Mom Goes to Sex Ed

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Brett Paesel writes a Fictional Blog

Meagan McPhee is a fictional character, created by Brett Paesel. 

Meagan will be posting on her site every Monday from her desk at First Lutheran Church in Evanston, Ill. Join her every week as she creates a new life for herself and her son after her divorce (http://meaganmcpheead.wordpress.com/)

 

The first blog starts out:

 

"The upside of being divorced at age thirty-seven and supporting yourself and a kid is that you hardly give a crap about anything anymore.  The word “hardly” is important here.  Because just when you’re sure you’ve abandoned all feeling about what people think about you or say about you or promise-and-don’t-deliver to you, a teenage grocery store checker says you look tired on a Saturday morning and you burst into tears, drop the bottle of vodka you were buying for Bloody Mary’s and run out to the parking lot, choking on snot and obscenities until your best friend, Diane, pulls the car around to load you in like a wounded dog.  We’ve all had moments like that.  But, really (apart from these lapses) once you’re divorced and on your own, you care a whole lot less than you did before."

Read more at Meagan McPhee AD (After Divorce): http://meaganmcpheead.wordpress.com/

 

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The Christmas Loan -- Part Three (After the Loan)

It was January of 2010. Over our Christmas vacation in Madison, my parents lent us a thousand dollars to float us through the New Year. With that, we managed to pay our rent and some bills. Then, we returned to Los Angeles and waited for a large check that was due to me for work I had completed a couple of months before. 

As soon as the door to our apartment swings open, the boys race past us into their bedroom. Pat and I yank our suitcases into the hallway, making adjustments around each other on the slippery area rug. My suitcase falls over and I pick it up again, leaning it against a broken chair that is still waiting to be hauled down to its final resting place next to the trash bins in the basement. The chair is only one of the mocking markers of unaccomplished domestic tasks that litter our abode like vandalized tombstones. There is the vacuum cleaner without a handle, another chair with stuffing hanging out of its seat, the broken laptop under the desk, and the large rug (dotted with worn beige patches) that never lived up to its indoor/outdoor promise. 

Before we left for Madison, we hired a kid downstairs to watch the cat for twenty-five dollars. At the time it seemed like a steal for two-weeks worth of feeding and litter-cleaning. Now that I survey the soft white hair that floats over everything like a spun sugar confection, I think that I should have gotten more bang for my buck. Would it have hurt the kid to have brushed the dining table a few times? Didn’t he notice that the living room was beginning to look like a scene from a gothic novel? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a skeleton lying in our bedroom next to a withered rose.

My scan of the room stops at the tree next to our entertainment center. It has been in critical condition for years, dropping big brown leaves to the floor at regular intervals. But every time I have given up hope, a green shoot has peeked out from the dry soil in its pot or a leaf will raise itself up when I toss it a dram of water from my glass. This time, however, its mortality is not in question. I cannot discern a speck of green, fallen brown leaves surround the pot, and it lists to one side at a forty-five degree angle.

I hear the kids pulling toys from their places of temporary retirement in their bedroom.

“Whatever you take out, you will have to put back,” I yell to them, my voice betraying more irritation than I intended.

Pat grabs our stack of mail from the dresser, swipes dust and fluff off the top envelope, and plops down on the couch. I watch the debris swirl in the sunlight that streams through a gap in our closed blinds.

“You’re going to have cat hair on your ass,” I say to Pat.

“I’ll live,” he says, tossing a couple of envelopes on the coffee table.

My stomach is tight, but I shrug like I don’t care. I am struggling to resist the urge to start cleaning and then scream at the children and Pat that they aren’t doing enough. This is my pattern and Pat knows it. The impulse is born from my need to control the uncontrollable. Cleaning the house won’t make my check from the studio come any faster. Vacuuming the fur off the rugs won’t pay my parents back their loan any more efficiently. But creating the illusion of domestic order will calm my spirit. At least that’s what I think. Pat disagrees. He claims that the impulse is born from a need to make everyone else to feel my discomfort and resentment as keenly as I do.

Pat throws the rest of the stack of mail on the coffee table.

“Let’s go out to dinner,” He says.

A slight gasp escapes me. We have barely a hundred dollars left in the bank. Dinner would clean us out. Usually Pat is the one to point out the fiscal impossibility of any proposed venture outside the home, not me. I glance at him. He smiles back at me innocently. I feel a flutter in my chest. I like the way Pat’s hair is flopped over one eye.

“We don’t have the money,” I say because it should be said.  But I want to go out to dinner. I really, really do.

“Your check will come in a couple of days,” Pat says.

“I guess…” I say, playacting now. This is my opportunity to abdicate responsibility for a foolish choice.

“Dinner?” Spencer’s head pokes out of his bedroom doorway.

