking through the courthouse door, old, disabled, young, together for 12 years, 18, 40—and I kept weeping.

“It’s so beautiful,” Lisa said, and that would have been enough, but she went on. “I don’t understand how anyone could hate you, Mom,” she added, kissing my head.

“They’ll try to take it away,” I heard myself say. Immediately, I regretted it. I’m trying to raise a hopeless kid into a hopeful life—and here I am, already thinking ahead to the inevitable barrage of hatred that will follow this moment.

“Have faith, Mom,” S. said. “They’d better not, or I’ll kick them in the balls.” But I didn’t hear the second sentence; instead, I saw her boyfriend’s messy, giant letters scrawled across the bottom of the letter she’d written him, which he’d sent back: have faith.

For whatever reason, I understood something then as I hadn’t earlier—that S’s need to stay connected to P. has everything to do with faith. She wants to believe she can change her life without fundamentally changing who she is. A part of her is proud of how she’s matured in the last three months—another part of her is terrified. She's terrified because when she thinks back to the Boys and Girls Club, where she spent most of her time because her foster family agreed to keep her only on this condition, and where she and P. met, she remembers having one other outsider who truly cared for her there, one other person her age who understood, more or less, what she had been through. It was a good feeling, but it's in the past--and she can’t connect the person she is now with the person she was then.

This is, of course, a terrible comparison, but I know the feeling. My life has changed drastically multiple times, and occasionally, I feel this pull toward the past, this need to reconnect with friends who have long since left my life or to talk with someone who “knew me then,” even if she doesn’t know me now. It’s why I had an inexplicable urge to call my ex, with whom I barely speak, the week I was going to meet S. for the first time—I didn’t do it, but the urge was there. Unlike S, though, who is able to convince herself that a one-sided conversation is actually a positive sign, I knew any conversation I initiated would have ended with me disappointed, sad--something a 14-year-old girl can't be expected to understand.

Even now, years later, when I see the photos of those couples getting married, finally, legally, after so many years, I am partly weeping for joy, partly for what I know I could have had if I'd been willing to stick it out--but I wasn't. And for good reason, let me add--I would not have been happy.

But these couples are--truly, undeniably happy. This is all S. wants, really, some kind of assurance that the future will be secure for her, that she'll be loved.

"I said I'll kick them in the balls if they try to take it away," S. repeated, clearly wanting to make me laugh, and the second time, I did.

"Explain how it works again," S. said, "how gay people can be married in a church but not really. How does that work?" I explained the difference between a church wedding and a legal wedding--and all the privileges that go along with it.

"It's so unfair," S. said. "I'll kick 'em in the balls," she repeated.

“Kicking them in the balls won’t help,” I said. “But there are other ways. We can write letters...”

“I know, Mom,” she interrupted me, rolling her eyes. “It was a metaphor.”

And immediately, for some inexplicable reason, I saw my own handwriting at age 14, scrawled on a tiny piece of paper I’d taped to the side of my bed, read every night—a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, then my favorite poet:

To a Young Poet

Time cannot break
the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together,
go down, one feather.
No thing that ever flew,
not the lark, not you,
can die as others do.

When I was 14, I instinctively understood the bird metaphor--I wanted, like S., desperately to fly, to feel the rush of wind in my wings, but also, I wanted my life to matter. My vision may have been different than hers--I wanted my writing to change people's lives the way Millay's had changed mine--but is that really any less selfish than wanting a big wedding, to be loved completely in the fairy-tale way by the first boy who ever showed you a little kindness? OK, maybe it is less selfish--but considering that all S. has ever wanted or needed is to be loved--considering that the idea of making an impact wasn't even in her frame of reference until recently, as she was focused primarily up until this point on survival--her desire is really the foster-care-kid version of mine.

S. leaned over me then and pressed "replay" on one of the U-Tube videos we'd watched. There they were again, all of those couples walking into the courthouse, joyful, grateful, changed. I wept again, and S. rubbed my back and said, "It's OK, Mom. It's real."

My daughter may not always have a concrete sense of what is real and what is not, but in that moment, she was so, so right.

