A lump, and quiet wisdom in the night

Not long ago, I found a lump. Not only that, but my breasts were sore and ached as if deeply bruised. To women of my age, that means only one thing: panic! For a week I shuttled between medical services. My doctor felt the lump and raised her eyebrows. She sent me off to the hospital. I stripped down in a tiny cubicle and put on a freezing, open-backed gown. I was shown into a dark room where a brisk woman ground an ultrasound wand into my aching breasts. She decided I needed a mammogram, and so I moved to another dim room where a different brisk woman pulled and kneaded my tender breasts into place, lowered the great weight of the machine until they were nearly flat, and took some shots. When it was over, I dressed and wandered out through a crowded waiting room, feeling sick.

The next day, the hospital called me. The pictures didn’t give them enough information; I had to go back. Again, I waited in a crowded room, stripped off in a tiny cubicle, and had my breasts kneaded into place. Again, the machine squeezed them into pancakes and took shots. Again I dressed, and left feeling sick.

And all the while, I panicked. Calm on the outside, I went through the motions; but inside, I was in turmoil. I couldn’t sleep. Instead I lay in bed each night beside my husband, kneading my breasts, feeling the soreness, getting the full measure of the lump, and thinking about death. Not yet forty, the mother of three primary school aged kids: I was not prepared to die.

About three o’clock one morning, something shifted. I realised that life was good. I didn’t want to be married to anyone else; I enjoyed being a mother; I loved where we live; I loved my work; and I had recently understood my life’s trajectory, a big deep satisfying revelation which filled me with a sense of home. And I realised that there was little more one could expect from life than to come to understand oneself, to be happy with one’s situation, and to be flooded with gratitude for all that has been. Even if this life was coming to an end, it had already been so much more than enough; I had already experienced abundance.

A couple of days later, I discovered that the lump was not malignant; it was just a lump; and the sensation of bruising was just the latest symptom of the candida that has raged through my system for years.

If the results had been different, I don’t know whether I would have been able to hold onto that early-morning moment. The quiet wisdom of the small hours is hard to remember in the full light of day; in the face of work and study and children; in the reality of sickness; in the waking awareness of all the things a person my age is still expected to do and be.

But I want to record it here, to remember that at one time I knew deep in my bones that already my life has been more than enough; already, it overflows with goodness and mercy; already, my life is abundant.

Response: Kith: The riddle of the childscape

When was the last time you encountered the word ‘tatterdemalion’? I have just read one of the most playful, exuberant, relishing encounters with language that I have ever come across: Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, by Jay Griffiths. The author loves language and odd words; she plays with meanings and roots and etymologies; she relishes alliteration and other musical tricks; and the cadence of her writing is positively lyrical. Or, as she writes (in relation to the metaphors we have for feeling and knowing, but which equally pertains to her modes of expression), ‘Language…, a beautiful partisan, waits with rifle and song to ambush us into remembering what we used to know as children.’

Yes, the writing is beautiful, drawing the reader in; but the point of the book is not language. Instead, in the course of writing her last book, Wild, Griffiths visited many indigenous tribes and found herself wondering why the indigenous kids she observed were so cheerfully grounded, while the Western kids she knew were so unhappy by comparison. Kith is her attempt to answer that question.

Her answer is long, opinionated, and unabashedly Romantic. In brief, she argues that kids in the West rarely get what they really need: secure early attachment followed by extreme freedom; a relationship with the woods and the wild, including wildlife; a big tribe of kids and adults; stories packed with metaphor which allow for the expression of a child’s emerging sense of self; lots of free time; rites of passage into adulthood; freedom from consumerism; a rich, responsive education; and so on.

Instead, what they get is ‘controlled’ crying and the physical isolation of cots, prams and car seats, followed by helicopter parenting and little nuclear families; constant surveillance; highly structured schedules; media outlets and politicians which portray them in a constantly negative light; stop and search laws, curfews and dispersal orders for the crime of being young; lives trapped indoors; hollow stories; no rites of passage; and industrial-style, heavily politicised education.