“We’re talking about it,” I say.

“We’re going out to dinner,” Pat says and stands up. He looks tall to me -- standing there, making decisions. I feel an unbidden smile steal across my face. I’m sure that my eyes are sparkling.

“Kids,” Pat yells over his shoulder, “grab your sweatshirts, we’re going to Fiddler’s.”

I can hear the kids whoop like they’ve won something. Drawers are being opened and slammed shut in their room. Fiddler’s is a family friendly restaurant down the street and they know that they will be given free gumi bears after our meal. The boys run into the living room, pulling sweatshirts over their heads. I grab my jacket. Pat strides to the door with a white fluff of hair on his ass. We tumble into the hallway, giggling like kids ditching school.

Outside the air is crisp but nothing like the cold in Madison. I breathe it in, fill up my lungs, and skip to keep up with Pat. The boys jog ahead of us. I no longer feel like the penniless mother with a cat haired living room to clean and a skeleton in my bed. I am free from domestic constraints, free from the judgment of my family in Madison, and free from self-punishing thoughts about how we got into this mess in the first place.

I grab Pat’s hand at the crosswalk and glance at him sideways. His hand is alive in mine, tightening and relaxing. He feels it too, I think. This is rebellion plain and simple. We’ll regret having spent the money tomorrow. But today? Today we’re living fast and dying young. Spencer reaches the door of the restaurant first and flings it open. Murphy slips in behind him. I squeeze Pat’s hand. We have shared moments like this before, watching our children filled with such confidence and complete surety that the world cares about them.

Inside Fiddler’s there is nothing to indicate that the boys’ confidence is misplaced. The staff clucks over them, asking about their Christmas vacation and Pat and I slide into our favorite spot on a banquette.

“I’m going to eat all the green ones first,” Murphy says about the gumi bears.

“The red ones are sweeter,” Spencer says, pulling out his chair opposite Pat and me.

“That’s why I like the green ones. I like some sour in mine,” says Murphy.

The waitress comes over to our table. She’s been working at Fiddler’s since I started coming here six years ago. Her accent sounds Eastern European and she always seems to be in a good mood. I wonder if this is because she’s continually grateful that she’s not back where she came from.

“We’re talking about our gumi bears,” Murphy tells her.

“What gumi bears?” the waitress asks in a teasing tone, her eyes mock wide with innocence.

“The ones you always give us,” says Spencer.

“Oh those,” she says. “We don’t give those any more. Now we give out green beans.”

Murphy’s face drops, but Spencer says, “OK. Then show us the green beans.”

“They’re in the kitchen,” she says. “I only bring them out after you’ve eaten your dinner.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” says Spencer. “It’s not like green beans are a reward.”

“Right,” says Murphy. I’m not sure if he’s following Spencer’s logic, but he has infinite faith in Spencer’s brain. Spencer speaks with such a tone of academic authority that younger and impressionable kids simply assume that he’s right. I wish I had this gift. My voice betrays my every emotion and I rarely run on empty. I worry that the quaver of passion in my lower register is sometimes scary. I’ve sensed hesitance from even casual listeners.

“Well, we’ll see,” says the waitress, rolling her l’s and her eyes.

“That’s right,” says Spencer. “We’ll see.”

He and the waitress smile at each other, the game played out.

“Two chocolate milks, a diet coke, and wine, right?” she says, turning to Pat and me, anticipating our order.

I nod, “Red wine, please. It’s chilly out.”

“This?!” she says. “It’s California. Please. It’s never cold.”

I feel my face flush, imagining her frozen tundra of a homeland. She is, of course, right. California is always warm compared to any spot that experiences an actual winter. What is more, I tell myself, any family who can skip down the street for dinner is living large in comparison to the vast majority of the global population. I know this to be true. I’ve always known it. But I know it in abstraction. I know that I know it in abstraction. How, I wonder, do I make that abstraction, concrete? How do I tunnel through my fear to find gratitude? Not the kind of gratitude you find expressed on greeting cards but the kind that is transformative and indelible. 

Pat’s shoulder is warm against mine as I look out the window at the orange sun dipping behind our apartment building. 

The sun over our apartment complex

The Christmas Loan -- Part Two (To Take is to Give)

My mother’s father quit school after sixth grade to support his family after his father and brother drowned in a lake. Later, he married a beautiful Swedish girl, started a family, and moved into a small two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Chicago. He was a streetcar conductor who woke up at four in the morning, six days a week, to head to work downtown. My mother slept in the living room on a pullout couch that she shared with her sister until she left for college. Her other sister shared a bed and bedroom with her aunt who sang hymns almost constantly and was dying a slow death from untreated breast cancer. All three sisters grew up knowing the price of everything and distrusting credit or a deal that sounded too good to be true. I doubt that any of them ever bought a lottery ticket. No one, they firmly believed, ever got anything for nothing. Frugality was inbred, carved into their DNA. Born in America, their faces were cast by the land their grandparents came from. Cheekbones like bluffs and ice blue eyes. Andersens, Johnsens, Lundquists. The sisters grew up knowing that having enough money meant that they would never have to ask for anything. And if a Swede can die without ever having asked for one goddamned thing, that’s one successful Swede.