Healing

It was April 2002, the last day of GLBT Pride week at the college where I teach. We gathered as usual for a celebration potluck at the home of my friend, who co-advises the GLBTA organization. We were tired but joyful--proud of the excellent work the students had done to bring nationally-known speakers and performers to campus. As twilight began to fall, the students left in small groups, planning their weekends. I remember telling them to be safe and, jokingly, saying “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That shouldn’t restrict us to too much,” one of them joked back.

I have a picture in my mind of us sitting in that circle; I can still hear the deep laughter of one of the co-chairs, Jen, and see another member, Dustin, running his fingers through his hair as he paused dramatically during a funny story. In this picture, they are innocent, untouched by anything hateful or harmful, proud of who they are, and safe.

I can see the big prairie sky turning from blue to pink to blue-black as the students trickled out the front door.

I wasn’t there later that night when Jen, Dustin, and Dustin’s boyfriend decided they were too tired to go out and chose instead to go to the local grocery store to rent a movie. I wasn’t there to hear their laughter in the car, and yet, I can hear it—Dustin’s a little higher than a typical guy’s laugh, the earthy, deep, short giggle in Jen’s throat. I don’t know what movie they were looking for, but maybe that’s what they talked about as they rolled out of the car, Dustin’s hand in his boyfriend’s, oblivious to any sideways glances of the teenagers parked at the McDonald’s, one of the local teen hangouts in our small town, which shares a parking lot with the grocery. Or maybe they were still talking about Pride week, the giant flag they’d unrolled on the student center’s outside wall, the image of the campus’ chancellor dangling from the end of the rope when the flag stubbornly refused to fall.

Whatever it was they were talking about, according to the interview records, they didn’t hear the high school kids by the magazine rack, who were making comments about the men’s linked hands and the quick kiss Dustin gave his boyfriend after he made a joke. They did hear the reprimand of a community member named Katie, who told the kids to get lost, get over it, mind their own business. She talked to Jen, Dustin, and his boyfriend after, explaining what had been said, what she’d said back. This did not faze them.

And then they rented the movie, got into their car, and drove away. It didn’t take long to figure out they were being followed. A car pulled up beside them, windows down (it was, as I recall, a mild April, nothing like this year’s snowy one), the boys inside shouting words like “buttfucker” and “faggot.” They shouted for Jen, Dustin, and his boyfriend to “get out of our straight town.”

The three of them, unnerved, drove back to campus and parked their car. By then, the other car seemed to have disappeared, and for a moment they felt safe again, even laughed it off. Then, as they were crossing the street to get back to their dorm, the car sped up and drove toward them as if in an attempt to run them over.

This was the first of a series of hate crimes aimed at the GLBT community in our small town. It was also, for me, the one with the most impact. (I have written about it before in this blog). On the positive side, it was the first time the mayor, police force, and Human Rights Commission got together to discuss how to make the community safer for GLBT people. On the negative side, a spiral of silence began to surround the boys, and they were never caught—even though the police are certain of at least one of their identities, nearly certain of the other’s. Parents refused interviews, kids at the high school said they didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Eventually, the case was closed.

Both of our student victims were gone within a year. Neither finished college. And this week, one of them, who now lives in LA, came back to find some closure.

It was good to see her. She’d had a rough run of it over the last six years, but is now doing incredibly well. She looked the same, except that she could make eye contact and was a little more maturely dressed (though, as my daughter pointed out, still very fashionable) and clearly much more confident.

We had some good, long talks. She got to meet my daughter. She got copies of the records, including more than 10 interviews with high school kids and their parents. She discovered one of the boys admitted to doing the yelling but was never charged with harassment because the police believed the driver, whom he would not name, had committed the “only criminal act,” as a good-natured, well-meaning police officer explained to us when we met with him in the giant, 70’s-style atrocity that is our police building and courthouse.

Later, on my home computer, we looked up the harassment law and realized he could have been charged. I felt like I’d been a terrible advocate, missing such an obvious point. But it is now too late to file charges: even if the records did not contain black permanent marker slashes over the last name of every interviewee, six years have passed, and according to law, a civil case must be brought within six years.

As night fell on her last day here, Jen, my daughter and I went to the grocery store where the crime had begun. We stood silently in front of the movies.

