Mother's day is a time for action

On this mother’s day, I want to reflect on what it means to honor motherhood. In this time of pandemic crisis, it becomes clear how empty words and gestures are, and how sorely all of us need concrete action. To remake the world, we do not need new words, or new ways of simply talking. On mother’s day, we don’t just need public posts on social networks. In cities we don’t need buildings to light up in support of the ‘heroes’ on the front line. We need action.

As a mother, the best way to honor me is to see the work that I do and help me do it well. What does that look like? Six weeks ago I gave birth to my third and what will be my last child. Patrick and I have been through this before, and now know what we want out of parenthood, and more or less how to make that vision happen. After the baby was born I stayed in bed for a few days with her while Patrick brought the other kids to friends’ houses and did the dishes, cooked food, did laundry, helped me shower, filed the baby’s paperwork, talked to doctors, you get the idea. This work, this offering by Patrick and our friends, is how they honored my labor and delivery.

After those first few days, we decided to keep the older kids home as COVID spread and we didn’t know if or where we would get it. For the next six weeks, Patrick did the vast majority of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for the older two kids. But more than that, he would put the older two to sleep each night and then hold the baby and stay up for a while so I could get a few hours uninterrupted by her little body and little sounds. In the morning, he would get up before me, and recognizing the work of feeding and caring for her all night, he would take all three kids and feed them breakfast while I slept another uninterrupted hour or so. He would only wake me when it was clear that the baby needed to eat.

For most of these past 6 weeks, my days consisted of lying and rocking with my new baby. These moments, early in her life, allowed me to make her transition out of the womb and into this world with air and gravity smooth and easy and without stress. Lying with her, barely moving most days besides a daily walk, also allowed me to recover from the immense changes my body undertook, for the last time, in pregnancy. It is obvious to me that mothers and babies need to be allowed to be quietly together for at least a month postpartum, and Patrick honored that last sacred moment for me by allowing us to be together, getting to know each other, and recovering from our shared experience of birth.

On top of doing the actual work that allowed me to transition to a life with 3 children, it is important that Patrick, nor anybody else, made me feel guilty about getting this sacred time with my newborn. Too often we make the people we ‘honor’ most feel bad or unworthy for asking for or needing help. Or, we make them feel like it's normal to be stressed and worn out and they should just deal with it. Instead, our friends and Patrick made me feel worthy of this time, and actively offered to contribute to the collective effort of welcoming a new life into our family and community. It is this feeling of solidarity, that they are here to help me in this time where I need it, that makes me feel connected to all of them and waiting for the moment where I can return the favor. Paradoxically, accepting this help makes me want to do more work, contribute more to others, and results in a virtuous cycle of sharing and support in our community.

Our lives are already quickly returning to the chaos of caring for children constantly, but for one short moment I got to fully immerse myself in the mystery of new life, mostly uninterrupted. This work, this active effort, honors my motherhood, and I could not be more grateful that I am surrounded by people who made it happen. So, it is with all of the people in our world who deserve honoring. We don’t need cards, we need you to make breakfast and start the washing machine. We don’t need a parade, we need masks and pay and benefits and time off. We don’t need you to simply say you appreciate us, but to show it by asking ‘what do you need?’ and ‘how can I help?’ and ‘you are worthy of the help you are receiving.’ 

This is a political/sociological point, we have to be the change we want to see in the world, and it starts with us. Happy mother’s day to all the amazing, brave, selfless mothers out there. May your efforts be valued, and may you be so lucky as I have been to be surrounded by those who truly do value what you do. I wish you a wonderful day where at least one person asks you: ‘how can I help you today?’

 

The Amazon is burning (among other problems) and what to do about it

Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

With each new headline of environmental crisis out from the woodwork comes various dogmatic camps proselytizing about why their solution or way of life is The Way Forward and everyone else is Selfish Idiots Who Don't Read the Stats. Since I have basically dedicated my adult life to figuring out solutions to environmental problems, trying to decipher what works and what doesn't, I feel compelled to throw my own solution into the ring.

The first thing that is absolutely clear to me is that all current environmental problems are a result of industrial capitalism, and this is fundamental. This is an important assumption to start with because so many of the solutions people put forward only address part of the problem, and without getting to the root of it these solutions could be actively turning us away from solutions that do anything at all (more on this below).

Industrial capitalism is now global in nature. This means that private corporations, in conjunction with corrupt local governments around the world, are beyond regulation and social movement activity. (Note: the only thing that has empirically been shown to make major long-term changes is eco-terrorism such as exploding important hubs of production or sustained protest that disrupts the production of society, both of these being extremely dangerous).

It has been demonstrated time and again in the environmental sociology literature that international labeling or buy-cotts fail time and again, because corporations can write loopholes, evade correct labeling or find new markets to continue their destructive behavior. Further, what happens in industrial processing in the global marketplace is that it is absolutely impossible for consumers to completely follow the routes of products, and thereby be informed as to where their products came from.

Further, land use is complicated. As anyone who has ever been in a rural area knows: land use constantly changes. We know that when the Amazon Rainforest is burned, what first gets put on the land is livestock (mostly cattle) for industrial production. After a few years or so, it's been pretty well documented that a lot of that land gets turned into industrial soy plantations that then get processed into soybean oil and soybean meal which gets turned into both animal (mostly chicken and some pig) feed, but also other industrial products. Soybean oil is used for biofuel, human consumption, but also in various beauty products, pet food, and so much more. We know that Brazil exports over 79% of its soybeans to China, where it then gets processed and turned into myriad industrial products that then get shipped all over the world.

You see, when you start looking into the details, the supply chain is messy and complicated and spans the entire globe. But the story I see is not meat = bad. The story I see is the one that has happened since peasants were pushed from their land starting with industrialization (do you see that I keep highlighting this word?). Small scale producers that raise food non-industrially get pushed off their land by giant corporations that destroy the land for profit by making myriad industrial foods (animal and vegetable products alike, alongside a million other industrial products).

Now, what I've been dancing around here is the solutions part of the conversation. I am sorry to say that the answer is not simple and unfortunately never as easy as eco-friendly consumption like becoming vegetarian or vegan. We know that children's hands and mountain tops get blown off in Africa to make renewable energy technology with rare earth minerals, how does becoming vegan stop this? In fact, many people who are vegan probably also buy 'renewable' technologies, unaware of the environmental and human destruction they cause. We know that in India and Vietnam women's hands are being destroyed to make cashew milk for vegans who won't eat local dairy, even if it's raised on entirely grass-fed, biodiverse pastureland, because in their mind animal foods are the problem. We know that habitat for orangutans and indigenous communities are being destroyed for palm oil plantations that are in myriad food, makeup and soap products. Everything industrially produced is built on the destruction of land and people, including the energy it takes for processing. And it is labelled in such a way that you cannot know where it came from.

