"Oh my gahd, Helena, it's so good to see you again! How was your spring break?"
Since this comment was coming from one of my fall-quarter classmates, she really should have known not to ask how my spring break was. Obviously, I did not HAVE a spring break. My spring break lasted all winter. And everybody in the class knows all of THAT stuff. But I answered: "enh... okay... how about you?"
"Kinda boring... What program are you in this quarter?"
An even worse question.
"I'm in Bill and Nancy's class..."
"The one about... ohhh... the 'What Are Children For?' class?"
"Mm-hm..."
She gives me a blank stare, as if to ask what in the fuck is WRONG with me, anyway. I don't blame her... This is somebody who was sitting next to me on the Tuesday morning seminar a day after my pregnancy test came up positive. This is somebody who read my long, rambling journal entry that week -- the entry for class, on "Health, and the Good Life." I wrote all about morning sickness and so forth. This is somebody who mentioned, at a party or two, that she missed me in class... They ALL mentioned that. We were a very close group. All of those who had to abandon ship were sorely missed, from what I hear. This was somebody who got an email from the professor a few days after the baby died. They all knew. I had a very public pregnancy. And I had a very public loss. They all knew everything, right from the beginning. I don't suspect many of them say prayers every night before they go to bed, but I felt quite strongly that I, and the baby, and Jake, were in their unsaid prayers. They were a good group. I miss them too.
And after all of this, really, the last thing they expect is to hear that I'm taking a program about children. It's kind of embarrassing to say it. I must seem sort of insane to them.
I expect that the next question will be, "Are you like, OKAY with that???"
But she doesn't ask that. She just gives me a look that asks what'n the hell's wrong with me. So I try to explain.
"It was one of the only classes I could have gotten into. I already know Bill and Nancy pretty well, and plus, there will be some stuff in here about education and so forth... It's hard for me, but I think in a way, it's kind of healing..."
She smiles, and the subject gets changed with that smile... Really, nobody wants to talk about things that hurt. So I ask what class she's taking, and the subject changes...
But really... I wish someone WOULD ask me, "Are you OKAY with taking this class?"
The answer is: "Well, no."
And I wish somebody would ask, "How're you going to deal with a whole quarter of talking about kids?"
I would then offer them a quote from a Modest Mouse song:
"[When] I have sex, I'm always thinking about the pavement, so I can avoid premature ejaculation..."
How to cope? Think about pavement.
I swear, this works.
For awhile while I was on bedrest, I wasn't allowed to have orgasms (because of the resulting uterine contractions), so during sex, I thought about pavement. Sometimes, during particularly good sex, I had to think about roadkill lying on the pavement. [Sometimes, in fact, a fly on the wall would have heard me yelling: "Puppies! Puppies run over by tractor trailers! With green, squishy guts coming out all over the road!"] But it always worked.
Sometimes, when I'm feeling needlessly, causelessly moody, and I'm on the verge of tears, I think of pavement.
Sometimes when I have a damned good reason for being moody and on the verge of tears, I think about pavement.
I didn't really have to think about pavement today. But today, we had a guest speaker, who went on and fucking ON about some bullshit that seemed entirely irrelevent... Today, nobody said to me, "You don't know what it's like to be a mom! Wait until YOU have kids..." That is a statement that necessitates thoughts of pavement.
I think sometimes about the pavement near Wall Street in Binghamton. Rachel and I used to hang out down there... We were always passing by that little corner... We'd be on our way to the Murray Street Crackhouse, or on our way BACK from the Murray Street Crackhouse... And always, both of us were busily mooning over some man we knew we could not have... So we'd dreamily stare at the Chenango River, and melodramatically whine about the vast unfairnesses of life. (Heh! We only THOUGHT we knew...) Then we'd giggle, and one of us (usually her; she was the badass then...) would yelp, "fuck men! They suck!" The other would concur, usually loudly. And then we'd get moody again, almost immediately. We'd sing:
"...in the rain, the pavement shines like silver..."
It's a line from a Les Misérables song. Rachel and I loved that song. It somehow became our theme.