            The house in Madison is always cold. My mother says that heat makes you soft, which may be what she’s thinking when she says that I have become, “so California.” It is true. I am soft, softer than my mother. Although her core radiates heat and love so fierce that it embarrasses her.

            She sits at the table in the kitchen, with her calendar. For as long as I can remember, my mother has filled in the squares of a monthly calendar with family comings and goings, along with deadlines for art contests she wants to enter. In the morning, she consults her calendar, adds anything that’s new, and then writes down a schedule for that day, even scheduling her breaks. She does this, she says, to give shape to her day.

            I grab a coffee mug from the cabinet and walk behind her to get a tea bag from the shelf next to the oven. I look over her shoulder to glance at her schedule. Aha. She’s having coffee until she dusts the living room at ten. My pulse quickens. This might be the best moment to ask her.

“Where are Erik and Shona?” I ask. If my brother and sister-in-law are around and might interrupt, I should put it off.

            “They took Kiran to the lake. They wanted to get pictures of him in the snow.” She lifts her head from her calendar and looks out at the lake, “Where did Spencer and Murph go?”

            “Pat took them to the library.” I fill my mug with water and pop it in the microwave, “Where’s Du?”

            “He’s not upstairs?”

            I set the timer and the microwave hums, “I didn’t see him.”

            My mother shrugs, “I don’t know where he is.”

            My father’s comings and goings are puzzling to us all. He disappears and appears without announcing his departure or arrival. Later this afternoon, he will materialize in his rocking chair, reading the newspaper without a word said.

            The microwave bings and I open the door to retrieve my mug of tea. My mind scrambles for something to talk about.  I don’t want to simply blurt out a request for a loan. If it leaps out with no preamble, I’ll seem desperate. Of course, I am desperate. I shuffle though our usual topics: politics; the children; books; clothes, my father; her painting; my writing; my father. Nothing catches. I put my tea on the table, slide out a chair, and sit down. Just ask her, I tell myself. She’s never said no. She won’t yell or cry or recriminate.  She’ll simply pull back. How bad is that? My shoulders ache. My throat is tight, like it’s trying to prevent the request from being voiced at all. Jesus, I’m going to have to write it down on paper and slide it to her like I’m holding up a bank.

            My mother looks at me, her eyes misty; her fine, high cheekbones evincing her younger self.  My throat tightens even more. I don’t dare try to sip my tea. I might choke.

“I’m worried about Muriel,” she says.  I hear her, but don’t take it in. It’s a reprieve. This much I know. A change of subject. A shift in the game plan. My shoulders soften. I pull in a breath.

“What’s wrong with Muriel?” I ask stupidly, because everything’s wrong with Muriel. My mother’s oldest sister has been in the hospital for over two years. After caring for her husband with advanced Alzheimer’s for a decade before his death and enduring a crippling case of rheumatoid arthritis, my aunt barely eats. She sleeps most of the day hoping for death to come soon and lift her up, her corporal self almost ether now, to meet her husband in a world beyond pain.

             “It’s so sad,” my mother says. Her jaw goes slack. She looks past me to the lake. I want to reach out and hold her hand. My reason for coming into the kitchen has evaporated. Now it seems that my only reason was to sit with her like this. Unable to reach for her because she would not be able to bear it.

“I know,” I say.  This is all I ever say, because there is nothing else. And because this is all that my mother wants to hear. She simply needs to know that I know. Until recently, my mother wouldn’t have shared her sorrow at all. Traditionally, she has suffered losses in virtual silence. In this, I am not my mother’s daughter. I am a chest thumper and a copious weeper who can’t get through the opening credits of ET without wailing. At bedtime, my sons try to avoid books that will make me cry and extract promises that they will never leave their mother. With the exception of Pat, everyone in my family hates my inability to marshal my emotions. I have even been told that my emotional displays are intimidating. My mother, on the other hand, was once referred to by Erik as “six feet of Nordic ice”.

She is not six feet tall, nor is she that removed. Neither am I an emotional terrorist. These, however, are the labels we have both borne for years.

I remember my mother’s habitual remove two years ago, when she called to tell me that her sister, Muriel, had taken to her bed and that her daughter, my cousin, Rachel had said that she believed that Muriel would die very soon.