None of these observations are particularly original. In recent years, Skenazy encouraged parents to let their kids be more independent; Louv urged kids into the great outdoors; Hodgkinson called for tribes and freedom and faerie stories; Robinson advocated for an education which drew out the unique gifts of each child; and many, many writers begged us chilly Westerners to be more physically affectionate with our babies and toddlers. It’s obvious stuff.

What sets Griffiths’ book apart is the way she brings these themes together under the umbrella of Romanticism. She compares the childhood experiences of Romantic poets – Wordsworth, Blake, Clare, Whitman – with indigenous practices of childcare, arguing that they have much in common; and goes on to suggest that these approaches will lead to happier children. Further, she argues, we lack (but need) a Western philosophical framework to describe our parenting practices; Romanticism fits the bill.

I love her writing; I agree with many of her observations regarding how kids could be better raised; and I find many of her arguments regarding Romantic and indigenous ways of raising children reasonable. However, this book is so passionately one-eyed, and so flawed, that Griffiths fails to convince overall – and this is a pity.

To begin with, despite identifying what Western kids lack – such as secure attachment, a big tribe, and rites of passage – Griffiths offers few practical suggestions as how to get these things into kids’ lives. How do we make parenting easier so that parents have the emotional capacity to forge deep strong attachments to their children? How do we balance the needs of parents with the needs of children? How do we widen people’s perceptions of their role in the lives of other people’s kids, so that parents aren’t required to fulfil all the adult roles in a child’s life? In a post-church society, who develops and conducts rites of passage? And so on. These questions are all raised by the text; yet Griffiths offers no solutions, and it is simply not helpful to identify what is needed (and indeed to criticise harshly how we parents, of which Griffiths does not appear to be one, do it wrong), but to offer no suggestions for change. It is left to the reader to imagine what could be and then put it into place – and yet many of the necessary structures are almost impossible to tackle family by family: they require cultural change.

For example, to take the example of a tribe, it took nine years of talking and parenting before we found a family who was genuinely interested in and able to live in the same street as us, and, more than that, willing to get involved in our kids’ lives in ways that eased the pressure on our child-parent relationship. Griffiths writes rather breathlessly that, in one tribe, parents never discipline their own children; that is left to others so that the affection of the parent-child relationship is never damaged. That sounds bloody wonderful, but it would require a seismic shift in how we as a society take responsibility for other people’s children for it to be even remotely possible here.

Another weakness of the book is how Griffiths glosses over the hardships of life for indigenous children. Sure, traditional ways of childhood sound great for those who survive, especially boys: roaming, hunting, fishing, and untold freedom for kids. But traditional ways also involve high infant mortality, infanticide when the rains don’t come or too many girls have been born, the ‘betrayal’ (as it’s described in the book by a young victim) of female genital mutilation, the sexual trade of young girls to forge connections or strengthen associations between tribes, social controls which require high levels of conformity, even child sacrifice for religious purposes. In over 350 pages of praising indigenous childcare practices and criticising ours, Giffiths devotes a scant couple of pages to listing some of the downsides of being an indigenous kid, and offers no explanation or justification for these less than happy practices. This is deeply unsatisfactory, and feels unfair. At least kids in the West get to live when the rains don’t come; most Western girls don’t have their genitals hacked off with rusty razor blades; and the sexual trade in young girls is looked upon as an aberration and a crime. For these aspects of the Western approach to childhood, I am grateful.

Because I have never lived with an indigenous tribe, I find it hard to judge the veracity of Griffiths’ account of indigenous lives. Even so, I found myself questioning it. For example, in one place Griffiths writes that after spending an afternoon with over a hundred indigenous kids, she realised that she hadn’t once heard a kid cry, and that she couldn’t imagine the same situation with Western kids. Having just spent three weeks of the school holidays with two different tribes of kids, aged between 6 months and 15 years, I can vouch that even Western kids rarely cry when they’re running around in a pack. They get busy, and work things out; and so I’m not convinced that this lack of crying is a unique feature of indigenous life.

To the contrary, in fact. One of my friends lived for two years in an indigenous village in Papua New Guinea. When she returned, she told me that one thing she will always remember is the crying. It formed the constant soundscape; she said she could not remember a time when she couldn’t hear a child crying, and that coming back to Australia was a great relief from this point of view. Was this village, eight hours’ travel by small boat from Rabaul, ‘less indigenous’ than the people visited by Griffiths? Or, in her visits with indigenous people, did Griffiths excise weeping children from her experience and hear only what she wanted to hear? I have no way of knowing, but I am sceptical that the lives of indigenous children following traditional ways of life are always so blissful. (As for the lives of indigenous kids whose traditional ways of life are being torn to shreds, that is, most of them, I weep.)

