She said it in 2016

My predictions for the next four... or ten years

I don't particularly want to be political on my blog, but this election was a call to all of us. It is past time we look at how this happened.

I know you're probably sick of politics at the moment. Frankly, so am I. It all seems too depressing and also confusing. It feels like talking about it does nothing but dig us into despair and negativity.

Here's the thing though. I have seen every part of this coming. When I was in my twenties and organizing international anti-war protests and one of my best friends was from Syria, I shocked her by predicting that her country was next. I could have been a bit more gentle about my horribly accurate prediction, but I saw the writing on the wall--wiggly, magnifying-glass eyes or no. 

A year ago, I also predicted Trump as president. I was confused all winter and spring about why people thought there was any contest in the Republican primary. I never had a moment's doubt about the Republican nominee.

Creative Commons image by Joseph Delgadillo

Still if Donald Trump wasn't here, it would be someone else. This year or next time. This moment was a long time coming. I say that because I understand on a gut level the frustrations and alienation that led many Trump supporters to support him and to accept and even wallow in such hateful and bigoted statements, as well as to applaud irrational and extremely vague economic proposals. 

I am from Oregon, but the eastern, rural, Christian, conservative part of Oregon. My family were weirdos there with our internationalist, counterculture and often leftist thinking. But still. I understand Trump supporters. Partly because I grew up near them. Partly because I share their most basic root frustrations.

No, of course, I don't agree with them on everything or support Trump. But when you look under the racism, bigotry, fear-mongering and undefined-corporate economic concepts, you find people who feel disenfranchised because they never had anyone to vote FOR. They always had to choose the lesser of evils in a broken two-party system in which candidates never talk about the real issues.

Social media changed that this time; that, and Donald Trump's private media empire.. Let's face it. This election was not about who looked better or who had better speech writers and snazzier campaign ads as it often has been. This election, for the first time in my life, was about issues. It's sad that it was about racism, fear of foreigners and taxes for poor people, but there were real issues raised, issues that were previously taboo. 

Trump supporters in the parts of the US that I know well--that terrifying red swath through the middle of the country--are people struggling with the same root fury I have felt for years. But they were struggling with much less access to information and education, struggling in a society that never let the world (I mean the world beyond US borders) in.

Clinton supporters I know are out on social media right now bemoaning the election of Trump and yet repeating the very strange conviction that "America is still the best deal on earth," as if most of Europe, parts of the Middle East and good parts of Asia didn't have better education, health care, standards of living and just about everything else. Barack Obama convened congressional debates on health care early in his presidency and would not allow members of Congress who supported European-style single-payer health care to even participate in the debate.

And we are surprised that many Americans lack information and their frustration turns to bigotry?

If we limit choices to two parties which officially predetermine which issues can be brought up in televised debates, if we keep our school system focused on our own country's history and political system alone, if we allow news media to be controlled by a few naturally self-interested corporations, if we allow corporations to run almost every aspect of our society, we should not be surprised at the results.

Yes, this election was real democracy (except for the part about Bernie Sanders, the candidate with the most vehement supporters, being artificially cut out). This election reflects the frustration and lack of choice and the segregation of information that is rampant in our society.

Don't blame Trump. And don't blame Trump supporters. There are reasons for this.

As for Bernie Sanders, he is the only political candidate I have ever fully supported. That is primarily because I have known and closely watched him for twenty-odd years and I am convinced he was the real deal. I loved those months when Sanders looked like hope, but deep down I feared that the leadership of the parties would never stand for it. I also predicted that the next president would be a Republican. Sanders made me wonder for a while there because of the unpredictable influence of social media, but that was really only wishful thinking, given the impact of corporate media.

Where do all my predictions and statements about society come from? I am not a pollster or even a media junkie. I have been accused of almost never watching the news lately.  But I do keep up and follow important events. I observe the emotions of groups of people. My original profession was journalism and I was most known for drawing out the views of all sides in controversies. I heard out the fears of Czech Neo-Nazis and then walked across the street to a Romani ghetto and heard that side of the issue.

It isn't so much about knowing facts and polls, as it is about listening to people.

So, I have a few things to say in 2016 that I don't think you will want to believe. That's fine. I'm going to say them anyway and in four or five years, I'm going to dig this post out again and check how I did.

1. Trump will be very bad for us and life will go on. Most of us will live and I will probably not be homeless in four years.

2. Trump supporters will be told that their economic woes and feeling of disenfranchisement is not improving because of foreigners, Black people, the very poor (including people with disabilities) and other groups they should be against. For that reason, they probably will not be disillusioned with Trump as fast as we would hope.

3. But their underlying frustrations, which stem from a lack of true choice in US politics and the heavily consumerist, corporate-led society, will remain unsatisfied. Unless something in the media changes radically, most Americans will continue to confuse the systems of corporations with the concept of "big government."

4. Climate change is the most important threat to our survival. Extreme authoritarian religious groups are the other major threat--be they fundamentalist churches in the US or Islamic extremism (i.e. Trump or ISIS).