“It’s just a store,” Jen said, but she was clearly unnerved. She said she wanted to walk around the store for awhile, to try to remember some of the good things that had happened there. “I don’t want my only memory of this place to be that night,” she said. My daughter and I waited—and waited. After awhile, I got scared—where was Jen, what had happened? A few nearly impossible scenarios flew into my mind—someone had recognized her, maybe some of those boys-turned-men were in the store again. But then, she was back, saying she was ready to drive away.

We drove the same way they had driven that night, in silence, down the small access road that goes from the store to the main road, past Subway, past the cemetery. But when we got to the turn—the place where the car had pulled up beside them, where the boys had screamed their hateful words—the road was blocked.

“I can’t help but think this is a sign,” I said into the silence, which my daughter was prayerfully respecting. Nobody responded. I circled back another way, around the campus, past the horse barn, past the baseball courts, eventually landing in the same space where, according to the records Jen had received, they had parked that night.

School is out, and the lot was empty. We got out and walked toward the road. “Here’s where it happened, where we crossed,” Jen said, and we paused while she lit a candle and put it on the ground. “Everything looks different,” she said. “I thought we’d run up a hill to get to the dorm, but there’s no hill, just a tiny embankment.” She turned to me. “Did they do something here?” she asked, and I shook my head.

Memory is faulty when it comes to details. When I remember the home of my childhood, the room where my mother died, for instance, it is giant in my memory, the red-orange carpet searingly bright. When I went to that same room the day my father was moving out after losing everything he owned, I saw an empty, too-white, tiny space; it was hard to imagine my mother’s hospital bed had ever fit there.

Of course, just as the loss of my mother is deeply imprinted in my heart, even if the room’s details are lost to me, what happened to Jen that night, the feelings she had, will be with her forever. That is how trauma works—memories fade into imagined spaces too large to hold the details (small embankments become hills we struggled to climb; small rooms become spaces giant and bright enough to contain a mother’s death), but emotions remain.

My friend put a flower on the road next to the candle. She read a beautiful poem she’d written about the innocent, idealistic young woman who had died that night inside her, and how she was now reclaiming her, how she would take her with her when she left.

“What happened to the girl?” my daughter asked, confused by the poem.

“Nothing,” I said firmly. “She’s still alive, inside Jen.” My friend nodded.

Then I spoke about the joy and idealism of that afternoon, the pure wonder of finishing a successful pride week, of celebrating who we are. I spoke of how proud I was of my friend, and my daughter, for their willingness to move forward, to find ways to effect change in the world despite the trauma they have experienced.

We all looked up at the road, imagining the car waiting on the corner for Jen and her friends to cross the street, the calculation involved in that act. I imagined Jen just hours before that car turned the corner, remembered her deep laugh, her eyes looking directly into mine, her political resolve to make this town a better place for everyone.

Then I thought of her the next time I saw her, clearly broken, unable to look me, or anyone, in the eye. She is bright and was an excellent student, but it has taken her years to find her way back to what others would call a “normal” life. She still hasn’t finished college, though she’s thinking now of going back. Dustin, too, faced several years in an abusive relationship and other hardships, but, like Jen, he is heroically getting his life back on track (he recently reconnected with me via e-mail).

Both of them truly believe they almost died that night. The fear is palpable in the interview transcripts that happened a week later, when the police asked them, over and over, if they were still afraid. Yes, they answered again and again. Yes.

In one of the interviews, one of the boys who admitted to being the car but would not reveal the identity of the driver responded, when asked if he’d been trying to kill anyone, “No. If we had wanted to kill them, we wouldn’t have done it in the middle of town.”

A chilling sentence, when one considers the death of Matthew Shepherd in 1998. Then again, more recently, Lawrence King was murdered in his own high school—apparently high school boys have moved from dragging their victims to the outskirts of town to pulling out guns in their middle school computer labs when they feel threatened by another person’s sexual orientation.

I kept staring at that corner, but I couldn’t imagine the car turning toward us. I breathed in deeply. We were safe. The road was quiet; there were orange blockades blocking our view of the place the boys had turned. “We had to come back here by another road, because we’re different people,” I said. “And we’re going to leave here by another road, too, because after this ceremony, we aren’t who we were the last time we came.”

