Lunatia: Peace through Argument

The Audacity of Honesty

2008-03-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

In February 2007, I alluded briefly to Barack Obama's then-new book -- The Audacity of Hope -- in a blog post about my pregnancy and cancer. In February 2008, I sat in the Key Arena listening to Senator Obama address a huge and enthusiastic crowd. He said many things but I remember this: My faith in the American people has been vindicated. Obama is no longer an underdog. A year ago, I hoped he might be the "Next Howard Dean" -- an unlikely if inspiring candidate whose campaign brings politics into a new generation -- but now I'm hoping he'll be the next President. And I'm not alone. I was joined that day in Seattle by the Mayor, the Governor, thousands of convicted supporters, my son, and my six-month-old daughter. In the past year, our faith indeed has been vindicated. So I see our journeys as intertwined, as presumptious as it is to compare myself to him. He's emerged as the best public speaker of our day, so blogging about his writing feels like cribbing John Lennon lyrics. He's so good that paraphrasing him always feels cheap.

And as we've all recently learned, it was Chicago Pastor Jeremiah Wright who coined the term "Audacity of Hope." So it's really Wright who I hear, whenever my audacity calls to mind that phrase. It's Wright who has become "controversial" now, that we've seen quips from his angry "Anti-American" sermons to his African-American congregation. Of course, a competitive Presidential candidate can't say these things any more than he could burn a flag and still be electable. But how bad are Wright's comments? When the U.S. invaded Iraq, I can't count the white liberals who joked that they would move to Canada. Or flew flags of the UN or France when they disclaimed the War. Lots of people were this upset. But dissent isn't un-American -- it's America's lifeblood. This is easy to understand until it gets threatening. And "God Damn America," coming from a pony-tailed geek in a bike helmet, isn't as scary as when it's yelled by a black man.

Obama took this on: the bitterness within black congregations, the racism of our Depression-era white grandmothers. These are obvious and prevalent in the American experience. When our grandparents (who we love) say racist or ignorant things, we're torn between condemning them or excusing them. So we ignore them, and hold ourselves to an impossible standard -- especially in public and among the media -- where bitterness and racism is always condemned but never contemplated. This makes it impossible to honestly discuss even the most basic questions of race and politics. We worry about whether Geraldine Ferraro is "a racist" without critiquing the merits of her comments on race and politics. In doing so, we rush to judge a person -- and sacrifice our capacity to identify and support (even love) them -- but also impair our ability to honestly judge their comments.

But Obama refined the debate. He did so by reminding us that we can love and identify with a person -- our grandparents, our pastors -- while condeming their attitudes (if we indeed do). When we separate our feelings for a person from our judgment of their actions, we refine both. This comes up a lot with moms -- do we "feel judged" when we read critiques of our parenting style (even by someone who's never met us)? Do we "feel guilty" when we do something we know might be wron g(even if we don't really regret the decision?) These are complicated "feelings." But they untangle when we separate our gut feelings from our discernment of information. We can feel fear of hurting our children, desire for approval and belonging, the uncertainty and overwhelming nature of being a parent. But we still can know -- discern information on nutrition and safety, gather new perspectives on discipline, observe what is works for other parents (and what doesn't). If we start by loving and accepting ourselves -- and others -- we should be able share this information, even when it's "negative," without feeling threatened or threatening. With love, we can make friends with moms who are different with us, without feeling vulnerable to their disapproval. And we should be able to speak up honestly when we see right from wrong (where my judgment leads me on the issue of circumcision, for instance), and judge the issue without ever presuming to judge a person.

When speaking of race, Obama said the obvious -- that America is not perfect, but can start to make steps toward perfecting itself. But he went ahead and spoke lovingly of his pastor and his grandmother while condemning what he saw as wrong in their divisive and bitterness. We can't wait for perfection in order to love each other -- or ourselves. But with love can we discern right from wrong, and only then can we move toward a more perfect anything. Now that's audacity. And my faith in Senator Obama (and myself) is vindicated again.

Law and Lawlessness

2007-11-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

The University of Chicago Law School recently paid respects to the late Professor David Currie. While I didn't have Professor Currie's as an instructor, his remarks to my graduating class during our hooding ceremony made a distinct impression:

When one of Shakespeare's characters says the first thing to do is kill all the lawyers, it's not another bad joke about the legal profession. It's not Shakespeare himself speaking even in fun. He puts the words in the mouth of a rabble-rousing demagogue who wants to put an end to law and order and liberty and knows it's hard to do while there are courts and judges and lawyers to defend them.It is no less praiseworthy to defend those whom society disdains.

Professor Currie's remarks are not hypothetical. The front page of today's New York Times shows a lawyer -- in full business wear, looking as lawyerly as anyone you'll find in an American court house -- throwing a firebomb. He's one of many: Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is urging lawyers across Pakistan to "convey my message to the people to rise up and restore the Constitution.” Indeed. These lawyers aren't just admirable defending the downtrodden. In the face of national emergency, in defiance of military orders, they've literally taken up arms to defend the very rule of law.

We know that law gives society its fundamental functioning. It's easy to forget that it entrusts the lawyers such a fundamental responsibility. How close are we in the American Bar to being so soberly reminded?

Deep Greens and Blues

2007-11-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

So, I don't blog much these days. I'm not journaling or emailing like I used to either. This season of my working/mom life doesn't leave much time or energy to document my thoughts. But we're doing great. Physically -- oof that was rough, but apparently I'm tougher than I thought. The first of many follow-up tests has shown no signs of remaining disease. So, I can take a deep breath and look forward to a long life where I eventually die of something other than cervical cancer. My beautiful daughter is fine, too. Considering all the agony we went through counting the days and weeks until she'd be a viable fetus, she's turned out ridiculously strong, fat, and healthy. There's no sign, anywhere on her, of the whole ordeal. I've looked.

Emotionally, it's a longer road. I'm trying to be honest with myself about the rough spots while enjoying the sweet ones. I don't think I've figured it out yet. I did find unexpected inspiration in this Sunset Magazine article about Susan Marinello, a Seattle Interior Designer. Her picture caught my eye -- she has a calm and confident look and very skinny arms. The article describes her background (fashion model, interior designer) and her philosophy (enlarging small spaces by bringing outdoorsy palettes inside). When it comes to color, she says, "I'm not afraid."

I loved this -- I love that Susan Marinello is unafraid of color. It makes me wonder why I'm afraid so often. I compared myself to her. Am I afraid because my arms haven't been that skinny since the 9th grade? I tried to dismiss her as a lightweight, with nothing to fear in life than choosing the wrong green or blue. But that devalues the work of any businesswoman with a marriage and big clients -- on a daily basis, she's likely taking on as much responsibility as I ever have practicing law (which can make me afraid) or mothering two young children (which makes me very, very afraid).

Which might mean, that all my trials (literally) and tribulations, in the end, are just so much green and blue. What is there to be afraid of?

Healing Hurts

2007-09-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

That's really all I have to say right now. 20 days after surgery, my body is working hard on becoming whole again. My 10-inch incision is shrinking as my belly slowly contracts back to what it was before pregnancy (is "contracts" an ironic word to use, when you don't have a uterus?) Every day I'm a little stronger, but every day something new seems to hurt. The pain of nerves waking up, ligaments knitting themselves together, cauterized veins and arteries casting listlessly around (I imagine) to find a new home.

I think healing is like that. The stronger we are, the more we can feel. For almost three years, I've regretted going into "denial" after my sons' birth. I lied to myself about my feelings and pretended that I was okay with it all. I wasn't. Anxiety and depression seeped under my door like a cold fog, chilling me with an insidious and demanding pain. It took months (even years) before I could look squarely at that experience and all those feelings. But in those early days, in the dark of winter with a newborn -- a new mother, with a new scar and a bunch of new problems -- was it so bad to blind myself? What's so bad about waiting until we're strong enough to feel it all?

So I don't know yet, what I feel about all this. I've tried to write about my daughter's delivery and surgery, but so far I can't even finish the Customer Service Survey I got from the hospital. I just don't remember -- or want to remember -- it all. So far I can say this: That I was hysterical with fear in the hospital admitting lobby. That both teams of surgical staff were poignantly sensitive-enough and conducted themselves professionally throughout the surgery. That I remained conscious, without crying or vomiting, for the entire delivery until I saw and heard my daughter (ten feet away from me under her own oxygen mask, because "she's early" and "her lungs didn't get cleared by a vaginal birth.") I remember saying "okay, Josh, I'm done," to the anesthesiologist (younger than me!) and awoke hours later asking to breastfeed my baby. That I did feed her, and fell in love so suddenly that it surprised me. That I hit unimaginable physical and emotional lows in the hospital, but came home, and started to get better.

That's all for now. The baby and I are fine. Having a newborn is demanding, but I remind myself that this is only "for now" -- my baby wakes up every three hours at night, for now. She nurses ravenously and then spits up in my hair, for now. She is sometimes unconsolable, sometimes precious. Sometimes her socks fall off and get lost because they are so tiny. For now. So we are fine. I find myself welcoming the challenge and not overwhelmed by the cold or darkness that I expected. For now.

Ready or not . . .

2007-08-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Our baby will be here by Thursday. This is both thrilling and daunting, as I guess pregnancy always is. Like anyone in their 39th week, I'm ready to be done with the heartburn, the waddling, and the constant bathroom trips. Thankfully the weather has cooperated and we've only had a few uncomfortably hot spells this summer.

I'm joking that, having done the newborn thing before, at least we're not naive enough to look forward to it. Of course it will be wonderful to meet our daughter. But I hear myself saying "I'm ready to be done with this insomnia . . . " Oops. I know what challenges are to come. But I know other things too -- like my baby won't die from a sloppy nail clipping. I know more about my own strength. That I can survive on less sleep and fewer meals than I'd like to. I have a two year old who likes to say, "I a baby bird. I love you, Mommy Bird!" So I'm starting to understand why I have children in the first place.

The cancer thing is getting hard to ignore again. When I got diagnosed during my first trimester, I was consumed by the urgency -- one doctor after another telling me I'd need an immediate hysterectomy, regardless of whether anyone was living in my uterus. Then the tumor was safely removed, and I was consumed by relief. And it was easy to forget how serious it is. So I've spent most of this year complacently enjoying my time at home and planning for the new baby.

My anxiety crops up unexpectedly. Hearing the question "when are you due?" when I have a planned surgery date (which I'd otherwise fight tooth and nail). Listening silently while other moms talk about breastfeeding challenges and birth control (there's not a whole lot out there on nursing under the shadow of surgically-induced hormonal arrest). Definitively sorting maternity and baby clothes because I know this will be our last child. I don't fit in with most pregnancy discourse, and it makes me nervous.

Last week we met with the surgeon who described the details of the procedure -- the "dissections," the incision, the transfusion risk, the bladder complications. Nothing too unexpected. I still found myself dizzy and choking back tears. Could this really be about me?

I want to focus on the positive: the healthy, beautiful baby girl who will be joining our family in a matter of days. But I don't want to ignore the pain and loss. It's inevitable to lose one's sense of self with a newborn around. And when that self is physically or emotionally injured, ignoring it doesn't help. Survivors of birth trauma can find it impossible to admit any regret or suffering about their baby's delivery. Our culture tells us to pick between grief and love -- as if caring about birth is a self-indulgence that we could overcome if we only appreciate our children enough. As if we must judge our feelings instead of listening to them. At least I know better now.

I'm listening.

Talk Softly

2007-06-19T08:35:00.001-07:00

I keep meaning to type a quick update . . . after so much turmoil earlier in the year, everything has settled down to the point that I find myself without much to say. I'm spending the summer stretching my budget beyond previously unimagined limits (this turned out not to be the best time to find a new job), planting peas and building "railroad castles" with my toddler, and enjoying what I can about the third trimester of pregnancy. Our daughter will be here in the middle of August.

Sometimes I feel remiss in not writing more. But I'm discovering the freedom of living beyond words. After years of school and desk work, constantly typing up all my ideas and feelings, it's liberating to live life without stopping to imagine its narration. Or as our son reminds us, when we get too worked up in debate and analysis around here, "Too woud, Mommy Daddy! Talk softwy." And sometimes, the quieter we are, the more peaceful it is.

I'm hoping that this might help when the baby is here, in those early days when our family is reduced to its fundamental functionings of eat and sleep. When Malcolm was born, I struggled to explain and express every detail of my Parenting Experience. Even my paradigm of being a "more intuitive parent" was entangled in intellectual conviction and cognitive research. Even the most intimate aspects of my family's experience -- our cloth diapers, our breastfeeding, my cesarean scar -- I strained to mentally justify, to respond to counteraguments (imagined or real), to politicize. Of course, it was good to care about my choices and even to become an advocate. But it exhausted me. At one point I realized that I honestly could not count higher than "two." And ultimately, mothering a newborn is impossible to think your way through (or around).

So we'll try again. To move through this next big challenge while really letting go of explaining and documenting it. To languidly answer "I don't know" to doctors and nurses who quiz me about infant care. To doze in sunbeams like a cat. To talk softly. To touch and feel and care for my children. Without rationale, without explanation. Accountable to no one but them.

Partly Sunny

2007-05-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

This season of my pregnancy has been like a Seattle Spring. Moments of delicious, lilac-and-saltwater saturated sunshine, and moments of stark chill and darkness -- those times when we rush inside from the backyard to curl up under a blanket. Some days are sunnier, some are colder, but any given day could be forecast as “partly cloudy,” “showers,” or “partly sunny.” Which never really tells us what to wear, or how long we can be outside before coming in from the cold.

But most days really are partly sunny, if we‘re lucky and pay attention. And so I’m thinking of my life as “partly sunny,“ too. I’m expecting a baby girl, and enjoy the giddy relief of carrying her through the second trimester. I'm also preparing for a radical hysterectomy, as cancer treatment, when she is delivered this summer. Fear and thrill, grief and joy. It would be dishonest to say that the happiness outshines the anxiety. To pretend everything is fine is to lie -- and no more practical than wearing a sleeveless maternity dress on a day forecast for rain. Still, I’m inspired by what Elizabeth Edwards said, when asked whether encouraging her husband’s Presidential campaign, in the face of recurring breast cancer, is a kind of denial: that she will continue to deny cancer control over her life, every day that she continues to live.

So where's the balance? With luck and mindfulness, I can honestly immerse myself in sunny moments: The lush May branches arcing over our heads as I push my toddler’s stroller through the leafy streets of our neighborhood. His surprised exclamation that “we are FRIENDS!” as we cuddle before bedtime with his head on my growing belly. My daughter’s incessant thumping inside me -- already insisting on her own independent rhythm -- so much like the occasional bumping on the other side of the bedroom wall, as my son stirs in his sleep.

When I let myself rest in these sweeter times, I can feel the sun on my face and be fully thankful, in that moment, for all of our blessings. As my son sometimes says, looking around at his toys or our dinner table, “We have SO MUCH.” And we do. And when the clouds roll through -- when I’m temporarily chilled with the stress and fear of what’s to come -- I know better than to pretend it’s sunny. Sometimes, all we can wish for is a blanket to curl up under, and cry -- if we need to -- until the moment passes.

Robin's Cancer FAQ

2007-04-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Since so many people -- both strangers and my closest friends -- have learned about my cancer here, I'll provide a little more detail for everyone's information. I appreciate so much all the love and support shown by everyone throughout this whole time, even when I was not able to express exactly what was going on. Friendship, it turns out, takes more forms than I ever could have imagined.

What do you have?

I've been diagnosed with Invasive Carcinoma of the Cervix, Stage Ib1 (diagnosed as gross polyploid lesion less than 4cm), Squamous cell, Grade 3 (poorly differentiated), LVSI negative (no microscopic lymphovascular involvement within tumor), no lymph node enlargement visible on MRI, 1.5 mm of invasion with 6 mm of lateral invasive extent.

How did you find out?

I was diagnosed late in the first trimester of my pregnancy when I was examined for unusual bleeding. A visual exam revealed a growth on/in/through my cervix. At first the obstetrician assumed it was a benign growth, which apparently aren't unusual, but a subsequent biopsy showed that it was a Grade 3 (aggressive) cancer.