5. Putin is not nearly as bad as Trump. He is in power and will generally stay there. If he has to imprison a few journalists to stay in power or keep his picked successor in power, he will, but he will use intelligent international and military strategies that are good for Russia and only incidentally good or bad for anyone else. His main concerns are what is good for Russia and his power in Russia.

6. There will be other extremist groups that look like ISIS. There will be many refugees. There will be famine and huge waves of millions of refugees within ten years. Europe will build walls against them. And the US will shut down immigration from those areas.

7. Climate change will not produce very many Hollywood-worthy disaster moments. Oh, there will be ever worse hurricanes, but mostly the dry lands will get drier. Violence will become more and more "normal." Resources will be more and more stretched. Life will become harder slowly enough that most people will not realize that much of the hardship is caused by climate change. But for the next ten years at least, we will keep struggling on.

8. History books will one day remember that a very important and dire world event happened in November of 2016 and it will have to do with the Dakota Access Pipeline and the many other pipelines being laid for frantic fossil fuel projects, not the election. I'm serious. In the long-run, that will probably be more historically important and our generation will look back and wonder why we were so distracted and didn't see it.

9. And after all that, I predict we'll still be here in 2030. I think life will be hard and we'll look back on this as a time with simpler problems and easier decisions. Our kids will not understand why we couldn't do better. But we will not live in a post-apocalyptic world. We will live in a stressful daily grind in which resources are limited and the cost of poverty is very high in terms of disease and mortality. There will never be a moment--more than now at least--when we can say the apocalypse has come.

And we'll have to deal with all of that sooner or later. The sooner we start to take it seriously the better prepared we'll be.. 

Now is the time to put your energy into what you believe. Now is the time for solar panels, for learning self sufficiency and for building local communities. Now is the time for preparing for hard times and making sure we have the skills to survive.

This is the time to be serious and think hard about what we spend our time and money on. Is it TV and Facebook or is it learning to grow food and overcome antibiotic resistant bacteria with complex natural compounds? Is it buying another new car or is it about putting twenty percent of your income into one thing that might make a long-term difference.

This isn't about a catastrophe scenario. This is about right now. Live what you believe. If what you believe is not consumerism and TV (i.e. supporting corporations), then don't do it. There is much to be done.

Fear of need... or the problem with visible disabilities

It has recently become almost fashionable to talk about the issue of invisible disabilities.

Well, praise Gaia! Finally a fashion that is helpful!

Still I have recently received a bit of a shock to my view of the divide between invisible and visible disabilities. 

A little background... As long-term readers of this blog will probably recall, I started using a white cane regularly about ten years ago. I spent a lot of years before that "passing" for fully sighted, even though I'm clearly legally blind. Then in 2004, my husband and I moved to a small town outside Prague and I started teaching English and translating as a private business. I had to forge relationships in town and the invisibility of my disability presented a problem. 

Several people told me they were offended that I didn't greet them from across the road. Others mentioned that I didn't use eye contact and smiles to show who I knew in a group or that they initially assumed I was developmentally disabled (using other terminology, as you can imagine) due to the strange look of my eyes.

A picture of my actual famous scooter. Image by Arie Farnam

I started using a white cane because I thought it might help to clue people in to the real issue--that I simply can't see much. Soon I noticed quite a few benefits of the cane, even though it made me feel uncomfortable. People in stores were much more helpful when I asked a question and crossing streets stopped feeling so much like risking my life. 

In 2009, we brought home our first child and things changed dramatically. While I had used the cane a lot before, I now used it constantly. With a baby, I just couldn't take any amount of risk at intersections and it was around this time that a legally blind friend of mine was run over and nearly killed.

Still, somehow social relationships didn't improve over the long-term. The cane helped a bit with the social offense and confusion over the categorization of my disability, but not as much as you might imagine.

Soon the neighbors and acquaintances who initially seemed more willing to give directions or say "hello" retreated into guarded silence. I continued to say "hello" to everyone I met on the street. It's local custom in this country, but as the years passed the answers I got became gruffer and less friendly. Our circle of family friends narrowed to... mostly people with some sort of disability. I started to wonder if the cane was such a good gamble.

Fast-forward to 2016. My eldest child is nearly eight and the youngest is six. They are learning to cross roads safely. But more importantly, my bone and joint problems are acting up. I have always had crooked and funky bones in my legs and feet but compared to my eyes, it never seemed like a big priority. This year, however, with the kids attending two different schools and my husband in a higher pressure job than before, I have to do a lot of fetching and dropping off.

With soccer practice and my own teaching jobs in the mix, I can easily end up walking four or five miles on pavement every day. And neither my knees nor my feet can take it. I've always dealt with a fair amount of pain in my feet, but I never realized it wasn't "normal" for walking distances to be that uncomfortable. Now it is beyond "a fair amount" and worse than that it escalates day after day. My feet take more than a few days to heal from one five-mile day and these days five-mile days are every day.

The upshot of all this is that I ditched my cane this fall and I've been riding an electric scooter.