I wanted to say again that I was sorry—sorry I hadn’t done more to push the county attorney to press charges, sorry I hadn’t done more to help Jen, and Dustin, stay in school. But that night, I also forgave myself for everything I hadn’t done. Now that I’m a parent, I am even more aware of my own failures—how I so often fail to live as lovingly or heroically or thoughtfully as I want to live, how I so often don’t show as much compassion as I want to show—but I am learning, too, to say I am sorry, and then to move on.

What is harder if I’m also even more aware of the power of words and actions to hurt as well as to heal. But I have to forgive myself, as well as those who hurt me, and move forward.

It is hard to collectively forgive those who hate us enough to want to hurt us, but Jen and I and my daughter did our best that night.

Graduation and Resilience

I am beginning to realize that parenting a teenage child out of foster care requires two attributes more than anything else: resilience and openness. These are the same attributes required, I think, to do the work of social justice, and to teach, and to write.

It is important to be able to weather the ups and downs in the process; the difference is that those ups and downs are more tangible, more painful or joyful, in the parenting process than in other areas of my life. It is also important to be open both to the depth of love and pain AND to the wonder of every moment. In writing, this is true, or a good piece can't get written. In social justice work, this is true, or the horrors of our communities and world will overshadow what is beautiful and good and keep the activist from doing her work. In teaching, it's true, or else the students will stop being people and begin to become obstacles or problems. In parenting, it's true because it's the only way to make parenting something other than the hardest job of one's life--and to keep from numbing out, from simply going through the daily motions.

This week began beautifully, as I recounted in my last post. Mother's Day was amazing; the entire weekend was fabulous. On Monday, my Fundamentals of Writing students came over--I'd promised them a party if they all passed (there was one failure and one near-failure, but I went ahead with the plan anyway), and they surprised me with a beautiful card and a gift certificate to my favorite restaurant. They were genuinely grateful for our work together--and I felt like I'd finally figured out how to teach this class to at-risk college students in my eighth try. Lisa was a part of it all, and she loved having the company.

And then, two days later, she walked out of her therapist's office 15 minutes early and wouldn't explain why. I was weary; we drive 1 1/2 hours each way for her to see a therapist who is qualified to help her. In the car she finally told me a horrible story of something that had allegedly happened to her--a serious crime--right before she came to live with me. I'd heard the story before; she'd told it once, then admitted it wasn't true and that she'd only wanted to make sure I'd still take her damaged, and to make sure everyone from her previous life--therapists, social workers, foster parents--still cared for her.

But now the story was back, and she claimed she'd been "forced" to take it back earlier. I wanted to believe her, but I didn't. Still, I went through the necessary steps, just in case. I told her I'd love her if she was lying, if she'd had a flashback and thought it was true but it wasn't (very possible in this case), and if it wasn't true. By Thursday, she was saying, "maybe it happened, maybe it didn't." I told her it made sense to be confused, and to test me. She wouldn't admit completely to either, but she held me tight and put her head on my shoulder and cried a little. For the rest of the weekend, she was gratefully affectionate; she knew she was lucky to still be loved and cared for after that.

And then came graduation at the college where I teach. S. came with me to the Native American Honoring Ceremony on Friday. We watched several students I love dearly receive blankets or quilts, held tightly by their mentors and families. We listened to an honoring song and felt blessed. On graduation day, S. decided to come and watch. She listened to a controversial speech by a graduation speaker I admire. She watched me on stage as I cheered for the students who crossed, took a diploma.

I'm going to miss them. It wasn't an easy day.

Afterwards there was a graduation party at our home for two students who came to Greece with me and their big Native American families. The amount of food they carted here from South Dakota was startling. S. had willingly helped me prepare, but when the dog food got spilled, and when I wouldn't let her bring the dog out of his kennel, when the house got crowded and no one was paying attention to her, she got angry--and mean. At one point, she shouted at me in front of a house full of at least 40 people. Then she went upstairs.

I asked out loud, to no one in particular, "Should I go after her?"

Nobody answered at first. I looked around the room, realizing suddenly how quiet it was. My students looked sympathetic; their family members averted their eyes. And then my student's stepmother, who has raised six kids (and more, if you count nieces and nephews), said to me, looking right into my eyes, "Don't you dare. Let her stay up there awhile." She was startlingly beautiful and confident; I realized I had both an ally and someone who truly understood. Then, she calmly handed me some fry bread and berry sauce (I can't remember the name of the dish). I ate gratefully, felt better.