At 16 weeks of pregnancy, I underwent cervical conization surgery. While this was high-risk and not generally recommended for pregnancy -- the standard treatment for Stage Ib during the first trimester is immediate termination and hysterectomy -- it successfully removed the tumor and showed no involvement of invasion at the margins. Some noninvasive carcinoma (surface cells only) remains.

Are you okay?

The conization removed around 2 cm of cervical tissue. My pregnancy has been under close observation for early dilation due to cervical incompetence; so far everything looks fine. Because even microscopic cancer can spread quickly through the cervix and surrounding tissue, the safest treatment is a radical hysterectomy ("It's not your mother's hysterectomy.") Statistically, Ib1 patients treated this way have a 85-95% survival rate. Because of the success and positive indicators of the conization, I imagine myself to be on the high end of those numbers -- although the delay in treatment, due to pregnancy, has not been studied enough to know how that might affect the outcome.

How are you feeling?

In general, these days I feel . . . physically healthy, thankfully free of pain, surprisingly exhausted (I am fighting mild anemia and low weight gain as my second trimester comes to a close), conditionally grateful, and occassionally terrified.

This is so scary! Did you have any problems in the past that predicted this?

I had annual pap smears without fail between the ages of 18 and 30, and every two years after that. In 15 years, I had two occassions of abnormal pap smears: In 1994, I had some apparent dysplasia that resolved with no biopsy or further treatment. In 2004, when I was last pregnant, I had apparent "severe dysplasia" that either resolved after labor and deliver or was originally misdiagnosed. This appeared in a different location than my eventual tumor, which was found 16 months after my last (uneventful) exam and pap smear.

What do you think of the HPV vaccine?

That it is ridiculously politicized, commercialized and aggressively marketed for a preventative measure that might save 10,000 occurrences of cancer a year; If only our culture put this much emphasis into other fundamental women's issues. But I have no particular concerns and it appears to be as effective and low-risk as any new vaccine. Selfishly, I find it pretty annoying to have an illness that is the year's hot topic. It makes me self-conscious and clutters information resources for actual cervical cancer patients.

What's Next?

My daughter will be delivered by cesarean section immediately prior to my radical hysterectomy. This will involve about five hours under general anesthesia and about six weeks of serious physical recovery. If all goes well, this will happen in August.

No, I am not confident that this is best for the baby's health, due to the risks of cesarean delivery and disruption of breastfeeding. I am a little more confident that it is the better alternative for my own health, but deciding on how and when to be treated have been difficult decisions. I have not lost my trust in birth and my skepticism about medicine, just because because I'm a cancer patient. And because it's not up to my doctors to "let" me do anything -- delay treatment, go to full term, deliver vaginally -- the final responsibility for these decisions rests only with me. Which is a huge headache.

I will have a pelvic lymph node dissection which will give more information on whether the cancer has mestastized. If all goes well, I'll be carefully observed every few months for a matter of years, and might eventually be categorized as "NED" (No Evidence of Disease). If all doesn't go well, my remaining treatment options are radiation and/or chemotherapy. Which, I try not to think about much.

You Should Be Grateful! After all, all that matters is a healthy baby.

Okay, no one has really said this. Please don't, or I will have to kick some ass.

All That Matters Is . . .

2007-03-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

It's almost ironic that, finding myself pregnant with cancer, I'm drawing strength from what I've learned as a fledgling birth activist. A staunch VBAC advocate, fighting for the chance at a 26-week cesarean? A family-unplanner, researching sterilization surgery? It's not easy to apply my old convictions to my new situation. But it's helping.

Tonight I'm thinking about gratitude. Survivors of birth trauma are haunted by the reprimand that they "should be grateful," because "all that matters is a healthy baby." Reading You Should Be Grateful, the groundbreaking essay by Gretchen Humphries, was the starting point for my healing after my son's delivery -- during those first months when I worried that I wasn't "grateful" enough for my healthy child to forget the pain of a lost birth.

And here I am, at another starting point. The first day that my doctor called with a cancer diagnosis, I found myself huddled under the covers in bed, bargaining with God. And I heard myself say it -- "Lord, I will give up everything -- all that matters is a healthy baby." But I knew this wasn't true. I knew might be forced to judge -- brutally so -- exactly how much value I placed on this child's life. But I also knew that, however my other priorities might fall into shadow, they would still always matter. And what else could possibly matter? I've made a list:

Strength and Mobility Matter. I'm scared of the prospect of being temporarily immobile, incontinent, and disabled if I have a hysterectomy with a newborn. I'm trying to imagine this as a slow and quiet season in life, expecting little of myself and others, thinking only of healing. But I know it will be frustrating. If it hurts, I will let it hurt.

Bonding and Breastfeeding Matter. A cesarean-hysterectomy can take over five hours. Pain and recovery can be compounded many times over, compared to a cesarean alone. But the more I'm in the hospital, the more I learn not to fight pain medication, catheters, and IVs when my body still needs them for healing. This means that the first hours, or days, of my child's life might be spent without me able to feed or interact with them. I will grieve this.

Fertility Matters. By the end of the summer, I look forward to having two beautiful, healthy children to call my own. I live a life of abundance, filled with more love that any one woman deserves. Still I choke back tears when I read Hop on Pop. "Father, Mother, Sister, Brother/This one is my other brother." My children will not have "another brother." My family destiny has always been a matter of spiritual and marital trust and enterprise. It's an open horizon, closing into finition for reasons beyond my control. I will grieve this.

Youth and Sexuality Matter. About half of hysterectomy patients show signs of early menopause. Yes, I hear everyone's mother and mother-and-law have been doing really well lately with or without hormone supplements. They are inspirational to us all. I'm just not ready to be them. Whatever happens to my body, I will cope -- proudly, and with all the dignity and grace I can. But I will grieve whatever I lose of my 33-year old body.

Birth Matters. I still don't know whether a cesarean will be my safest bet in this situation. If it is, I'll deal -- but I won't like it. I will grieve my lost birth. I will feel disappointment and anger. I will write, sing and share this pain until I am healed. I will do this knowing that it cannot -- ever-- compromise the love I have for my children.

I'll probably think of other things that matter, as I go. I don't do this to be negative. I'm so, so grateful for the chance to have a healthy baby. Having thought long and hard about our lives (and deaths), I know exactly what "matters" most about me and my baby. But even if I don't lose it all, I'll still grieve what I lose. To deny this would be to lie and cheat myself. To accept this is to accept life and loss -- and to gain the strength to move through pain, to eventually find something more.

Seeing Thestrals

2007-03-09T21:16:00.000-08:00

Good news here -- Last week's surgery comfortably removed the tumor with room to spare. The pathology report indicated clean margins, no lympho-vascular involvement, minimal invasion, and other various happy things (all interspersed with the word "carcinoma," again and again). I spent yesterday getting MRI scans, and will still likely need a hysterectomy after delivering this baby. There is some risk in delaying treatment for a few months, but it's easily outweighed by the opportunity to carry the baby safely to term. So I can start saying "due in August" again, after all, without the catch in my throat that says "or so I hope."

Now after three weeks of waiting, the world seems so much brighter. I can take my boxed-up maternity clothes out of the attic. I can look at my son, and see him as the beautiful older brother he's going to be. But I feel a little like Harry Potter at the beginning of Book 5 -- when he's shocked to see that the magical Hogwarts carriages are drawn by skeletal winged horses that he's never noticed before. The beasts are called thestrals. Harry sees them for the first time because he's seen death.

I won't be melodramatic -- I live a lucky and luxurious life where I'm pretty much insulated from these things. Especially my own mortality -- me, a healthy, 33-year-old woman who has only been to three funerals, ever. But I think I'm starting to understand how it works. When I first got my diagnosis, I explained indignantly to my loved ones that I am FINE. This cancer cannot be a threat to ME, because the prognosis (when properly treated) has a stellar survival rate (as far as cancer goes). But really, I was trying to say, "you don't understand. I'm Robin. I'm right here. My life can't be at risk -- that's not the way it is."

But now I've had time to think about the way it is. In more painful moments, when my heart cried out "Why this? Why me?" the answer was too simple: "What the hell were you expecting?" How can I have a life-threatening illness? Because all of us die. Or as I've started flippantly saying, "we all have cancer." It's just a matter of whether we'll live long enough for it to slip out of the shadows and into our nuclei. All 6 billion people living on Earth will eventually die; I'm not particularly special, just because I'm looking it a little more closely in the eye.

The ugliness of this reality -- like the grotesque thestrals with their leathery wings -- can be overwhelming. But it's reassuring to see the truth that's been invisible until now. This life isn't magic. It's finite, even temporary. I'm not immortal. And this reality can make every little thing (and every big thing) -- the pregnancy, fresh tulips, a hug, toy trains, my family -- that much more delicious.

The Audacity

2007-03-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been keeping up with me, I'll warn you that things around here have turned serious. My life has entered into the Twilight Zone -- and not one of its happier edges where Santa Claus is real. I have cancer; I don't know whether my baby (due in August) will survive the treatment. I apologize, because I'm sick of dropping the depressing news on people who know me. But it's become ridiculous to pretend it's not happening.

So I'm learning about hope, and I'll title this along the lines of Senator Obama's book -- The Audacity of Hope -- because I feel absurdly audacious these days when I answer "How are you?" with a simple "fine." I'm not "fine." The past three weeks have been all about waiting. Waiting for doctors to call back, waiting for test results, waiting for surgery to be scheduled. Each time I wait, my life pauses for hours or days, and I can decide whether to be fatalistic (to avoid disappointment) or hopeful (and risk discouragement).

And "getting my hopes up" is something I've thought about before, in pregnancy. Pregnancy means "expecting." For months on end, we really don't "have" anything but heartburn, swelling, eventually some kicks and tumbles in our bellies -- nothing but the expectancy that this will lead to a day when we look into the eyes of our newborn child. Pregnancy is all about hope. And when it comes to the hard stuff -- whether to give birth naturally, whether to get your heart set on breastfeeding -- we're often afraid to hope for much at all. We tell ourselves, "I'm being flexible, so I won't be disappointed." As if it's the moment of letdown -- and not the actual loss -- that can ultimately hurt us.

So we protect ourselves with low expectations, and this isn't always enough. In my last pregnancy, I failed to prepare for natural birth (of course, not helping my chances) because I was afraid to admit I wanted it. I thought that, if I avoided conviction about birth, I would avoid disappointment. But the pain came anyway, even when I had so carefully avoided "getting my hopes up." How could I grieve something I tried so hard not to want?

Because some things suck. I decided, early in this pregnancy, that no matter how hard it is, I'd go ahead and hope for the best. That used to mean "insisting on VBAC" instead of "Maybe they'll let me have a trial of labor." Now things are crazy, but I'm hoping anyway. "Disappointment" isn't my worst case scenario any more. I have cancer. What do I have to lose by getting my hopes up?

Hope looks different around here, each day. Last week, I said out loud "I've decided that I'm fine," and ended up with my hopes crushed to tears after reading two more independent pathology reports. Yes, I felt stupid and embarrassed for having high expectations. I could have spent that week expecting the worst, and I wouldn't have any "hope" to be "crushed" when the oncologists came into the consultation room. Was I in denial, or just being optimistic? Was I feeling the pain of "crushed hopes?" Or just the pain of this damn situation?

This week, as I wait to hear whether last week's surgery got "clean edges" around a tumor, hope means shopping for baby clothes (just a few) without thinking too intently on when they might be worn. Hope means sending out job applications, without knowing for sure when I'll be available for work. Maybe this is delusional. But I can't clear a year off my calendar in case I end up unable to walk. I can't ignore the child wiggling in my tummy, when a few brief weeks of affection might be the most love I'll ever be able to give.

It's an awful, awful struggle. But I can't live as if I've already lost it. So, at the risk of "getting my hopes up" -- I'll go ahead and raise them high to shine in the sun. And see what happens next -- Maybe I'll even go for that VBAC.

Danger, Data, Drama

2007-02-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about how we learn about risk and safety. In a world of hidden threats, what is danger? How do we know what to fear? A car cruising at freeway speeds with sleepy children buckled in back. Pills prescribed by a trusted doctor. Invisible pollutants. Unprotected sex. These things can kill us -- but they probably won't. You can live a lifetime, unscarred by accident or disease, and never know whether you were safe and smart -- or just lucky.

It's through the collective wisdom of our community that we know about latent risk. I don't personally know anyone who's lost an infant in a car wreck. But I buckle my son in his five-point harness -- because I (and my government) have looked at the data and determined that, in the right circumstances, it could make a difference between life and death. I've done this with almost every parenting choice I've faced -- whether to supplement with formula; whether to vaccinate; what kind of medical interventions to accept during childbirth, and which ones to avoid.

And no matter what we disagree on, all moms seem to agree that this is exhausting. We face information overload. We go to great lengths to avoid "risks" like artificial growth hormones and latex balloons -- and at some point, we have to let it go. "What's the harm?" We say. "How dangerous is it really?" My sister and I used to wrestle around on the floor of our Grandma's backseat while she smoked cigarettes and fed us colored marshmallows in the car -- and we turned out fine. Can a little peanut butter and a few unsupervised bathtimes really be that dangerous for our own children?

So at some point, we turn away from the data and the studies. We remember that we are mothers who can learn from other mothers. We value the knowledge of our friends, our sisters and mothers, as if we crave a primal community where we learn by sharing anecdotes. "I was induced at 38 weeks/ fed him baloney/let him use the walker," they say "and he turned out fine." Or on the other hand, "I know someone whose cousin had a VBAC/left him alone in his highchair/ fed them a raw carrot -- and they almost died!" The closer we are to these kind of horror stories, the more power they have over us. It's as if we are living in the wilderness and hear of our neighbors being attacked by a wild animal. The nearer they are, the more real the threat can seem.

Of course we need to temper our parenting decisions with common sense. And good old-fashioned Mom Talk can be a great source of support. But the wrong anecdote can overdramatize safe situations -- or veil the risk of threatening ones. When I hear about a friend's cousin's uterine rupture, for instance, I need to keep in mind where she fits into the big picture. With a 0.7% rupture rate, for every woman who experiences rupture there are over 142 who do not. Of course, it would take too long to counter a single rupture anecdote with 142 relatively boring stories about uneventful VBACs. So the dramatic anecdote survives, and thrives, until ultimately it threatens to distort the true risk of the situation.

And some risks are only apparent when viewed relatively. A .177% infant death rate for cesarean deliveries seems low enough to ignore -- until you compare it to the .062% rate for vaginal births (in a study of almost 12,000 babies who died in a 3-year period) . So while it's accurate for me to spread the word that "I had a cesarean and my baby is fine" -- is it intellectually honest? Over 4,000 of those babies died for no other discernible reason than a cesarean delivery. Was it smart decision of me to consent to surgery? Or was I just lucky?

And why does it matter? We can't be perfect mothers. We all take risks the moment we leave the house. And we crave and require each other's support. Tell me I'm not a bad mom; Tell me I'm not alone. Don't judge me. But I wonder if we're so hesitant to "judge" each other that we've lost our ability to use critical judgment where it's needed -- in analyzing important information about our children's health and safety. What will it take to give us the courage and confidence again?

For Reals

2007-01-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

So, after months of debate, analysis and other attempts at finding "peace through argument" about childbirth, I find myself pregnant. (Okay, it's not as simple as one "finding oneself," but I'll skip that for today). And here I am again: in the middle of the night; alone in the car; huddled at my desk during the workday before I tell anyone at the office; Experiencing pregnancy as the fundamentally solitary, physical experience at the core of gestation and birth. Right now, it's much more visceral than verbal. So writing anything thoughtful about it seems, in a way futile.

Now that it's for real, I'm on a lonely journey. No matter how much "community" I sweep in around me, this pregnancy is mine and mine alone. Even my closest relationships -- my mother, my husband -- are satellites orbiting my own choices, and my direction. I felt this from the first moment I took a breath to announce my pregnancy. What to tell them? How to say it? It's all up to me. I am separate, relying on my words to connect me to everything outside myself. It's the same with my friends, with my journal, with support groups. It's as if, to be anything more than a lonely pregnant woman, I have to find out how to describe, explain and verbally connect with the outside world.