What? You go from blind to motorized without any actual change in your vision????

Essentially, yes. I was never carrying the cane for its ability to find walls... or even the thicker variety of lamp posts. I was carrying it for social cues and traffic safety. And I drive the scooter very slowly and only in areas that I know so well I could walk without a cane and with my eyes closed.

That said, I was pretty nervous when I first got the scooter. Neither my husband nor I could figure out how we were going to handle all the transportation of the kids this year with his job, so we decided that it was a necessity. But still I was sweating pretty heavily the first time I encountered people I know in town, riding on the scooter a day after having been downtown with my white cane.

Do you want to guess what happened? A wild flying guess?

Absolutely nothing. 

My acquaintances greeted me cheerfully. I did my errand and returned home.

The next day I went out again, still nervous but excited at my new ease of mobility. The electric scooter is a far cry from a wheelchair. It does not look like something only a disabled person would ride and it has a very small physical footprint. You can fit on narrow medieval sidewalks with it and in many of the same spaces where walkers go. I can't use a bike well alone in the same way simply because bikes are too big for our tiny sidewalks and riding in traffic isn't an option. Also bicycles require a certain minimum speed to be stable. This scooter can really crawl and still maintain balance.

Over the first few days, I started to wonder about the new cheery mood that seemed to have swept through our little, often grumpy town. People who usually greeted me before, now do so with gusto and many people who had not greeted me previously started returning my greetings. The elderly ladies I often encounter on the way to town who used to glare at me and mutter before, now greet me with a chorus of chiming voices. I had to wonder if someone in town was making hard cider from the fall apples (and if so, where I could get some).

Keep in mind that I can't see people's expressions from any reasonable distance, so I could not tell if the cheerfulness (or the previous grumpiness) had anything to do with me. But as the weeks have passed, I have been astounded by reactions to my scooter.

Despite my initial anxiety, not one person has accused me of "faking" my vision impairment. Not one person has complained to the local police about my scooter taking up space on the sidewalks. And three people have stopped me to ask where they can buy such a scooter--one woman running desperately for two blocks to hail me because she has also been developing joint problems and she said she felt her heart leap when she saw me glide serenely by--uphill no less. 

Several people have randomly commented on how nice the scooter looks and how helpful it is to me. When I apologize for taking up a particularly narrow sidewalk and scrunch to the side to let walkers pass I am often met with protestations that my scooter is "wonderful."

This has all been very pleasant and continues to be. But finally my husband got to the bottom of the change when he overheard someone saying how uncomfortable it made them to see me with a white cane. They felt helpless, not knowing how to help and yet they had a nagging feeling that they should somehow help "the blind lady." Now they see the scooter as having saved the day. No one seems to get that the scooter is not a guide machine of any kind.

They don't care. They suddenly don't see a person with a disability anymore and they feel better for it.

And that is a sobering thought for me.

I have lived much of my life straddling the line between a visible and an invisible disability. But there are many people who can never pass for non-disabled. I feel a bit like John Howard Griffin, the white journalist who went undercover as a black person in the Deep South of the United States in the 1950s. I get to experiment with seeing life from an isolated perspective and I get to return again to the "living." 

But what is it that causes people to react so intensely (and so negatively) to visible disabilities?

There is a fear that is innate to our human DNA--a fear of helplessness. We fear being the outcast or being the person in need. And to see a person we believe is outcast and in need brings that fear up, just under the surface.

Then too there is also the feeling that one probably should help someone who is in what the temporarily able-bodied often consider "a terrible condition," even if the assumption that a visible disability must be terrible is erroneous.  Obviously people with visible disabilities often don't need anyone's help just at the moment that you happen to see them on the street. They are just as likely to be routinely going about their business as anyone else. 

Most of the time I fit that description. 

I am glad to have discovered another technology that dispels some of the fear of physical differences. Still the core issue remains. A person's appearance is a very bad indicator of whether or not they need help. In this case it is better to listen than to look. People often ask for help and aren't heard. and others who never asked have help forced upon them (or are avoided out of fear) because of their appearance. 

Words for our times: Pass through fear and listen.

A thousand years of fishing

Pale, autumn sunlight sifts through the morning mist, a thread of weak yellow in the grayish brown landscape..

Image by Arie Farnam

My hands are nearly frozen, gripping the side of a jolting wagon and a child between my knees. And this is just the beginning.

But there are thermoses of hot water for tea and bottles of rum for grog and if anyone will be warm it will be me. My task is usually tending the small cookfire on the dike.

It's the annual fish harvest in South Bohemia and we're on our way to the ponds, bundled up for several hours of frigid work. There is no snow yet and only a mild layer of frost but everything is wet and will get wetter. The land here used to be a marsh after all.

Each year we are pressed into service by my husband's family on the last weekend in October to help fish out the ponds that hold the winter's supply of carp and pike. It's a tradition a thousand years old. The men dress in hip-high rubber boots and old farm jackets and wade out into the muck of the partly drained ponds with giant nets spread between them. Then at the grandfather's signal, they form a line and heard the fish in to the center. 

