Monday it will be a year since my smashing little head incident and the anniversary presents a great opportunity to assess this crap. I also freshly bonked my noggin on Tuesday and have been enveloped in a less severe but still annoying cloud of dizziness and nausea once more, although I'm trying to pretend it isn't so.
Old Lemon Cucumber in the November Garden
A few weeks ago, my vestibular therapist and I looked in to her professional crystal ball and sussed out what my future won't look like. Part time work: maybe in six months. Full time work? Possibly never... but maybe something quiet and solitary and with a singular focus, like say, assembling parts at home. She didn't say that exactly, but I'm familiar with the practice. And since it's on my mind I might as well tell you that when I was 13, just after eighth grade graduation, my classmate's father hired me to work at his warehouse, "under the table". Here I spent all day assembling products at "home." It was all the rage in the 80's. But I think the image was more of a home-maker-maker sitting on her stained white carpet, in front of the tv, ignoring her screaming toddler on the pastel-splashed couch behind her, as she peacefully assembled photo frames. But instead it was me, all 13 years of me, alone, in a very dark corner of a large warehouse using exposed wires to melt plexiglass into frames and then glue a magnet on the back. I also assembled hangers. I ate my lunch alone. I burnt myself a lot. Until my dad dropped in to check out the working conditions and saved me. I was somewhat disappointed because that meant I had to take a nanny job for school clothes money, and I think I would have rather been locked in the corner of a warehouse assembling garage sale fodder. And to think, that might still be an option for me.
Lemon cucumber corpse
The best thing my vestibular therapist said was when we were standing at the secretarial desk and we had to interrupt one of the four secretaries to make my very last appointment with her. And my therapist looked at me and said, "This job? You can't ever do this job. Too much multi-tasking. Too much noise. Too many interruptions." Really?! Really!! Oh god yes. Oh yes. Yes please. Oh please oh please ohplease. Never? Promise? I've been stuck in those jobs for so very very long. If you wonder
why I chose to be a haus frau for a few years, that's one of the reasons, abject fear of secretarial
jobs. I was so freaky good at them. My unnatural ability to predict
my boss's needs and wants combined with my now-vanishing co-dependance that made me
need to meet those needs and wants with glee, like a slave who's only
dream has been to be a slave, who's fantasy of a life well lived is to
take a message for someone important. Layer that over mad
organizational skills and you have a woman who would never get promoted
out of a job she does WAY too well. It's an important job, to be sure, not that anyone but a secretary knows that. We make our bosses sound like they didn't sleep through English, we dust the dandruff off their coats before they head off to court to argue a case we did all the work on. (I was a paralegal for five years, which in pay and prestige is just a slightly-glorified secretary.) But I'm not sure what I will do for money.
"When things haven't gone well for you
call in a secretary or staff man
and chew him out.
You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention."
For a long time, I told people I planned to go to law school, what when all this moving and kid-having mayhem died down a bit. But once we settled in here, any desire I was pretending to have, vanished. Plus the law school here is one of the most expensive and the town in lousy with it's graduates. But the law school dream was a nice thing to tell people to get them off my back, especially the Boomer home-makers who wanted to live vicariously through me and were disgusted that I'd throw my college education away on not-working, even for a while. And just saying I was studying for the LSAT let the world know I wasn't just another failed launch. People would immediately assume I was intelligent and respectable (!?!). It made a great cover story, and I came to believe it too. But I don't think it's going to happen at all. I don't think I can even keep lying about it, to myself or anyone. For one, I've realized that if you can't respect me now, with the decisions I've made to date, I don't want your respect, because it's all tied in with bullshit.
And yet... I too believe our culture's bullshit on what is respect and value and worth, though I fight it. It's only human. We're cultural creatures and we long to be valued by our social group and it's incredibly hard to ignore the screwy values we've cultivated into ours.