“How soon can you get down to see her?” I asked her then. Muriel was in Kentucky.

            There was a pause on the line before my mother said tightly, “I don’t think I’ll be going.”

            “Of course you have to go,” I said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t see her.”

            “Brett, I can’t go. She wouldn’t…” my mother took a long pause. “She wouldn’t want me to see her like that.”

            Another pause. That was it. Final. She had made the decision. I could hear it in her voice. There was nothing for me to say. I knew the Lundquist women. My mother would be immovable in her belief that Muriel wouldn’t want her baby sister to see her vulnerable, helpless, needy. Any appeals from me would meet with steely resistance and the conviction that I simply didn’t understand.

            But I did understand. As soon as I hung up the phone that morning, I called my cousin, Rachel. Our exchange was pragmatic, but kind. We spent more time together when we were younger and while there wasn’t much that bound us together these days, we were connected through these staid sisters.

            “I want you to invite my mother down to see Muriel,” I said. “She won’t go unless you ask her.”

            Rachel sighed, “I bet Mom would love to see her.”

            “I know. But my mother thinks that Muriel will be embarrassed.”

            “That’s true. She would be,” said Rachel. And so unbeknownst to her mother, Rachel crafted an e-mail to mine, inviting her to see her dying sister. It was an invitation my mother could not turn down because the Lundquist code had always been clear: refusing a request was worse than making one. This was the kind of circular logic Rachel and I had lived with all of our lives.

            Upon her return from Kentucky, my mother said that seeing her sister was good. Muriel’s hand was lighter than paper, my mother said. The soup my mother fed her was too hot for her. But the spoon, Muriel told my mother was too cold.

            “Were you glad you went?” I asked her over the phone.

            “Oh yes,” she said, as if the answer was obvious. “Oh, yes.”

            Muriel didn’t die then and in the months that have followed my mother’s habit of restraint has slightly diminished. She doles her sadness out in small amounts that she thinks I can handle, often by simply evoking Muriel’s name. And each time she gives it to me, I take it. Because I know that sometimes to take is to give.

The emotional landscape in the kitchen with my mother and her calendar and her grief is a topography of stinted impulses. Mine to reach for her hand and weep with her. My mother’s to harden her face into a smile of acceptance, get up from the chair, and apply herself to a domestic task. Hers is the harder job because she has had thirty more years of inculcation.

I wait and she pushes her calendar to the middle of the table.

            “Will you give me pictures of the boys on their sleds yesterday?” she asks. 

            “Of course,” I say, lifting the mug of tea to my lips. My mother has been sending Muriel a package every week. Sometimes it’s an envelope of pictures and sometimes she sends cookies, books for Rachel to read to her, or articles that I have written.

            “Good,” my mother says, with a wistful smile. “I’ll send them to her on Monday.” She stands up, walks over to the sink, and looks out the high window there. Her back tells me nothing.

            “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” she asks. “Do you need something?”

            I put the tea down, fighting every synaptic urge to deflect. Instead I hold myself to the chair. She has asked if I need something and I do. It is within her power to help me. She cannot help Muriel but she can help me. And I can help her. To take is to give.

“Yes, Mom, “ I say, my throat catching. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

            This is how the request is made and granted. The mother at the sink and the daughter at the table, her hand resting on a mug of cooled tea. Their words are not important because they do not tell the story of what each of them had to give up to be there.

The Christmas Loan (Part one)

For the two Christmases after the financial crisis (2008 and 2009) Pat and I had to borrow money from my parents simply to afford gifts and January rent. This year, we are visiting my parents again and our circumstances are slightly better. But for those who still feel the financial grip of fear along with their Christmas cheer, I offer the following story – along with profound thanks to my parents who have always, always been there when I needed them:

Happy, middle class families in America are very much alike. Most of them gather at the family seat at Christmas to share meals, tell old stories, compliment each other’s children, and exchange presents, many of which will be returned to Gap and J Crew the following day. Sometimes the adult children drink too much and go outside at midnight to build a pornographic snowwoman. Or maybe that’s just mine.

            Our family seat is my parents’ two-bedroom house on Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin. The winter winds blow so bitterly there that Murphy, a California boy and three at the time, once screamed through a scarf tied so high that only his eyes showed, that he wanted to go back to America. On the rare Christmas that all of us can make it, my parents’ compact retirement house can host eight adults and four children. This means that the ordinary recriminating and bargaining that marks every good marriage must take place in furtive, rushed tones behind any available closed door, including the communal bathroom.

            That is, when the happy couple actually remembers to close the door. I once walked by my younger brother, Keir’s encampment, a mattress on the floor of my mother’s art studio, and heard him impeach his wife’s angry back, “It’s always the same. Every year. Vacation after vacation after vacation after vacation.” The tone was familiar, if not the specifics.