Unfortunately, it makes people feel control to have a simple solution like don't buy meat from Brazil, but there are actually some very dangerous consequences to this kind of thinking, and here's where my background in sociology comes in. A seminal work in Environmental Sociology is Andrew Szasz's book Shopping our Way to Safety. In it, he describes a kind of eco-conscious consumer who buys organic vegetables as a kind of political activism and protection from the harms of industrialism. What has been revealed in study after study (and this is pretty much right in my area of expertise) is that people spend the extra 50 cents on organic eggs, and then stop caring about anything else. They don't care what GMOs are in the cereal or the veggie burgers made with soy or the bread made from poisoning the soil with glyphosate or how much rainforest is cut down to supply the various vegetable oils in their margarine or vegan oreos.

It's worse than that, though. Because they also get channeled (a term borrowed from social movements literature). Channeling is where someone is given a false sense of control or power. For example, when an indigenous leader is given the opportunity to voice concerns at the table with a powerful corporation who is planning to build a dam and flood their village. The indigenous leader feels heard, included, and loses the political will to fight against these people that listened. The corporation goes ahead as planned.

This happens a lot in social movements. People feel like they are doing something, like becoming vegetarian or vegan or buying organic, and it literally makes them worse than they were before, because their concern falls away. They see a solution that on the surface makes sense. Let's boycott meat from Brazil (or stop buying animal products altogether)! It's doable, it's (relatively) easy. The problem is, it is industrialism that is the problem, not one tiny part of it. So, these people keep talking about animal products as if that's the entire problem, and the solution solely vegetarianism or veganism, they start to believe animal products (and the people who eat them) are very, very bad.

This focus then leads to an even bigger problem, which is the failure to see the industrial system as at fault. These people become disciples of "no animal products = save the environment," they can't even see other solutions for what they offer (especially not solutions related to sustainable animal production). They lose big picture thinking about the system because they live in an echo chamber of "I can't believe other people are so stupid and selfish as to continue eating meat when it clearly is destroying the planet. Thank goodness for us veggies who are saving the world. *pats own back*" This us/them mentality really hurts in the environmentalist community. Then, when solutions are put forward that require more than slightly altered consumption, they are suddenly confused and shocked, because they feel like they've already sacrificed enough by changing their diet and buying organic foods (or buying a Prius and installing solar panels or whatever).

So the solution to this problem of industrial capitalism is not just related to food, but literally everything we use, how we get around, where our poop goes, and how we relate to the natural world. It is a total cultural shift, which includes real fights with terrible actors, plenty of which are currently happening. It is a future in which we re-envision a non-industrial world, one in which the logic of this world is completely upended. It is one where we ask hard questions like: can I do without this? If not, how can I source this product from someone who makes it non-industrially? What are all the systems I rely on for water, sewage and transport and how could those be altered to do less damage? What kind of social systems can I invent (sharing, co-ops, etc.) that upend the logic of exploiting people in the marketplace? What kind of activism can I take part in that can either stop corporations or governments from exploiting the world, or envisioning a sustainable future? (Plenty of city councils are currently working on city-level Green New Deals, get involved!)

All of these questions take decades to answer for us raised in the Global North on soy-meal-fed-McNuggets, fries covered in fungicide and fried in pristine-landscape-destroying canola oil, and high fructose corn syrup Coca-Cola, while washing our hair with palm-oil-orangutan-habitat destroying shampoo. The point is, so much of our lives are shaped by industrialism that it is like the air we breathe. We can forgive ourselves if takes a while to figure these things out, but the important thing is not to commit to a solution that gives us a false sense of efficacy (along with an identity).

On the one hand, these bad industrial actors are so powerful, there is little we can do to really stop them dead in their tracks. On the other hand, thanks to limits of physics and biology, we can't go on this way destroying the environment in an industrial society for much longer, so we should be using every spare moment we have figuring out what's next, and how to take care of ourselves when oil costs $400/barrel. We have more agency than we realize, and there are so many things we can do right now to imagine a post-industrial future. But the first step in the journey can't only be buying our way out. The first step is likely inward questioning, education, and big picture thinking. Then, getting out of your comfort zone, getting involved in projects with other concerned people, which will lead to more ideas and activities and on it goes.

I will end with this. Often when people read about crisis after crisis, they feel defeated. The point of this essay is not to bombard with how bad things are and how little you can do. Instead, when I hear bad news like what's happening in the Amazon, it lights a fire in me to do more, explore more, figure more out. What does this actually look like? I make friends with people who are doing sustainable agriculture and learn from them (join some facebook groups for earth building or regenerative agriculture or permaculture and just start reading everything!). I spend my money on fruit trees and non-industrial infrastructure (you can't eat money). I offer to watch my friends' kids and have them watch mine in an informal co-op (there is a lot of evidence that communities with these kinds of connections are MUCH more resilient in disaster/crisis situations). I get free range chickens (just did this a week ago!) and learn how to take care of them. I write about people practicing innovative solutions (just interviewed a bunch of people building Earthships) because one thing I can offer this world is research and writing. What can you do?

(P.S. check out the work we do at rizomafieldschool.com entirely centered on environmental solutions and alternatives!)

Edited to add:

Alternative...parenting

I have been meaning to write a series of explanatory posts about how myself and my family are exploring alternatives to mainstream ways of doing things.

Since today is mother's day, I thought it would be a good day to talk about the way I do parenting.

I am lucky that through a mix of being exposed to certain people and ideas even before becoming a parent, I was able to learn about subjects that greatly improved my parenting.

Two books I read before becoming a parent were Wandering God by Berman (about nomadic tribes) and The Art of Loving by Fromm (a psychoanalytic take on love). Neither of these were explicitly about parenting, but I learned in them the importance of the maternal role in setting up deep attachments that provide a secure base for children.

For instance, Berman showed how prolonged breastfeeding (beyond 3 years) was common for most of human history until people became sedentary with agriculture and had kids closer together, which lead to earlier weaning. Berman argued that this connection to the mother made for a different kind of consciousness, one that felt that the world is generally a secure place. He talked a lot about how modern children use transitional objects (like a teddy) to help ease the pain of early weaning, night time/sleep separation, and lack of overall touch.

Nomadic babies don't use transitional objects, but instead the child is physically near the mom (usually in a baby carrier worn on the mother's body) and uses nursing as a way to connect and calm themselves. This importance of physical connection was echoed in Fromm's book from a psychoanalytic perspective, and then a few years later I read Jared Diamond's book The World Until Yesterday about nomadic tribes and this finding was repeated again and in this article. At this point, I was already convinced theoretically about the importance of holding/wearing the baby, co-sleeping, and breastfeeding until the baby chose to wean (little did I know what that would entail).

Before having Isa I went to La Leche meetings and met some other breastfeeding mothers, and joined facebook groups for breastfeeding help. I had my support network for information, so when I had pain initially, I found out that was common and pushed through. When I had mastitis, I figured out how to treat it. When I was trying to figure out co-sleeping and nursing, I could get tips and tricks to get good sleep and not roll onto the baby.