So far, this has meant lots of reading, talking, listening. Lots of theory, research anecdotes. And it's tiring, because meanwhile my body is growing a placenta and networks of blood vessels to support the little gummi-bear sized fetus who will zillion-tuple in size as it grows into the full-fledged person of my son or daughter. But in the meantime here I am trying to connect and learn as much as possible. Because I want this pregnancy to be different than last time. Healthier; more convicted; more confident. I keep thinking of my mantra from last fall -- With Love and Without Fear -- and honestly, these days it seems out of reach. So my new mantra is "courage." And Mark Twain said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." So I know I will be afraid -- and do it anyway.

And what am I afraid of? Last time, I appreciated the value of natural childbirth, but I did little to prepare myself for it. I secretly hoped I'd be one of those women who found it "not that bad" and would end up saying, "by the time I asked for an epidural, it was time to push!" But I didn't commit to avoiding interventions. I didn't aggressively learn or practice other coping techniques. I went with standard OB care instead of a midwife, and didn't have a doula. Part of me, quite simply, didn't believe in birth -- and didn't care. This part of me was afraid.

I wasn't just afraid of the pain. I was afraid of disappointment; of wanting something that I wouldn't get. Of being one of those women who "thought they could birth naturally," but caved in, and turned out to be self-righteous ideologues who are no better than the rest of us. Looking back, I thought that disappointment was the biggest risk I faced. And by keeping my standards low, that I could avoid it. I was afraid to hope and afraid to care.

I was wrong. Now, I'm done second-guessing the medical treatment that surrounded my son's delivery. I've reviewed my records -- and yes I did have pre-eclampsia, and we all did the best we could with what we knew at the time. But what I can second-guess is myself. What if I had stayed mobile, without an epidural and could walk around or labor in the shower? What if I had more confidence in my body, and trusted myself to work with my contractions? I can't guarantee I won't have pre-eclampsia again this time. But there's a lot I CAN do to prepare myself, build my skills, and surround myself with supportive people.

I have a lot of other thoughts -- about whether regret is the mirror image of disappointment, and how they're really phantoms that distract from our actual fears. About where, and how, and with whom I'll have this baby. About my dreams for my family and my future. But that's a lot of words, for another day. So I'll stop talking, for now, and just keep listening.

Santa? Snowflakes? Savior?

2006-12-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

"Happy Holidays." I wrote this at the top of our "Annual Family Letter" to slip into this year's Christmas Cards. This is the first time we've done a letter, and I'm hesitating. I'm worried that it's not pithy and funny enough, but it seemed convenient to remind everyone where we work and how old the baby is. We're also sending everyone a picture of him. And like every year, I've bought three sets of cards. Religious ones (Mary and Jesus from Gerard David's The Rest on the Flight to Egypt), for religious relatives and art lovers with an affinity for Christian tradition. Wintery ones (snowflakes), mostly for Jewish friends. And Secular Christmas (a cat wearing a Santa Hat), for everyone else.

Every year I consider sending the Cat in a Santa Hat to our Jewish friends. Because the Santa Hat is not a symbol of the same magnitude as Christ on the Cross. They know I observe Christmas. But I know they don't. Not even the contemporary American, Santa Baby, Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, "9 days til Xmas" Christmas. To those who are alienated by the mainstreaming of Christianity's Major Holiday, Santa is a symbol of their marginalization (as in the joke from the Simpson's, Santa Claus is beloved by everyone, "whether you're Christian, or simply not Jewish.") I know mixed-religion couples who have debated less about bris or baptism and more about whether they could ever have a Christmas Tree in their house. So, I skip it -- and anyway I don't mind the Un-Santa cards: I love snowflakes, or wintry cityscapes, or birds on snowy branches. In a way, it's an opportunity for me to broaden my experience of all that is festive about winter.

And of course, I don't send Mary and Jesus to everyone else. I do value religious worship as part of a community (one reason that I'm Catholic). But Within my Church, an image Mary and Jesus (She is feeding him grapes -- adorably evocative of my own relationship with my own toddler) is precious. Between us, the symbol says: Here is our Mother, and here is our Lord. Here is an painter circa 1510, honoring them with this artistic image. Here am I, sharing them with you.

But with non-Christians, I'm more guarded. Even though I'm fairly bold about sharing my faith, I see it as just that -- a personal faith, that in the context of my culture will always be subjective. I can't prostelytize. So when my Christian symbol might be heard differently, I keep them to myself. Because I'm not saying: "This is what I think Christmas should be about . . . .I am more religious than you . . . You should be Christian. . . I don't care if you don't agree with me."

I hate to make it political. And once you take your faith beyond your faith community, it instantly implicates politics. If I believe Jesus is Right, then it logicially follows that un-Jesus is not right. And what do we when everyone can't be right? How do we incorporate our various faiths into our legal and cultural symptoms? Who's in charge? What happens to minorities? All fascinating questions. I won't stop asking them for fear of being offensive -- and I won't use the phrase "politically correct" to describe anyone who would rather talk about politics than holidays -- But sometimes, I'd rather just say "Merry Christmas."

One of these years, I'll get too busy or bored, and it will be snowflakes for everyone. But for now, I have fun with it, and I have fun thinking about symbols. It's easy to analyze symbols pedanticly. For instance, does the origin of Christmas Trees in pagan nature worship, makes them less potent a symbol of American Christianity? Is "Santa Claus" less religious than "Saint Nicholas?" When people want to come together as a community, holiday traditions and symbols seem like a festive and inclusive way to bring people together. The debates about the removal (and reinstalation) of Christmas Tree display at the Sea-Tac Airport show how important this is to people -- but also remind us that, once symbols have become marginalizing (if not oppressive), their meaning won't go away so easily.

This reflects the core tension of the First Amendment: Free expression of religion and freedom from religious establishment. There's no easy way to respectfully celebrate holidays in a diverse society that values plurality. The reader board by my house ("Happy Holidays, to everyone not offended by the suggestion") is too snarky. But I don't care if it's not easy. If I know whether someone prefers a snowflake over the Santa Cat, or the Santa Cat to Jesus, I'll try to reach out in whatever way helps us celebrate what we share about the season. And when I don't know, one way or another, I might just say, "Merry Christmas." And if someone doesn't want to say it in return, I'll consider myself lucky if they tell me why.

The Price of Discretion

2006-11-17T16:38:00.001-08:00

So I've fallen behind, and still need to catch up the latest chilling news -- a women kicked off an airplane for breast-feeding. The buzz on this is already fading; In the time it has taken me to assemble my own thoughts, the airline has already apologized and a number of “nurse-ins” across the country are proceeding with little controversy.

But the message to me, and to women everywhere, is still sinking in. It’s a message about discretion and exposure – our social obligation to protect other people from seeing too much of our bodies. The woman kicked off the airplane (seated by the window with her husband on the aisle) was first asked to cover her child (and breast) with a blanket. When she refused (or failed), her family was ask to leave -- no small request for a family who has spent hours hauling baggage, stroller, carseat and gear through an airport's gates and crowds. Removal from a flight is a serious measure. A group of Muslim scholars removed from a flight out of Minneapolis yesterday have called for an investigation because of the humiliation (and presumably they needed to get where they were going, too).

But even among dedicated lactivists, the outrage and disappointment at the news never sounded like shock and awe. Because we’re not really that surprised. Even if we agree that it was wrong to kick the woman off the plane, we understand why it happened -- or at least we have the vocabulary to discuss it: was she "discreet" enough? Does it matter? We can debate it, but we knew this kind of thing could happen. As much as we rail against it, for years we’ve been hearing that same message about our bodies and babies: Be careful. Your breasts are dangerous, and feeding your child is risky.

And so, in its first apology, the airline expressed its support for breast-feeding women – if they are discreet. I’ll assume that, in light of national news headlines and a complaint filed with the Vermont Civil Rights Commission, even the first apology (later revised) was vetted by at least one team of lawyers, publicists and managers. All that expertise, all that consideration, came to the decision that it’s necessary to draw the line when a breast-feeding woman exposes too much of her body. In essence, they reiterated that women have a duty to protect society from an inadvertent view of our breasts.

I won’t be the first to point out how ironic this is, in an age of breast-intensive advertising and entertainment. If breasts are offensive, why are they everywhere? It’s not enough to blame the media – if mostly-bared breasts weren’t appealing to most consumers, they wouldn’t be plastered across billboards and beer commercials. Boobs are good. So then, we assume, the threat lies the prospect of “too much” breast – along the lines of local strip club ordinances that define "nudity" as including "the breasts below and including the areola." Therein lies the difference between an episode of BayWatch (appropriate) and the moment when I quietly shift my drowsy son off my breast and reach for my sweater (not). Is it all about the areola? Too bad for babies that the business end for milk is the same part considered the most taboo for display -- because it is usually not displayed (a tautology?) -- and therefore takes on a more private and forbidden association. As the argument goes, because breasts are obviously sexual, and sex is private, breast-feeding must be private.

But it’s really not the slight slip of nipple that instantly repulses an otherwise breast-appreciative public. In fact, it’s not the “breast” in the “breast-feeding” that's offensive – it’s the feeding. I think of this as the "don't ruin them for us!" argument: It’s the lactating woman, not the sexualized one, that must protect the world from her body. As observed by the characters on Friends, while watching a nursing mother, "It's such a beautiful and natural thing. . . / Yes, but there is a baby sucking on it!" Or comments like those of Ken Schram, a local news commentator who compared public breast-feeding to "urinating in the middle of the mall.” Boobs are pretty and sexy; Lactation is an intimate, even disgusting, bodily function.

In practice, I can tell you that discretion is no small challenge. It’s hard to nurse a busy and curious baby while maintaining the crucial inch of coverage that could change a peaceful and cuddly feeding into an offense, a confrontation, even a ruined cross-country trip. A slip of blanket or bra, a little distraction, and there we are exposed. Even with laws protecting public breastfeeding, many women feel too vulnerable to ever nurse in public. This is not simply out of modesty (I'd argue that anyone has the right to protect their body from view) but out of fear. What if we're next? Why risk it?

So we suffer a chilling affect. We hide ourselves in a safe “quiet” corner, cover up with a blanket, and spend hundreds of dollars on pumps, bottles and formula – all because we feel vulnerable. And what is our vulnerability? A nursing mother doesn’t shield her breasts out of fear that a sexual predator will notice and direct his violent attentions upon them. We’re really protecting our babies, out of fear that someone will disrupt the feeding. We protect the fragile eyes of the public from the uncomfortable truth of lactation. And in doing so, we complicitly agree that our bodies should be protected -- for someone else's prurient fantasy.

50-State Summary of Breastfeeding Laws
Militant Breastfeeding Cult

Waning Crescent: Birth Stories

2006-11-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

I went into labor two years ago today. I've written tons about my labor and delivery -- in email, in a Baby Book, and all the journal entries, messages and posts in between. And now, looking back on it all, I can see how I've changed by the stories I've told. When my son was 8 days old, I wrote out a long timeline, hour by hour. Here's a quote:

Hour 22: Still at 6 cm. The doctor (new one on rotation!) came in and said we could deliver now by c-section, or we could wait and see if things changed. I had never thought about a c/s, no one in my family has ever had one, and my pregnancy had been so healthy and easy. The doctor said the baby wasn't in distress, but didn't say "get the c/s or wait for a vaginal birth." It was more like, do it now or do it later because all the pitocin hadn't worked and my water had been broken all day. They couldn't figure out why I wasn't dilated despite good hard contractions, whether it was the magnesium sulfate or what.

We talked about the c/s. They answered all our questions about breastfeeding, time together right away after the birth etc., and it sounded manageable. The doctor and nurses and my mom left the room so D and I could talk it over. We understood the risks and benefits of situation pretty well, it was just overwhelming to be faced with such a huge decision about our baby in such an exhausted state. We decided to go ahead with the c/s.

This is accurate, but I notice the tone. I was so careful not to place blame. The surgery was inevitable. At the time, I thought I was confident and competent. Now, I hear defensiveness and denial. When I wrote this, my son was so young he still had the stump of his umbilical cord. I had only felt a fraction of the pain the cesarean would eventually involve. But I insisted that I had "understood the risks." I had heard about women who were ignorant and manipulated into cesareans -- I was not one of them. I was better prepared. I chose. In these stories, I am savvy and empowered.

If anything, I told myself, I was unlucky -- I had been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia in labor, and was treated with magnesium sulfate. This made my labor both unpleasant (vomiting, sweats and chills, double vision) and slow (an effect of the drug). I'm the one who "failed to progress," but the deck was stacked against me. If I was sad, it was because it had been so bad. My writing began to emphasize all the difficulties, as if I need to justify my pain. I had never been hung up on childbirth (I wasn't some granola-cruncher who wore hemp maxi-pads.) I thought it was healthier to be flexible and not set my heart on natural birth. If my heart felt broken, it wasn't because I had set myself up for disapopintment -- I had low expectations in the first place. It must be because my labor was so very hard. I was one of those women talked about at baby showers with sadly shaking heads. In these stories, I am a victim.

But I knew women with “worse” trauma who weren’t as upset as I was, and I hate to feel competitive. I tried to move on -– but without much "blame" or "regret" to hang my hurt on, I became listless and conflicted. Whose fault was this? I had chosen a cesarean, but the memory haunted me -- the pounding, slamming anonymity that violated me, despite my consent and my numbness -– like a teenager who thinks she's "ready for sex," realizes too late that she's not, but tells herself she's okay and that she can't complain. So many, many other women had been through identical experiences and they were fine. I wondered why I couldn't get over it: Was I hypersensitive? Melodramatic? I read, wrote and argued with women who had cesareans and women who hadn't. In these stories, I am confused.

I began to doubt and wonder. What had I really done to prepare for childbirth? What if I had been more patient -- even let the epidural wear off, and sit or stand enough to let my son's head dilate my cervix? On the day I finally Googled "mild pre-eclampsia," I found a reputable medical source say that magnesium isn't standard treatment. Had my cesarean been avoidable? And if so, who was responsible? I ordered my 147 pages of medical records, sat down to read them, and wrote about what I found. In these stories, I am searching.

I face my son’s second birthday tomorrow. In the past, when anyone has asked me "what date he was born," I've had trouble answering. I had labored through the night and day of November 9; The nurses in the operating recorded his delivery as "00:50" on November 10th. But I didn't like that date – what kind of time is "00:50?” The middle of the night, or the early morning? The end of one day, or the beginning of another?

And this is how I felt about it all: A gap surrounding my son’s entry into the world. When I saw “State of Washington” on his birth certificate, I thought no, not my Washington. The "place" was a sterile operating room, forbidden to anyone not trained and scrubbed (or being cut open). When I hear “November 10,” I think no, it was not that day. It doesn't have a date. It’s taken me two years and thousands of words to help me articulate what the gap is. Maybe it wasn’t a birth.

So how can we commemorate that? Yes, we'll buy balloons and cupcakes, he'll open presents, and we'll all sing "Happy Birthday." But for me, it doesn't feel quite right. So I think of this: I recently told someone how my son loves the moon (he calls the outline of a naked pregnant woman on my "Birthkeeper" shirt a "moon and stars.") She asked if he'd been born at night. I flinched but said yes. Then I thought about it, did a little research, and here's what I learned:

When my son entered the world, the sky was dark. That morning at 4:45, the sliver of a waning crescent moon rose for its short journey across the wintry southern sky. Imagining this, I can imagine those moments. I can remember that what happened did happen, and even if it will never be "okay," it will always be part of something bigger. Maybe that is what we will observe this year. Tonight I’ll take him outside and we'll look at the moon. He will say "Oh LOOK! The MOON!" like he does every time. I will think about the eternity and rhythm of its phases. We can live in the blackness, and we can live by a sliver of light. We can rage against loss, and love all of life with the same heart.

Happy Life-on-Earth-day, Malcolm.

International Cesarean Awareness Network
Birth Truth
Phases of the Moon

What's Hempenin' Mama Cloth

Hearts without Names

2006-11-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

All over Seattle, there are billboards and buses showing bodies -- the insides of dead human bodies. This is not a metaphor; it is advertising for a science/entertainment exhibit of preserved cadavers called "Bodies: The Exhibition." It is hard for me to get past the "I see dead people" aspect of this, but on reflection it's pretty amazing.