Image by Arie Farnam

I am always struck by the odd beauty of this ritual. It is all about mud, cold and hard, dirty work. But the fact that the techniques used hundreds of years ago are still the most effective makes it magical. And the realization that the five-hundred-year-old network of fishponds and water channels has made humans an integral part of the ecology of this land make it beautiful. 

When the fish are drawn into a wriggling, silver-flashing mass in the center of their circle, the fishermen lift them with scoop nets, while others sort them into huge drums of water--one for the smallest immature fish, one for those that will be left to grow another year and one for the full-sized fish, which will be kept in clear water for a month to ensure that they don't smell like mud. Then they'll be served for holiday dinners.

Image by Arie Farnam

Dozens of people come to the fish harvest, many to work for a free fish, many just to watch from the dike. I hand out grog and tea. This used to be my mother-in-law's job and I was only her helper. This is the first year since she passed on. 

My children run wild in the pack of local children, splashing through the shallow black water and spattering themselves with that peculiar stinking black mud of the South Bohemian bogs that is nearly impossible to wash out of clothes and off of skin. But such family traditions are worth more than a set of clothes. 

I warm my reddened hands by the fire and watch as the sun emerges from behind the heavy clouds, briefly setting the autumn trees around the pond ablaze with color. 

Forging one's on solace

Almost nothing can be seen from my windows this morning. A few bits of trees poke out of the dense fog but everything else is shrouded in thick white. The air smells like wet compost and leaf mold. 

The contrast with the warm light of my fire and the dry, snugness of my little house is delicious. I tell my husband and children how fog was something so magical and exciting to me as a child, growing up in parched Eastern Oregon. Whenever we went on trips near the coast and drove into fog, I would shout, "We're in a cloud! We're in a cloud!"

My children are confused. I try to explain that fog is pretty much a cloud on the ground, but they insist that clouds are things with borders, skin and substance that you see up in the sky--not just white air.

My husband simply laughs at the idea of fog being exceptional in any way. He grew up in a marsh. 

I'll admit that fog has lost some of its magic for me. I am getting tired of the damp after eighteen years in this climate. I often long for the clean dryness of the high desert. Even after all these years, it hasn't left me.

Creative Commons image by Joshua Ezzell

But this particular morning I rejoice in the mist.

This week I had to draw the line in an unhealthy and manipulative relationship. Doing it required not just setting boundaries with one person, but choosing seclusion from a community--in fact a community that ties me to that high desert I love so deeply. 

I've spent so much of my life seeking community and struggling for inclusion that the act of choosing seclusion is boggling and yet on some level it is cathartic. The knowledge that you have a choice in every situation, even if that choice means exiting and taking the losses, is a bit of empowerment. 

I spent much longer at my morning meditation this morning than I usually do. Yesterday I missed it for the first time in many months, due to the pressures of rocky health and children.

And today I could not get settled. I felt a knot of anxiety and grief still in my gut and there was one distraction after another - the new-kindled fire threatening to go out (fog does actually make it harder to start a fire), the cat acting like it was going to vomit on my couch and so forth and so on. Even if you turn off your phone, sometimes the world just won't leave you alone. 

My meditation is a moderately active one. I don't sit and say "Om," though I know people who that works beautifully for. My mind chatter needs to be quieted, so I use recitation of poetry as well as simple ritual, candles and turning off all electric devices. Still I could not get settled, so I just did it anyway.

Of course, merely going through the motions is not really good spiritual practice, but "fake it til you make it," has its merits.

Finally I did make it, but not until I'd been at it for an hour (and I brought out the heavy artillery in the form of Tarot cards). Some days I don't have that much time. And today it was a near thing. 

But finally peace of mind came.

The fog closed around me and held me by my warm fire. The danger is at bay, somewhere beyond. I have forged my own solace--a chance for healing. And I do not need to struggle for now.

I know that when I step out again, I may have to face it all over. And soon I'll have to clean the school room and prepare for classes this afternoon.

But for now I have made solace by effort and design. This is woman-made peace without the use of mind altering substances or denial of harsh realities.

It's there somewhere. It can be forged.

Staring down my ballot

I envision Americans all over the world--Americans living abroad that is--sitting and staring at this letter the way I am. Americans abroad get to vote quite a bit early.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the envelope in front of me. I am glad it made it given the funky postal system these days. I'm also grief stricken. And terrified. I hate the damn thing. And I'm grateful that this at least remains to us.

A ballot.

How many people fought for this? Women. People of various colors. People with disabilities. Immigrants. If you belittle it, you are either an ass or just plain ignorant of history.

We all know that.

It's a great thing to have a ballot. My neighbors and my husband don't get one. The issue of who will be the next American president will impact them nearly as much as it impacts me. But they don't get a vote. I do.

And I don't know what in Hades to do with it.

I do know it's one in a hundred million. My ballot does not mean squat. If I ball it up and throw it away in disgust no one will care. Clinton will win or Trump will win, whether I do it or not.