I always thought I would continue nursing until the baby chose to stop, and I realized that if there are no other issues that means the kid would wean somewhere between 3 and 6. Yikes. Since most of my experience has been seeing mothers only nurse babies under one year, this came as a shock to me, and of course I have felt the judgment of others with my prolonged nursing. But, I remind myself, most of our parenting practices date back only 100 years or so (cribs, formula), and at the most they date back 12,000 years to the agricultural revolution. Our babies bodies are meant to be held, nursed, and this is one of the most important traits to set them up for psychological health. This is what the evidence I read said, and this is what I believe to be true, so I persist, even when it's not so easy and I'd rather just give my kid some cow's milk and have my body back and I'd rather not have to endure those sideways glances when someone sees my 2 year old asking to nurse.

The other information I came across early on (thanks to a fellow grad student friend, Emily) was something called radical unschooling. For me, it is more a stance on child rearing than schooling per se. The idea is that you want to model curiosity, and show your children how to follow their passions in an unstructured way, as opposed to rote memorization and learning to 'behave' in a classroom (read: sit still and be quiet). The upshot of this is to see your child as autonomous, and having of desires that deserve to be respected, while keeping in mind the limitations of anyone's desires.

Here's an example. The kids are in a crazy mood and they start climbing on top of the car. I see the roof is denting in a bit, and I want to yell at them to just get off the car completely, but instead I see what they're doing is just having fun and learning how to climb and use their bodies. This is a good thing to foster. So, I show them how the roof is denting and ask them to climb in a way that does not do damage to the car. I am not looking for them to obey me because I do not make up rules that are arbitrary. I am asking them to respect boundaries that they will experience in their real lives. Parents' rules are often so out of touch with the real boundaries people experience. I try to make sure that I am telling them to do something that has a good reason, and one they will likely encounter in their lives. I ask myself, often: can I say yes to their request? What is at the heart of what they are asking? How I can I foster that in a way that makes me comfortable and feel respected myself?

I see school as a place for my kids to make friends, learn the language and socialize. I see home as a place to foster deeper learning, and to pursue the things they are curious about. I am the main educator of their lives, not their teacher. And I follow Rousseau's educational theory, which is to have early childhood learning be mostly physical discovery, and as they get older their learning should follow their own interests, with an emphasis on trial and error as well as useful skills.

We will see how this philosophy plays out as they get older and grow into more complex creatures. The idea behind radical unschooling and attachment parenting is that giving the kids a foundation of love and respect at an early age helps to set up your connection with them and their security so that they trust that you are a person who has reasonable expectations and has their best interests at heart.

I have seen this play out with Isa as she grows older, although of course it's never 100% because we are always still growing and improving. If I explain to her why I am telling her to do something, and it is reasonable, she will usually comply unless she has other issues (like she's too hungry or tired) -- which is basically the way it works in a relationship with mutual respect and love, something we want to model.

I rarely have to yell loudly at my kids (I only do this if they are hurting each other). Rousseau said that the worst punishment should be the parents' disappointment, which can simply be expressed with a face. I have seen that since I so rarely abuse my power with them to get them to obey me, they are very responsive to my disappointment, almost always crying out of remorse if I ever get upset with something they do. I don't take this position of authority lightly. I know they are reliant upon me for both care and approval, so if I exercise restraint in using disapproval, it becomes quite a powerful tool. Of course, after I disapprove I make sure to tell them I know that [insert behavior] doesn't represent them and they had a momentary lapse of judgment.

This is where I stand at the moment, and it's working well for our family on most days. Breaking free from the way any person or society tells me is the 'right' way to parent is really liberating. Finding what works for us and doing it, despite the judgment of others, has been quite a journey, but I would never choose another path.  My hope is that we can make a generation of kids who are secure, who can then keep the cycle of positive parenting (and relationships) going.

Greatest country on Earth!

When compared to the 19 others OECD (developed) countries, including Greece, Turkey, Chile and Mexico, America is:
















https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/29/peoples-state-nation

Incomodo

My first ever fiction:

Incomodo

I realized I hadn't been breathing and sucked air slowly into my lungs, so as to not show my panic at the realization. When I didn't know what to do with my face, I involuntarily smiled. I hated it, but I couldn't change my face, no matter how aware I was of it and how inappropriate it was for the setting we were in.

The dance teacher said, "dale," and I knew it meant it was time for something else, but I didn't know where to place my body or how. Or what to do with my face. I tried glancing at the others in the class. As everyone sat down cross-legged, I made sure to sit in a way that showed it was my own idea. "Oh yes, I planned on sitting too, obvio." I straightened one leg and tucked the other one in so as to say "look, I am not copying. I am doing my own thing. I'm comfortable here." But I wasn't comfortable and all this thinking was making me tired.

I was performing for no one. My audience was my own perception of others' perception of me. No one was looking at me. I knew this, but I continued on with that heightened sensibility that comes from an audience. My heart beat faster and I kept forgetting to breathe.

The teacher described the next set of movements. The only word I picked up was "infinito."

Is she talking about infinity? Like, philosophically? Or is this a specific dance instruction? I never know with her, her language is so damn flowery. How am I supposed to tell these things? If I interrupt for clarification it'll ruin the flow of the class. I know this. I've done it. Just see what the others are doing and figure it out as you go. This is good for you. Get out of your shell a bit. Get out of your damn head.

I step into the corner of the room, in line with the others. The teacher stands facing us. Each one of us takes turns moving in any way that occurs to us, while making eye contact with the teacher. "What movement will I make? Do I make the same movement each time? Should my movements be decided by what the other students are doing? How can I get this smile off my face?"

The exercise starts and each time it is my turn to confront the teacher I am thinking of everything at once. "Breathe. Control your face. Do something interesting, but don't stand out too much. Don't laugh. See what the others are doing and do something like it, but don't look like you are doing what they're doing. Ok, a simple spin. I've been doing this spin too many times, I'll switch it up to a clap. Oh god, clapping and making eye contact feels like I need to erase my existence from history, try something else. Back to the spin. Oh no, too many spins, she is probably noticing. What are other people doing?

This time I'll do a dip. Can't use any of my go-to dance moves from gradeschool. I put my hand up on your hip. Twerking with my little 10 year old body back when we called it juking. Yeah, definitely don't do that. I wonder if it would be considered vulgar here? Just don't do it, you'll stand out too much. But do I try to do something salsa-y? Or like some kind of Shakira belly dance? I know the teacher's dad is Egyptian. I'm going to come off as laughable if I try to pull off something like that. My sense of these kinds of dances have the depth of a cartoon. I can imagine someone from here trying to twerk like they see on American TV. That would be funny. Ha. So, what do I do then? I can't be who I was, I can't yet be who I'm going to be. Ah shit, it's my turn again and I haven't thought of anything. I do a belly dance move. Ah, just kill me please. Just get through this. Let this song end. Who am I praying to exactly? Just remember to breathe, at least. Stay alive."