The exhibition website describes it as an educational exhibit that tells the story of ourselves "with reverence and understanding." I would hope so. These are the real remains of real human lives: The muscles, bones and skin that grew with these people from childhood. Legs and backs that worked for a living. Lungs that breathed and brains that dreamed. Arms that held lovers and cared for babies. These bodies aren't just artificacts of life -- they were life itself.

In every culture, human remains are treated with some kind of ritual and reverence. Even when they are destroyed through cremation or funeral pyres, it is not because they are so much waste -- it is because they have so much relevance. For the people who became the "Bodies" exhibition (all former Citizens of China), their funerals consist of a transportation across the United States for public education and viewing. The exhibition is their final rest.

I love science -- in fact, I love anatomy -- and find myself staring in wonder at the complex interplay of tendons and muscles on display I see on the side of the Metro Route 15X bus. Perhaps the exhibit itself (like others, such as the display of ancient Egyptian mummies in Chicago's Field Museum) lists the dead by name and respectfully asks for prayers in their memory. But the advertising (which is everywhere) doesn't. I see a skull without a face; I see a heart without a name. I know science and education are public and social goods. But is this?

I'm happy to find, on doing some quick research, that it's not just me: The Seattle P-I has written a cogent editorial about consent; unlike human cadavers used in medical study (which I have seen, in educational settings), there is no evidence that the people exhibited intended to donate their remains to public display. The Exhibition has affirmed that it has a "contract with a Chinese university" which, while it apparently guarantees the bodies are not from political or religious prisoners, doesn't say much else about the source or intention of the remains. The Stranger's article, "Unrest in Pieces," includes an article written by an employee there who describes the moral and political ambiguities of law and death in China.

So at least it's a "controversy," in the headline-grabbing sense. Yet I'm still kind of surprised that this is this where our standards are: It's socially acceptable to display tastefully flayed dead bodies on billboards, as long as they weren't executed for political reasons by a totalitarian government. Apparently, under our American values system, the victims would be much more sympathetic if they were killed for exercising their civil rights. Perhaps it would be okay if they were criminals, executed for morally reprehensible crimes like rape or muder. Or best of all if they'd simply died "naturally" from malnutrition, disease, poverty or unsafe work conditions.

I wonder whether the cause of death even matters. Or is it that, in contemplating the specifics of individual human deaths, we must see these as individual human lives. And maybe the issue of "consent" distracts us from the real moral question of whether there are some things just too intimate to buy and sell, no matter who consents. Anna Nicole Smith, for instance, has apparently sold the video of her cesarean section to Entertainment Tonight (sorry, not linking to that one). Like the Bodies Exhibition, it speaks its own truth (yes, that is a "section" cut out of a real woman, knifed in half and bleeding, crying through drugs for her baby). It is indeed educational. But the fact that we can view it so casually (even unwittingly -- be careful clicking on links that read "Anna ET Video, TMI") raises questions of exploitation, profit, and dignity.

When it comes to prostitution and pornography, our culture draws the line -- too much potential for abuse, too much exploitation, and at some point, just "too much" -- consent or not. Yet when it comes to death, we tend to deny its intimacy. I remember being so disturbed by the decaying flesh of the Pirates of the Carribean Zombie-Ghosts. Why is it cinematically appropriate to represent the inner structure of a human arm as it loses its rotting skin, but a healthy woman breast feeding a child is quickly criticized as "too much?" Death, violence, injury, surgery -- these involve our vulnerability, privacy and humanity, as surely as sex does. But we're supposed to act tough -- to turn away -- to shake it off -- to see it as tecnical, academic, and scientific. What have we lost?

Tricks, Treats and Tantrums

2006-11-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

I was going to start by saying, "Our child has never had a temper tantrum." But that would be obnoxious, if not dishonest. This morning, for instance, went something like this:

Me: It's time to go! Here is your coat!

Child: No coat. NO no no no no nooooo cooooooooaaaat!

Me: Here is your coat [forces coat on child]. Now it's time to go. Let's get in the car. Here we go! [uses fun voice]!
Child: No car nocar nocarnocarnocarnooooooo!!!!!!!! [lays down, hits head on the floor, screams]

Me: Time to get in the car. [carries to car, buckles carseat]

Child: No carseat no buckle no no nooooooo [Kicks. Screams. Defies consolation. Cries for ten solid minutes].

And so he proceeded with "an irrational fit of crying, screaming, defiance, and a resistance to every attempt at pacification in which even physical control is lost," which is Wikipedia's definition of a "tantrum." I'm pretty sure he wanted to bring his Halloween Candy in the car with him, and is angry that I stashed it on top of the refrigerator (he may even suspect, correctly, that I'm eating most of it myself). But since I recently came across the suggestion to avoid using the word "tantrum" at all, I can say he didn't have one. And though this may sound pedantic, or semantic, or even absurd, I’m amazed to find myself really feeling better about the whole morning.

No, I haven’t lost my mind from getting hit over the head with sections of toy railroad track. I’m serious: Letting go of the "tantrum" label has separated my child’s irrational, screaming behavior from my own desperate need to snap him out of it. I've read about all different ways to prevent, control and react to the dreaded Big T, and so far this one little trick has helped me the most.

Labels matter: They're little bits of linguistic shorthand that reduce entire categories of behavior, expectations and perspective to a few short syllables. Since the moment I became pregnant, I've had labels to define all my parenting fears and achievements: When is my "due date?" Will my son hit the "terrible twos?" Is he "potty trained?" When we use labels enough, we take them for granted -- and forget, for instance, that a pregnancy "due date" represents an entire body of research, tradition and cultural expectations about what should happen, when it should happen and how we'll react if it doesn't.

But children operate without language – a gestating baby can’t count to 280, and an overwhelmed toddler doesn’t self-identify as an autonomous person who’s exhibiting a specific behavior pattern called a "tantrum." When my child loses it, he is so saturated with fear and anger that he’s hardly capable of protecting his own body from harm. He might be raging for a variety of reasons – exhaustion, confusion or experimentation, to name a few. It’s only when I choose to label these behaviors that they coalesce into a recurring "event" called a tantrum.

As soon as I let go of the label, I'm free to focus on the bigger picture -- in a way, the conscientious use of language is part of a powerful paradigm shift away from adversarial parenting and toward a mindset of helping my child. So when he goes into an irrational rage, my priorities are something like this: 1. Keep him safe. 2. Keep myself calm. 3. Keep our lives on track. 4. Help him calm down. And, in the long run, I will 5. Teach him the skill of behaving appropriately under stress. For instance, if I’m carrying him through a doorway, I’ll 1. Protect his head (or try to, oops, bonk.) If I’m about to lose it, I’ll 2. Leave him alone and go take a few deep breaths, for my own peace of mind. After that, 3. What we do depends on what needs to be done: If it’s time to go, we’re going out the door, even if he’s got big feelings about it. If it’s time to relax and get in the bath, I’ll devote more time to calming him down. 4. Depending on the child and the situation, this could include rocking, nursing, a bear hug, or leaving them to unwind alone.

Of course, I’ve tried tons of things that don’t work, too. Sometimes it’s easy enough to leave the TV on for five more minutes instead of dealing with the screaming because he can’t watch the end of Little Einsteins. I’ve been known to regret this, but I don’t worry too much about spoiling my child by occasionally accommodating him – I think it’s fair to say, "I didn’t realize this was so important to you," give him a spoon instead of a fork, and quietly move on. On the other hand, I won’t agree to "no diaper" just because he wants to keep playing with his pee-pee (okay I confess I stole that one, but I love it because it is SO TRUE). Some things aren’t optional around here, no matter how upsetting this might be for someone who loves being naked but is too young to clean up his own undiaperedly mess.

And this is where Number 5. comes in -- that we're in the process of teaching him how to behave appropriately even when we're overwhelmed by big feelings. I’m not interested in instigating good behavior by making my child feel bad when he fails. And I'm not all that concerned about "rewarding" his meltdown with some calm attention and help where it's needed. And looking at the big picture, there are lots of things I can control (our routine, meals, rest and exercise) to avoid us getting so burnt out that we become utterly unable to cope.

On the other hand, I don’t go out of my way to be sure he never has bad feelings at all. In fact, when we step back and realize that big, loud feelings aren’t a failure – that they are, in the end, "just feelings" – it’s much easier not to take it personally when a child is overwhelmed with emotion. In fact, simply labeling the emotion (instead of the tantrum), in a calm voice, can be powerful: "You are angry. You want to stay home. So angry." Sometimes, as silly as it sounds out loud, wrapping my calm words around his raging feelings helps me believe that it really might not be that bad.

And I know that as he gets older, my child might start to "tantrum" more strategically. Kids do tend to experiment with the power of their big feelings over the adults around them. It's my hope that, by modulating our own reactions to his outbursts -- and by accepting our own frustration, without using anger to threaten or manipulate our child -- we can set a tone in this family that honestly helps each other through the hard times without being scared of our emotions.

I'm sure it will be an adventure. I have bad days, where I forget all this and we both end up crying on the floor anyway. But on a good day, it’s almost as if I can look down on the whole scene: A screaming and confused little boy soaking wet on the bathroom floor, and an exhausted but calm Mama who's finding her authority and managing to be in control. Who knows she’s strong enough to dry off a thrashing toddler, clean the tub, and find pajamas -- while making a mental note to herself that next year, Halloween candy won't go in the bath in the first place.

I owe my perspective on tantrums, as I do many things, to the work of Crystal Lutton.

With Love and Without Fear

2006-10-31T10:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't forgotten that I have a blog. I met a new coworker yesterday, and when she introduced herself with ". . . and I'm a knitter," I heard myself say ". . . and I'm a writer!" So time to get to it. I've been away on vacation, taking my toddler to visit family in Alaska. This is a trip that, a year ago, I would have dismissed as impossible. My husband and I couldn't both manage the time away from work, and a thousand miles of air travel with an almost-2-year old seemed beyond my solo parenting capacity. But as my son has grown from a baby to a toddler, I've grown too. And part of my growth includes a determination to avoid the phrase "I can't" whenever possible. (Not that I'll do anything -- I still reserve my right to the phrase "I won't.") So with his second birthday (and the mandatory full-price airfare that goes with it) looming large, I decided we would go.

But realizing that "I can" fly my son to Alaska didn't solve my anxiety of "HOW on Earth can I?" How could I manage taking his little shoes off when we go through FAA security? How will I know whether to pack new books and toys, or comforting old ones? What if he refuses to eat? Or sleep? How can I be sure he doesn't get lost, or hurt? What if he screams, and screams, and doesn't stop? These kind of fears startled me awake, in the nights leading up to our trip, with my anxiety screaming in my head: "How will I do it?" And at some point, I unbelievably got an answer -- from my intuition, from the depths of my soul, from the universe or God Itself I don't know. And the answer is, "With love, and without fear."

Which wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I had hoped the universe would give me more specific directions. Maybe along the lines of "you will take the second elevator down to the L-2 gate, and then feed him goldfish crackers until he falls asleep." But instead, I got a rough outline that reminded me how I will cope: I will mother my son with love. I will not let fear overwhelm me. When things get difficult, I will rely on my love to calm me and guide my decisions.

So off I went. My newfound conviction found me hauling 30 bundled pounds of little boy up the steep stairs to a little 12-seat prop plane, too small inside for anyone to stand upright but him. And so (after our long trip from Seattle and a longer turmoil of baggage, security and lost stroller issues), we finally took off from Anchorage, across the Kenai wilderness, over the glaciers to chilly-yet-cozy little Homer, Alaska. And the whole trip turned out fine -- to keep my son calm, I found myself affecting a calm attitude even when I didn't feel it. And my "message," or whatever it was, was right. I did it all With Love and Without Fear. It wasn't easy, but we managed. Even bedtimes away from home (which I was dreading without husbandly assistance) went smoothly, with the substantial assistance of my loving and fearless sister who enjoyed the moments of snuggling her sleepy nephew while I enjoyed emptying and loading her dishwasher. With Love, and Without Fear.

And now I'm noticing all the ways this applies to parenting. How will I cope if my son screams and hits when I'm running late to work and straining to buckle him in the carseat? With love, and without fear. How could I ever manage another pregnancy and childbirth? With love, and without fear. How will we get him to sleep tonight? And the next night, and the next? Same answer.

I have a lot more mom-thoughts I'm trying to get down this week: one mess of ideas about "tantrums" and one about "praise." But today I'll stick with the theme: That with my son facing down the Tender, Terrific Twos, I've found tremendous strength in believing that "with love, all things are possible." And that this is ultimately enough -- no matter how much I might personally prefer "all things are easy." In my more difficult moments, I'll try to remember pressing my cheek against my son's silky blond head as we watched out the window of our little plane -- over the trees, I told him, over the mountains and above the clouds -- each of us amazed, for our own reasons, that we really can fly.

Books:
Your Two Year Old
Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline
Unconditional Parenting

Websites:
Dr. Sears on Why Toddlers are Difficult
Crystal Lutton on Tantrums
Get off Your Butt Parenting

Evidence instead of Evidence

2006-10-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

The Washington Port is reporting concerns about the use of magnesium sulfate in preventing early labor. This fascinates me for a few reasons. I was briefly monitored for possible "early labor" at 34 weeks gestation (my baby would have been born 7 weeks early). I thankfully avoided magnesium, (but got a shot of terbutaline, which is a story for a different day). At it happened, I didn't go into labor early -- in fact not until 10 past my "due date" (41 weeks 3 days, which I'm now learning is exactly average). But I ended up finding magnesium sulfate anyway, when I was diagnosed with mild pre-eclampsia.

The Post article doesn't challenge magnesium’s use to prevent seizures. But no matter why it's used, the drug's side effects still "range from highly unpleasant to lethal." I guess this doesn’t surprise me, even though no one told me this before they started pumping the Epsom Salts into my veins. I’m sure I had signed some intake paperwork that waived my right to be informed of drug dangers when something critical like a seizure (maybe, possibly, until we get your bloodwork back) might be on the line.

I can vouch that an IV of magnesium, even without a severe complication like "life-threatening pulmonary edema, in which the lungs fill with fluid," is no walk in the park. Reading the article brought it all back to me: nausea, blurred vision, headache, profound lethargy, [and] burning sensation[s]. They don't mention the mad craving for ice cream (especially acute after going without food and water for 20 hours), which can be tolerated only by playing slightly delirious games where you demand that everyone in the room help you name all 31 Flavors of Baskin Robbins Ice cream (I still can’t believe we couldn’t do it – but then we were all pretty tired).

The Post article is noteworthy for another reason: it quotes obstetricians blatantly admitting what I'm always suspcicious about -- that they are more concerned with malpractice liability than patient safety. As Dr. Michael Gallagher, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine, or high-risk pregnancy, puts it:

. . . jettisoning a long-standing practice [magnesium for preterm labor] in obstetrics involves factors other than evidence, some doctors say. They note that the standard of care -- a benchmark of evidence in malpractice cases -- as well as patients' wishes and the desire to prevent a bad outcome such as premature birth -- all contribute to continued use of the drug . . . "Suppose we don't use it [to stop pre-term labor] and a patient delivers [early and the baby dies]," Gallagher said, noting that might violate the prevailing standard among OB-GYNs. "You find yourself in lonely places."

Oh, those lonely places. So even when the hard, scientific evidence casts doubt on a drug’s safety and effectiveness, the "standard of care" still won't change because each doctor is afraid to stand out from the crowd. They're more concerned with the potential "evidence" that might be brought against them in a malpractice lawsuit -- the testimony of trial experts who tell a jury what "all the other doctors do." They are safe from liability as long as they act consistently with each other -- as long as they all do the same thing -- regardless of whether it protects patients.

It makes me wonder what Dr. Gallagher would do if all the other obstetricians jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Would he follow them? (Maybe if they threatened to raise his insurance premiums?) Or is this beside the point – since it’s the mothers and children, in this metaphor, being asked to line up and jump.