Lemon Cucumber, post frost
I always dreamed I had a jet-setter buried deep inside. Given the right circumstances and opportunities, I'd have secretaries of my own, multiple phones and I'd run through airports in expensive pin-striped pantsuits with shoulder pads, a man/power haircut, high heels, with a 360 degree spinning carry-on hardback suitcase. I had this vision that I'd be someone in our crazy society, someone Important. I know now that I'm important in the universal sense of the word, that's from the head injury, not a degree or paycheck or job or pantsuit. But since I live in this back-ass culture, I'm sure I'm not alone in dreaming occasionally, in the furthest darkest corner of my warehouse-mind, that I'd someday be American-Important.
Halloween!
It's kind of relief to know that I CAN'T be American-Important anymore. It's not that I could be but never will thanks to some moral failing or laziness, lack of focus, homeschooling, or simply by being distract by something less than world domination. It's that I can't. My brain won't let me. Sometimes "can't" can feel okay.
Back when I was telling people I would be a lawyer, I remember confessing to a friend as we whispered in, again, the darkest corner, of an intimate restaurant. I leaned in and dished my deepest fear about my faux-career path. I said, "...but sometimes, I think that if I even had to spend one sunny spring day in pantyhose and a cublicle I would slit my wrists in the bathtub." Shocked, she ordered me to never say that again, which I felt was kind of controlling and willfully blind: think it, just don't speak about it? But I don't think I meant I'd actually kill myself. I think I meant that I'd have to drastically change my life. So I'm not sure I really wanted the jet set life anyway. I just wanted to be American-Important. Can I settle for universal important? Do I have a choice?
People tell me: "Oh, you know doctors and their predictions... the cancer patient given weeks but takes years." Hell, after Huck's knee was shattered, lo these nearly 20 years ago, he was told he'd never walk again. But a bunch of titatnium and hard work later, and he's a runner. Or rather, was one until a month ago; now he's not even a walker, more of a swinging person on crutches with an appointment to see a surgeon. (Yes, life likes to pile the shit on.) I know these "don't take everything a doctor says seriously" folks are just trying to make me feel better, but they aren't. I'm enjoying the possibility that there's nothing I can do to make me American-Important, which means there's nothing I should be doing and that means there's nothing I'm failing at. Sounds kinda relaxing, doesn't it? Except for the financial part.
The two moose who traversed our field
But my vestibular therapist did give me some hope. She said the career she could really see me doing was writing. A deadline here, a deadline there, a quiet room and nothing to do but string the lovely words together. I asked her if she knew how to pull that off. She didn't, but she was sure I'd figure it out. Gosh, I'm gonna miss that lady.
Secretary and American-Important are off the table. My future self is at the spa... that it can't afford and doesn't deserve now that it's not American-Important, but she doesn't care. She's just splashing in the hot herbal sauna and ordering another glass of cool water with a lemon slice.
"1953 is stuck in my head. I don't know why," Blue said.
"Huh," Said I.
"Why would 1953 be important?" Blue said with increasing urgency.
"No idea," I said without any urgency at all.
"Can't you find out?"
"Maybe."
"Look it up on the internet!!" Blue yells.
"You do it."
"I'm doing my homework."
"Right."
Farmer's Market zinnias
Blue and Coyote are absolutely appalled that Huck and I grew up before the internet. My first e-mail, the one I still use, I got in 1998 when I was 22, shortly after I'd learned to use Excite and Alta Vista. I got this hot computer geek in the college library to give me a "search engine" tutorial. Before that? Card catalogs, days of research with little return, phone calls and personal phone books, letters and stamps, birthday cards. The kids were trying to comprehend our description of card catalogs and they couldn't wrap their minds around the clunky waste of time. Sometimes I can't even believe I grew up without computers or the internet... it seems cruel and isolated and boring and lots of hard work, like sheering your own sheep, cleaning the wool, spinning the wool and knitting it to get wool sock vs. going to the store, or better yet, buying them online. And we tried to explain the social ramifications to them: it was the big-headed blowhards that always seemed to win the day with "facts" no one could check so who could question them? They seemed to think they were right you had to go along or spend three weeks of hard labor in the dark dank library to dig up any information to the contrary. Now the information belongs to all of us memory-less schmucks with smaller voices and hunches, and all our minds can be freed to think things through rather than retain little facts for the unlikely moment we might need them.