The teacher puts the students in the receiving position. It's now my turn. As each dancer comes up to me and moves in front of me, looking me in the eye, I panic. My face. Oh god my face. I am trying to control my smile with closed lips but my mouth just keeps moving up and up my face until it is right under my nose. Where do I put my hands? Behind my back? No, that's terrible and everyone sees it. Just put your hands to the side. Act normal. What does normal look like again? No, I know they aren't looking, but it still feels like they are looking. No, they're definitely not looking.

Now my teacher comes up to me, looks me right in the eye reflects my ridiculous face back at me with her mouth just up under her nose. In less than the time it takes to have a conscious thought I think, all at once: she has been looking, erase yourself from history now, stop smiling, change your face. And then I laugh out loud, acknowledging what she is communicating to me while I drown in my prison of thoughts.

At the end of this first class, she asks the group to reflect on how the experience was for them. "Comodo. Comfortable," people were saying as she went around the room. "What in the hell?" I thought. "INcomodo," I found myself saying, when it was my turn, without first thinking it through. The instructor looked a little horrified. Did I make some kind of faux pas? At this point, who cares. I am so tired of thinking.  "I don't know if I'm using the right word. For me, in order to learn something new, you have to be at least a little bit, uncomfortable." They all smile. Relief. They were feeling it too, but the culture here is too polite to say such a thing. Maybe that's who I am here. The one who says what others only think. Lending a moment of freedom to their prison.

Maybe I will twerk next week.

Loss of a good friend

Patrick McDonnell was an epic personality. One of those people whom everybody loved to tell stories about. Or, actually, recount the stories he told.

Like the one he told about parties among the English upper class (Princess Anne sometimes came) in the 60s that lasted weeks with people alternating between weed and acid and the only way to get the party out of his house was to offer to take everyone to Stonehenge for a grand LSD adventure. Or how he was charged with conspiracy by the English government for sending tabs of LSD to the Icelandic army. The thing about charging someone with conspiracy is that you don't have to prove anything except that they thought something, he would say. Or was it the U.S. nuclear submarine officers he sent the acid to? The stories always changed, but remained riveting whichever detail he decided to include that day.

Or how he was raped by priests in the Catholic church in Ireland as a young boy, and how years later he went to the Pope with the allegations. Or how he staged protests in front of the Uruguayan telecommunications company when their policies meant he was ostensibly locked into a never ending rural internet contract.

He had great ideas about social change. Give everyone psychedelics. Or protest. If you are going to use violence, make sure you go for the supermarkets first, because they are usually owned by someone powerful in the community. Never be afraid to use your voice and speak directly to power.

I loved the story he told about trying to get residency in Uruguay 15 years ago. He had this criminal record, spent time in jail for mostly political crimes. So, he had to go in front of a tribunal of senators to hear his case. Lucky him, at this point in history the senators were mostly former leftist guerillas including then-senator, later president Jose Mujica, who himself was imprisoned for many years because of his political action. This group sympathized with his political point of view and came to find out that McDonnell had actually donated money to their leftist group a few decades back. They granted him residency and Mujica came to give him a hug, thank him, and invite him for a beer after the hearing.

Patrick would tell us that the two things he wanted to see in his lifetime were legal gay marriage and legalized marijuana. He was very happy to see both happen, sooner in Uruguay than in his native Ireland. One day he and his partner Chris were at a routine government meeting, as his story goes, and some Uruguayan bureaucrat handed them a paper saying they were now legally married via co-habitation laws. In that moment, they both began to cry. After a lifetime of laws that allowed him to be hurt, beaten up, and discriminated against because of his sexuality, it was a relief for him to be in a place that allowed him to live and let live.

I remember his story about getting permanently kicked out of South Africa. He was there after a jolly jaunt around the world in his 20s. He was working at a bakery trying to make enough money to get back to England. One day, meeting with a friend of his father's, he was waiting for the 'white's only' elevator to come and it was taking forever. The 'mixed' elevator was already standing there, open, so he went in. He was apprehended by South African police 'dressed like little boy scouts' as McDonnell would always say, who asked him what he was thinking taking the wrong elevator. He said he is mixed race, he is Norse and Hebridean. They said you have a bad attitude (Patrick always delivered this line in a South African accent) and they beat him bloody. He was given a one way ticket back to England with a ban from ever returning. Good, he thought, that's what I wanted anyway. After apartheid, he did get a letter of apology and welcome back from the South African government. Maybe the arc does bend toward justice?

Patrick was in the Tet offensive as a British military contractor, and just as the firing started he ran toward the U.S. military bunker knocking to be let in. They said screw off, ostensibly, but McDonnell was smart. Right as the bombing started he ran to his quarters and got whiskey and cigarettes. He yelled back to the U.S. Army men I have whiskey and cigarettes! They let him in and he was safe to live another day. He told us to always have hard alcohol and cigarettes on hand in case of emergency.

I loved Patrick's sense of humor. One of his most laugh out loud stories was about a farm manager who was ribbing him and his fellow workers for not working fast enough pounding in heavy iron stakes. The boss grabbed the stakes and started stomping toward the next place to pound one in. Trouble was, they were working on a steep cliffside in Ireland and of course trying to work too fast he lost his footing and started sliding toward the cliff. He dropped all the stakes that went flying off the edge and barely made it from flying off the cliff himself. He promptly got up and walked off while Patrick and his friends were doubled over in laughter.

After some work in the U.S. in the late 60s he was offered either U.S. Citizenship or a brand new red Ford Mustang by his employer. He chose the Mustang. For the life of me I cannot remember where that Mustang ended up he would always say.

Patrick told stories like I imagine they are told in the old Irish oral tradition way. They are not just stories, they have a lesson, the share a culture, each one tells you a little about humanity.

My favorite memories of him, though, were our moments of kindness together as friends and neighbors. As we were running around with our two little girls, without a moment of peace, he would say You two really are fabulous parents. When it seems no one sees the work you're doing as a parent, Patrick would not only notice, he would say it out loud. His great great great (something) grandmother was Isabel Fitzgerald, and he had an oil portrait of her in his house in Uruguay. We instantly felt a familial connection with him and Christopher. He used to say we are from the same ancient clan of Fitzgeralds.

When we first met we came over for lunch and at the end of it he said We are so excited to have someone worth talking to around here! He and Chris would invite us over for lunches every couple of weeks and every time we would have champagne. Celebrating life together. Celebrating simple friendship and being alive. And we would eat Chris' home cooked food, prepared with love just to share with us, and it felt like family.

When you choose to live in a new place, you have to find ways to cope without the social networks you are born into. So you find others, and if you're lucky, they can turn into a new network on which you can rely. We knew we could rely on Patrick and Chris, and they could rely on us. That simple fact can give you so much peace. If I need help, I know they'll be there.

He was suffering a lot toward the end and I am glad that is over for him. He always wondered out loud how in the hell he lasted as long as he did after all the drugs he did in his lifetime. Well I am glad he lasted long enough to overlap a few of his years with myself and my family. We are better off for having known him, and the world is lucky to have had him for the time that it did.

I will miss his big stories and guidance and love. I know I won't stop telling stories of the great Patrick McDonnell, and in that way he will continue to be.