On the other hand, maybe all the doctors are desperate for some sensible freedom from the viscious cycle of standards and liability. It reminds me of Cass Sunstein's hockey helmet theory -- hockey players always knew they'd be safer with helmets, and wouldn't have minded wearing them. But no one wanted to be the first person to be different, so they didn't wear helmets until it became mandatory. According to Sunstein, there's no bright line between what's "rationa" (ie, evidence based medicine) and the "social norms" (how you'll be judged -- literally -- compared to all the other obstectricians). In fact, peer pressure can influence our beliefs until the "norms" become intertwined with our deepest levels of thought. It's easy to imagine this happening in medical education, where new doctors learn not just from research but from the practice, anecdotes and experience of other doctors -- even when this becomes distorted (perhaps through single a dramatic example, like a fetal death) from what what evidence-based medicine would tell us.

Things become even more distorted when we bring "patients’ wishes" into the discussion. Patients know nothing about magnesium – or any medical intervention – until their doctors tell them. And patients facing preterm labor surely pressure their providers to do whatever they can to help. But perhaps this is just another symptom of our inflated faith in what medical technology should do for us. Who’s to blame for that?

As far as the Post article goes, I did find myself touched to read that another OB/Gyn, Gary Cunningham of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, had the empathy to once take magnesium sulfate himself to see what it was like. "It was scary," he said. "You feel like you're burning up."

Yep, scary. A burning arm where the IV enters. Double vision, flu-like symptoms, sweating, chills and vomiting. Enough to scare a healthy, symptomless man in controlled research conditions – even scarier for a woman in labor who is fearing a premature birth. And scariest of all -- it probably doesn't help her.

Lonely places.

Simplify a Change of Season

2006-10-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

For some reason I was charmed to read yesterday that more parents are becoming open to large families. I grew up in a family of 6, but have never had any particular conviction about the "right" family size. In fact, I'm pretty noncommital about the whole thing -- especially when it comes to deciding when to have more children of my own. For some reason, I find it reassuring to read of contemporary, urban professionals expecting another child (their sixth) with a warm "why not?"

A family larger than four (mom, dad, two kids) is virtually unheard of in my circles. All the lawyers I know have a pair of children, almost as if they order a stair-stepped "Zach and Molly" set from the American Girl catalog. Families with three or more kids seem to have suffered some unexpected accident (an older lawyer, whose second pregnancy led to twin daughters, told me that women lawyers tend to have more twins "because we're OLD.") Obviously, busy city people like us have limited time, money and real estate -- as well as goals for career, travel and personal achievement to pursue when our children are grown. But the logistical considerations aren't enough to describe the small-family epidemic among professionals. It makes me wonder what we've convinced ourselves of, and what we might be missing.

Why not have children? It’s such a refreshing question. My parents had four children because they didn't want five. Yet I've always had to ask myself all the hard questions: Why have children? How many? When? I understand all too well the burdens of adding more people to the family. And it's our responsibility to decide to have children (right?) Yet no matter how I put my mind to it, my intellectual and intuitive capacities have failed to guide me.

How do I know I'm ready to have a child? I think that women of my generation, along with our powerful right to control our own reproductive destinies, feel an acute responsibility to determine, rationally, when to have each child. If our careers or finances are not in order, we are to use artificial contraception until we are ready. This is true even of women who are fully capable supporting whatever children they have. When women expose their fertility to chance, they're perceived as sloppy, even negligent -- Britney Spears being a recent example of this.

The concept of "birth control" promises more than it can deliver. Having babies is both mundane and mystical. It's not a simple matter of ordering up Zach or Molly for a scheduled delivery date. These little people, running around your house yelling about bananas and tipping over the dog's water, are an obvious yet enigmatic result of our biological and social sex lives. Conception is a curious alchemy of physiology and intimacy. It can happen in an accidental instant, or it can evade months of concerted effort. Yet I'm asked, and ask myself -- How did we decide to have this baby? When will we have more?

In other times and places in global history, parents have had far less luxury and leisure time to dedicate to their families. But here, in our relatively wealthy culture, it's socially acceptable to have children only at an appropriate time: Planned Parenthood, for example, supports individuals "to have children when and if they are ready." The idea of "reproductive self-determination" (intended to describe our fundamental privacy rights) can pressure us to "determine" each and every choice we make. Each day, each month. And who decides when we’re "ready" to have a child? I just reviewed Planned Parenthood’s "readiness" checklist and learned that I've got a ways to go before I'm ready (I still need to "come to terms with my own childhood experience," and "cope with tighter budgets"). And my son turns two next month.

This dilemma isn't just for pregnant teens who suffer problems of domestic violence and drug abuse. There's no "them" and "us." More mothers than I can count – women I admire and consider mentors if not role models – originally became parents in difficult or accidental circumstances. And many of us -– financially stable, established, deliberate parents –- jump confidently into the cold water of motherhood only to flounder, overwhelmed, in its cold, black depths. We're a continuum of women, from young to old, conflicted by our desires, our means, and cultural messages about what is expected of us. How much of successful parenting is maturity and preparation, and how much is inherent to our character? How much is luck?

Of course, this implicates religion, too. Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI exhorted Catholic families to be missionaries of love and life (which I like). Protestant fundamentalists, while less doctrinal about contraception, often describe themselves as "quiverfull" (from Psalm 127) in giving their family planning over to God. It's easy for the secular mainstream to dismiss these kind of "open to life" attitudes as irresponsible or even oppressive. But it's not that family is a religious issue – it's that family is important. In any paradigm, our fertility is a critical – even sacred – part of who we are as people, both individually and in relationships. If faith deals with anything relevant to our human experience, it must speak to families and the mystery of new life. And maybe the underlying value of fertility, if not the exact paradigm, is an important one for our culture to keep hold of.

When faced with the question of having children, I haven't found any analytical framework much more useful than religious doctrine. No matter how I calculate the months, the hours, the dollars and the square footage that would be required by another child, I'm left feeling less capable than when I began. With all due respect to Planned Parenthood, maybe there is no "ready" to have a child (although there is surely a category of "not ready," perhaps that's less obvious than we think).

So I wonder if a pregnancy is something I can "decide" on at all. I don't believe in fate or think my family size is preordainted. But I still don't understand how much control I have over it all. And even if I have another "well-timed" pregnancy, the entire process is a cascade of growth and change over which I have little direct control. When our modern reliance on technical management of gestation and birth has resulted in so much risk and pain, it makes me wonder. What would happen if we just let go? What if our "reproductive self-determination" is a determination to set down the calculators and calendars, and live our lives as they come to us?

Why not?

How can you have too many children? That's like having too many flowers -- Mother Theresa

Yes, more of this

2006-10-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote a letter to the Editor of the New Yorker today:

For Publication

Editor:
Atul Gawande's article about birth and modern medicine raises the bar for birth journalism -- his historical treatment and surgical descriptions are eye-opening -- but I find myself deeply disappointed by the ending of Elizabeth Rourke’s story. Dr. Rourke’s misery and debilitation following her cesarean section were not “stupid feelings.” As one of the many women who suffer from what Gawande calls medicine’s "tyranny" against birthing mothers, I observe that mixed feelings after a cesarean, while varied and intimate, are far from stupid. The pain of women like me– from IV bruises and infections, from confusion and anxiety – is real, even if it is usually invisible to institutional healthcare.

It’s not just medicine that lets us down. It’s our culture and community – often other mothers like Rourke – sending the constant message that all that matters about birth is a healthy baby. As if, were our child only “gorgeous” enough, our gratitude only deep enough, then we could ignore these “stupid feelings” of pain and regret. Like all mothers, I value my healthy son more than my very life. But I’m not alone in grieving a birth I never knew I wanted (I being one who yelled for my epidural before I had my shoes off) until it was lost.

When the most recent evidence (perhaps published after fact-checking for this issue) suggests that cesareans nearly triple the risk of maternal and neonatal death, the damage we face is not just sentimental. The prevalence of cesarean delivery is threatening every doctor’s ability to treat patients and every woman’s right to choose the safest birth for herself and her family. Only with accurate information, and honest emotional support, will this begin to change.

Robin Grace
Member, International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN)

The Wretched Refuse of Your Teeming Church/State Paradigm

2006-09-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Lou Dobbs writes today on Keeping Religion Out of Politics. He's apparently getting some hinky feeling about houses of worship violating Federal tax laws (which prohibit endorsing or opposing candidates). This I get; I don't want my church to be a cog in a political machine. That's an important moral issue, and not just because it affects Mr. Dobbs' precious tax dollars (in the macroeconomic sense that he's ultimately affected by my church's tax-exempt status).

But Dobbs gives only one example -- the Mormons "helping a pro-amnesty incumbent with a get out the vote campaign," where a church is accused of supporting a particular candidate. His argument is much broader: No religious organization, apparently, should participate in any activity within what he has deemed as a "political" sphere. He mentions that the IRS has dozens of investigations underway, and snarks that, "apparently nobody in the federal government is too concerned that the Catholic Church has repeatedly lobbied on behalf of millions of illegal aliens and their supporters for wholesale amnesty and open borders." And he says it's "time for all of us to examine closely, both in our communities and in our Congress, just what separation of church and state really means to us and to the nation."

Okay, I've examined it. How about this, Lou? Keep your politics off my immigration issues. Maybe the reason "nobody in the federal government is too concerned" here is because you're wrong.

This is my religion: "for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of my people, you did it to me." Jesus Christ. Immigration isn't just a footnote to Christianity; it is one of its core themes and defining values. What kind of government would deny me my right to study this in a Bible group, announce it to my fellow parishioners, and minister to immigrant peoples? On what theory does my personal religious practice become a government "establishment" of religion to the extent that my own right to free exercise -- in fact to free speech, to free assembly, to free press -- can be abridged?

I'd say "we were here first" -- that immigration has been a religious issue far longer than it's been a political one -- but that buys into Dobbs' polarization of "Church" and "State" as two institutional spheres that should never influence each other. But "religion" isn't simply an institution. Religion is a paradigm; a set of values; a defining premise that guides the lives of individual men and women of faith. Whether these people meet in a church or synagogue, worship their God by name, or pray together or separately -- their faith is an innermost, private process of the human heart. Likewise, "politics" isn't a disembodied activity that occurs only in campaigning, in voting, in the activities of our legislature and judiciary. "Politics" are the very processes by which we argue, buy, discuss, read and spend according to what is most important to us. Political process and religion perspective are each part of all of us. How can one be ever kept wholly distinct from the other?

Yes, I hold the establishment clause as dearly as I hold my right to free exercise. But telling my parish to stay silent in the face of massive social oppression, as if we must shut up and stick to singing Kumbaya on Sundays, is unconscionable. If immigration is political, it's because of the way our government uses its economic and military power to control its borders and deny its privileges of citizenship to outsiders. This threatens the life and safety of the thousands of men, women and children who their lives for a chance to come join (and be exploited by) our society. This is a tragedy and an epidemic. And if my heart and soul tell me not to look away -- to help, to reform, to fight the tragedy -- does it matter that this particular heart is informed by a particular faith? It cannot.

Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Inscription on the Statue of Liberty

For Reference: C-section risks

2006-09-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm gathering all my links together for easy reference . . .

Vaginal Birth after Cesarean in California: Before and After a Change in Guidelines. The 1999 ACOG recommendation on VBAC resulted in a marked decrease (from 24% to 13.5%) of vaginal deliveries of women scarred from previous cesarean surgery. Neonatal and maternal mortality rates did not improve.

Cesarean Delivery Triples Maternal Death Risk. French National Perinatal Survey as reported in Obstetrics & Gynecology, September 2006. Yes, I'm sure you don't know anyone who has died from the c-section. Thank God, neither do I. But when we look at the numbers -- not just our personal anecdotal evidence -- we learn what we're missing: Deaths, resulting from blood clots, infection or complications from anesthesia -- at 3.6 times the rate of mothers birthing vaginally.

Cesarean Delivery increases Infant Death by 2.85x. Infant and Neonatal Mortality for Primary Cesarean and Vaginal Births to Women with "No Indicated Risk," United States, 1998–2001 Birth Cohorts. Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care, September 2006

The Risk of Adhesions after Gynecologic Surgery. Dr. Gregory Fossum, September 2006. Those little side effects that are usually ignored by the larger studies of mortality and complications: Adhesions are bands of tissue that form between organs in response to injury caused during surgery. in one report, adhesions formed in 73% of primary C-section patients. Resulting injury includes small bowel obstruction, chronic pelvic, and infertility.

Cesarean Spike Drives up Medicaid Costs. Study by Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, August, 2006. The epidemic of surgical delivery isn't just the pet issue of birth fanatics like me. It's your problem, too.

A Role Model for Water

2006-09-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

This week's Newsweek features "The New Generation" of women leaders -- profiles of political, athletic and artistic women and their achievements. It's a good read, if a little canned. All the women seem to have been asked about their role models -- many of them cite role models, or wrestle the idea in general. As racecar driver Danica Patrick puts it, "I learned from people that I knew along the way, but I didn't have somebody that I wanted to be like. I wanted to be the first Danica, not the next somebody else."

I wonder about role models. Of course, girls need exposure to diverse and inspiring examples of adult womanhood -- in family, in work, in matters of personal character. But the idea of a "role model" is so limiting: As if we must choose our role, then imitate those who model it for us. As if there's one way to be a good racecar driver. Or a good Secretary of State. Or a good mother.

The "mother" role is, of course, one of the hardest to define. It overlaps with all the other categories of what it means to be a woman, to have a family, to work. Even those of us with admirable "role model" mothers are bound to struggle against fulfilling or rejecting the role as we imagine it to be. It's worth asking the question: Why is motherhood a "role" at all?

Looking lately at some studies of ancient Hebrew "word pictures" -- the original characters used in Biblical scripture that eventually involved into our own alphabet as well as modern Hebrew -- I’ve recently learned that the ancient Hebraic word for mother -- "Em" -- means "strong water." Which makes sense: The symbols for "father" (strong house) embody the structured, formal, property-bound family entity: Man's solution to the problem of rain and wind. The mother, on the other hand, is elemental and ubiquitous. Nourishing and necessary; everywhere, doing everything. And not just any water -- the strength of water, the first among the waters. A strong river. A deep wellspring. The first rain.

And "Em," while consistent with a traditional, life-giving mother role, immediately transcends the entire idea. Water is fluid and dynamic. It is vital to everything around it, but true unto itself. "Em" isn't just the spring in the center of oasis. It's not a source that might one day run dry. It is the water itself, flowing over the ground, rising to the sky in steam, and raining back to earth. We can consume water -- but while it lends itself to our nourishment, it always retains its own unique character.

We're mothers, by definition, when we have children. We mother them regardless of where we work, how large our family is, or when and what we feed them. As we lend our nature and our strength to our family, we do not disappear. And in straining to be the mother we think we "should" be -- to imitate others, to try to reproduce what we see as the productive elements of someone else's life and role -- we can lose ourselves in the process. Karenna Gore Schiff, in her Newsweek interview, tells of getting married in lawschool and pregnant soon after. She describes being one of the youngest mothers she knows, and mentions that she left the practice of law after a year, but declines to make a larger political or social point about this. She simply points out that "women in particular gain strength from operating in different spheres." And maybe this is all there is to it. A woman can be fully a mother, yet must be fully herself.

So what is the role model for water? Water doesn't need anyone to imitate, or any books to read, to show it how to be what it is. Maybe it takes an image like this to remind us how futile it is to compare ourselves to each other, or to a Motherhood Ideal. Despite our commonality, we are incomparable: The nature of water is constant, but its forms are infinitely varying. Water it always just as watery and wet as it is supposed to be. There's no "better" water or "wetter" water. It’s just water – falling from the sky, tumbling down a mountainside, washing up the beach with a rising tide.

No wonder, when mothers compete with each other, we’re left confused and frustrated. Any competition is only futile and distracting. But we can nourish and inspire each other. Perhaps (at times) we do so by "modeling" healthy behaviors and attitudes through all our challenges. But, regardless of our role models, each one of us can only be herself. Strong water, on her own course, vital and strong – washing away our roles and stereotypes. As fine as mist; as right as rain.

You Go, Girl.