There were a few years when my other brother, the middle child, had no door at all. Erik slept alone on the couch feeling, he later told me, like a failure for being unmarried, childless, and stuck at a meaningless job. Living room couches all across America can give leathery testimony to the ache of such children, now older, yearning for their lives to begin.

            It is the Christmas of 2009. Keir and his family have opted to travel to Thailand instead of joining us and Erik has come home a victor. Within three years he has fallen in love, married, bought a house, and sired a male child – riches and reason enough to lay claim to the guest bedroom. My parents are squatting in Mom’s art studio and my family is staying in the master bedroom. My mother has awarded us their room ever since we first brought Spencer to Madison at ten-months-old.  When Pat and I moved his pack-n-play into the walk-in closet, my mother was thrilled that we could close the closet door and create two rooms out of one. 

            The children are too big for the closet now and share a blow-up mattress that takes up most of the available floor space. That means that when Pat and I talk behind the closed door, we have a very narrow pathway in which to move around. This is a liability mostly to Pat who needs to move when tackling life’s biggest problems, like the fact that the check we have been waiting for – the one that will pay our rent in January, pay our credit card bills before they globally increase their interest rates, pay for our expenses here in Madison, and pay for groceries when we get back to Los Angeles – has been held up due to an accounting error and cannot be issued until the new year when the accountants are back from their vacations with their families and doors and couches.

            We have no money to see us through until that twelve thousand dollar check arrives in mid-January.  And since we voluntarily closed all of our credit cards over two years ago to negotiate lower APRs, we don’t have credit to lean on. The recession has hit us hard too. We used to fill in financial gaps with odd jobs that simply aren’t there anymore.

            “Can we ask your parents for a lona?” Pat asks me.

Proving that drops of blood can be squeezed from stones, his own mother is so strapped that she often depends on us to help her out.

“We did that last year,” I close my eyes, wincing at the prospect of going to my mother, hat in hand, yet another Christmas. Pat and I have done all right, financially.  But because I am a freelance writer and he is a freelance actor, Christmas is always tight, not just because our cash flow isn’t steady, but because the institutions that pay us are buried in paperwork at year’s end and then close down for a couple of weeks.

            “We’ll pay them back,” Pat says, stepping on the edge of the leaky mattress, which hisses air. I can hear the boys sledding down the stairs on a piece of cardboard. They should really be outside but I lack the energy to bundle them up with plastic bags stuck into their boots and over their jeans, only to have to peel off their wet clothes twenty minutes later when they’ve tumbled into some snow bank and have had enough.

            “We didn’t pay them back last year,” I say with a tense jaw. 

            “We didn’t?” Pat says.

            “You know we didn’t.”

            “I thought we did.”

            “No. We didn’t. Mom said not to worry about it,” I say, sitting on the edge of my parents’ bed. My mother is very proud of this new bed that is so high she has to climb up into it. My feet dangle like a child’s.

            “Then why are we worrying about it now?” says Pat, walking into a pile of Spencer’s books, which scatter. I resist the urge to jump down from the bed and stack them again. Pat hates it when I clean during a tense discussion. Which is invariably what I want to do. At least if my life is going to shit, my living quarters can look ordered.

            “We’re worrying about it because when Mom says not to worry about it, she doesn’t really mean it,” I say. 

            “Maybe she does.”

            I jump down from the bed and gather Spencer’s books while Pat glares at me, “What Mom means is, ‘don’t worry about it this time. But I will remember. I will remember how much you borrowed from me and I will worry that you can’t make enough money to care for yourselves. Every time you borrow money, I will stay awake for nights agonizing about how you are going to survive.’ That’s what she means, Pat.” I place the pile of books on the dresser where they will be safer, “And if I worry my mother into an early grave, I’ll never forgive myself.”

            “She’s already eighty, Brett. That doesn’t qualify her for an early grave. And I’ll tell you something else. If you’re so worried about worrying her, then let her help.”

            I climb back up onto the bed and sit, pulling my knees up to my chin. Pat swipes a pile of the kids’ clean underwear off of the desk chair and sits.  We’ve been married for eighteen years. We know what to say and what not to say. Although we’ve said the unsayable and withheld compassionate reassurance plenty of times, with painful results. The thought that visits me now is one that I’ve suppressed for years. Why is it my family that bails us out? How come Pat got to marry a woman whose parents have modest teacher’s retirements, but can manage the occasional thousand-dollar bailout? While I married a man whose parents met in a children’s home, divorced when he was one, and struggled to cover basic living costs most of their lives? How come he got to marry the woman who might inherit a third of her parents’ house while I got to marry a man whose mother might be so poor she might have to move into our two-bedroom apartment for the rest of her life? Tears sting the inside corners of my eyes. I feel ungenerous. Unloving. Unyielding. Stiff. Why did Pat just shove the underwear off of the chair? Couldn’t he have picked it up and moved it to the suitcase?