Hollyhock
So I looked up 1953. In about 1 second. And Wikipedia was there, of course, with the complete works of 1953. Turns out, it was a really nutty year. Cra-azy Cold War ramping up, with an H-bomb here and an H-bomb there, here an H-bomb, there an H-bomb, everywhere an H-bomb. And U.S. laws being signed by Eisenhower dictating that the U.S. MUST build it's nuclear arsenal. And I suppose that made sense for the times they were in. There was the North Sea Flood killing 1800 dutch people, hence the gargantuan hydraulic sea walls they've since installed. Waiting for Godot. Queen Elizabeth II. James Bond. Kinsey Report on women. Playboy's first issue. First ascent of Mount Everest. DNA structure. And I don't know if they knew, then, how many landmark firsts had occurred that year. This paragraph represents a year's worth of demanding card catalog work I did not do.
My brother is a cabin artist west of the Cascades
Then there's the births, the 1953 babies. Those I'd never heard of, who blazed and peaked and burnt out before my memory, were the athletes... also could be I don't give a shit about sports and that's why I don't know of them. The actors and actresses? I've got some vague ideas about some of them. Most musicians: no bells ringing up here. But the rock stars? yes. Van Halen, I know the name. But they're all old now, done, just the contrails of big careers are left. But the writers and the politicians, they are peaking during my time, their talents and "talents" respectively, took time to ripen and develop. And as I faced my 38th birthday after this crappy ass year, staring down another hollow year of non-working brain, I thought: hey, there are talents and careers that ripen more slowly than others and it means nothing about the quality of work or quality of person. And after this year of crapola, I am much more soothed about the state of my career at the moment. I am much more relaxed anyway and confident that my life is my life, my path my path and where it leads, no one knows, not even me, but I'll get where I'm going at any rate. But for now I really am rocking the mom role and I am at peace, and this idea of ripening talents was just icing on my state of ease.
Since the Wikipedia was already open, I decide to peak in on October 14, the most important day in my life. It's a great day for Mughal and Thai kings to be born, and for French revolutions. And just as those facts were starting to inflate my noggin with fantasies of political domination, I started to think of how many countries there are, close to 200, each needing a leader, each experiencing some turn over either to voting or death or coup, and you have a shit-load of leaders the world has seen. Given this perspective, October 14 is actually very low on dictators and kings. And the one's it has weren't particularly ambitious, that I can tell, simply because none of their names ring a bell. Given my typical non-professorial knowledge base of the history of world leaders, especially Mughal and Thai, and my brain injury, I realize that just because I don't know who they are doesn't mean they were nobodies in the geo-political arena, but I'm going to stick with that assumption anyway.
There's a Blue up there
Also, e.e. cummings and I share the birth date, and no one can deny his brilliant nature-loving individualism, and he was a Unitarian. Aside from the McCarthy fan-dom and a couple of terrifyingly racist poems ... it's like we're soul twins.
I've looked long and hard for someone who has died on my birth date, exactly. And I've found no one. I suppose I wondered if I'd be them reincarnated. But since the onset of this search, I've thought that if there is some big soul-recycling mechanism in the sky, it would hopefully let you rest for a while between lives, get some of that gunky build-up of difficult feelings and experiences out of your system, a tune-up, before sending "you" back in to the fray. But I still wonder who died the day I was born, and I always scan the grave stones for October 14, 1975 and it's never been found. (You know by now that I'm fond of graveyard strolls, right? My father brought me to graveyards instead of playgrounds and it's a hobby that stuck.)
Moon on Hwy 20
My very favorite thing about my birth date is a thing that never happened: THE DAY ITSELF. YES! In 1582 the Gregorian Calendar was implemented and it didn't go smoothly. Is there anything MORE exciting that could possibly happen to a date? Non-existence is a BIG freaking DEAL among the days on the calendar. It is the single biggest thing that can happen to a day, which is that not one thing happened on that day, because it did not exist. Sadly, upon further research (which took seconds thanks to the internet) it apparently happened to 10 days in October in parts of Europe, the 14th being the last day lost, the invisible caboose. Not so unique after-all, I guess. But still, that's less than 3% percent of dates have experienced non-existance, which does put October 14th in the 97 percentile of non-existance. Elite, if not utterly unique.