I don't get political, I mean actually election-political, on my blog very often and I swear I'm not even doing that now. I'm not going to tell you how to vote because I don't know how to vote this time around. 

"Knock me over with a feather!" I can hear some of you shouting. "Arie doesn't have a political opinion for once."

Oh, I've got opinions. I've got a gazillion of them. That isn't the problem. 

I'm going to hazard a guess here. I'll bet I don't have very many readers who are Trump supporters. (Except you, Andy. And we love you anyway.) He's sort of a family member and you know how that goes.

But the rest of you... well, who reads my blog? According to my Google stats some people actually do, for which I am immensely grateful.

And from comments I'm guessing some of you are general treehuggers, like me, and you know you're not voting for Trump. Then there are the non-Americans who read my blog, and you wouldn't be voting for Trump even if you could. There are quite a few people with disabilities who read my blog and Trump would just as soon see us dead. Same goes for my Romani and otherwise non-white readers.

A lot of readers are also variously Pagan and Goddess inclined. Now one could theoretically argue about whether or not Trump will make America "great" again, but we know for sure he'll make it Christian-or-else again, so that sort of settles who Pagans aren't voting for.  

Therefore, I'm not going to tell anyone not to vote for Trump because it's pretty safe to assume that no one reading this is planning on it, except possibly that guy Andy. And he's only reading this to humor my mother.

Instead I'm going to commiserate with you.

Because if you aren't voting for Trump, what are  you going to do?

Okay, there's the question. Vote for Clinton or don't vote for Clinton? Clinton is one of the least popular politicians in history even before the election and with good reason. You may be one of those desperate people demanding that every decent person vote for Clinton because "if you don't, you're signing the country over to Trump and thus signing your own death warrant!" 

I get it. I really do. When I look at Trump. I think of course there's no choice. That Green on the ballot might as well not even be there. No real choice.

And then I put my head in my hands and cry. Because... remember all those people I mentioned, the ones who fought for this ballot. And now the ballot is as good as useless. There's no real choice. 

Every single election in my adult life (that's since 1996) I've been told, "There's no choice. Just vote AGAINST that guy!" whichever guy it was. Who I was supposed to vote for did not matter.

So, we grit our teeth and do our duty. We vote for slime, for lies, for candidates who care as much about us as they do about the gum they stepped on when they got out of their LImo last night. 

It's only harder this time because we had hope for a little while. I knew it wouldn't last. Admit it. So did you.

If we were right about the way the political system works, if you actually believed what Sanders was saying (including Bernie Sanders himself), you had to know that he would never be allowed to compete for actual votes cast by people.

He said the system is broken and rigged. And it is. So Clinton participated in a blatantly rigged primary to deny us our right to vote. And now we'll vote for her because... we have no f---ing choice!

I try to comfort myself. Clinton mentioned climate change. She actually MENTIONED it. Bernie did that at least. He has forced her to at least say a few taboo words. We all know she won't do what needs to be done, that she doesn't care and that these are all just words to her, but maybe I should throw my vote her way as a sort of "thank you" for the mention of the single most important security crisis facing us (according to official US military analysis and everyone else worth their salt). At least she didn't completely ignore reality. 

And I do have a daughter. She's seven and she's into Lego Friends, who first rush home to change their clothes and put on make-up every time they are called out to rescue endangered animals. Think about what it would mean if the president is a woman--a woman who does not even make coquettish noises every two sentences. My daughter could grow to her teenage years with this woman's face as the supreme power in the world. That is worth something isn't it? No matter how much of a liar and conscienceless shell she may be.

That is something to vote FOR, isn't it?

My gut feels like a sack of rotten potatoes. If you've ever smelled rotten potatoes--really rotten--you know what I'm talking about this election.

So, good luck when you get your ballots, America. You've got my sympathy which ever way you toss your lack of choice. Just remember that NOT voting is still part of the game and there may be consequences.

I'm going to go out tonight and wish on a star. I wish just once in my life to vote FOR a president, rather than against. Even if my choice doesn't win. Please just once. I want to cast my vote for a candidate I trust and admire. 

And that wish is light in the darkness. We may have to fight for the right to vote, really vote, all over again. Don't forget. It's been done before.

Inside the house of the model parent

"You're such an amazing mother! Your kids are so lucky!"

I couldn't believe my ears. And then I felt awful inside. Not only am I a bad parent, I'm a liar. Either that or I'm only "inspirational" because I'm legally blind but not a real "good mother."

That's how it feels when people tell me I'm a wonderful mother because I know what it really looks like at our house. I do something--one little thing--well and people are so impressed. But I know how much hair pulling, screaming and yelling, fighting with my husband and so forth it took to get that one thing done. And I know about the piles of laundry, the dirty dishes and the cobwebs that have fossil layers.

The parenting feat that attracted this latest gush of praise was the time I managed to put together a cooperative reward chart for the family that ended in homemade pizza. Not exactly super mom. More like lesson one from a parenting book. 

