I Am Really Looking Forward to Seeing My Friends in Seattle

Girl-Friends
When we discovered candles
we were teenagers
and just beginning
to play with the fire
of our bodies.

We spoke about it only
tentatively, unable to be anything
but mostly honest about the
boyfriends, those we thought
we might love, and the ones we
merely tolerated, those who
wanted us to be something else,
dressing us up like dolls, drawing us
into their older world, and away
from each other. We talked about
how we resisted or let them
and when we even
enjoyed it.

We sat and talked at cafes that
hated us, because we were so young
and had no money to tip the waitresses
and made a mess of spilled water
and ashes, cellophane wrappers,
and emptied plastic creamer containers
that we strewed about the tables
or stacked one inside the other.

We were altogether unhappily
awkward, with the bangs that
wouldn't grow out or that awful
color, and no one knew us
like we thought we knew each other
our lives burning up so fast
inside us like wild fire.

We complained about our parents
who restricted us, when we were
just dying for that hot
dangerous freedom.

We talked about school,
those days of occasional interest
but largely languid boredom
and what we did last weekend
how we went to to this or that
party or how we missed it, because
of bad directions or wrong address
and the evening was frustrated,
wasted.

But we still had those satisfying
soft summer nights when
we snuck out to meet each other
and there was such a feeling
of uneasy abandon
as we got defiantly drunk
or stoned and were happy
just to be out and together
laughing and forgetting.

We were unsure and temperamental
but rarely fickle or callous with
each other, because this was all we had
in the whole world: the fiery encounters
between our bodies and our boyfriends,
the long, slow school days and our caffeinated
conversation afterward, the sun setting over
far-away mountains on summer evenings
and the immense prospect of our
unimaginable lives before us.

A great song by Natalie Merchant, about being that young -
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nataliemerchant/tellyourself.html

The Beautiful, The Bizarre and The Awful

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.
~ John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

"But, umm, I don't know, you know, something's, like, crossed over in me and I can't go back, I mean I just couldn't live."
~ Thelma, from the movie "Thelma & Louise"

Life is such a strange combination of beautiful, bizarre and awful that it seems to have forced me awake at 5am on a Sunday morning and I can't figure out what else to do but write about it, so here I am.

It's bizarre to be living in a house with no furniture. It's beautiful to be up early to see the summer sun rise, but bizarre how I can't sleep lately and also am not eating properly. Quitting my job appears to have been a great diet plan, because I finally hit my Weight Watchers "Goal Weight" (hey, I am BMI-compliant for the first time in years! see hyperlink below), will now do 6 weeks of "Maintenance" and then become a "Lifetime Member," at which time I can finally stop paying the monthly fee, which will be great cuz we really can't afford it any longer.
http://www.findmybmi.com/

And I don't get much out of Weight Watchers meetings anymore anyway, since so many attendees apparently eat the highly-processed plastic Weight Watchers "food" that I just can't do, and seem to not know much about organic/natural options. But it was a little bizarre, after years of being overweight, to go to lunch on Friday with a friend who weighs about 80 pounds and be lectured about eating more, as I picked at my chicken ceasar salad.

It's awful to be giving up my cat, but beautiful to feel all this love for him, rising up even more as I let go. It's awful that an ex-boyfriend appeared in my dream last night but I refuse to feel guilty, since I didn't have any control over it! He was actually in a bit part of a play that was being put on in a park in Portland, Oregon which is somewhat bizarre because he is not an actor (so far as I know), and lives in Seattle (again, so far as I know). But it was scary and awful to worry that my husband would see him, realize who the bit-part actor was (still in the dream), and it would trigger feelings of insecurity in him and we'd fight (again). Brings to mind a great song by the LemonHeads - http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/lemonheads/bit_part.html

But I think I know why I dreamt it, which is kind of beautiful, how the mind can piece things together, synthesize random thoughts we have during the day into some whole new story we didn't even realize we were capable of telling: the bizarre insight I had about the "work world" while meeting my friend downtown for lunch, that all the people rushing off to their important meetings, and taking themselves and the work so seriously were really just actors on a stage in the most ridiculous and boring play ever. (No offense to any old co-workers reading this, but I just found most of it really boring.) I probably also dreamt it cuz I've had the song "Endless Love" on a loop in my head ever since my last post, and that's a song I associate with my beautiful-and-awful first love.

It's beautiful that I get to go to Seattle in August and all the siblings will be in town at the same time, to celebrate my mother's 65th birthday. But it's awful that David and I have about five business days to set up a whole new relationship with a property management company IF we don't go with renting to a friend who can only take the place in September if she can sub-lease her current apartment, an iffy prospect in what looks like a bad rental market.