Hwy 20 is state owned, the pull-outs were federal and all closed, except to we rebels
Perhaps my favorite thing that DID happened on my birthday is in 222 AD " Pope Callixtus I is killed by a mob in Rome's Trastevere after a 5-year reign in which he had stabilized the Saturday fast three times per year, with no food, oil, or wine to be consumed on those days." -Wikipedia. See what happens when you have a written language? All of your crap is permanent. Where normally attrition of those who lived through it would have erased the memory of such a mob killing long ago, you've got the written language to preserve it. The people spoke, via mob: don't mess with our wine, and history heard their cry and unwisely ignored it for the 1920's. What were the Svedes doing in 222? No one knows since written language came to them with the Catholic church in the 900's. We can guess, based on carvings, that it did involve killings, decapitated heads on sticks, and also a lot of oiling of extremely large handlebar mustaches. But we'll never know why because they never wrote it down.
222 looks like a dull year, over-all, only five things of note. Compare that 1953's 128 events as per wikipedia. But that could be because there were so many more people doing and dying and arriving and discovering and being crowned in 1953 than in 222. But we also are the uber-record keepers these days, so many records produced in one day it would take a lifetime to read them all. 1953 even has the advantage of 60 years of distillation, to see what turned out to be important and what didn't. But with everything evermore recorded, every moment, will it ever get distilled in to the five most important things? And with all of it being noted, what is important? To the world, to the future?
The selfie(s) at the summit
I have experienced that sensation of my life as flotsam on the sea of history, being tossed by political and economic waves so much larger than myself. But it's just a back drop to personal illnesses, heart break, love, anger, friendship. To each of us, it's all history. In 222 millions fell in love, died of simple bacterial infections, were born into mud houses, their umbilical cords cut with sharpened sticks. And what is one mobbed pope in all of that? Real HISTORY, or just another piece of flotsam that happened near someone holding one of the few pens of the day and knowing how to use it? I like the records we keep today, the blogs and facebook posts and buzzfeeds mixed in with the CNN's and Al Jazeera's of the world, all of it for everyone to decide for themselves, not just some blowhard with a ridiculously good memory, but all of us get to decide what's history and what's for the dust bin of our own minds.
For me, October 14, 1975 remains the most important day in history, facilitating all the other days of my history and of me reading history, and making way for the second most important day in my history, the day it ends, some day in the future, hopefully far far in to the future and no one knows when.
It's apparently a one-step-forward and one-to-three-steps-back kind of a thing. And I'm really sick of it. My brain has been telling me I've "done too much," but my ego is screaming "What The F*** are you talking about!"
We had a great, if challenging, annual trip to San Diego to commune with Huck's maternal side of the family. My symptoms were well managed by occasional Ativans and multiple naps per day, many of them on the beach. And betwixt my moments of shut-eye, fun was had. I enjoyed the amusement park and zoo, vicariously via voluminous recaps.
Coyote caught on on his second wave of soup!
And I visited with a friend from high school, which was amusing. I hadn't seen Yuri in the twenty years, since we graduated, and I was a little nervous as I've changed so much and was sure to not meet any kind of expectation. But I was calmed by the memory that Yuri was one of the most reliably nice people in the entire state of South Carolina, and likely hadn't abandoned that trait entirely, if at all. And also, in high school, she'd just come from Japan and her English was quiet, unsure, and infrequent. Our friendship had involved mostly a lot of smiling at each other and nodding our heads. In fact, I believe we shared more words during our lunch in San Diego than during our entire high school career. The funny thing is that she's lived in San Diego for 15 years. I've been visiting for 12. And her husband's office is only a block from where we stay at Mission Beach. I'd noticed that many of her facebook photos involved very familiar buildings and the exact same lifeguard station we normally hang out around and a meet-up plan was hatched. It was a great visit and the cool thing was that her English was perfectly eloquent and included the surprise of a Southern California accent.