2006-09-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today is Washington's Primary Election Day. If I hadn't already sent in my absentee ballot, it would be exhilirating to go to the polls and celebrate my suffrage on the same day that the Thai government is being overthrown by a military coup because its democracy is failing. I was going to mention last week that the most inspiring thing I heard Ann Richards speak about was the right to vote and run for office -- that she was elected governor only a mere generation after women had to fight for the right to cast a ballot. It's a privilege to vote. Not because, as a woman, I ever needed special permission. But just because we live in a safe and free country, and voting is what ever and always can make it so. Even the abuses, failures and weakness of our electoral process serve to remind us of this -- to not be complacent, keep our standards high, and remember that we value democracy.

The results of the Primaries matter in quite a few races -- in legislative districts, such as the 43rd, that are so dominated by a single party that the primary winner is guaranteed the seat in the House of Representatives. In reading the Stranger's endorsement of Stephanie Pure, I've only recently learned about the "Feminine Critique" controversy: This past summer, The Stranger reported that Lynne Dodson -- the other female frontrunner -- along with representatives from NARAL and the National Women's Political Caucus -- approached Stephanie and asked her to drop out of the race. Not because Stephanie is a lesser champion for women's rights or, if elected, she would be any kind of threat to their platform. But because, as the candidate with (in their assessment) a lesser chance of winning, Stephanie should step aside -- so that the "women's vote" is undivided among multiple qualified candidates, and a woman is more likely to win.

In theory, I comprehend the rationale. As NWPC's Mitchell said: "I want to see a woman win that seat. And when voters are offered a choice of two great women, then it limits each woman's chances of winning." Political strategy makes sense in certain contexts: For instance, in the Nader v. Gore v. Bush 2000 Presidential race, there were long-ranging implications of Nader staying in the race (and voters voting for him), instead of strategically backing Gore to provide him undivided support in defeating Bush. But Nader, and many of his 2000 supporters, will still argue that a person must stand by their position, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

I'd say that was a close moral and political call. But Stephanie Pure isn't Ralph Nader, and Lynne Dodson is no Vice President Gore. Oh, and "women" aren't comparable to the nationwide 2000 Electorate. We're not a troop of girl scouts all marching in uniform, either. We're a diverse and dynamic array of voters who simply have in common our XX chromosome. To act as if women are an interest group, who only deserve one qualified candidate to choose from, stinks with the cheap perfume of quotas and tokenism. Would a "wait your turn, little girl" attitude be tolerable in reviewing applications for medical school or NEA grants? Electing law firm partners or Union Presidents? It would be annoying if it didn't chill me to the bone.

I would agree that Stephanie had an obligation to assess her chance of winning and consider the strategic impact of her candidacy. And believe me, she did -- and she is as serious and responsible a candidate as you'll find. Opposition candidate Jamie Pedersen has been criticized for trying to make the 43rd Representative position a "gay seat" -- but the Dodson coalition has done us one worse -- acting as if there's only one "pink seat" in the legislature. Apparently the ladies of the 43rd must politely wait in line until Ms. Dodson has finished her term, washed her hands, and moved on.

As a 30-something professional woman running for the House of Representatives (who I have, as a disclaimer, known since college), Stephanie has courage, conviction, and energy that are nothing but admirable -- unless you are her opponent, in which case I imagine you'd find it all threatening. Her candidacy is a reminder that a Democrat-only district deserves choice and diversity in a race (and everyone running, for the record, appears to agree on the substantive issues of gay marriage, women's choice, and civil rights -- there's no G.W. Bush to be found). Another bright, qualified woman on the ballot can only serve women. And a greater number of qualified candidates, in this situation, can only further the democratic process.

Stephanie, you go, girl. May the best woman win.

Update: Today's results indicate that Stephanie Pure received 13.1% of the votes cast among all six candidates. The frontrunners are battling for the seat between 23.9% and 22.8%. And yes, if the votes for Dodson (with 11.5%) and Pure were combined together, it would be enough to win the seat . So if Dodson's logic was correct, she should have withdrawn -- and Stephanie might have won.

Tears to the Heart of Texas

2006-09-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Former Texas Governor Ann Richards died this week. A few years ago, I saw Governor Richards speak at a dinner for the Northwest Women's Law Center (and even got to shake her hand when a friend from Texas introduced me). She made such an impression, I talked about her for weeks -- usually choking back emotion and unable to adequately describe what she actually said. I'm the same way today.

I'm so sad. Partly because I'm immature about death and just feel like crying, "but I met her -- and she was alive!" Partly because I'd imagined even greater things for her -- national office, more publications, even farther-reaching service to her party and country. But even if she was the wrong generation to be in Barak Obama's cabinet (or he in hers), she left a great legacy of prison reform and equal rights. She was a sensible, convicted voice for respectful treatment of everyone. She was a commanding and inspired woman who remained true to her own self while holding public office. She was one of the greatest, but she doesn't have to be the last.

Everyone talks about Governor Richards' wit, which makes me reflect on what exactly made her so darn funny. Because humor is so subjective. I once was in a workshop with a group of engaged couples when we were asked to name one thing we loved about our partners. Almost everyone mentioned "sense of humor." But after spending a weekend with these people, I had to respectfully (and quietly) observe that, with the exception of my own fiancé, no one was being particularly amusing. Humor is part of affection and intimacy -- it doesn't just attract us, it grows as we become more familiar. The more we trust someone, the more they share their selves with us, the more we are able to laugh together. The best humor is in those sudden little moments -- that light up with a twist of phrase, a quick insight, shining like a bright flash from the depth of a person's character. The deeper we love someone, the funnier they are.

And that was Governor Richards' appeal. I've been looking up quotes to repost here (some of the best are at her Keynote Address to the 1988 Democratic Convention), but find that -- as brilliant as she sounds in writing -- I can't quite capture the warmth and conviction I recall from seeing her speak. She brought her genuine self into the room as few people do. She loved progress and cared about people. And she was loved in return. And that's why she was so, so funny -- At the heart of her wit was her courageous and humble heart.

Learning to ride a motorcycle on her 60th Birthday

. . . After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.
-Ann Richards

Let the Midget Demons Come to Me

2006-09-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

Salon.com has a feature article today about Mars Hill Church, in my very own neighborhood of Ballard. The friend who sent me the link described this as "scary." I read it carefully, because I was ready to explain to him why progressive, educated salon-readers like us don't need to be scared of every Evangelical Christian we read about.

But then I read it, and I agree that it's scary.

According to the article, Mars Hill teaches an interpretation of the Bible that requires its married female parishioners to "quit their jobs and try to have as many babies as possible," and "submit" to their husbands about little details like their personal purchases and plans. Their pastor speaks flippantly about his own children as "midget demons" and jokes (or is it a joke) about his childhood of "duct-taping and hog-tying his own siblings." Not surprisingly, the article describes the women in the article as tired and frustrated -- complaining about how one child "talks back" while the other one cries alone in the other room during the interview.

Christians don't have to live like this. And I'm not just talking here about liberal, social-justice minded Roman Catholic Christians like myself. I'm talking about Bible-college, homeshooling, fundamentalist Protestant Christians who live by Sola Scriptura -- upholding the text of the Bible as the sole and only basis for all religious belief. Even within the Evangelical community (or communities), many women disagree on whether Titus 2:5 prohibits work outside the home, or whether Paul's Ephesians 5 directive to "submit" requires that a wife defer to all her husband's preferences. Many Fundamentalist families don't believe that Proverbs 23 or Hebrews 12 require them to punish their children. They rely instead on their faith in Christ's Grace as a model and a foundation to for grace-based discipline.

It's not just Christian parents who see their children as adversaries to be wrested under control. Many mainstream parenting sources -- including the abysmal "What to Expect" series -- describe greedy, selfish children who will overwhelm us if we don't train them out of their natural habits as early as possible. And I can name many feminist mothers who have sighed over their mixed feelings and unfinished masters' degrees -- none of them Fundamentalist conservatives like the one described in the article. These are cultural challenges, not just Christian ones.

Evangelical parents, however, may have an added burden. In their conviction that the Bible contains their entire life's directive, they can become vulnerable to charismatic ministries who, in ironic defiance of Sola Scriptura itself, impose their own interpretations of Scripture that are unsupported by Hebraic tradition and linguisitic study. And a cultural bias, given the authority of God's Word, is a heavy burden to labor under.

Along with their great burden, however, many Christians have a great strength -- their faith in a greater love than all the misinformation, legalism, and corruption both of culture and of church. I've been honored to meet many Evangelical mothers online, debate with them, and learn from them (Yes, I cited the above verses from memory). Despite some critical differences of opinion, I've opened my mind and discovered an eduated, diverse, critically-thinking community (and some dear women that I might humbly refer to as friends).

It is scary when Mars Hill -- or any institution -- becomes an amplified voice that threatens to distort such a powerful message as that of Jesus Christ. At the same time, it's important to realize what we have in common -- just as the Salon article described the movements' camraderie, healthy living, and skepticism about corporate tyranny and consumerism. We might aspire to the same strengths and, as women and mothers, might share the same struggles. And maybe with open minds, we can learn from each other.

He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." Mark 10:14

For reference:
www.aolff.org
www.ezzo.info

ERCS, She Did it Again

2006-09-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

Britney Spears has another son, delivered by cesarean section.

Before having her first child, Spears told ELLE magazine that she "hoped for surgery" because she didn't want to "go through the pain" [of labor and delivery]. Now she has done it again. It's impossible to know whether her experience with her first surgery was everything she had hoped for. I don't know whether she had any interest, or support, to revisit the decision for vaginal delivery the second time around. It's easy to imagine, give the hostile medical climate surrounding VBAC, that like most women she presumed it was high-risk and didn't think twice about it.

And now, c-sections are even more normal than they were when I woke up this morning. Birth anecdotes create our cultural beliefs about birth (where did she get the idea that surgery was preferable to vaginal delivery in the first place?) Hundreds of thousands of young women will read about Britney's repeat c-section and accept it as a preferable and safe course of action. I doubt any of those women will ever hear what I have to say. But I'll say it anyway: It's not. Britney and her babies faced a tripled risk of death. She now faces increased risk of infection, blood transfusion, depression and anxiety. Her uterus will be sewn shut and her remaining layers of muscle, fat and skin will be stapled and glued together. She is likely to scar over with adhesions as the tissue heals.

If she wants more children, she'll have the face the fact that each c-section is more risky than the last. If she wants a large family, she will likely be outright discouraged, because of the increased risk and strain to her uterus each time it is cut open and sewn shut (uterine rupture is as likely during pregnancy as it is during labor and delivery). And if she ever is haunted by regret, by confusion and some haunting rage about it all, she will probably hear what most of us hear -- you're fine. You're healthy. It's normal. Be thankful you have healthy babies.

It looks like her family is recovering just fine. So is mine, Thank God. And neither one of us have daughters (yet) to inherit the legacy that our choices are building -- a world where surgery is normal, birth is feared, and women have little right to choose.

Ethiopean New Year

2006-09-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

It's September Eleventh.

It's been almost five years since I got burnt out on the phrase "September Eleventh." I've never liked how the numerical date itself is our actual relic for the terrorist attacks. Of course I remember "the day," and all my reactions to it: Trying to get ahold of friends in New York, hearing their story of watching towers fall and how they walked home for hours through ash and crowds. The feeling everywhere of imminent vulnerability. How some moving boxes fell over in a crash late one night, and I was out of bed in tears before I knew what happened: at once facing my own mortality and feeling ridiculously safe. The patriotism that pretended not to be political, but planted the seeds for years of war and confusion. It's so universal, it's a cliché. There's really no reason for me to discuss my own memories of September 11, 2001.

But before there was September Eleventh, there were hundreds of other September Elevenths. It was just a date, in late summer or early fall. For generations, people could discuss it, schedule it, and get up in the morning on September 11-- without the clanging syllables ringing heavy in their ears: Sept-EM-ber! Ee-LEV-enth!

September 11, 1999, for instance, was my sister's wedding day. I was the maid of honor. It was 90 degrees in the Wishkah Valley shade. We wore blue dresses, and had bouquets of delphiniums. My beautiful boyfriend and I flew back from Chicago for the weekend. In addition to all the other great things (love, family, Spencer the dog who kept trying to crash the ceremony) I remember my Grandma being there. In a crowd of people at the reception, she called out to my boyfriend from her table, and asked him to come over and be introduced to more relatives. He proceeded to sit with her and be introduced, and was polite and considerate. I don't know what they talked about. I know it impressed other relatives (which is how I learned of it). Just one of those simple little family challenges where everyone is at their best, and it comes together shining for a moment -- that makes a wedding day what it is.

My Grandma died less than two years later. My boyfriend is now my husband. That's the September Eleventh I'd like to remember.

Using the phrase "September Eleventh" to mean "Terrorist Attacks on New York and Washington" is at once too much and not enough. It's overbroad: September will have an eleventh day, year after year, as long our Gregorian-calendar-using civilization survives. At the same time, it's inadequate -- to refer to the terrorist attacks with nothing but the icon "9/11" serves to somehow veil the actual attacks and the actual terror. In my house, we find it more accurate to refer to "The Terrorist Attacks on New York and Washington." Let's hope there will never be more -- and to call the Terrorist Attacks the Terrorist Attacks will serve, indefinitely, to be the most accurate and the most honest way to describe them.

September 11 is somebody's birthday, somebody's anniversary, somebody's first day of school. It also happens to be Ethiopean New Year: A reminder of an entire people, an entire continent, a calendar, for whom my country and its problems are peripheral to their own traditions and celebrations. Even in our pain, our rememberance, and our sense of community, it's important to keep some perspective.

Happy Anniversary, K and J!

Lunatia on a Friday Afternoon

2006-09-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

So I'm loving the blog, but these are turning into long essays that demand a lot of me and anyone reading them. I'm aiming for a post per day, but at this volume it's a lot slower. Every single time, I think I'm going to be pithy and just post a single link and few short quips. And then my ideas expand until I just have too much to say. Some of this stuff is emotionally intense, and I'm trying not to be superficial and go into depth when I want. But it's a big learning process. I have spent an hour or two writing each "essay," and many more hours editing. Then the html slows me down, even those simple little linky-thingies. And there are still tons of typos, I start too many sentences with "maybe," and ask too many rhetorical questions. I'm really trying to let it go, keep moving on, and get better with time.

I really do welcome comments, ideas and discussion. I might experiment with shorter formats, blurbs, posting links, giving myself a paragraph or time limit. In the next few days I'm going to try and write about:

Categories Suck: (I don't care if I'm a "Good mom.")
Love Means Never Having to Say You're Happy
Ten Things I Hate About Scientology
Ethiopean Independence Day
What else?

Before the Seizure that You May or May not Have

2006-09-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

Headline yesterday: Two Proteins Tied to Preeclampsia. Big news, because this is a dangerous, mysterious pregnancy complication. It’s really a "symptom cluster" (elevated blood pressure, proteins in urine, hyperreflexia) with no definitive way to diagnose, cause or cure it. "Pre-eclampsia" means "before the seizure" – the eclamptic seizure being worst of its symptoms and effects (it used to be called "toxemia" because it involves toxins in the blood). There’s some good info here: What Happens Biologically During Pre-E. Pre-e causes a "domino effect" in the mother’s blood – some things (diet, minerals or blood pressure meds) seem to help, but they might just slow down the systemic chain reaction long enough for the baby to be born. But nothing is proven to work, and thousands of mothers (and their infants) die of it.

If it’s caught early, pre-e is medically "managed" by bedrest, monitoring, intravenous anti-seizure medications, or surgical removal of the (hopefully healthy and viable term) fetus. In order to avoid the (very low, but real) chance of a seizure, current protocols demand aggressive management. I’ll assume that, on balance, this does more good than harm – although I haven’t seen any stats that show it. Not even hindsight is 20/20 – it’s impossible to know whether any given interventions actually avoided a seizure, or did any good at all.