Cost of living in Uruguay

As we are settling into life in our new country, we are getting a better sense of the ongoing costs associated with living here. Because we were smart and lucky enough to have saved enough money to buy our land, home and vehicle outright, we do not have ongoing costs associated with paying the debt of those things (like a mortgage, car payment, etc.).

Here are some of the ongoing costs we have found associated with living in Uruguay:

- Energy. Because we bought a solar water heater we got government subsidy on our electricity bill, so our bill is around $30 monthly. Once the subsidy runs our (after 2 years) we will be paying more like $50 monthly. We also use propane for our oven/stove which runs us about $10 monthly. Total energy costs are therefore about $40 monthly or $480 annually

- Our ongoing car costs include monthly gas (for vehicles and lawn mowers) at about $200 monthly, and annual insurance and registration fees for our scooter and car at about $1,200. So, total transport we will say is around $300 monthly or $3,600 annually

- We have a very savvy accountant who has set us up to pay social security, property taxes combined with health insurance from a very fancy local private health network for our whole family for $150 monthly or $1,800 annually

- Although we are attempting to build up the infrastructure to produce more of our own food, the truth is now we buy most of what we eat. Our ongoing food costs are probably in the range of about $500 monthly or $6,000 annually for our family of four

- Let's just have another category of incidentals. Home supplies, replacing or fixing things, etc. at an average monthly cost of another $100 monthly or $1,200 annually

Some people say it is expensive to live in Uruguay. Our ongoing expenses for a family of four are:
-$1,100 monthly or
- $13,000 annually

The way we see it, the big cost savings versus our life in the U.S. are health care and education, as well as a small enough housing cost so as to not have to take on debt and pay monthly mortgage and interest to a bank. We get high quality meat and produce for cheaper here, but processed foods and consumer goods (TVs, electronics, home goods) are much more expensive. It seems to me the stuff that matters (health, education, housing, food) cost way less (at least in the rural areas) and the things that don't matter (consumer and processed crap) cost more. It kind of forces a shift in priorities.

Hope and fear, or a post about laundry!

My lovely, intelligent brother in law Colin sent me a video the other day of Bret Weinstein (of Evergreen College fame) talking at something called a Virtual Futures conference. In that talk, Bret conjectures about a healthy mental state in facing the world we currently live in and the myriad crises we face.

Bret suggests we can neither live in an entire state of hope, thinking someone else will fix the problems, nor fear, unable to move or act due to the immensity of the problem. I tend to agree, and think since we cannot live in one mental state alone we would be best served to oscillate between informing ourselves about the state of the world and how the crises are unfolding and engaging in small, meaningful, human-level solutions to the everyday problems we face in the world.

I'll give you an example. Today, I watched an episode of the Handmaid's Tale. It's a novel I loved and a show I've been meaning to watch for years. During the show, I feel just dread and fear. I feel some sort of responsibility to watch it, because it draws so heavily on authoritarian regimes that have actually existed in history. It is like a show that is a lesson in what is possible, and how to think through the playing out of potential social crisis in the future. In this moment, I feel I am fully informing myself, and fully experiencing the dread and fear about the state of the world. In this way, I am confronting and naming the issues, learning about them, and not pretending they don't exist through some misplaced optimism.

But then what? Then, instead of living in dread, I go back to solving the problems of my daily life. One of those problems, here in Uruguay, is getting laundry clean. Yes, it's mundane, but so are all of your lives. These problems make up our days and these days make up our lives. I couldn't get my towels white enough just with bleach, and they were getting more and more grey looking, and less inviting to use on my clean post-shower body.

This had been bothering me, so I looked up the cleaner I've been told works wonders (by real people, not just the infomercial) Oxiclean. I know I can't get this product here, and also I am always looking for more healthy/less chemical alternatives for cleaning. I found that in oxiclean is an ingredient called sodium percarbonate, which is a mix between hydrogen peroxide and washing soda. I immediately called the pharmacy to get a big order of peroxide, but washing soda is not something you can get here. I then found that you can turn baking soda into washing soda by baking it in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour, which makes it more basic/alkaline and helps to clean with more force, naturally.

So, I ordered two big bags of baking soda along with the peroxide. They came in two days later, I baked the baking soda and in my little science experiment I turned NaHCO3 to Na2CO3. I mixed up a little formula of water, peroxide and washing soda in a bucket and left my towels to soak. Then, I washed them in the machine with a little soap and also peroxide and washing soda. Voila!!! They came out bright and white. A real accomplishment. The work results in the feeling of nice, clean, bright, white towels. I had a presented problem, I found a solution I liked and could do, and I fixed the problem.

Overall, this is my life, and this is the life I have chosen to live. It is not easy starting from scratch and re-making all the solutions to all the problems of everyday life. But, these little surmountable challenges bring meaning to my life, as little challenges do for all people. And with each new challenge and new solution I feel less overall dread and despair, and more confidence and ability. It is in the mundane that the future is made. It is in all these little decisions we make. How we wash our clothes, raise our kids, spend our days, who we spend our time with, what we eat. There is so much work to be done tweaking each little part of our lives, little by little, to improve them and thereby make the world a little teeny tiny bit better. This is the work we have before us. Join me.

This is America, or a review of Spike Lee's BlackkKlansman

 I just got home from going to the theater, something I love to do but unfortunately rarely am able to do in rural Uruguay. I saw Spike Lee's BlackkKlansman, the story of the 70's infiltration of the KKK and, ultimately as in most of Lee's films, an essay on race and inequality in America.

A number of sharp critiques of American culture have surfaced in the media recently. I am thinking of Childish Gabino's This is America:

Or Sasha Baron Cohen's Who is America:

Alongside Lee's film and many others. To me, the message is clear: America is full of hate, and it has been that way since its inception. This isn't news to me or anyone who has studied classics of America cultural history like Morris Berman's Dark Ages America or recent follow up Why America Failed which argues that American culture has been hyper individualistic, competitive, and money-loving from the very beginning. The current iteration of America (and president) that seems to be so shocking to many is actually part of a trajectory that's long been set forth.

Although this is not a popular message, this explanation is widely accepted by cultural historians and sociologists. You could point me to acts of good and kindness, and of course no one would ever argue that a country of 320 million is all one thing. But, study after study and work after work of art demonstrate that, overall, Americans tend to think in black and white terms, and often in terms of good guys and bad guys, friends and enemies, people to love and people to hate. This manichean ideology leads to things like Charlosttesville, where a man drove a car into a crowd of people he didn't know, but hated.

Lee's film ended with that footage, and it is both haunting and beautiful that America's best artists are waking up to American culture and its fundamental maladies. My best hope is in facing those maladies, naming them, and spending every day of our lives realizing something different.

What does that mean for me? It means I don't have any enemies, just people who don't understand me well and whom I need to understand better. It means I will think of community before myself. It means money won't be my sole driver in life. It means I will cooperate and find ways to benefit myself and the (human and nonhuman) world, not compete with it.