When S. returned, she interrupted multiple conversations, stepped on my foot multiple times (painfully), told me repeatedly how horrible I was and how much she hated me, smeared a delicious berry dish onto my arm. Eventually, people left the back porch and headed back inside, realizing we needed some time alone. She was too distraught to be disciplined or to listen.

For awhile, it was only the two of us and one little boy who was enjoying using my broomstick to pound pine cones into a hole in the back deck. I watched him for awhile while Lisa went on with her tirade, staring until I felt myself numbing out. "Don't go away," I told myself fiercely.

And that's when my student's stepmother came out to sit beside us. "You know," she said, to me, but knowing S. was listening, "I got a beautiful mother's day card from my stepdaughter last week. I cried. It's the first time she's acknowledged my role in her life." Then she locked eyes with S. "She does what she does because she loves you," was all she said, and then S. walked away, at least a little ashamed, and went upstairs again to calm herself.

We sat in silence, this woman and I. I'd never met her before, but I knew her stepdaughter well. College had not been an easy ride for her; she'd partied too much, drank too much, had at least one major trauma at a party, which she'd chosen not to report; she'd faced the common problem of feeling not a part of either world after coming here (no longer a college student, no longer a full participant in the lives on her reservation). She'd faced the humiliation, over and over, of one or another of us professors pulling her into our offices to berate her for being smart but not trying hard enough.

But I have also seen tremendous growth in her in the last year. She really connected to the elders in Greece, one of whom spoke to her about the importance of knowing and loving her roots while also achieving what she wanted to achieve in life. She made a real impact on an elder in the community whom she visited regularly as part of an internship; he is going to miss her.

Now, she's pregnant. I was so worried when she told me. She was worried, too--terrified of how her family would react, of what her future had in store for her. But she made a decision to stop drinking, to have the baby, to tell her family, who stood by her. She made a decision to do her best in her last semester of college, to get her degree. Through all of this, she remained relatively without affect, quiet, reserved, at least around her professors. I had to ask her friends how she was doing, really, because I couldn't always tell.

As the last year of my student's life ran through my mind, I said, finally, "I'm sure she wasn't easy to raise."

"Oh, no, not at all."

We both laughed. "How long has S. been with you?" she asked.

"Not quite two months."

"We've taken in nieces and nephews at this age. They come angry. They take it out on you."

"She has plenty to be angry about."

"Of course she does. And she expects you to send her back." She paused, looked me straight in the eye again. "But you have a big heart. So you're not going to do that. You're going to figure out what works."

I told her that so far, we'd been able to process things, and she'd taken consequences--but today was different. She was meaner, angrier, and I was actually afraid her reaction would get more violent if I disciplined her in front of everyone. I said I'd decided to do it later.

"That makes sense," the wise mom-of-many told me. And then she repeated, "You have a big heart."

(Did I say resilience and openness were the two attributes most important for parenting? I should have added love).

A few minutes later, my student called me inside. She wrapped a Native American honoring quilt around me, and I burst into tears immediately. Like I said, she doesn't say much, but I knew what it meant; I knew it was a big deal. Then she hugged me tight. Then her stepmother hugged me and said, "Thanks for everything you've done for her." Then other student gave me a beautiful beaded pen and keychain--it was remarkable, made by her father.

I couldn't stop crying.

Awhile later the families began to leave, until only the students were there--and then more students began to arrive, including some GLBT activist students with whom I'm very close, and also several alums who had come to see their friends graduate. It was an impromptu, sober party, all of us sitting in a circle, talking comfortably. There was tangible love and joy in the room. S. came down again, in a wonderful mood, joking with everyone, complimenting everyone. We talked until there was no more to say, until saying goodbye was hanging over everyone painfully. And finally, after a last round of hugs, they left.

But luckily, I happened to glance out the window just in time to see them all come together in a big group hug on my front lawn. It was an amazing and a lonely feeling; I knew they'd come to love each other in this place and with me watching, helping them here and there through all the normal college dramas, from running social justice-related organizations to practically failing classes to falling in and out of love. And now it was over. They were graduating.