20 years later
Then my parents came to visit, close on the heels of our late night, zombie return from California. We tried for a mellow visit and accomplished that in isolated moments. My mom had the idea to help me can, but I've decided this is a non-canning year. It's exhausting when I'm in peak condition, but I can't even imagine the fiasco's that would ensue in my current state.
End of Summer Celebratory Snowmen cupcakes!
Then I let the kids talk me into going to watch Huck's band play at a festival downtown. It's supposed to be the largest free music festival in the U.S. and it has the worst, nastiest, makes-me-wanna-puke name ever. Okay, grab a bucket and I'll tell you: "Pig Out in the Park." The name just oozes good times and classy grub, right? OR, possibly an unholy alliance of eating disorder and exhibitionism. Regardless of the fact that I got to chill in the VIP tent, it threw me over the top. It had been against my better judgment but when your son cries, "Are we ever going to get to do anything fun again?" you go. Then you have a total, crying, hissing melt down wherein your brain actually oozes out of your ears and nose and down a city drain (I believe). Then you go home and sleep for three days.
seedpod of Love-in-the-Mist in the mist
And then school started, while Huck's bipolar job decided to (unannounced) ramp up to 16 hour days for 14 days straight. This left me doing it all, dawn to dusk, driving to town 4 times a day. And napping for every possible minute in between. And that left me feeling super angry and sad about my lame-oh life and self. Driving is still a challenge for me, with all the zooming and my eyes still not better, despite five months of work. You might think, "Oh, if only she lived in town! It would be so much easier." And I am here to tell you that's a fantasy city (Spokane-size-city) people have. The truth is that it takes 13 minutes to get from our house to Blue's school across town, or Coyote's homeschool school on this side of town because it's all freeway driving. And it takes 15 minutes to get from Blue's school to Coyote's and 20 minutes to get from one of my therapists to Blue's school. Cross-town driving sucks way worse that out-to-in-town driving. Anyway, I eventually was able to make a five page spread sheet to help me cope with every damn day being entirely different than any other day of the week. There's no way I can remember every necessary pick-up, drop-off and extra thing to bring to school without an extensive, externalized memory thing, such as a clipboard with graphs and pre-made lists for each day. And I guess that's one of those glass-half-full things, whereas I couldn't even make a spreadsheet only a few months ago.
unweeded grass in the mist amidst strawberries
And, if you caught that, why yes, I am homeschooling Coyote this year rather than playing Russian rulette with the roster of un-fire-able teachers at a standard school which was incapable of coaxing his hidden genius out of his crab-shell after three years. Although his second teacher last year did a much much better job with him than his first, it was during the break between teachers that we'd checked out The Enducation Coop and he loved it. And he also got in to Blue's school based on IQ testing, rather that i-dotting/t-crossing testing and he will get to go there one day a week this year, and full time next. This leaves me with two days for homeschooling, exactly as I did it with Blue, and he gets five years of school semi-security. I cried with relief when I found out.
One last sip of nectar before I go, don't mind if I do
But by Friday of last week, I was a total disaster on multiple levels. Coyote awoke at 6:30, jumping and ready to homeschool. "Do we get to do science today? Do we do we dowe? Or art? How about I make stuff out of recyclables?! OR maybe history? When do I get to study WWII techonology? Whenwhenwhen? Is today cooking day? I'm gonna make chocolate chip cookies. Can you come clean the kitchen so I can make my cookies? Do we have all the ingredients? Are you gonna help me? Are you are you areyou?!" And I stumbled out of bed at 10:30: worst homeschool mom ever.