            “Look,” says Pat on a slow breath that means he’s going to use the reasonable, officious tone that I hate, “if you have a better plan, let’s hear it.”

            I recently attended a wedding where the minister gave a cute little speech extolling the joys of marriage while allowing that “sometimes you will be angry with each other.” My immediate thought then was, “what about loathing?” What about looking across the room at your husband and being filled so high with the black bile of resentment that it threatens to blow you apart, spewing its poisonous ooze all over the room and your man?  As far as I’m concerned, you aren’t truly, happily married until you’ve lived through hundreds of moments like this.

            I dip my chin behind my knees, swallowing bile, frantically thinking of options. Even as my mind races, I know the exercise is futile. We’ve explored financial options before and we already know that there are none except emptying my puny IRA or raiding the kids’ college funds.

            I unfold my legs and breathe out slowly, “I’ll think about it.”

            “Thank you,” says Pat like I’ve finally come to my senses.  He stands, scoops the kids’ underwear from the floor and replaces it on the chair. Damn him.

            He walks over and gives me a kiss on the top of my head before leaving and closing the door. I hear him saying something to the boys and the pounding on the stairs ceases to be replaced by animated chatter in the kitchen. The clanking of pans tells me that Pat is making them grilled cheese sandwiches.

            I am a better person than this and, even though I’ve loathed my husband many times, I will not live without him. No one understands and forgives me more. He makes me laugh until my insides hurt. He is uncomplicated in the best sense. To say that I love him seems trite because it’s voicing the obvious, although I do tell him this every day.

            So I will go to my mother, as we both knew that I would before the conversation even started. The reason why I will go to her instead of my father is that, like many marriages forged in the 50’s, my mother is my father’s Lieutenant. She protects him from the unpleasant ditherings of daily life. She will hear my case and then make her recommendation to him. I can’t think of a time when my parents have turned down a request for a loan or an outright bailout, but there are always emotional consequences. My mother will confess her deep concern about our solvency and even about our ability to negotiate the adult world at all. And my father will mentally tally how much money we owe them, in order to subtract it from my share of the estate, “Just to make things fair.” And, in the end, we all know that their resources are limited. They are incapable of saving us entirely. Were we to find ourselves completely and hopelessly broke, our only recourse would be to move in into the guestroom that Erik and his family are occupying right now.

            This, of course, won’t happen because my twelve thousand dollar check will arrive and I am still finishing two pilot scripts that the networks love and owe me money for. Pat will return to his job as a background extra on a popular TV show and we will muddle through, as we always have. We might even flourish. If one of my shows airs, if one of Pat’s commercials takes off, if Pat does a couple of guest spots, if I sell a big magazine article, if Pat gets cast in an equity play, if that play goes to Broadway, if I get staffed on a TV show, if I get a book deal, if Pat lands a recurring spot on television – if any of these things happen as many of them have and all are possible -- we won’t simply survive the economic crash that is pounding the rest of the country, we will prevail.

Next week: Part 2 -- asking for the loan

Boyz in Madison (2009)

Our Family Occupies Los Angeles for a Night (Part Two)

              The main event of every evening at Occupy LA is the general assembly meeting, and we didn’t want to miss it so we hustled the kids with their t-shirts back to the tent for some dinner. That’s where we were planning to meet our friends who had brought their son for the overnight as well. Striding down the sidewalk, past the humpy landscape of canvas abodes, I congratulated myself for turning a civics lesson into a fun sleepover as well. Of course, looking around, I was reminded that I wasn’t the first person to think of it.

            As we waited for the big meeting and our friends, Pat and I talked to the kids about why we were spending the night there. They had certainly heard talk about the 99% from the radio shows we listened to. We had also talked to them about the financial crisis and the fact that the two parties governing our nation had widely disparate views on how to solve it.

            Sitting on canvas chairs in front of our tent, we attempted to give this particular action a context that they could understand.

“So, because the two parties can’t agree, they can’t get anything done about the financial crisis,” Pat said, ripping off a hunk of French bread I had bought especially for that evening. Even though we were at a bare-bones populist action, there was no reason to eat like it.

            “So that’s why we’re here? Because the government can’t fix it?” asked Spencer, sipping on his box of chocolate milk. I know what contributes to a successful sleepover.

            “Well, we think that the government can fix a lot of things. Like a plumber fixes the toilet. Daddy and I can’t fix the toilet. That’s why we need a plumber.”

            Pat and the boys stared blankly at me. Why, I wondered? The metaphor was solid.