"Your student is going to be a great teacher," S. had said, unprompted, earlier that day about one of the students in that group hug. I thought about him going off to New Mexico to do Teach for America. I thought about his road trip out there, how he'll have time alone to take in the wonder of this new step in his life. I thought about the confusion in another student's life; he turned down an opportunity for grad school because the place didn't feel right to him, and now he doesn't have a plan--but he is smart and talented, and I have no doubt that he'll figure something out. And then I closed my eyes and remembered one of the students her freshman year, afraid to even come into my office--I would have never guessed I'd be hosting her graduation party. And then, finally, I imagined my other student with a baby in her arms, held tightly in the embrace of those who love her.

I nodded. I am a part of all of these lives, I thought.

And then it was time to deal with my daughter. I told her what the consequences were. I told her how hurt I'd been. I explained why her behavior was so inappropriate, how selfish it was to act the way she'd acted. She said, "Well, no one here has had as hard a life as I have."

But that wasn't altogether true. The students whose parties I'd thrown had known hard times, times of deep loneliness and pain. The students who came to visit had lost family members and friends in the process of coming out, had struggled in other ways as well. Two of the other faculty who'd been there had dealt with alcoholism and abuse in their families of origin or choice. I told her these stories. I told her she needed to stop expecting that nobody cared or understood. I told her she needed to be a part of this community, but only she could make that choice.

"We all want you to be OK. We all want you to be able to say later to your abusers, 'look at me, you didn't ruin my life.' But you have to make that choice. Everyone who was here today is behind you, everyone."

She nodded. She knew it was true.

"It's about being open to the love around you," I said. "And about resilience."

"What does resilience mean?" she asked.

"Staying true to yourself and your path, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how much the past haunts you," I told her.

And then she agreed to the consequences, said she was sorry, and went to bed. Before I fell asleep, I wrapped myself in that quilt and held it tight around me. I felt the warmth and love of all the students I've mentored in my 12 years of teaching. I'd promised my first-year students who had come over earlier in the week that I'd throw them another party when they graduated. Four years is a long time, and at the same time, hardly any time at all. I closed my eyes and saw my students in their little circle on the front lawn, a group hug, and felt myself enclosed within it.

I knew what I was doing mattered. And then I went to bed--but not before S. came out of her room to give me one last hug and kiss and say goodnight again.

Lot's Wife and Mother's Day

Last week, S. saw her teacher reading a book during free time that she'd also read, a devotional book about women in the Bible. The conversation went like this:

S: I've read that book before, too!
Teacher: You have?
S: Yes! I made it as far as Lot's wife.

Her teacher thought this exchange was funny and shared it with me. It IS funny, of course, but it is also a bit chilling. During the story of Soddom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife is an innocent victim. God sends angels to save Lot's family, but some people come to the door to, depending on the translation you read, rape or harm in some other way the angels. Lot offers the people his daughters instead of the angels--where was Lot's wife at this moment, one wonders?--and in the end, Lot and his family are permitted by God to escape as long as they don't look back.

Lot's wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.

Every day, S. has to decide whether looking back will keep her from moving forward. Will she get so frustrated by being challenged at school for the first time that she decides to stop trying--decides that catching up isn't worth her time? Will she continue to refuse responsibility for her own actions as her biological parents did, or will she finally, ultimately, find her way into living responsibly? Will she be able to mourn what happened to her and also forge a future for herself? Will be she able to see the present clearly rather than through the warped vision of the abuse and pain of her past? Will she be able to open her mind to new ideas or remain in a rigid, gated way of understanding herself, others, and the world?

Every day, every minute, she makes a choice. Sometimes the choice is played out in an argument, sulking, tears, or words like "I want to go back where I was because nobody made me do anything hard when I was there." Sometimes it is played out in a graceful turn on a horse, a hug and a kiss, a simple, "I can do this!" or "Thanks for believing in me!"

These days, S. almost always chooses to move forward. She may look back, but her God is merciful and understands how torn she feels--as does her mother. But she is also able to focus on the present, and the future, with more and more attention. She is able to let herself consider new ideas, like the idea that evolution may not be anti-Christian, that a person's GLBT identity may be a gift from God rather than a curse.