In the middle of all this mayhem and foolishness, Autumn started creaping in. Flucking Fall. Normally, it's my favorite time of year: crisp colors, apple cidering, laying down the garden to rest, my birthday, chili (I don't know why I associate that with fall, but I do love a good chili on a fall day), and there's this refreshing nip to the air which acts as a nice foil for the rich sweetness of nostalgia and meloncholy that always coat my soul during these days. And I love it. I love it, normally. This year, I HATE IT. My left foot keeps trying to slam on the season brakes. Back it up, earth-darling. Right your axis, for once. This fall-crap is just BS. Take it back and apologize. NOW. And here's why I think I'm so full of loathing for this fall: I never got my summer. Not really. I just shifted naps from the house to the back porch. I never got the full-on hard-living summer fun. I never stumbled home from a sleepless camping trip, my back crimped from the hard ground and the rock beneath my sleeping bag. I never floated the winding river, hot and sweaty on top, frozen in mountain run-off on the bottom. I never went skinny dipping! That's a first in 20 years. I haven't had summer. Normally, I love the turning-inward of fall, preparing for long dark days with good books and hot tea, finally, after all the balls-to-the-wall raucous fun of summer. But for me, it's been inward all year. My gardening-lite year did produce rediculous amounts of food. But in my real life, there's no fruits, no real labors, and no cashing in on the fruits of my labors. There's just nothing.
Zinnia,darling, you make me want to write sappy poetry
To cope, I accidentally bought a GIANT bar of chocolate and some marshmallows on summer clearance and when I came home Blue jumped to the most obvious conclusion: we were having a s'mores party. And so I said okay. It's been a long long time since we had anyone over. So I invited a family for s'mores by the fire, for just a little while in the evening. It made me feel human again and happy for the two hours they were here, which is two hours less of feeling like an utterly failed human. Even though the fire department came out and told us it was illegal still to have fires in our grassland plateau and even though that was embarrassing, what with our ignorance on display and all, and having to put out the fire just when the coals were perfect, it was interesting at least. And it wasn't driving kids around town. And it wasn't napping. And so maybe another step forward is coming my way soon. Just in time for winter. Maybe this winter I can actually read a book.
Things (meaning my brainy neurons) are getting better and better around here. I feel like I should be walking around in a visible cloud of smiley emoticons and exclamation marks. Each week the gains thrill me. I am about half way there with the vestibulo-ocular reflex stuff and am gaining on the stamina. I still have a bit (as in months to a year) to go yet, and still need a large mid-day nap, but the momentum is gaining. It's like a glorious snowballing effect. The more gains I make, the more gains I can make off those gains, and so we are charging forward. I will try to ride a bicycle later today, when someone is home who can take me to the ER (later: success! And now Blue is fully trained on stopping blood gushers and dealing with broken vertebrae, not that she had to use those skills, but I did prepare her for multiple possibilities)
Zombie Poppy
Several people a week are telling me how much better I look, from my complexion and coloring to the clarity in my once cloudy eyes. Even people I see only once or twice a month are noticing. Apparently what I thought was mostly invisible to the naked eye (that would be failed and partial synapses in my head) was visible to all, especially in my eyes. These noticing people call my eyes clearer, sharper, sparkly, more focused. Boy, it seems like if you take the reverse of these, I must have looked like some sallow zombie with dead, foggy, dull, unfocused eyes wondering the planet: "Brains! Brains! BRAINS!!!" Was I really that scary? that gone? Someone said I look like I'm "there" again. And you know what? I feel like I'm here. Not all the way, but I've been mostly beamed back to Enterprise, so much so that my particles are actually taking on a Sarajoy-ish look, apparently. It's only been about nine months. It's like I've been in gestation: Here I am, world! Spank my booty and clear my nose, I'm being born!
failed selfie from the Zombie days
And now I'm looking around the house and noticing that, yes, the house keeper has been out for about nine months. The kids have kept the bathrooms up and Huck has vacuumed and swept and taken on the kitchen a few times, but the backlog of baseboards, cupboards, light switches, dresser tops, closets, nooks, crannies, desks, cubbies, et cetera, et cetera that need to be scrubbed and re-organized is overwhelming. I expect that it will take at least 6 months to revamp this place. Oh gosh, my brain is overheating just thinking about it. Maybe I'll work on just preventing the current level of disarray from getting any worse for a few months before I start strategizing my plans for victory in the Great Household Entropy War of 2013(-14?!).