This blanket enthusiasm for indigenous practices coupled with a blanket criticism of Western practices grates; and it also leads to ridiculous inconsistencies. Griffiths is scathing of the way Western children are penned up indoors, locked away from the wild spaces that they need for their development. Yet in a chapter devoted to the importance of imagination and metaphor, Griffiths writes positively about the Kogi people in Colombia, who identify a boy as a future spiritual leader. This infant is taken from his mother, and shut in a dim cave for the first nine years of his life; his only exposure to the wider world is through the stories told to him. After nine years, he emerges as a spiritual leader (or, I suspect, completely mad). Of this practice, Griffiths admits only that some Westerners may feel ‘ambivalence’. Horror is more like it. One is left with the impression that it’s not okay for Western kids to be inside playing the piano, learning to cook, reading faerie stories, building cubbies, or playing hide-and-seek; but an indigenous kid can be locked away in a dark cave for nine years. Oh, please! Clearly, this is absurd; yet Griffiths seems cheerfully oblivious to both the brutality of some indigenous practices and the inconsistencies within her text which lead her to condemn in the West that which she extols in other cultures.

Griffiths also suffers from the hopeless sentimentality towards children that one sees in non-parents from time to time. As a parent, I do find it helpful to be reminded to let my kids take risks, to get them outside, to let them have their privacy and secret spaces and special dens. I like being a little breathless about the idea of childhood, and I know that when we relax our family culture, everyone is happier and more cheerful. But I also know just how much of childhood is about shit and sex and fighting and greed and fear, not only in my own children or the children I spend time with, but in my memories of childhood; and it seems that there is little room in Griffiths’ worldview for such normal kids. Not all kids are large-spirited hearty adventurers or passionate artists. Griffiths seems to be unaware of the variations in personality which are found, I suspect, across all cultural styles.

Her one-eyed view also means that Griffiths fails to see the opportunities for wildness and secret places that city children find: on the subway, up the fire stairs, under the stoop, in a cubby, or in the branches of a tree at the local park. Not every wild space or secret den needs to be a rural idyll. She seems to miss the ways city kids lose and construct themselves, and make little nets of privacy, not just in folk tales but in music and dance and sport, and dreaming in the back seat of the car. Her unabashed primitivism lacks subtlety; and there is so much good about being a Western kid that I find it hard to perceive the crisis of childhood to which she constantly alludes.

So I have lots of issues with the book; still, I recommend it. Griffiths’ observations about what makes kids thrive are good sense, overall; and the great exuberant eloquence of her writing is such a delight, such a gift, that I am prepared to forgive very many of the flaws. Cat-shadows in beetroot patches will win me over, every time.

‘Obedience is deadly, will is divine and the vital wildness of the human spirit is purring, over there, like a cat-shadow in the beetroot patch.’

***

PS: If you’re not really up for a long, loquacious, one-eyed, deeply flawed rant – though why not, I can’t imagine! – but you still want to think about how to parent generously, I’d recommend Hodgkinson’s utilitarian The Idle Parent. My longer response to it is here, but, in short, it advocates freedom and choice; is packed with suggestions for ways to maximise love and affection and minimise the rage and frustration of parenting; and urges parents to seek ways of making family life fun. It’s intelligent, enjoyable, good-humoured and opinionated, and lacks only cat-shadows and beetroot patches. And who has a beetroot patch, anyway?

Farewell to school reading

For nearly five years, I have spent a couple of hours each week reading with kids at a local primary school. Most of the kids at that school are from a refugee background; many of their parents had very little schooling themselves; and books and reading are rarely part of their home life. Many of the kids come from large families, and so even those parents who might be able to provide reading support in the classroom tend to be at home caring for younger children.

Yet children need assistance to learn to read, preferably one on one. A teacher in a classroom doesn’t have time to read with every student every day; this is where volunteers come into play. Most middle class schools have a host of parents who volunteer in the classroom. At this school, because of the family situations of the students, other adults step in.