The art of discussion

To discuss: talk or write about (a topic) in detail, taking into account different ideas and opinions.

Lately I have been engaging with some of the ideas of the intellectual dark web. Although I don't agree with all of what all the members are arguing, I do agree with one premise that seems to be the only thing the group has in common: it is of the absolute utmost importance (both personally and socially) to cultivate the skill to discuss with others. There a couple of components to this I'd like to get in writing, because they seem to be at the core of so many of the struggles I've seen in relationships and society lately.

The first is something I've mentioned before and then censored. I will put it more obscurely here: discussion, or ongoing talking, negotiating, compromising, empathizing, is absolutely essential for any healthy relationship (or any relationship that is more than the empty shell of superficiality). Erich Fromm (who wrote the best book ever written on love) describes a cultural phenomenon that I have experienced in droves lately:

One other frequent error must be mentioned here. The illusion, namely, that love means necessarily the absence of conflict...the 'conflicts' of most people are actually attempts to avoid the real conflicts. They are disagreements on minor or superficial matters which by their very nature do not lend themselves to clarification or solution. Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or project, but which are experienced at the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength.

Discussion is basically ongoing conflict. It is evolution. It is growth. If we accept as a premise that (according to the dictionary) discussion is talking about a topic in detail, taking into account different ideas and opinions, then discussion is, according to Fromm, a necessary part of any relationship. Two people are never exactly the same, even husband and wife or mother and child, and discussion is the negotiation of differences to find peaceful resolution using empathy, understanding, and putting aside one's ego.

In my personal experience lately, I have not been given the opportunity to discuss contentious issues in certain relationships. Grown adults have repeatedly refused to speak with me in person or on the phone, resorting to avoidance or only allowing text-based conversations. Being robbed of a voice, just simply not being invited to discuss, is akin to the death of that relationship. If there is no space for discussion, if it is either overtly or covertly banned (through social norms), or if one partner in a relationship is not invited to discuss, that relationship is an empty, superficial shell. Or worse, if people don't discuss they are robbed of the chance for empathy toward one another, and the relationship becomes entirely antagonistic. According to many members of in intellectual dark web, this basic fact is driving the tribalistic tendencies that is dividing our society into ever sharper and more brutal opposition to one another. This lack of discussion is dangerous, because it is the kind of behavior that leads to genocides (this is not hyperbole).

Now, what is happening in a few of my personal relationships is the worst case scenario when discussion is not valued. These relationships might be a lost cause, unless there were a total reversal in behavior. But, let's say, we have two people who do want to at least talk to one another, but are not practiced in the art of discussion. The second point I want to make is that discussion is an art and a skill. It is not something you just decide to do when you are feeling particularly magnanimous. It is something you must work on repeatedly to get good at it. And I want to be clear: I think discussion is essential not just for close, personal relationships, but for all relationships from spouse, children to co-workers to neighbors.

Some members of the intellectual dark web, like Jordan Peterson, make the claim that we have for the better part of a century been modeled a form of 'discussion' on media with low bandwidth, how to make points very quickly (the 30 second sound byte), and to 'win' the discussion as efficiently as possible.  This is more akin to a high school debate, or even more limited than one in the usual time each point is given (imagine panels on CNN with 15 contributors all trying to speak the loudest). What kind of lesson are we learning from this kind of 'discussion?' We are learning to speak as superficially as possible and to 'win' at all costs. We are learning how to get the best quip, earning the 'gotcha' moment or 'destroying' our opponent (as the titles of so many YouTube clips demonstrate).

In an ideal discussion there is no winner or loser, both parties win by becoming closer, growing in understanding, and feeling the efficacy of having overcome the very difficult problem of attempting to understand another human being, of connecting across differences. One thing that is a common social norm in my family of origin (my parents and siblings) is that my family attempts to see others' point of view to a fault. I often see my family (myself included) giving up some (often too much) ground when we have been wronged, just because we are attempting to see the humanity in others and show our humanity and our ultimate desire for resolution. This happens when only one side of the relationship is actually engaging in discussion and the other is engaging in debate and trying to win. One person walks away feeling like they've won, the other person (showing their humanity) has been taken advantage of. When both parties aren't engaged in true discussion, the truth is they both lose.

So, now let's take the ideal example of someone who is engaging you in what they think is a discussion. They are speaking with you in detail, and it is on differing opinions. I think it needs to go beyond this dictionary definition of an exchanging of points. It has to have two further components to be successful: 1. Each person has to actually listen to the other person's points and fully consider them as if they could be true and 2. Each person has to be able to make mistakes and stumble through their own ideas through the act of discussion, and they need to be allowed to evolve during the course of the conversation.

This is the kind of model of discussion I got in the college classroom at the University of Chicago. A topic was introduced and the instructor and the students simply talked about it. We all learned through talking, and we all gave one another the respect of considering if the other person's ideas/argument had something to teach us or could shed light on our own thoughts somehow.

So, what does this mean for me personally? A couple of things. First, I have been practicing the art of discussion in my daily life. In my relationship with Patrick it is something I've been inadvertently practicing for years, but am doing more explicitly now. I am also practicing it with my kids, friends and neighbors. I am learning to listen without just filling my mind with the next point I want to make.

I am learning that talking for a long time, all the time, is the only way for deep relationships to grow. The ideal discussion involves talking over the course of hours, not only giving a topic a few minutes of your time. I am learning to negotiate and compromise and to accept all points, intellectual alongside emotional and spiritual, as valid points from which to enter into a discussion. That is, if someone comes to me irrationally scared or mad or sad, it is ok that their emotion is the main consideration, even if it is irrational. It is ok to discuss emotions, not just debate intellectual points. And, I am attempting to simply lead by example by discussing more with others.

I am talking a lot (big surprise), and I know engaging people in discussion is annoying them to some extent because it is hard to work to engage in discussion and to be emotionally and intellectually present. I know many people would rather engage in superficial talk that is actually building antagonistic relationships. I know bringing up difficulties is a buzzkill for someone looking to relax, physically and intellectually. I know people would rather take the lazy route of repeating sound bytes they've heard instead of engaging one another. But I'll be damned if I give into that way of communication that is currently destroying our world and has the ability to do a lot more harm if left status quo (there is no space to detail this here, but if you start looking at podcasts with members of the intellectual dark web you'll see plenty of evidence from people across the political spectrum).

So, if you see me, get ready for a discussion.

I'm enough.

Very powerful message.

1. Have the courage to be imperfect
2. Embrace vulnerability

Lead to a strong sense of love and belonging.

"Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough" ... then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves."

Working on all of these pieces of advice today.

Vicious cycles and virtuous cycles

As I get older, I tend to think less and less in dualistic categories like good and bad, but on a spectrum from bad to good. I don't think as much in black and white, but in grey, embracing the complexity and paradox of life. I have also recently been thinking in terms of the movements of life as cycles. Sometimes I get this cascading effect of a vicious cycle wherein one bad thing contributes to another and another and things get worse and worse. Other times in my life, I feel like I am in a virtuous cycle wherein one good thing just leads to another and another. I feel so grateful that in the present moment, I am in a virtuous cycle.