When a woman shows up in labor (like I did) presenting some clinical symptoms for pre-eclampsia, the protocol is apparently "everyone freak out." I had BP around 135/90, some protein showing on a urine "test strip," and excelled on my reflex test by kicking the nurse in the face (I was momentarily proud, before I realized was not a good sign). I was immediately given an IV (after two false tries which left me too bruised for anyone to hold my hands through labor). For the next 20 hours I was administered magnesium sulfate, a drug so strong it burns the arms on entry and causes "flu-like" symptoms (dizziness, exhaustion, vomiting). Magnesium, coincidentally, is a drug that's also used to stop labor when women are in danger of delivering prematurely. So, not surprisingly, after 12 hours of being "stuck" at 6 cm of dilation (and after pitocin, artificial rupture of membranes, an intrauterine catheter, and other stuff I probably don’t even know about), I agreed to the doctor’s proposal that "we go ahead and section you." Somewhere in the back of my mind was the recollection that "failure to progress" really means "failure to be patient," that c-sections were not an easy way out of anything, and that somewhere inside me was a baby who knew how to come out of my body the way the good Lord intended. But I don't remember thinking much about this. Mostly I remember that they promised me a cherry popsicle when it was over, at my insistence.

I'm lucky, I know: pre-eclampsia stole my birth, but not my baby. I’m also lucky that I did not suffer serious complications from the interventions and surgery. But yes, the birth still matters -- a point I think Gretchen Humphries says best in her essay You Should Be Grateful. I understand that medicine is an art as well as a science, and I believe that the doctors who put me on magensium me did it with every intention of protection me from seizure and delivering me of a healthy baby. I’m not prepared to second-guess their decisions, even when we saw another OB shake her head in dismay at my chart and tell me my pre-e was "mild." Even though I recently checked my labwork and saw that my actual blood draws did not show positive indicators of pre-eclampsia. I still might have been at risk. They might have saved my life. There’s no way to know.

It’s a popular myth that women are healthier and safer now than in "The Old Days" of childbirth where we didn't have operating rooms and anesthesiologists on-call. While nutrition and sanitation have made birth much healthier (especially compared to eras of historic poverty, malnutrition or social oppression) other things haven’t: Skyrocketing c-section rates since the 1970's, for instance, haven’t lowered maternal or neonatal mortality rates in the same time period. In fact (see below), surgical deliveries carry a higher risk of death for everyone. And this is without considering complications like infected incisions, blood transfusions, pain, depression and anxiety (that are not quantified as "serious" complications by most research, or legally cognizable as damage). And in countless other situations, mothers and babies are exposed to infections, allergens, medicinal error, anxiety and post-traumatic stress -- simply by going to the hospital.

It may be too much to hope for a magic pill for pre-eclampsia (folic acid during pregnancy, for instance dramatically reduces neural tube defects). But science has got to lead us (eventually) to more certainty, less fear, and more accurate and specific treatment. And we have to wonder whether so many women's bodies are truly made (evolved, designed, created) with innate defects that can only be cured by modern medicine. Childbirth is not supposed to be easy, but I have to wonder if it's supposed to be deadly. Do we really need science to save us from the danger of own bodies? How much of this is a symptom of our modern lives -- poor diets, exposure to pollutants, and a culture of fear and mistrust surrounding birth? How much are we asking of medicine, and how much do we need to take responsibility for ourselves?

In some cases, maybe mine (maybe), medical intervention saves lives. I’ll never know. What I do know is that, from here on out, I’m classified as a "high risk" birth – not because of pre-eclampsia, but because of the previous uterine surgery that fear and treatment of pre-eclampsia led to. So we'll see what happens if I do it again. In the meantime I’m learning all I can -- about health and disease; responsibility and trust; risk, fear and courage.

Better than Banana Milkshakes

2006-09-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

I just celebrated my four-year wedding anniversary. This is not impressive to normal people, but I'm feeling quite superior to Nicolas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley. They were married a few weeks before I was, back in 2002. They lasted three months. I'm gloating: Look what money can’t buy!

Even when I don't envy celebrities, I compare myself to them. Like I enmesh my identity with this idealized notion of what they are, that I'm not. I let them get to me: I hate how they're so skinny that girls think they’re getting "fat" when they hit highschool and grow out of a size 2. I’m annoyed that their casual sex lives look so glossy and easy, and their divorces hardly seem to inconvenience them.

And we're codependent. Because I pay, month after month, to read, watch and ogle their beautiful, awful lives. I’m the enabler, because I consume it all. The glamorous photo shoots and the paparazzi shots. That section of Us Weekly that says "Stars: They’re just like Us!" – and all the advertising along the way, so I know what purchases will cure my imperfections and make me more like them. I haven’t actually bought any pore-minimizer, but I look in the mirror see lots of pores. More pores on my nose alone than I can see on the combined surface area of Angelina Jolie’s entire family. I also see heavier arms, shaggier brows -- and a happy wife who met her husband when he was single; and a grown daughter who is happily on speaking terms with her wonderful dad. But, as long as I compare myself, I can only see Robin, The Not-Angelina. Whether I "buy into" it or not, I’m buying it.

Thomas Merton (who pre-dated pore minimizer, but would know what I’m talking about) described this as the loss of love itself. In his Love and need: Is love a package or a message? He wrote about "the advertising imagery which associates sexual fulfillment with all the most trivial forms of satisfaction" -- what's now the conventional wisdom that "sex sells." Merton saw this rooted in our very definition of love as a "a package concept." Pursuing love as a "thing" – the promise of ultimate fulfillment of a need – pushes us to seek others who will "make a deal" to love us. As Merton says, "in order to make a deal you have to appear in the market with a worthwhile product, or if the product is worthless you can get by if you dress it up in a good-looking package. We unconsciously think of ourselves as objects for sale on the market. We want to be wanted. We want to attract customers. We want to look like the kind of product that makes money." At some level, even the most educated and emotionally healthy of us are bound to wonder whether, if we were more attractive, we would be happier. But to ask this question, we are hoping for conditional love, and nothing more.

Celebrities are everywhere – our constant reminder of an ideal package we covet but cannot compete with. This is the fascination with Jennifer Aniston: She is so beautifully packaged, how could someone leave her? Her wedding vows promised her "banana milkshakes forever" -- really a pretty lame aspiration, and her husband couldn’t even live up to that. Maybe she’s not as worthy as she looks. Maybe my own package isn’t so bad. At least I’m not starving myself and constantly photographed by strangers. But comparisons debase us all (and are haunting -- what if a woman of Angelina Jolie-caliber attractiveness becomes interested in my husband?) But my marriage is not an achievement, any more than my body is an accessory.

When we stop measuring ourselves by perfection (or cattily refusing it), what waits for us is unconditional love. It's the same liberation we find when we stop trying to control our children with affection and anger. Anything less, Merton says, misses the whole point of life itself: "Love is not an emptiness to be filled. It is a sacrifice. It is a form of worship. A positive force. A transcendent spiritual power. The deepest creative power in human nature. A living appreciation of life as value and as gift. The revelation of our deepest personal meaning. " And he does not dismiss the fulfilling power of relationships. Unconditional love is not a reward for perfection. It is the revelation of ourselves through the sacrifice of another.

My true meaning and worth are shown to me not in my estimate of myself, but in the eyes of the one who loves me; and that one must love me as I am, with my faults and limitations, revealing to me the truth that these faults and limitations cannot destroy my worth in their yes; and that I am therefore valuable as a person, In spite of my shortcomings, in spite of the imperfections of my exterior "package." The package is totally unimportant. What matters is this infinties precious message which I can discover only in my love for another person.

I’m working on it. Maybe Angelina is too. We’ll see how she’s doing after she and Brad spend four long years together.

"Love is not just something that happens to you: Love is a certain special way of being alive."
Thomas Merton

Dark Hearts and Wounded Knees

2006-09-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Christians seek West's atonement for colonialism today. This kind of thing makes me hopeful, then immediately wary. I know there's something dark under the surface here. I'm at once inspired, skeptical, daunted, and wondering what the "backlash" will be. Or maybe the darkness is my own heart, asking whether this is really my problem, and wondering if we can't just forget about it.

But these guys sound upbeat: "We are not looking to man for help, we are looking to God for our dignity to be restored but first of all the West must confess, repent and atone for their past . . . Once that happens we can talk of reparations and co-operation and how we can start on an equal footing."

It's a start. Apologies are scary. They're usually encumbered by small print so they can't be admitted into evidence as legal admissions. Unhindered, public apologies are unusual, and make headline news. The descendants of L. Frank Baum (Wizard of Oz), for example, recently made headlines for apologizing for Baum's racism against Native Americans. And by "racism," I mean "called for extermination." Or as Baum put it: "Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth." A position that was egregious even on the 19th century frontier, as explained by Tony L. Kollman. This isn't the folksy racism of Mark Twain, and calling it out can't be dismissed as political correctness. This was express incitement to genocide; and Wounded Knee, which followed, was genocide.

So this summer, Baum's descendants visited Wounded Knee descendents and apologized. His great-great-grandson, Mac Hudson, described it as "a very humbling experience," and noted that "It seemed possible that healing could occur from this." .

Possible. There's some hope.

If apologizing is hard, what's the next step? Making amends is even harder. Reparations -- repairing that which was broken -- attempt both social reconciliation and legal restitution. Perhaps they make the most sense from an "unjust enrichment" theory -- but we tend to get hung up on the emotional issues of guilt, culpability, and vindictation. As Salim Muwaakil wrote about slavery reparations, they have the potential to "help clarify the crippling affects of that legacy by taking careful account of the structural and intergenerational dimensions of racial advantage and disadvantage. This approach is not concerned with inducing guilt or moral suasion; it defines slavery in terms of unjust enrichment and racially biased distribution of resources."

Okay, but do we have to do something about it? I was lucky to study Human Rights with Professor Wiktor Osiatynski, a Polish Constitutional scholar. What I remember about Professor Osiatynski is his admiration for the U.S. and our Constitution. His appreciation, from a critical and global perspective, was refreshing. (My own stagnant appreciation was pretty much summed up in my 8th Grade VFW-Contest winning essay entitled, "The Constitution, Our License to Liberty.") Professor Osiatynski gave the U.S. its due credit as a stable and successful young democracy (which, I gathered, has been a hard thing to create from scratch in post-Communist Poland). But he was equally open about America's debits: that we built our country on a history of slavery and Native displacement. This gave the young U.S. tremendous economic leverage and the geography of a "clean slate" compared to old countries like Poland. And this is a legacy we haven't reconciled. So there it was. The cloud in the room, darkening my gloating rights over Poland and her flailing Constitution. The same darkness I feel today -- it apparently stretches from South Dakota to Africa, all the way across Oz and beyond.

Reparations are complex. I don't know how we'd start considering who has been "unjustly enriched" by slavery and genocide, and to whom amends must be made. Or maybe I'm just making excuses -- and this is that darkness in my heart saying it's too little, too late, and it's time to move on. Because I sound pretty close to Mr. L. Frank Baum: we've come this far, wouldn't a few more wrongs make it all go away?

Our democracy gives us hope and (at risk of sounding like an 8th grader) it gives us responsibility. Where to begin?

Death: an Issue in Perinatal Care

2006-08-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

The most recent study on c-sections confirms that Cesarean Deliveries for low-risk pregnant women increases babies’ death risk .

. . . Neonatal mortality rates were higher among infants delivered by cesarean section (1.77 per 1,000 live births) than for those delivered vaginally (0.62). The magnitude of this difference was reduced only moderately on statistical adjustment for demographic and medical factors, and when deaths due to congenital malformations and events with Apgar scores less than 4 were excluded. The cesarean/vaginal mortality differential was widespread, and not confined to a few causes of death . . .

In other words, when comparing otherwise "low-risk" deliveries (singleton, full-term, no medical risks or complications), a baby delivered by c-section has a 2.85x chance of dying in the first month. The study analyzed 11,897 deaths out of 5.7 million deliveries. That's thousands of babies who died with no discernable risk indicator other than their surgical delivery. The study doesn't ask the real question -- why are healthy mothers having surgery instead of giving birth to healthy babies? It's common knowledge that c-section rates are skyrocketing, even though this is driving up public health care costs. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology virtually forces repeat c-sections even though their policy doesn't save lives of mothers or babies. It's so rampant that the latest issue of "Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care" published a roundtable on the subject of Why Do Women Go Along with This Stuff?

Why?

How long before the "standard of care" for childbirth -- the legal duty we use to judge whether a doctor made a mistake -- reflects the scientific evidence? Are 3,000 dead infants enough to get someone's attention? Because that's what I see when I do the math. As long as experts tell malpractice juries that a c-section is a safe and surefire way to save a baby's life, insurance companies will be covering their own butts with their "when in doubt, cut it out" policies.

As long as our culture accepts surgical delivery as normal and healthy, we're going to keep having this "issue" with birth -- if a doubled infant death rate can be called an "issue."

UPDATE: More numbers came out today. . . this from the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology: C-section moms have a triple death rate .

Watch! It

2006-08-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of posting more pithy and current observations, I'll comment on today's breaking news: CBS has been busted for using Photoshopped pictures of Katie Couric that make her look thinner than she is. I'm not sure why this is a big deal. The before and after pics (always fun) just look like a good tailor paid attention to her jacket seam. And in case you didn't catch the original of the doctored photograph, it was published in "the September issue of Watch! which is distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines flights." In other words, who cares?

The CBS President has expressed "surprise and disappointment," but it's not clear why. Without sounding cynical about a stain on the journalistic integrity of Watch!, this probably has more to do with the actual leak of before and after photographs on the internet. Or maybe the real news is that Couric is less skinny than I thought she would be, for someone who's made news for being a cute young person taking on a job traditionally held by older, serious men. Are the media trying to warn all of us of our impending disappointment, in case we tune in to the evening news expecting to see more light between Couric's arm and ribcage?

Me, I prefer to think that any corporate "disappointment" is a reaction to the implicit invalidation of Couric's body -- and for the message sent to women everywhere that, no matter how successful we are in the world of men, we still must be "fixed" until we are an appropriate size and shape.

But, nope. It's not because they photoshopped her -- just that they went too far, and got caught. Photographs of models and celebrities are constantly modified to look more "perfect." Last year, Aisha Tyler (actor, writer and official beautiful skinny woman) wrote an essay in Glamour with her own before-and-after photos, including retouching instructions (such as "fix stray hairs," "make legs thinner," and a few ominous notations about lightening her skin). This is apparently old news (searching for an archived article, I only find that everyone's already blogged about it); But check out this great before/after of Britney Spears.

Yes yes, women constantly get the message that we aren't thin and perfect enough. The propogation of fake photos is a lie so pervasive, it's easy to forget it's all around us. The other day I found myself feeling inferior to a woman in an animated TV commercial. She had such luxurious hair. Another successful moment of seduction -- since I can't afford an actual Photoshop amputation, I can be lured into purchasing shampoos, cosmetics and pills that promise to rid me of my undesirable physicality. It's not just "blemishes" like pimples and scars that make me feel imperfect -- but the very pores, hairs skin and fat that make us human. The joke is, there is no perfection -- Just an industry that says "give us your money" without caring if we give up our selves. The tragedy is, our bodies aren't just another accessory. They are our living us -- our skeletons, our thighs, our freckles and our cellulite. Objectification and commodification of (usually women's) bodies and appearance aren't just amusing and annoying. These are are the fruit -- or maybe the roots -- of our culture of death.

It's a joke and a lie. And we believe it, again and again. It's such old news. Maybe when more of us become as wealthy and powerful as Couric, there will be more surprise and disappointment about it. And we can respond, as she did, that we prefer ourselves as we are.

Links:
Nerds Demand Katie Couric Be Fatter

And today's New York Post Front Page

Unconditional Love

2006-08-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

So why punish children?

I guess this is where I really want to go with the themes of grace, retribution and rehabilitation. Why do we punish children? I'm talking the young ones, under the age of 7 or 8 (although I have thoughts on the older ones, too).

We tend to take for granted the idea that rewards and punishments are a necessary way -- if not the only way -- to train children in appropriate behavior. We're supposed to find deterrents to discourage undesirable behavior: penalties that add a little something unpleasant in order to "make them learn" or "make them think next time." The idea is that, upon their next opportunity for misbehavior, they'll consider the possibility of the penalty, fear it, and choose to avoid it by pursuing a course of appropriate behavior. Rewards, the mirror image of punishments, provide incentives for desirable behavior -- so the child is to choose a course of action (staying quiet, sitting down, stop hitting) in an effort to receive an (often unrelated) benefit.