But I also know that looking from the outside it might well look pretty impressive. Things like that look impressive to me when other people do them. So, I'm going to let you peek inside this particular "model parent" moment.

Here's how it REALLY happened.

Problem 1: My husband and I are really out of shape. This is primarily caused by stress, jobs, kids, the demands of society, our kids' school and so forth. He has high blood pressure and I'm developing joint problems. 

Problem 2: We want our kids to learn responsibility. Our kids want to have animals but take no responsibility for them. The parents are tired of doing all the work and the remembering.

Solution: I made a chart that looks like a board game. At the start of it there were four stick figures. That's us. At the end, there was a crude picture of a pizza in a square pan (i.e. homemade, not going out). In between, there were about thirty little colored squares. The deal was that every time my seven-year-old daughter fed the cat in the morning without being reminded our little family star moved forward one place, every time my five-year-old son fed the ducks in the afternoon with only one reminder the star moved another place and every time a parent did an agreed-upon daily workout it moved forward. That's a total of four possible moves per day. 

It took us well over two weeks. Not a perfect score by a long shot. Mama and Papa got less than seven hours of sleep a night, any night they got up early to exercise. There was cat food all over the back veranda at least six times. Everyone forgot the ducks at least two nights, but they did live. They just ate the cabbages instead of getting fed, so the cabbage from the garden is full of holes.

But we got there.

The day of the pizza arrived. It started with a fight between Mama and Papa about who had to go to the store to buy the salami Papa had forgotten to buy because Mama had forgotten his second reminder. The fight lasted 45 minutes and was loud and stressful. I cried in front of the kids again.

Then in order to fit making homemade pizza into the preparations for lunch, cooking for the week ahead and the harvest feast with friends planned for Sunday, I was chained to the kitchen stove for the entire Saturday. This, of course, made me a bit grumpy. I mostly spent the morning, trying to cook and clean while telling the kids to go outside and generally not doing quality time.

The kids hit and kicked each other, got time-out, ran away from time-out, got a reasoning talk about conflict resolution, unwillingly role-played talking out their needs, banged on the piano, hung onto my legs, got into the pantry and tried to eat cookies right before lunch while knocking two glass spice jars off the shelf, got sent outside again... and again.

Photo by Ember Farnam

I hoped to make the pizza with the children, but the seven-year-old was invited to a birthday party that afternoon. So, I planned to do it with just the five-year-old. But then the five-year-old collapsed on the floor screaming and crying for no discernible reason, while I was finishing up the dough. Trying to be a good mother, I put the dough aside, washed my hands and carried him upstairs, kicking and screaming.

We settled down in his bed to read three story books and by the end of the reading he was drifting off to sleep. He doesn't usually sleep in the afternoon but I was rejoicing inside. This would avoid the inevitable meltdown when the seven-year-old departed with Papa for the birthday party while he was left at home with me.

I returned to the pizza making.

The seven-year-old party goer went outside and started to screech with feigned glee directly under the window of the sleeping five-year-old. 

Mama came unglued. 

I force-marched the seven-year-old into the play room and ordered her to lay down on the couch and sleep, or else. I wasn't going to threaten to not let her go to the birthday party because 1. that would be punishing me as I was hugely looking forward to some peace and 2. this was the first non-parent initiated birthday party invitation she'd ever gotten and I never got even one such in my childhood, so going to the party was just law. 

The five-year-old woke up and came downstairs crying after only sleeping for five minutes, because he had been woken up. I put him back in bed.

And went back to rolling out the pizza.

The seven-year-old came out of the playroom. I made angry silent motions at her with a raised fist and she went back in and shut the door... hard.

The five-year-old came down the stairs shrieking that his sister gets to play and go to a party and it isn't fair. Then he ran into the stair railing from sheer exhaustion and bruised his knee.

I washed the flour off my hands again and took him back upstairs again. He continued to shriek. I put him in bed and left with him still shrieking. 

The seven-year-old ran out of the playroom and made it outside before I could do anything. The five-year-old continued to shriek. I got the dough rolled out and started to cut up things to go on it. 

After listening to shrieking from upstairs for ten minutes, I went upstairs and yelled at the five year old. Then I was consumed with guilt because yelling doesn't help and even so he was being punished for what--essentially--the seven-year-old had done. I let him come downstairs and be tired. 

The seven-year-old went to the birthday party, the five-year-old's neighbor friend showed up in time to cut the resulting tantrum short. I went to the store and got the salami. I finished the pizza. I had no bonding moment making pizza with my children. The kitchen was an utter disaster with dishes and half-eaten lunches piled on every available surface and flour in small drifts on the floor.

Photo by Arie Farnam

But the pizza was hot out of the oven when the seven-year-old returned home from the short afternoon party. There's that perfect parenting moment you were envisioning when I first mentioned the chart and the pizza. 

But it only lasted about ten seconds, barely long enough for me to take the potholders off my hands. Then the five-year-old came running in reporting that some neighbors were having an outdoor yard party and they said he could have a hot dog. He no longer wanted pizza.