Leaving North America put me in this virtuous cycle. I am not saying it is entirely because I left North America that I am in this positive space, but as I see personal, political, social, health, economic and many other relations falling apart into sociopathic chaos among family and friends living in North America, I have to wonder if where one lives can either make you happy and healthy or sad, depressed, unhealthy, and pathologically anxious and stressed?

I have studied sociology long enough to be aware of the effects of institutions on individuals. Take, for example, something that always surprises my students, that mental health disorders differ greatly by nation. Depression and anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, autism, eating disorders and others are much more rampant in highly industrialized countries, and the United States has the most mental health disorders on the planet. 1 out of 6 takes a mental health prescription. 7 out of 10 take some daily pharmaceutical! 20% of Americans take at least 5 drugs daily!

The moment Patrick and I made the decision to leave North America, we were facing some pretty serious personal and interpersonal challenges. Having a new baby and a toddler, taking on new jobs, writing a dissertation, struggling with communication with family members, feeling isolated, misunderstood, and hurt, we were struggling with all sorts of stress-related physical illness.  All of that, and to add in the complete and utter chaos of moving a family with two small children across the world with very little sympathy or help. It was the hardest time in my life, but the best decision I have ever made.

The moment we made that choice the vicious cycle started to turn virtuous. Patrick was offered an online job at a prestigious university, we found a place to stay, there was some local discussion about hiring us as English teachers in Uruguay (didn't end up happening). Once we arrived, I could feel the trauma start to dissipate, but it happened very slowly. We were still struggling with the trauma and the difficulty of living in this entirely new place, but as we began to let life unfold (and take daily walks on the beach), we made new friends almost immediately. These friends stopped in for a quick chat and some mate a couple of times weekly, and we began to connect with them.  This is something that was unimaginable for us in the U.S. Isa started school and easily made friends there. She began to get all sorts of invites to birthday parties and we met more parents and they embraced us fully. They were interested in us as immigrants, but did not exoticize us.

I made the decision to work through some of the trauma from my life in North America and address it in order to move past it. That was the hardest thing I have ever done (because of my intense fear of confrontation), but I am so glad I did it because there is no way I would have been able to let go of my resentment unless I came clean about it and addressed it. This added to the virtuous cycle. All of a sudden I felt more confident in my ability to handle difficult psychological and social interpersonal problems, something I was terrified of before.  I stood my ground and owned up to my hurt feelings, and I also learned a lot about other people's thoughts and expectations of me that I would never have learned unless I brought the issue up. And the virtuous cycle continues!

Then, having moved past all of this trauma, I was able to put myself in a mental space to complete my dissertation. In about 3 months I wrote almost an entire book. My creative energy was unleashed when my mind is not taken up by resentment or stress or anxiety! Then, my parenting started to improve. I could see my girls and just be present with them. Giving them my attention when they most need it is the best gift any parent can give their children. And I noticed a difference in the quality of attention I could give. Not a simple smile while I thought of something else or multitasked on my phone, but truly paying attention. Helping Isa build a crown out of cardboard or pushing Vivian on the swing and biting her toes as they reach my face each time, making her giggle endlessly.

Organizing our lives so that we are free from the daily trauma of life in North America, I began to explore other means of self-improvement. I found a diet that has made me not only lose weight, but I feel satiated and stronger and have more mental clarity and less pain. I started looking into different ways to wire my brain to be happier and more present, and I am practicing these new activities daily, and I see a huge difference. I am more present. I am able to enjoy life more. I feel less anxiety about unknown things or difficult things, but see them as something I can handle confidently.

When more issues arise with my family, I am not stressed or considering them anxiously. I do not let them roll around in my head, keeping me up at night. Instead, I notice them from a distance. I view them as a result of a sick society (on various medications). But I am also attempting to move past only this simple, dualistic judgment and see these people's feelings with empathy. I know they are victims themselves. I know they hurt from all sorts of traumas that have happened to them. I see their humanity. And, for most of them, that humanity makes me want to do the work of continuing a relationship. So, I attempt to reach out with my own vulnerability and humanity (instead of with lies or political machinations or gossip or judgments). I have become closer with several family members than I have in years, and for that I am so grateful. And the virtuous cycle continues.

The best part of all of this virtuous cycle we are experiencing is improved social relations, both here in Uruguay and with the people in North America that are worth our time and attention. Seeing others with empathy and letting go of resentment has allowed us to experience a new level of closeness with people in North America with whom we once felt alienated. We are building up our relationships slowly and carefully. Each contact a step in the direction of love.

Here in Uruguay social relations are even easier. We are invited to several social engagements weekly with other young families locally. And about monthly we get to see our expat friends. We have been lucky enough to fall into a social group of artists and artisans, yogis, authors, musicians, microbrewers. Overall our friends here are really lovely, interesting, creative people. And of course I feel anxiety about my (in)ability to speak Spanish and follow everything with our local friends. But each time I try I grow in skill and confidence. And our friends are incredibly helpful and kind in helping me to understand and to learn. The social gatherings are also really lovely and not stressful at all. The kids run around together, the parents all do their part to watch all the children, we share mate and check in with one another. Our kids are already old friends. And I feel we are growing into old friends with the adults too. The process is very organic, and as a sociologist I know the importance of social cohesion. New reports say loneliness is the leading cause of death in the U.S. So, as we build our little community, the virtuous cycle continues.

The social cohesion is something that is virtuous in our kids too. When Isa went for a short time for preschool in North America, she quickly learned that she was not allowed to touch anyone. Not other kids or the teacher. No touch (!!!!) at all. In Uruguay, she gives besitos to every child and teacher every morning when she arrives and every afternoon when she leaves. Touching well is something that is learned in school. She hugs and plays. She sits in the older kids' laps. They hold hands and skip. The older kids pick her up so she can reach. She is learning how to make friends. How to touch nicely. How to be a good community member. How to do her part.

The other day her school went to a retirement home and the kids sat and listened intently to an old woman tell stories about the local area. I am sure it was insanely boring. But they were taught how to respect this woman and her oral history. And the woman I am sure was happy to share. It is these little ways in which implicit lessons about respect, dignity and community seep into her little brain that make me so happy she's not in American classroom sitting still with her hands to herself (where she could one day be prescribed a drug forcing her to sit still). In Uruguay she runs in and out of the classroom as she likes. Until she's 6, she is free to spend her time at school as she wishes. Playing and creating and learning little lessons about how to be a good person. And Vivian has already embodied many of these lessons. When Uruguayans drink mate they drink one sip themselves and then offer it to everyone else. Vivian takes my mate and shares it around the room. She shares all of her food. She is already thinking of others in this very Uruguayan way.