Spelling it all out sounds pedantic. But behavioral conditioning in its current form is hardly innate to our biological and spiritual makeup -- in fact, it's a fairly recent cultural tradition.

A "utilitarian" value system -- seeking the greater social good through punishment of undesirable activity -- originates in (among other things) 18th Century economic theory. For instance, the theories of Jeremy Bentham (the economic legal theorist) on "strategic behavior": a potential criminal weighs the possible punishment against the benefit of his crime. I might decide, say, it's worth it to go 10 mph over the speed limit, because I want to get where I'm going more than I care about a 1% chance at a $100 speeding ticket. And really you don't have to analyze Bentham to understand the "Pavlovian" method of reward and punishment. This is so ingrained in our culture that few parents question whether it's a viable (much less moral and ethical) approach to raising their children. But it's critical to question whether reward and punishment "work" in families -- what goals do they accomplishment? And at what cost?

People are relational. We crave society, family, approval, validation and attention from each other. We can call these relationships "rewards" -- and surely we have all behaved strategically in the interest of pursuing a relationship -- but in doing so, we sell ourselves short. When we approach our relationships with the goal of conditioning other people's behavior, we shut our eyes to the possibility of unconditional love.

Love can be examined by science (and social science). Maslow's Heirarchy tells us that, with our biological and safety needs met, love and belonging come next; without them, we cannot proceed to growth and self-actualization. Study after study shows that infants thrive not just on food, sleep and warmth but on their attachment, both physical and emotional, to people who love them. And for most of us, love is even bigger than that -- it’s our defining value, our foundational premise, our directive and our goal.

But behavioral conditioning gives a message of conditional love. When our children are Pavlovian objects, to be trained by well-timed rewards and punishments that coincide with their behaviors, we react strategically in hopes of manipulating them. The most obvious examples are threats of pain (the American spanking, a part of many "traditional" upbringings which most of us would say we survived just fine) -- even temporary pain, that does not mark or injure, operates by causing enough fear of significant pain that a child molds his behavior appropriately. But that's not the only way we tell our child that he's safed and loved only if and when his behavior pleases us. Punitive isolation (the traditional "time out") tells a child, "you will be accepted as part of our family again when you behave appropriately -- or finish paying your penalty." And our very attention and affection for our children -- the comforting hug, the kind word of praise, the cozy snuggle -- can be defined as "rewards" that we must strategically dole out or withhold in order to react appropriately to their behavior.

The problem is, reward and punishment don't work all that well. So many parents, after reading every advice book and following every formula, become frustrated when no amount of consistent and stern punishment will get them the behavior they want from their children. And when our attitudes are locked into a model of behavioral conditioning, we often just give up and stop trying to hold our children to any standards at all. And what do kids really sit through punishments reflecting on the moral lesson -- or do they think more along the lines of "No fair! I hate you!" How many of us have rewarded a child only to pursue a spiraling game of "how much will you pay me to do what you want?" Or felt bored and dishonest when praising a child's banal (yet appropriate) behavior? Our hearts are crying out for a relationship -- for honest and unconditional love. But we fear that by loving unconditionally, we might ruin our children for life.

The good news is, none of this is necessary. Children can be disciplined in appropriate behavior without reward and without punishment. We can set boundaries and uphold standards without pain, fear or withholding affection and care. When our instincts move us to comfort a crying child, we can follow the wisdom of every cell in our biological makeup -- the legacy of generations of mothers and fathers -- and raise a healthy family by following those instincts. Parenting is easier (and much more fun) than all the books on reward and punishment would have you believe.

At our house, hugs and kisses are free.

For reference:
Arms of Love Family Fellowship
Effective Practical Parenting: Communicating Love
History of Punishment

Peace through Peace

2006-08-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

Along the lines of culpability, grief, justice and peace: Two impressions of recent, tragic local car accidents:

First, a quote from the family of Joselito Barber, the police officer killed last week by a driver doing over 80 mph on a city street under the influence of cocaine. When commenting on the exceptional sentence expected to be sought against the driver for her "outrageous recklessness," Barber's family members are quoted as saying, "We have faith in the legal process and will do what we can to assist in the criminal proceedings as they unfold. We want our focus to remain on celebrating Lito's life and on preserving his memory. No legal or criminal proceeding is going to return him to us, or reduce our pain."

Second, the response of Heidi Coffee, who lost her husband Gavin this week when he swerved to avoid falling metal shelving that had fallen from a pickup truck on I-5. Recent law, passed in response to similar unsecured-load accidents, criminalizes this kind of negligence. It remains to be seen whether this driver will be prosecuted under the new law. But Heidi Coffee has moved toward personal reconciliation by inviting the driver to her husband's memorial service. "Gavin had this great saying, 'Holding a grudge is like taking poison and waiting for someone to die.'"

Grief can rage. Anger is an awful but expected part of an awful but expected human process. At some point, though, when rage turns into blame, resentment and hostility, we're not just feeling a raw emotion -- we are choosing a course of action. It's useful to remember that, in our grief, we don't have to take on the burden of judging and punishing those who wrong us. That's what our legal system is for.

Of course it remains to be seen (as always) whether the system works. Criminal punishments serve a few different purposes. Punishments should deter -- presumably, the threat of being caught and prosecuted will make us all extra cautious when securing our loads. We have an incentive to be careful. Our criminal penalties give voice to our society's "standard of care" -- we have a duty to each other to be sober when we drive. We owe each other an extra bungee cord in the back of the pickup. Unfortunately and ironically, the punishment is meted out once its deterrent effect has failed. It's too late for those lives to be saved; for the system to work, I guess the idea is that we prosecute these individuals to make an example out of them, and deter others.

Punishments also serve as retribution. Penalties make someone suffer for the suffering they caused. This idea is so old, and so embedded in our cultural consciousness, it's hard to think critically about. We're left wondering whether someone "deserves" to be punished without remebering what this really means. These drivers won't be punished simply because of the choices they made: they are no more culpable than thousands of other drivers that do the same thing, month after month -- but with enough luck or whatever other links in the chain of cause and effect that no one was killed. The crimes in question are combination of their choice (failing to meet what our legislators and prosecutors have defined as a duty to society), and the consequence. What is a fitting punishment? And why?

As a tripartate democracy, the idea is that we can learn and change as we go. Perhaps we'll learn that our driving while intoxicated laws aren't "strong" enough. Or that the unsecured load law really doesn't help anyone, and makes us all end up feeling lousy instead of vindicated. Thankfully, we've also learned from the Barber and Coffee families that forgiveness and dignity -- peace -- can be ours, even in the face of brutal grief -- and that our legal system doesn't have to be perfect in order for us to find peace and move on.

Postscript: Punisment through incarceration also can serve to protect society by taking the criminal out of circulation for a specific period of time. This makes practical sense in the case of Officer Barber's death -- where the driver has a history and propensity for similar behavior, and may be for those reasons a "menace" (although I don't know that the vehicular homicide statute is designed for this). Less so in the case of Gavin Coffee's death, where the driver, one might imagine, has a very, very slim chance of ever posing a similar freeway risk again.

I Forgive His Crimes of Fashion

2006-08-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

I came across this Picture of the Bin Laden Family in Comcast's August 2006 Channel Guide Magazine. The magazine (my main TV Guide) features the photo as part of a blurb about two upcoming Osama Bin Laden documentaries. The actual text doesn't appear online (perhaps wisely), but the picture does -- a striking group of fashionable-looking young Saudis, circa 1971.

I like how it captures that self-conscious / self-satisfied moment in adolescence. They look like the Brady Bunch (or a few Brady Bunches), right down to the wide ties. And there is young Osama Bin Laden. Which would probably be "haunting" except he has a huge dorky grin on his face, and is hardly recognizable. The picture (and, I hope, the upcoming documentaries), serves to remind us that goofy, earnest teenagers can become fanatical world-domination-caliber terrorists. He obviously wasn't born a bearded old monster.

I don't think much about OBL. How can I? (I was going to plead "I'm a busy working mother," but realized that Christine Amanpour, who led the investigative report behind the CNN documentary, has a young son just a few years older than mine). At times I find myself wishing he were dead, which feels at once uncomfortable and futile. It's discouraging: I have been terrorized and my government's attempts at retribution haven't worked (because I don't feel any better). Bin Laden is a legitimate threat, if there ever was one, but his death would not sate us (and might not make us safer). He's dangerous because they idolize him, but more dangerous because we demonize him. As an enemy, he is as seductive as he is elusive: we have come to believe that our nation must defend itself, if not from the threat of a single man, than at least from a single ideology. Can it be this simple? Or are we only distracting ourselves from economic, cultural and military realities that are too complex (or too inconvenient) to untangle?

I'm wary, and it's going to take a good documentary to get me to stomach some Bin Laden narrative. I don't know if he's a psychopath, or simply evil. He must have once been a typical man with typical failings (Greed? Ego? Lack of empathy? Ideological arrogance?) and I guess we're supposed to learn about what on earth kind of cultural and political context torqued and amplified him until he reached the current status of monstrosity/idolatry that is truly analagous (little is) to Hitler.

I can't imagine any satisfying ending to Bin Laden's story. In 2003, when we saw the awful wire photos of dead Uday and Qusay Hussein -- grotesque in both their humanity and their monstrosity -- I learned about nothing but pathos. It resonated of Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard To Find, but I'm still not sure why. I guess it's the brutal questions of cruelty and redemption: Whether we can recognize them, whether we care, and whether it's all still too ugly too face, either way. Bin Laden's story only promises more pathos. Is he the Misfit? And if so, what do we learn when we face death looking him in the eye?

Maybe I'll watch the documentaries and learn something. For now, my fascination is with the blurb Comcast ran in its TV Guide article (sorry I'm having trouble uploading it). They said, "The hideous '70s duds worn by then-16-year-old Osama bin Laden (second from right) in this 1971 photo would be the least of his crimes." I can't tell if this is a joke, because it is not really funny. Because his clothes are not even that bad; he's just wearing a green shirt and flared jeans. The guy with the short orange tie, hip belt, and the Austin Powers hair, maybe his clothes are "hideous." But exaggerated accusations of Osama Bin Laden's FASHION crimes don't really get us anywhere. The caption is so bad its funny, but not in the way it's supposed to be.

It is just a step away from some awful pun like "Fashion Victims of September 11th." Really.

(And I'm not beyond being amused about these things IF something's funny. Bert is Evil is funny)

In the Footsteps of Osama Bin Laden, August 23 on CNN
The Final Report: Osama's Escape, August 29. on National Geographic Channel

Pacem via disputare

2006-08-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

"Peace through argument" just kind of came to me as a kind of subtitle, and I didn't think much about it until I tried to explain it. I guess it means a couple of things:

First, personal peace of mind -- serenity, quiet and calm -- through the refinement and articulation of our own convictions. "Argument," not because we're always right. Not because we've got to force everyone else to agree with us. But because it speaks to our own confidence in the face of disagreement. And the process of learning through disagreement. Good argument is free of hostility. But through good argument, we assert our convictions without taking on the fear or hostility of those who disagree with us.

Second, social peace -- Cessation of armed conflict. Peaceful communities that are safe and thriving. The peace of families within our homes. But this also through the dynamic interchange of ideas, the convictions of individuals and communities. It happens when we challenge ourselves to organize our thoughts, stop assuming we're right, move beyond seeing only two sides to every issue and become unafraid to engage difficult topics (and difficult people). The peace of social justice happens through vigorous and often uncomfortable process.

Peace is a blessing freely given us, and it is also a gift we can freely give each other. It is a personal and social aspiration and a fruit of considered discourse. And I like the contrast of Peace/Argument. It's like a reminder that peace is not passive and permissive. And that the goal of argument is not aggression and self-vindication.

"Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace." Thich Nhat Hanh.

"The fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace." Galatians 5:22

Moonsnail (No, not Sovin)

2006-08-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

So, you have to name the blog before you can set it up, which I guess is fair. This is consistent with the English 284 (Short Story Writing) rule that you can't turn in anything called "Untitled," no matter how earnest and dramatic a font you come up with. Decide what its about, and come out and say it. Also, don't write about your dreams. And no robots.

For a blog title, I wanted a phrase that would succinctly encompass the topics of law, rhetoric, celebrity-think, culture, parenting, childbirth, Anita Shreve novels, Marian theology (open to learning here, no thoughts formulated yet) and all these swirling thoughts that might somehow make it here. I considered the Jane Austen quote, "You should have distinguished." But that’s so accusatory. And evokes an unnecessary feeling of poignant regret.

Please note that, if you look online for inspiration, about.com has a blog name generator. I don't know if it's any good because I quit after it suggested "Heart Community" and "White Times." No, not White Times. Maybe I should have kept going, so I could find more things to blog about. In search of other blognameters I found http://www.wordconstructor.com/ which will let you type in a word and use that as inspiration to invent an entirely new word. I typed in “Robin” and it suggested "Sovin," which it rates as "47%." Which I don't get because three out of the five letters are the same, which would make it an even 60%. No, not Sovin.

So, I turned to the idea of a physical or natural image -- something with energy that expands and grows, nonlinear, and not quite predictable, but that eventually organizes into something more than itself. I came upon the word WHORL which seemed perfect:

WHORL: A form that coils or spirals; a curl or swirl: spread the icing in peaks and whorls; An arrangement of three or more leaves or petals radiating from a single node; A single turn or volution of a spiral shell. One of the circular ridges or convolutions of a fingerprint. An ornamental device, as in stonework or weaving, consisting of stylized vine leaves and tendrils. A small flywheel that regulates the speed of a spinning wheel.

I like all those things. Frosting! But I set up the Whorl Blog and realized that “whorl” looks a whole lot like “whore.” Which probably lends itself to all sorts of interesting linguistic and cultural exploration, but I’m not about to name myself that, am I. So I started thinking about the whorling spiral shell, which led me to google around on that idea, which led to Lunatia, the Latin genus for a moon snail.

Moon snails are cool. They are chalky blue on the outside and glossy shades of lavender on the inside. A live moon snail is a huge, gooey mass of mollusk that is four times bigger than its shell. It has a muscle that it uses to drill through the hard shells of clams and oysters. It lays its eggs in these big leathery swaths of sand that are so perfectly circular they look like they were fabricated on a wheel. I remember seeing these egg collars when I was little and having the image that all moonsnails were female -- motherly. But I don't know, maybe there are two sexes or maybe they are hermaphrodites? But then the maternal symbolism things carried itself out this morning, when I looked for moonsnail pictures online and had kept finding ones that looked just like a single, huge breast.

Moon snails are mathematically perfect spirals hiding burrowed into the wet suction of the intertidal sand. They are elegant, messy, delicate, strong, succulent, carnivorous, and life-giving. I think that's a good start.

Robin's Introduction

2006-08-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

So, for all the time I spend writing, I've been resisting a blog. It seems like I spend most of my energy emailing boring things about myself, mostly to my family. Or complaining online about things like "why my job is annoying." Or getting into arguments along the lines of "here’s why I’m right, and you need to listen to me." I spend a lot of time worrying that people are being too reactionary and not listening and learning as well as they could. And reflecting on all the baggage we have that makes us defensive and clogs our critical thinking.

But I thought I couldn’t do my own website, because 1. It would be boring (My mom is patient enough to read things like "I dreamed I was brushing my teeth". Or maybe now that I think about it, she doesn't actually read them) and 2. If all my writing just complains about people in my life to other people in my life, who is left to read my blog? What is left to write about?

Then yesterday I had two actual Ideas in the course of an hour, and it occurred to me that there might be a better way to express myself than cramming it into an email about my Greek Monte Cristo Sandwich recipe. Or like a better place to put things down so I don't lose them. So I'm aiming to assemble some thoughts and format and intentionality.

And maybe this will raise my standards for myself. I’m hoping to make this a little quiet place for me to sort out the noise and figure out what I’m thinking. Or maybe it will be a noisy place where I can find my voice and be loud.

Lunatia Heros

2006-08-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Northern Moonsnail.

This photo courtesy of Washington State University Extension Island County Beachwatchers. I hope to take my own photo soon.