In the background of the story of Soddom and Gomorrah is a long history of oppression against GLBT people. Somehow the men who came to "rape" the angels became homosexuals, although as far as I know, I am guessing God doesn't assign genders to angels and that God thinks rape is a horrible thing regardless of the gender of the people involved. The story about S.'s exchange with her teacher reminded me of how far she's come in learning to see shades of gray, to adjust her rigid thinking. Now, she would be able to talk about this story in less-than-absolute terms, whereas before, it would have been a story about homosexuality.

Or maybe S. would never have seen it through the lenses of the Fundamentalist churches she attended while in foster care. After all, S. has been raped, over and over, by many people, most of them family, throughout her childhood. She has watched people she loved be handed over to be raped as well. Perhaps she would have been compassionate toward Lot's wife. After all, she has to watch her husband offer her daughters to be raped. She is told not to look back at the only home she's ever known while running to her safety. And let's not forget what happens next: Lot sleeps with both of his daughters, who have somehow come to believe they must sleep with their father in order to continue the human race. In the story, disturbingly, they are to blame for their intercourse with their father--their father is innocent victim of their seduction.

S. grew up living with parents who believed they were doing nothing wrong, who gave up their daughter to be raped in the way Lot attempted to give up his own daughter. S. grew up living with parents who raped her.

S. has gotten as far as Lot's wife, innocent victim of a sick family. But unlike Lot's wife, she's safe now with a parent who believes in a loving God, a God who would never destroy a woman's life the way God supposedly destroyed this woman's.

Any thinking person who hears the story of Soddom and Gomorrah--or S's story, for that matter--will have to come to one of three conclusions: 1) God is not compassionate 2) God doesn't really have much power to intervene in individual people's lives, though some early writers of Biblical stories may have believed God did; 3) God doesn't exist; if God existed, innocent children like S.--and innocent women like Lot's wife--would never have to suffer the way they do.

I tend to believe #2--and yet I'm struck by the power in the story of Pentacost, celebrated today in the Western church, not to mention Jesus' miraculous signs and resurrection. Surely these were not all made up; Jesus was, after all, a real person, and there is some overlap in the stories about Him (although there are also many differences among the stories).

I'm just as struck these days by the smaller miracles that I can only attribute to the work of God--a daughter who keeps moving forward, leaving her past burning behind her.

All weekend long, we have been studying for a science test in order to raise her current grade of D-. She has B's in all her other classes. S. has never before been in a mainstream classroom besides art class--but she's getting B's, and tonight, she got an A- on the practice test. Even if she panics and fails the real thing, she knows the material, and she was willing to give up an entire weekend to learn it. Tonight she said, "If this is what college would be like, it wouldn't be so bad. I like learning new things. I even like studying, I just never knew how to do it before. I think I'll go to college, and maybe to graduate school. I want to meet all my goals." A tiny, tiny part of me thought, "Let's just get through this test first," but the rest of me was all heart bursting open with pride and hope.

This morning, S. brought me breakfast in bed. She'd figured out how to make the coffee, and she served me cereal and juice as well. Along with the breakfast, she handed me a gift--a candle, chocolate, and a card that said, "God loves you forever and so will I."

It is more than a minor miracle that S. loves learning or God or me after what she's been through. If my first Mother's Day as a mom isn't proof of God's existence, I don't know what is.

Discipline

It is hard to believe that the last time I wrote here, in late March, I was wrote about an unexpected snow storm; today, as I write in late April on Greek Orthodox Good Friday, it is again snowing like mad in my small MN town. Last week my daughter enjoyed an extra-long horse lesson in 70 degree weather; today, her school let out an hour early, and her horse lesson was cancelled.

So much can change in a week.

During the last week in March, I went from living alone (unless you count my anti-social cat) in a small, rural college town to living with a 14-year-old daughter and a little dog. S. and I are both adjusting well overall. We have had conflicts. We have wept together and laughed--a lot--together. We've struggled through homework assignments and misunderstandings and talks about painful memories from her past. But we are making it.