            Pat leaned forward to catch the boys’ attention, “Don’t think about the plumber. What mom is saying is that we believe that there are some things the government should handle and that’s one of the reasons we’re here. When the government isn’t paying attention to what the people want, the people have to get their attention in creative ways.”

            Pat tends to have more confidence in the children’s ability to grasp big concepts than I do, and I probably lowball their ability to comprehend because my own is a bit shaky. But as we heard the noise of folks gathering on the other side of the building, Pat and I persisted in telling the kids about taxation, privatization, unnecessary wars, entitlements, and social safety nets.

            “And what’s happening now,” Pat said, “is that money being taken away from the poor and the middle class; from our schools and from agencies that protect our environment because the banks and corporations don’t think it’s important to pay their fair share of taxes.”

            “And,” I piped in, “because some people think that paying for wars is more important than helping to create jobs so we can feed our families.” I threw a look to Pat. Better than the plumber?

            “That’s not fair,” said Spencer.

            Bingo, I thought. If he hadn’t understood the specifics, at least he had grasped the inequities.

            “What do you think, Murphy?” I turned to my baby. At seven, Murphy already has a sharp mind and a sophisticated sense of empathy. 

“Can I play with Daddy’s phone?” he replied.

            “No” Pat and I both replied in unison.

            Fortunately, our friends arrived so the phone became a non-issue. The boys happily engaged their pal and we poured his parents a cup of wine, offered them some cheese, and leaned back in our chairs to look at the sky.

            By seven-thirty it was totally dark and we walked over the General Assembly. About two-hundred people had gathered. They sat on the ground or stood at the back in groups listening to committee leaders who stood on the steps, talking through a microphone. Speakers went through housekeeping issues, security concerns, and the all important hand gestures that occupiers would use to vote on pretty much everything. The kids flopped around, enjoying the hand-gestures, particularly the one for “I don’t understand” – a circular motion in front of the face like you’re washing a window. I foresaw months of the kids using this gesture whenever I asked them to clean their room.

            Much of the rest of the meeting was spent connecting Los Angeles to other occupy movements nationwide. We voted on sending money to Oakland and a bus of occupiers to San Diego. Organizers also took some time announcing specific upcoming marches and actions. The boys would watch for a while, then chase each other around.

            Later, as I lay in our tent, I wondered what my sons would take away from this venture. Certainly, I hoped that they grasped some of the deep concerns that were propelling people – citizens -- to camp in the middle of our city. But more than that, I hoped that they felt connected those citizens. I didn’t want them to grow up thinking that it was someone else’s job to fix things.

            And, in the end, if none of those messages had sunk in – even if Spence and Murph had been more preoccupied with the tent and their friend – I hoped that the cumulative effect of attending marches and rallies would start to make participation a habit. As I told them when I tucked them into their sleeping bags that night, “The first and most important thing you can do is to show up.”

It turns out that this is as true for peaceful revolution as it is for getting free donuts.

The boyz listen to Pat's explanation of why we were there

At the General Assembly

Sending messages of support to Oakland

Waking up in the tent the next morning

Our Family Occupies Los Angeles for a Night (Part One)

           “Can I pitch my tent here?” I asked a young man whom I guessed to be an organizer by the benignly authoritative manner he used with a couple of campers. These campers were ‘occupiers’, who had been bedding down around Los Angeles’ city hall for close to a month.

            “Looks like we’re trying to keep the walkway clear here,” he said, indicating what looked like a thoroughfare for foot traffic, with domed tents, three deep, on one side and service tents on the other. On the service side I saw a signs for a library, meditation area, and a People’s Collective University. “But really you can set up anywhere.”

            “I was told that this was the quieter side,” I said. “My husband and kids are going to be with me.”

            “Oh great,” he said, his face brightening, “we really want to start getting families down here.”

            “Well, here we are,” I said, stupidly, since I was only bringing my family and another for one night, not an army of families to occupy for as long as it took.

            “Great. Great,” he said. “Yeah, I guess you could say this is the quieter side. That’s how it’s turning out anyway. The general assembly starts at 7:30 on the south and that’s when it gets pretty crazy and noisy for a few hours.”

            I wanted to ask “how crazy?” but I didn’t, for fear of sounding uptight. He looked like a twenty-something hipster, I am a fifty-year-old woman who looks like she’s comfortable at an ice cream social even though I don’t know what one is.

            “Sounds like this is the right spot, then,” I said, resisting the urge to jazz up my language by calling it the right ‘hang’ or  ‘hood’. “Thanks,” I touched my eyebrow in a solidarity inspired salute and flipped out my phone to call Pat, who was circling the block with the kids in our jeep.