We volunteers can’t provide the daily reading with each child that is recommended; and yet even our few hours are something. What, I’m not always sure. There are many weeks when the reading is the point – I see a kid make a leap in fluency, or really understand a concept. Other weeks, the relationship is the point, and I was given the bangle in the photograph to prove it! Still other weeks, the point might be nothing more than to show through our actions to a group of kids that not all Australians are hostile to refugees.

They are all good reasons to be there, and yet I feel like it’s time to wind up my involvement. Stop reading with these fantastic kids, stop traipsing down once a week for even that little while, and start doing something else with my time. The problem is, having once committed, I struggle to step away – especially since I have no pressing reason not to.

Moreover, I am aware that I am the powerful one in these relationships. I can choose to be involved, or to move on; whatever I do, people will still be grateful for the paltry efforts I have put in. Meanwhile, the kids turn up to school week after week without the educational consolidation that many other kids’ home lives provide; they have no choice in the matter. For several months now I have grappled with these entwined feelings – that I have had enough, and that I feel guilty about stopping – as I try to decide what I will commit to this year.

One morning late last year, as I was preparing to head down, I received a text from the school reminding me that it was mini-Eid. This meant that almost no kids were at school, and so there was no point in me going. I unexpectedly had the morning off. So I dropped my daughter at kinder, then basked in the freedom. I didn’t do anything amazing: I hung out the washing, wrote a blog post, checked my emails, read a chapter of a book, and picked up my daughter again. And it was fantastic – an unexpected gift, a few hours to centre down in what had been a busy week.

More, I felt deeply relieved. I was glad to be home, glad not to be negotiating books and behaviour, glad not to answer the same questions that I am asked every week. ‘Can I call you Alice?’ (No, my name is Alison); ‘Where’s your little daughter?’ (at kinder, you know that!); ‘How will she go on your bike?’ (on the trailer, which is parked at kinder); ‘Why you cut your hair short like a boy’s? Tsk, so ugly!’ (I like it that way); and so on.

The deep relief I experienced when I stayed home is a clue, I think, that my involvement in the school should come to an end. My low grade annoyance at the weekly questions is another. If I am tired by these kids and this situation, I am not giving them my best; there are many days when I struggle not to get cranky.

It’s not that there isn’t a pressing need; it’s just that, for whatever reason, I am no longer the one to meet it. In this world, there are billions of pressing needs, and billions of people to meet them. I am not indispensable. I have to trust that, if I let this go, someone else will step into my shoes – with any luck, someone more gentle, more humorous, and better with kids. And I have to trust that, if I let this go, something else will arise to which I can offer my time, and my self.

How to prepare for a hot day

 

The night before, water the plants. In the morning, erect a temporary shade cloth over the seedlings using an old red curtain and ropes; get the girls to hold the corners taut while you tie the knots. Place milk crates over any small plants that could use a bit of shade.

Fill the chooks' water container. Place it under the fig tree. Water the terracotta pots surrounding their dust bath. As long as you water them every few hours, they'll keep the chickens cool.

To rig up a shade over the back door, you'll need the ladder. Fetch it, extend it, and make it steady. Climb up, and tie a length of old clothesline to a veranda post. Thread the rope through the loops of another red curtain, then run it through a metal bracket on the opposite post. Knot it firmly – the wind will be strong. Pin the curtain wide on the rope with bulldog clips. Climb down and put the ladder away. Tie the bottom corners of the curtain to the veranda posts with short lengths of rope. Unroll the canvas awnings over the back veranda and make them fast. Kick yourself that you haven't ordered awnings for the front veranda, go inside, and add it to the list of jobs.

Close any windows. Draw the curtains. The bathroom is the hottest room, so shut the bathroom door. Notice the trickles of air coming in. Block them with a door snake at the front door, a green pillow at the back. Plug the disused keyhole with cotton wool. Climb up on a chair and fasten a sheet of aluminium foil to the window over the front door, shiny side out. Think about rigging up another old curtain between the front veranda posts to shade the front door, and decide it's inhospitable.