I have been able, so far, to maintain some balance in my life. I'm genuinely enjoying spending time with S. at home and advocating for her in other settings. But I'm also still getting to the gym three times a week. I'm writing in my journal, albeit very short entries, each day. I'm getting my work done, though at times I'm a day or two further behind that I'd hope to be. Though I'd like to get more time with friends, I'm at least finding time to read, write, or at least lie on the couch after S's bedtime at least a couple times a week (though sometimes I have to use that late night time to catch up on work).

Still, Holy Week got away from me this year. It's the first time that I can remember that I have not kept the fast for Holy Week. This week, I was away for a full day--the longest I've been apart from S. since her arrival--for a conference, and S. and I spent another day driving all over the state for various appointments. So, I decided I was not going to make my usual trip to the closest Greek Orthodox Church in the Twin Cities for Good Friday and Easter this year, and for that reason, and my travels this week, I also decided I would not keep the fast.

The blizzard, which has been ongoing now for close to 12 hours, is not helping me feel like it is time for new life. Still, tonight, in between disciplining S. for the first time and a dinner with S's chosen godparents, I burned incense and sat in front of my icons and sang the mourning songs from the Greek Orthodox Good Friday vespers. S. sat downstairs, listening. I worried she would feel like an outsider, hearing her new mother sing off-key in a language she didn't understand, but instead, when I was finished, after I'd prayed the Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim and come back downstairs, she said, "You actually sound good when you sing in Greek." Believe me, this is a huge complement coming from a child who playfully puts her hand over my mouth every time I try to sing. (And she has a point: I have a terrible singing voice).

Last night was difficult. S. got frustrated about homework and about the fact that she hadn't been able to talk to her boyfriend, who still lives in her old hometown, for a couple days. Angry, she announced that he obviously hated her and was out with another girl. I tried to talk to her about healthy relationships, as I have in the past, and about why it was unhealthy to make these kinds of assumptions. She got mad--very mad, and crossed some clear lines about how to deal with her anger. When she calmed herself, we talked about the consequences.

Today, instead of her usual 20 minutes of computer time, she had to sit at the kitchen table and write about how she could have handled the situation differently. The 20 minutes dragged into 40 minutes as she resisted and continued to act out until, finally, she got through the task and we were able to talk about it. She had made a good list of what she could do differently, but she was still resistant to talking about it.

She said she thought discipline was cruel. I explained that discipline and disciple had the same root: to teach, and to learn. I said I wouldn't be a good parent if I didn't provide some discipline. I explained that I still have to find ways to discipline, or teach myself, when I get off track with my own goals and my own treatment of other people and the world, but that until she was an adult, she would need a parent's help with this. By the end of the conversation, she was hugging me and telling me how much she loved me. Tonight, she told me she was lucky to have me as a mom.

So much can change in a day.

I think about the discipline that Holy Week provides--the prayers and poems and songs that lead us through Jesus' last days on earth, and through our own journey from sin to forgiveness to grief to, eventually, wonder and joy. I remember, as a child, how I loved to crawl beneath the Epitaphion--Jesus' tomb, covered with fragrant flowers. The crawling was a sign of humility and repentence; the rising up, out of the darkness, a sign of hope, of moving forward.

We are moving forward, slowly, but we're going to have to make that journey over and over, day by day, week by week. In the meantime, there are the warm hugs and the moments of sheer wonder while walking the dog in the daily changing weather and S. sitting regally on top of the horse, confident, proud. She's learned to walk and trot and lead and groom the horse; she's learned to be responsible for helping with meals and cleaning and other chores; she's learned to stop underestimating herself in school and to start taking coursework seriously. She's learning, slowly, to find better ways to manage her anger.

"Is it OK to be angry?" she asked me on our way home tonight.

"Of course," I said. "Everyone gets angry. It's just a matter of learning to handle it without hurting other people, and of figuring out when it's worth it to act on your anger and when it's not." There was a moment of silence, and then I heard myself say, "Even Jesus got angry when things weren't right in the world. If you're angry, it must mean something is wrong, either inside or outside. And so you have to figure out what it is and what you need to do next."

"That makes sense," she said, and then we were home again, pulling into the driveway and parking as best we could, until the wheels stopped spinning and we gave up and walked into the house and let out the dog and got ready for bed, the whole world white and silent and mysterious--and peaceful.