I was thinking about the pavement tonight as I waited for Jake to pick me up... The sidewalk was shiny with rainwater, and orange from the streetlights, and the night was very, very dark... The pavement was remarkably peaceful. I'm not much in favor of pavement as an entity -- I'd much rather have some trees or a garden -- but it does sometimes serve quite a grand purpose.... a soothing purpose. A distracting purpose. While waiting for Jake, I wasn't actually thinking of anything particularly unpleasant, but the pavement managed to remove any lingering traces of negativity from the day...
I love pavement.
Right.
Anyway.
The guest speaker today seemed, to me, to be SO full of shit...
She was a principal from a local elementary school. Cynically, I thought it was quite odd that a principal would be invited to speak on the subject of CHILDREN, since I always thought that the purpose of principals ("What ARE Principals For?") was to look scary to keep the teachers in line... What do principals know about kids?
I was in the office of my elementary school principal ONE time... I was in third grade then, and a boy named Sean Spangenburg pulled my pants down in the middle of the playground. Then, several of his friends sort of... what? sort of fell on me, if that makes any sense... Three or four kids, all standing there taunting me, blocking any exit I could have made... So I screamed bloody murder (9-year-olds can get away with that...), and the kids all ran away. A playground monitor assessed the situation and immediately sent me in to the principal's office to discuss the situation with him. The principal, Mr. Arthur Chambers, asked me what I had done to Sean and his friends, and hadn't I perhaps pulled down my own pants? Had I been showing off to him? Anyway, I shouldn't wear pants that didn't fit me correctly. His sage advice was to stay away from Sean, and to wear a belt, or my modesty would always be at stake.
Have I mentioned that this gentleman is now the Sexual Harassment Prevention Coordinator (I think that's the accurate title...) for the fucken DISTRICT???
Anyway, that's MY experience with elementary school principals. Naturally, I think, I don't trust them. They couldn't be trusted with me, and they surely will never be trusted with any children of mine. Oh, I know, it was a stupid, shitty childhood trauma, and everybody's had their pants pulled down somewhere along the line... But the way that man made me feel so DIRTY... as if little boys picked on me because I was immodest... I STILL haven't told my mother about that incident. A child of mine, trusted with a person like that? A person whose job it is to scare teachers and assign blame in pants-pulling playground incidents? HELL no.
Right. Anyway, this woman today was slightly saner... but not by much...
She said, "It's imporant for parents to know who is the adult [in their relationship with their child]."
Then she said that "child protection laws are NOT protecting our children, so they keep changing, and they're still not good enough."
So *I* said, "Do you believe that legislation should then be playing the role of the adult, rather than yourself as a parent and an educator?"
Whoa. That one hit her like a load of bricks. She looked like I'd punched her. I wasn't trying to be mean; I just think it's sort of fucked-up to rely on governmental administration to make sure kids are safe. She said, very cautiously: "I like to have... CONTROL over my kids... I do what I can for them of course, but the laws aren't good enough, and so I want to influence them as much as I can by voting." Right. So this lady wants to have her own parental control over her own kids, and THEN she wants the government to have control over everybody ELSE'S kids? Please! I REALLY felt like letting her have it, telling her, "Lady, the more legislation there is to ban things, ostensibly to keep kids safe, the less control ANYBODY has..." But I don't think she would have understood. You give the government control of protecting kids, and the government throws you in pedophile prison for taking pictures of your own kid wearing a diaper. Laws have no compassion for parents who slap their kid who's about to put his finger in a light socket. Laws take kids away from their parents if the parents aren't making much money, and they don't give them back until 35 pages' worth of criteria have been met. Laws don't give a shit about anybody. Laws never gave a shit about me...
Anyway, this woman went on, and on, and on about her school, which sounded suspiciously like a communist dictatorship for very small, very hyper people... What is this about standardizing programs to encourage kids to socialize with each other? It all reminded me of some horrific scene out of a Milan Kundera novel. No, REALLY, it did...
This was not a time for thinking about pavement. This was a time for wishing the average IQ could be a little bit higher. Especially in "educators."
I gotta go to sleep now.
'Night...
Love,
~Helena*