Papa came up with the idea that we would take one pan of pizza to the neighbors and the kids could share it there with the neighbor kids. So, I took the pizza over to the neighbors with the kids.

The two moms organizing the party gave me grim, unfriendly looks when we approached. Then they told me this was their party and they hadn't really wanted a bunch of people, regardless of offering my son a hot dog. I offered to take my kids home. They feigned indifference. I started herding my kids out of their yard despite the beginnings of a double tantrum. But one of the moms questioned why I was making the kids leave as if she hadn't just shamed me for coming and the other gave my kids juice. I couldn't very well spill the juice, wrestle two screaming children out of there over the host's protests (feigned or not) and carry the giant pan of pizza at the same time, so I left both pizza and children and went home.

I ate the other pizza alone with my husband and thought grim thoughts about perfect parenting.

That, my friends, is the true story of my super mom moment. For me, the lesson is to be careful what I assume about the parenting of others. Perhaps the little yard party put on by my grumpy neighbors was the fruit of hours of frustration and frantic juggling too. That might explain a few things.

Why I get up at 5:00 am

It's still very dark when I roll out of bed at 5:00 am. The town is silent and cold below my window, lit by the misty pools under orange street lights. The occasional early commuter zips by on the main road down the hill. The waning moon is high in the clear autumn sky.

I throw on a sweater and slippers and tiptoe downstairs to make tea. The mornings have suddenly gone from thankfully cool to a bit too chilly and there's a hint of frost in the air when I close a window left open. The popping of the kettle and the crow of the morning's first rooster punctuate the silence. The kitten scratches at the door. I let her in and light the fire I laid the night before.

Creative Commons image by Jeremy Monin

While the kindling sputters, I set up my meditation space, light candles and smudge with sage. The smells of herbal tea, wax and sage smoke surround me with a sense of well-being. When my meditation is finished, I settle down in my rocking chair by the fire, drink tea and do a bit of reading on ancient goddesses, which is my current unnecessary indulgence of the day. 

I do a joint-friendly workout and shower. By 6:30 the first gray light is coming out of the east. It feels wrong to wake children up so early but I have to. In the winter, the light will come even later.

Feeling a bit guilty I pull their clothes on over their heads while they try to burrow back under the covers. And the morning routine is well and truly started.

It isn't always easy for me to get up this early. I won't claim that I do it purely for pleasure. I'm sure there are some who do and I can see the attraction. The stillness and peace of early morning is matched by very few other moments, especially if your head is clear from sleep rather than muddled by an all-nighter. 

But like most people, I used to think 7:00 was a respectably early hour to rise. So what changed? Why do I get up so early?

Well, I also used to think daily spiritual practice was an incredible feat only possible for monks living in isolated mountain monasteries--far from the stresses of professional jobs, election years and children. But then I started doing my thing some weekday mornings after the kids were in preschool.  I felt much better on the days when I could fit it into the schedule, usually between 7:00 and 8:00 am. But on weekends--with the whole family home and going places--it seemed impossible.

Then after about two-years of doing mostly daily spiritual practice, I wanted it even in the summer and on weekends. The relief from stress outweighed even sleep deprivation. So, I started getting up before everyone else,

Z. E. Budapest writes in Grandmother Moon that we each have a certain time of the twenty-four-hour cycle which is our personal golden hour, and that it tends to be directly opposite to our most lethargic time of the day. I'm most tired and frustrated at about five in the afternoon, most of the time, regardless of what I've been doing all day. According to Budapest, this means my body's own rhythm is primed to be up at 5:00 am. 

The theory entirely rests on my ability to keep an early bedtime in a world where most people are still functional far past 10:00 pm and most of the internet is just getting fired up at that hour in my time-zone. 
 
So, it's not without it's struggles. There are times when I don't get to bed early enough and it is hard to get up in the morning. But the rewards of making it work are enormous.

We need a stress-free hour without the demands of children or work. And I want to use my freshest moments for something stimulating, rather than sink it into the bottomless pit of the daily grind.

The Problem with Asking for Help

Just a few weeks into the school year, I was almost late taking my first grader to school. But on my way back, I heard screaming from inside a car in a neighbor's driveway. 

I knew the one. There is only one car there now, where there used to be two. That one belongs to a mother with three little girls, one barely more than a toddler. They were always known for being quiet and keeping to themselves but things have been hard in the last few weeks.

Creative Commons image by Damian Gadal

Her husband left her just before the first day of school. And she works at a school as well. Still she's late. Really late, if I was nearly late and I'm already back.

I hope my face shows my concern and empathy. But she probably just wishes no one was witnessing her family struggle, her kids screaming and fighting in the car, the lateness, the frantic stress. 

She's a very private person. I am on good neighborly terms with her, trading waves and gardening tips. But she has never been open to deeper friendship. I only know her husband left because my kids overheard a gossiping neighbor and brought the tale home to me. The woman herself has not told me, and I don't think she'd appreciate anyone approaching the subject from the outside.