Fill the ice cube trays and put them in the freezer. Peel the bananas and freeze them in bags for an afternoon snack. Drop some cucumber into a jug of water and put it in the fridge.

Get out the fans, the jigsaws, the textas, the board games. Tell the kids to stay inside. Choose a book and stretch out in the big green chair; throw your legs over its arms.

Lose yourself. Around you, the house is a cave on a Greek island, shady, dark and cool. The house is a memory of rainforest light, dappled green and gold. The house is a ship. The awnings billow and rattle, the rafters creak. The red curtain has filled like a sail, the clouds, glimpsed through high windows, are scudding along, and you're sailing away to sea.

(Books reviewed here and here.)

Is there a 'real' me waiting to be unmasked?

In my last post, I provided a link to a sermon I gave at Christmas. In it, I said “...one step on the journey is to start living as if we trusted because, like most things, if we practice long enough then eventually it will become second nature, and shape who we become.”

Someone wrote to me and asked:

You have said that in behaving like you already believe something, you eventually found you did believe in it. When I try to do that, part of me feels like I'm not being honest. Is it possible to be true to yourself, to the ‘real’, ‘unmasked’ person you are, and yet act out another persona totally? I really don't understand how one can. To me, it seems that in order to act the way one ‘should’, one is suppressing how one really feels, thinks and even believes - and so is not being the ‘real’, ‘unmasked’ person at all. I'd really like to know how you came to understand this as a way of changing, and maybe even ask if the questions I raise with myself are ones you have already raised and resolved.

Perhaps others have similar questions, so here is my response.

***

You raise some really good questions, fundamental to what we believe a human being is, because behind your questions is a big assumption that our culture makes: that there is a ‘real’ person underneath, waiting to be ‘unmasked’. There may have been some confusion in the sermon, as I suggested there are ways to unmask or reveal the light that is already shining within us, and you may have assumed this meant the ‘real’ person. However, I was calling for the continuing revelation of the divine spark within us, the gift from God. This spark is a part of us, but it is not some ‘real’ us.

As for some ‘real’ us, well, I don’t buy the myth that if we all did enough psychotherapy or drumming rituals then we’d know who we really are. How we live reveals exactly who we really are: our values, our histories, our wounds, our beliefs, our choices. How we choose to live, how we respond to what life dishes out, whether we value our wounds or our healing and so on makes it clear who we are, what we hold dear, and what values we prioritise.

Our society venerates ideas like ‘being true to oneself’ and ‘authentic ways of living’, but when I observe people who base their lives on these concepts, I often see very selfish and dishonest behaviours. For example, I think of people I know who have justified extra-marital affairs because they claim that by expressing the passion they feel for their lover they are being true to themselves. They cannot admit the dishonesty they engaged in when they allowed their heart to stray so far from someone to whom they have pledged faithfulness, nor the dishonesty they practiced when they met covertly with their lover.

More personally, I think that if I had lived in a way that was ‘true to myself’, you would have seen a wounded little girl who sought refuge and comfort in sex and alcohol, and who tried to feel powerful through hurting others. Those, at least, have been my instincts; but I never wanted to be that sort of person, so I haven’t had affairs or drunk way too much way too often; and I have practiced holding my tongue and learning some self-control and gentleness. After a decade or two of these disciplines, the little girl has grown up a lot and her wounds are healing; she no longer needs to be destructive to feel powerful.

Instead of being true to myself, then, I try to be true to my Christian calling. Sometimes the expression of this will look like being true to myself, or ‘finding’ myself; other times, it will look and feel like the very opposite, as I engage in the hard and painful drudgery of learning to be faithful. The times when it appears that I have found or recognised something essential about myself are often the result of years of patient, tedious, largely invisible practices which, through repetition, have altered my approach to other people and the world, shaping which values I live out and what sort of person I have become.

Being true to the Christian calling won’t ever require me to act out an entirely different persona; but it will require that I take a good hard look at my persona and work on the bits that aren’t Christian. Christianity – like any faith discipline – is like a rock tumbler: what goes in is a rock, what comes out is a rock; it’s the same thing, only all the rough edges have been knocked off and it is now something beautiful. And the rough edges are knocked off our persona by practicing the disciplines of faith.