As a result of all the goodness coming out of these virtuous cycles, things are going so well with my marriage. Patrick is exploring so much creatively. He is playing the guitar every day. He and Isa are writing songs together. He designed our house! He is reading so many books. He is transforming our property into a beautiful paradise. Cutting in some places, planting in others. We are both learning so much about all the ecological principles we came here to learn: like how to make food sustainably, how to be a good husband to both animals and the land, and how to handle waste, and how to preserve ecosystems in the process. We are learning together, and having fun, and can spend our days as we wish. We both have work to do for our jobs, but we can decide when to do it, and how to structure our days. What a gift!

I am so grateful to be in this period of virtuous cycles. I am not perfect. I still have moments of sadness or anxiety or frustration. I still feel lonely. I still get nervous about confrontation. I still question myself. I still eat crap sometimes. But, slowly, I am healing. I am growing into a better, healthier person. And I just hope I can keep the virtuous cycle moving in an upward direction, because I can't wait to see how good it can get, if it is already this great.

Little (big) changes in a new place

I am feeling urged to write today about the small ways in which the culture here is changing me. I am thinking of a daily routine that in small doses doesn’t seem like much, but, added together, entirely changes who I am and what I thought I thought. Let me explain.

Each day when I take Isa to school and pick her up, I get out of the car and go in. I greet the other parents and children and teachers each with a kiss and a quick moment of catching up. They ask how I am doing and wait for a response. Usually everyone just says ‘fine, thanks and you,’ but it seems they are actually waiting for an answer and looking you in the eye while asking.

If you described this cultural norm to me before moving here (getting out of the car and greeting everyone every time I picked up or dropped off from school) I would likely be horrified. I am a skeptic, a loner, a misanthrope, and someone who generally hates superficial pleasantries and small talk.

In the U.S. I find small talk unbearable. Partly, I think, because when people ask you how you are doing there it is often so hollow that answering seems like a trap. Like, if I said happy they might say ‘good for you’ sarcastically (since they are likely struggling in some way or another), or if I said I was struggling myself in some way the American response would be thinly veiled schadenfreude combined with fake concern. And the sheer laziness of not getting out of the car to drop your kid off at school. The insane lengths teachers go to let the parents stay in their car. The long pickup lines with elaborate systems that identify which car belongs to which small child.

I used to think I liked the convenience of the car pickup at school. How nice to not have to get out of the car! How easy. And to not have to speak to any of the other parents. A dream! I don’t want their sarcasm or schadenfreude anyway.  I despise small talk. It is all political machinations, even amongst the preschool parents. Who speaks to whom? Who is organizing the next fundraiser with the celebrity chef and the microbrew food trucks? Will there be mason jar glasses for the beer? That’s such a cute idea, Jennifer! I wish I had your touch! Did you hear that Melissa isn’t going? I mean, she didn’t help organize, but she won’t even go to support her daughter’s school? Some people, I mean, are just so, well you know, I am preaching to the choir here.

But here, I am surprising myself by finding I actually want to get out of the car. In fact, I want to ride my damn bike to school. Of course I haven’t done it yet. But I dream of doing something active, which was the furthest thing from my mind up North. I like to see the other parents and the kids and greet them and ask them how they are. It is very subtle the way in which the culture is different. I think if an ethnographer from a third country came to both places and saw parents interact at school they wouldn’t see much difference besides the besito down here in Uruguay. But it’s something about the eyes, and the smiles, and the way in which people are inviting you in without judgment or as a premeditated way to trap you into a social faux pas.

As a result, I am actually changing who I am. What I think. I don’t look at groups of people with disdain and frustration. I look hopefully and I find myself opening myself to them. I want to get involved. I want to invite people over. I want to go to their events. I am much less lazy or entitled in thinking it is a huge inconvenience to get out of the damn car. It is a privilege to get to be a part of this community. To see them and to be seen. To have the time to chit chat for a few moments, and not feel hurried or stressed by it. My schedule is not so jam packed that I have small margins for error. That is a luxury.

Just another small moment in the life of an immigrant, and in the exploration of the ways in which places and social structures can actually change individuals. That is, change is not only in one’s mind, it is also very often due to external forces. I am happy about who I am becoming. I used to be proud of my loner status. But, guess what?, it made me lonely. I am less lonely now, and becoming less lonely by the day. What a gift. 

Happy birthday mama

Today is my mother's birthday. There's this movie Lady Bird that just came out, and it (in a revelatory way) shows the ways in which mothers organize their lives around their children, while trying to maintain a sense of self, and of dignity. When reading about Lady Bird, and in the process of becoming a mother myself, I am growing more and more appreciative of my own mother.

One of the most important insights I've had lately is about the ways in which I didn't experience my mom doing things for me that helped me, or nourished me, or silently supported me. Like, the bagged lunch. It was just made. I never saw her doing it. She never congratulated herself for it. But there it was, in my bag for school, every single day. And as a child, I had the freedom from thinking about that one part of my life. 

There are so many ways in which my mother shaped me, invisibly. How she noticed things I thought I was hiding. Young adult thoughts and emotions that I might have been hiding even from myself. And, like Lady Bird, I pushed her away cruelly. I wanted autonomy, privacy, as teenagers and young adults do. But now, as a young mother, I see it all anew. 

I see what it took for my mom, with very little outside help (her parents didn't live near and my father's parents were not primary caregivers in our lives), to raise three kids. My dad was away from the home one out of every three days (on a firefighter schedule), and on those days she was a single mother. I know on days with only my two kids how much I struggle without Patrick home. When I am putting one child to sleep and I hear a noise outside and I am fearful without another adult to help manage one or more ongoing situations. But she did it. And I remember my early childhood fondly. I felt so secure. She made me feel that way, invisibly.

I was so cared for, and that took so much more work than I knew. I always had dry and clean clothes, something to eat, she was always, always patient. She made us intelligent by paying attention to us, and speaking to us, and engaging with us, always. She was stable and responsible and someone I always knew I could go to when other adults or children let me down. She was reliable. And that added a rosy tint to my childhood. Being so lucky to have a reliable mother means taking her for granted. Because she was always there, you came to expect it. 

When I was back in Chicago I watched my mother spend the better part of a day steaming my sister's bridesmaid gown for a wedding. And I realized in that moment, all the time she has spent doing something for us unnoticed. And all the time I now do the same. And how hard it is to be unnoticed, just to care for your kids. But the reward is worth it.

Just yesterday she sent me this message:

"Cleanse your life and fill it with genuine, interesting people that have your best interest at heart. It is just that simple. If that makes me ridiculous, I'll wear that like a badge of honor. Loving relationships are not a power play. And for goodness sake don't shed a tear or lose any sleep over small minded people, not deserving of a moment of your pain."

There she is again. Reading my emotions before I knew myself what I felt. And taking the time to articulate, and guide me when I most need it.

So, I want to take a day to notice her. To take notice. And for all of you reading to take notice of my mom, and your mom, and yourself as a mom. And all the little ways in which we can choose to build each other up without fanfare or recognition, and how my mom has spent her lifetime doing just that for me and my siblings.

I love you mamas. Happy birthday.