And yet, I wish I could help. And I could. My kids went by there a few times in the past weeks and found a paid babysitter with her kids, something almost unheard of in this country, where parents and grandparents are expected to be on hand and babysitting isn't an industry. I could watch her girls for an afternoon and it would mean only a bit more attention than just watching my own kids. I could water her garden in a pinch.

I could just listen and make her a cup of tea. Easily. My life is hectic but that much I could do.

Yet I can't do much at all, if she keeps up the appearance that everything is fine, if I know of her trouble only through unwanted gossip. And when I ask her if she would like to come to tea, she just looks harried and too busy. She says, "Sure, sometime. I'll let you know," but she never does. 

I suppose this is what people mean when they say that many people don't ask for help when they should. I've heard it so often in the past few years, that it is becoming annoying. Whenever experts talk about 'self care" or social skills these days it seems like they always tack this on to the end: Ask for help.

Creative Commons image by Jon Marshall

"Overcome your aversion to asking for help and just ask."

The connotation is that help will be readily offered.

And yet I know full well why this woman does not ask for help. Help often isn't forthcoming. If she asked for help, she would have to ask many times--embarrassing herself, damaging her reputation and exposing her children to potential ridicule--before running across someone who would help.

You doubt it? You think most people will readily help?

A recent UNISEF video documented an experiment conducted with a six-year-old girl. The child was dressed in ragged clothes with messy hair, in order to look like a homeless child and positioned on a busy street in a major city. A team o adults watched from a distance and filmed the child standing alone amid the hurrying crowds. No one stopped to ask if the child was lost or in need of help.

Then the child was dressed in expensive, fashionable clothing, combed and clean, and positioned in the same place. As soon as the child was alone several people, primarily women, stopped to ask if the child was lost or needed help. Some started calls on their cell phones seeking help for the child from authorities. 

Next the experiment sent the child into a restaurant, first in the expensive clothing--in which she was engaged cheerfully by diners and praised as she wandered among the tables--then in the ragged clothes. When the ragged child moved around the tables in the restaurant, she was insulted and told that she had to leave and never come there again. This, even given that the child did not touch anything, speak or do anything but walk around and sometimes make eye contact. 

Eventually the insults and harsh words were too much for the six-year-old and she fled from the restaurant crying and continued to sob even while being comforted by familiar adults. The experiment had to be called off, given the potential for emotional trauma. An eerie follow-up took place when the video was posted on social media, in which the large majority of comments make illogical excuses for the negative behavior of adults toward the child. 

Most of those who did not make excuses in their comments professed shock when they saw the videos. But I'm not shocked.

Today I return from the school with a heavy heart. There is a school choir my daughter wanted to be in, but the school building for some of the first graders--including my daughter--is several streets away from the main school where the choir practices are held early in the afternoon. Because I can't drive, I would have to go three miles on foot to bring my child to choir practice in the middle of the day and then return to teaching my own classes. My work schedule won't allow it. I have strategized and shuffled things around every which way. But it won't work. 

I asked the school for help--the classroom teacher, the aids, the extracurricular coordinator, the choir teacher. They insisted that it is the responsibility of parents to transport their kids between school buildings, and that the fact that many first graders have their classes in the building with extracurricular activities but my child doesn't is simply my own problem, rather than an unfair disadvantage. I asked other parents too. No one is willing to help though some will drive their own kids to choir.

When I asked, one lady even said, "Do you expect me to pity you or something?"

No dear, I asked for for help, not pity. Somehow our society has become confused about the difference. 

Creative Commons image by Erizof of flickr.com

I don't mean to be depressing. I try to make my writing uplifting and nurturing. So, this is the nurturing part. If you are like me, you have heard many times that you need to learn to ask for help at times. You've heard it from experts, from from the media, from self-help books. So, you end up feeling inadequate yet again. Not only do you fail at meeting the ideal of perfect independence and emotional self-sufficiency. You aren't even any good at asking for help, otherwise, the experts imply, you would have it. 

Well, they're wrong. It isn't you. It's the times. 

I'm not saying don't ask for help. Do ask. There are people who want to help, not out of pity but out of the knowledge that a strong community is our best protection in hard times and the most important thing in a survivalist kit. It is not your failing that not everyone has that knowledge. 

Keep asking for community and be assured that no matter how small your means or how difficult your physical life, there are ways you could help a neighbor or a stranger in need. Find them. Make yourself interdependent. That is strength that lasts.

I'll be on the look out for a chance to help my neighbor with the three little girls. Today I'll call a mother who's in her ninth month of pregnancy and offer to pick her son up from preschool and keep him a couple of hours. And just this week, a migrant woman who speaks little of the local language admitted to me that her husband has been beating her severely and I was able to connect her with a specific counselor at a reputable organization with shelters and legal aid.  

As for my daughter's school, the principal asked me to help her find someone from an English-speaking country who would like to be a semi-paid volunteer in their English teaching program for a year.

And I can help in their search because I know many English-speaking people. Sometimes even school administrators must learn a lesson and this one is about community.