Professional athletes and musicians and cooks practice their passion for hours every day. They learn to change a grip or a posture or a habit, and at first it feels unnatural; but then it becomes second nature and part of how they do what they do. Faith is the same. If it’s our passion, we practice it every day, yet there will always be habits that feel uncomfortable and ‘fake’ because faith is so countercultural. For example, when I decided to be Christian, I felt very fake going to church, singing, praying and talking to members of the congregation, but I identified these disciplines as part of the tradition that I wanted to belong to, I practiced them, and eventually they became second nature. So too with trust and all the other disciplines of faith. They feel fake, then they feel real because they have become part of the person we are becoming, part of the mix of choices and habits and practices and beliefs and attitudes that constitute our growing and maturing selves.

I hope this answers your questions – and maybe raises a few more!

Alison

Christmas Lights

A couple of weeks ago, I went for a swim. Now, I don’t swim often; I’m a slow swimmer with rotten form; and I can’t swim freestyle for fear of drowning. Usually, I remember these things about myself. But that week at the pool, I noticed a strong, muscular man cruising down the next lane. He had big shoulders and big biceps – and I was keeping up with him! What’s more, he was resting between laps, which meant, I realised rather proudly, that I was overtaking him, and had more stamina! I felt pretty chuffed as I made my way up and down, up and down, racing this big guy, who was, of course, totally oblivious to my efforts.

***

To read or hear more of this Christmas sermon, click here.

Participant observation, with cake

 

My daughter wanted to go to the park after kindergarten. So I walked her over and then, ignoring the knots of chatting parents, went and sat under a tree. I was feeling introverted; I had a crossword in my bag; I thought I could solve a few clues while my daughter played.

Within a few minutes, kids were gathering round. 'What are you doing?' they asked, then 'Look at me! Look at me!' they called. A two-year-old sibling leaned into my side. 'You're her [my daughter's] mother,' she said knowingly. Then she offered me a gumnut.

I thanked her for the gumnut, and we talked about its shape and pretty colour. Then I turned back to my crossword and filled in a few squares. She went for a wander, telling to me to watch her.

'No thanks,' I said, 'I'll do my crossword while you go for a walk.'

'Ok,' she said. A few minutes later she was back, with a pocket full of gumnuts. 'We're making cake,' she announced. I asked what was in her cake. Silence. 'Broccoli?' I asked. 'No!' she said, laughing. 'Beans?' I asked. 'Noooo!' she said again. 'Chocolate?' I asked. 'Yes!' she crowed, 'and sugar! And eggs!'

'Sounds delicious,' I said.

She had a little stick which she was using to stir the 'gredients' in her pocket. 'Mix, mix, mix' she said.

Then she found another little stick and handed it over. 'You stir,' she instructed, holding her pocket open and leaning towards me.

I gave up on the crossword, and gave the cake a good stir. She baked it, cut it up, and gave me a slice. Together, we ate. 'Good!' she said.

***

There are reams written about how to study kids and childhood. There are certainly projects which seek to find out particular things and which require formal methods; but in general I find the suggestion that researchers need special techniques to talk with kids slightly ludicrous.

I'm not naturally good with kids. I'd never make a kinder teacher; I don't like children's birthday parties; and group work will never be my forte. I always find new kids and groups of kids slightly terrifying; and too much time with children drives me batty. Even so, it seems pretty clear to me that kids are just people. They swell up when we remember their names; they like us to speak quietly and with respect; they appreciate it when we join in their games. It's not rocket science – and it's hardly different from adults. I may not mix gumnuts in your pocket, but if I remember your name, take you seriously, and engage in whatever you think is fun – a coffee, a chat, a walk, a joke – chances are you'll think I'm a good egg.

At the park, the little girl and I were just playing; but I have no doubt that, had I asked a few gentle questions while we mixed our cake, she would have told me to the best of her ability whatever I wanted to know. In fact, I didn't need to ask her anything to learn something about my own interests. I'm studying friendships between children and adults; and just the way our interaction unfolded spoke volumes about how kids and adults communicate and share small intimacies.

If I had been wearing my researcher hat, I could have described my role as 'participant observation', and written about the event from an 'autoethnographic perspective'. But she's not a formal part of my project, and I was only wearing a sunhat, so I wrote this post, instead.