They still thought they could win, silly kids!
And there are recent signs and symptoms that the kids are growing up. In a first stab at re-organization, we cleaned out the craft hoosier and tossed out all of the playdough and plastic beads; we are now officially too old for such things. And then I started to notice lots of things my kids are too old for now. For example, no one even tries to get in to the bathroom while I'm using it for my nefarious purposes; and it's been a good six years since anyone tried to nurse on me while I am doing business in there. No one has wet my bed for a very long time. I haven't picked up any cheerios or noodles off the floors or walls in years. No one uses a stool to reach the sink, therefore there are no longer any stools to stub my toes on. Am I supposed to be nostalgic for those days? I'm not feeling it. Maybe it's just the zombie in me.
With age has also come new viewing pleasures. Once we were a screen-free family, when the kids were still of toilet-top nursing age. It was only a year ago that we ventured in to Wii territory. And only a few years ago that video games (educational only!!) crossed the digital threshold of our home. But now, with zombie-mom holding court, it's been the Summer of Screens. It's disturbing for me to watch them watching; I'm squirming. But I'm really not bringing anyone to a life-guard-free Millfoil Lake where I'm the only person responsible for these precious lives. So what are we doing? Coyote: Mine Craft, like legos online. And Blue and I: Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
When Buffy came out, someone described it to me in breathless tones of over-excitement: a blond cheer-leader-type highschooler kills vampires in Southern California. Sounded way too gimicky for me. And then a few years ago I was listening to Ira Glass (of "This American Life" on NPR) chat with Peter Sagal from NPR's Wait,Wait, Don't Tell Me. And Ira was saying that his wife liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And... I remember I was driving and I was near the corner of White and Cedar and I nearly drove off the road because IRA IS NOT GAY! Holy Moley on Stick! My whole world exploded and turned upside down. Anyway, I then began to reconsider Buffy. And there it is on Netflix. And so we began the Summer of the Slayer.
just bee!
At first I was very very nervous as it's rated TV-14 and Blue is only 12. But she is 12, which is not 7. And then I was nervous because the show addresses all sorts of creepy issues like teachers hitting on students, relationship violence, first sexual experiences and yikes! At first I would narrate through the show: that's inappropriate, that's not a good idea, oh my she doesn't seem to be thinking clearly. But then I began to see that that's what the show does, it deals with those issues in an awesome, non-clunky, non-after-school-special way. I don't have to point out that a teacher's sexual interest in a student is inappropriate because in this show that teacher is going to turn out to be a praying mantis monster, or that ill-advised first sexual encounter is going to have big consequences. I've learned to trust the show, shut up and let it speak for itself.
I also appreciate that the main characters usually portray great integrity in their interactions, unless they're the one doing the learning in that episode. Buffy doesn't go to the dance with Xander because she doesn't like him like that. Willow doesn't go with Xander because she doesn't want to be a Buffy-substitute, even though she does like Xander.
Buffy Blue's last time in my antique debutant dress
But the best part is the kicking and stabbing. When it gets too mushy, (and it does!) we yell at the screen "More Slaying! Less Smooching!!" Blue's 12 year old smoochy-squeamishness is a perfect match for my mother-of-a-12-year-old smoochy-squeamishness, so we're in synch with our rants, an anti-cheer squad. I hope that what Blue gets from Buffy is a full entitlement to defend herself in any circumstance. Yes, girls can kick. Yes, girls can fight back. The most powerful person on the show is a blond teenage girl. I want her to see that. I want her to know she has rights and the power and entitlement to defend them. If only men, if they turn in to monsters, had facial changes so you could tell when it was time to defend yourself. Unfortunately, the part about self defense that catches so many women off guard is that two seconds before, that demon supposedly loved you more than any one else. It's not usually the dark parking lot ambush. It's the vampire you've invited in before. It's hard to go from smoochy to slayer that fast, to recognize the moment play switches to war and respond accordingly. But Buffy can do it and I hope Blue can too, if ever the need arises.
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