            As I waited on the curb, I felt the last bit of my earlier irritation with Pat fade. When he had arrived home from work that afternoon he proceeded to check e-mails and methodically go through a mental packing list while I urged for speed and spontaneity. We only had a couple of hours to get downtown and pitch the tent before it got dark. I was starving and I already wanted to devour the salami sandwich I’d packed for that evening. The boys whapped each other with pillows while Pat returned a phone call. All this while my mother-in-law jabbered on about a movie she’d seen thirty years ago starring James Garner. My mother-in-law has been living with us for a month while she searches for an apartment to move into, closer to us. My motivations for dragging my family down to occupy Los Angeles for a night range from the personal to political to parental. But mixed in there is another ignoble factor. Why not occupy LA while my mother-in-law is occupying my living room?

             Pat pulled up in the jeep and the boys tumbled out with our tent and gear. While Pat was parking, the kids and I dragged everything over to our hang. I was going to wait for Pat to return to start erecting the tent. I have managed to assemble it by myself, but Pat has a firmer grasp on mechanics and, frankly, this is an area where I have nothing to prove except my stunning ineptitude at following directions, especially ones with diagrams. Why oh why do the drawings never look anything like the real thing?

            Before Pat could join us, however, three young men descended, introduced themselves, and offered to help with the tent. Before I even managed an affirmative nod, they dragged it out of its box and started lining up the poles. Spencer and Murphy eagerly helped when the guys asked for assistance.

            “Before this, I had never put up a tent before,” a white guy with a tie-dye shirt said. “But now I’ve put up hundreds of them.”

            “I think I’ve got the first pole in,” said a handsome African American guy with a wide grin. He pulled on the pole and the rose, sagging at either side. “Is this what it’s supposed to look like?”

            I shrugged, “Without the other poles in, I can’t tell.”

            “Doesn’t matter,” he said, flashing white teeth, “if it’s wrong we can start over.”

            This was the first time I would notice the universally generous attitude that I would find consistent throughout our stay. I understand why the left has consistently sought to distance the ‘occupy’ movement from its hippie element.  There’s a fear that it lightens the movement, makes it less serious, more fringy. But at a time when “compassion is out of fashion” (as Paul Krugman recently wrote in a New York Times Op Ed), it was moving to see young people consistently opting to help us - and each other - out. I think that a return a core hippie belief that we are in this together and that we are all responsible for each other is one that the Left should embrace.

            By the time Pat appeared on the scene we had a saggy shelter, flapping precariously in the breeze.

            Pat smiled, “Did anyone look at the directions?”

            “Nah,” said tie-dye. “We knew we’d figure it out.”

            Proving that you all you need is love and a plan, Pat located the directions and significantly sped up the process so that the tent was up before sundown. Before taking off, our new pals gave us the lay of the land and offered to check in on us later.

            First we checked out the public tents. The boys were disappointed that the library didn’t have books for kids. But there were plenty of used books for older campers to grab. The People’s Collective University was an open-air tent where organizational meetings were being held as well as classes in social activism. Later that night, Pat noticed a circle of folks who also met there for purely recreational reasons. As we walked through the encampment, we were periodically offered bottles of water and baked goods. Free baked goods, I have now come to believe, are the very life’s blood of any decent rebellion. What decent mob won’t go the extra mile for glazed donuts?

            The occupiers that I saw were diverse ethnically. There did appear to be some homeless folks and certainly some barefooted, bare-chested stoners, but the majority of the occupiers appeared to be twenty-something activists. Pat and I listened to a band of them hold an organizational meeting on the steps, itemizing what they would bring to the general assembly that evening at seven-thirty. Another significant group were Iraq veterans – I met one who managed the food truck and another who was working on media relations. I also met a lawyer who used her tent only during weekend days. Sprinkled throughout the camp were occupiers of every stripe – professionals, parents, artists, and a couple of older citizens (specifically an elegant grey haired woman, with her adult daughter, who asked me about camping overnight).

            As we returned from our exploratory mission, a gentleman named Rahm sought us out, “My buddy is this rad artist who does these t-shirts…” he pointed to his own, “and we’d like to give all of you one. We really want to encourage families like you to come down here.”

            Cool, I thought. Revolution swag. We found Tony B Conscious on the east side of city hall spray-painting his Basquiat inspired t-shirts.  He fist-bumped the kids and they bounced around picking out their very own wearable art. Mr. Conscious even spray-painted a fresh t-shirt for Pat. As it turned out the shirts weren’t as free as Rahm had led us to believe. But for a five dollar “paint donation” each, we would walk away from our overnight just a little hipper than we arrived.

in Part 2 I attend the general meeting, camp overnight, and am asked by a young person if this was what it was like in the 60s!

           

Murphy eyes the sweet bread in front of our tent

The boys next to the Library (the People's Collective University is behind them)

The view from our tent

T-shirts, courtesy of Tony B Conscious