And it's a bit bizarre and awful how this has changed our friendship already, is causing tensions I should have foreseen but didn't or thought we could rise above, if they happened. But to be more honest, there's tensions also because I've been giving her and her boyfriend WAY too much advice about their relationship, because I think I "know" something, because David and I did so much couples-counseling in the past.

I think there's a quote that I, of course, can't locate now, about how that's one of the most dangerous things: someone who thinks they know something. Someone who is so sure, and therefore a little bit blinded to those pieces of information she is missing for a decent view of the "whole picture." (See my other post "Robert S. McNamara's Death and The Evil of War" and maybe I should take my own advice huh?)

When I get too excited about sharing my "widsom" I sometimes cross boundaries and step on toes and this is maybe also why I'm up with anxiety at 5am, because I have to fix things with her today, as well as give away my cat. Oh my god, this is hard, have I mentioned that yet?

But David and I are still full-steam ahead with this project and we will get there, one way or another. Because in fact, when asked the question would I really turn this ship around now (if I even could), my reply was that it feels like there is no "there" to return to, it's been obliterated for me somehow. And so I keep thinking of that Thelma & Louise quote, which doesn't mean we are driving off a cliff, don't worry! Although it certainly feels like we are some days, and with weightier decisions like who the hell is going to rent from us in September, and how we'll manage the property long-distance.

I just have to believe that something is going to work out for us, but it's so awful not knowing what that will be exactly...and so I'm dwelling on the beautiful, the bizarre and the awful and it's still not even 7am, too early to wake my husband for him to distract me from my crazy thoughts, this monkey-mind that is acting up a lot lately. So maybe it's OK for me to stop being all intense and angst-ridden and go do something mundane like make a pot of coffee and sit on our balcony to listen to the birds' cacophony. Which is kind of beautiful actually. :)

Lots More Lessons in Letting Go....

So, there was saying goodbye to the dining room table, already amply documented here. Then in the same weekend, we sold that damn Tempur-Pedic mattress I never should have spent so much money on, to a nice couple who drove all the way down from Appleton. We made them really happy - they have two kids, said they were both laid off, that "this is really all we can pay, sorry," and how the husband needs it for his bad back.

I was glad to help them and make a little money back, in the process. But selling the mattress meant we could sell the bedroom set (headboard, bed-stand and bureau). That was hard, cuz we're talking Amish-made heirloom-quality furniture we didn't even have that long, which we thought we'd keep to our deaths, the one thing we considered putting into storage, till we decided we want to be free even more than we want to hang onto it. Yes, there's also a photo of me hugging the headboard with tears in my eyes, but I'll spare my loyal readers from seeing that.

And this coming weekend I will let go of Colby, my little orange tabby cat, that we are giving to my meditation teacher, Kathie. I am so happy to have found him such a good home. I love that she not only does meditation classes but also psychotherapy, and so my husband and I have this half-joking/half-serious hope that she will be so soothing and therapeutic to be around that she will help him overcome what we figure is his PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, see hyperlink below) from living on the streets. He was a rescue cat and has a story to tell from that but doesn't have language, only speaks with his strange little meeps and hiding under our bed (before we sold it), or in closets when strangers come to the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTSD

I know that everyone who loves her cat probably sez this, but I honestly think he is the sweetest feline I have ever met. He looks up at us with these big eyes, as if we have all the answers and he's only waiting to be told them. I have loved how he always heads to the bathroom, to make a bed of the rug, and is there anytime we go to the toilet, head-butting us to prompt our affection. I often felt guilty when home from work and too tired to engage his still-kittenish play. I can't even say for certain that I've played with him more since we've been here during the work day (and I'm neglecting him right now to write this post), but I have been trying to pay him more attention, as our time together comes to an end.

I emailed his expectant new owner, when she asked after him: "Colby is great! He's right here next to me as I write this...I am enjoying him all the more, knowing how soon we will give him up. But I'm so glad to have found such a good home, and I really think you are going to love him, he's got such a great personality. I call him the 'cat-love-of-my-life' which is saying a lot, since I had a pretty terrific cat from the age of 7 to 14."

That cat, the one that no other could live up to (until Colby), was called Tiger. I got him at 7 yrs old because someone up the street had kittens - I carried him home in my arms and begged my Dad until he let me keep him. Later it was a toss-up which one of us loved that cat more. As the first domestic pet to enter my childhood home, we had no idea what to do with him and fed him milk (my father's old-fashioned idea of what a cat would eat), until he got the runs and we figured out he needed kitty-chow instead.

Tiger (unlike Colby) was an outdoor cat, and would sun himself in the alley with no inhibitions, as if dangerous cars simply didn't exist in his universe. This cat would greet anybody who came by with full-on love and acceptance, if you would pet him, you were in.

This cat would curl at my feet under the covers when I slept and climbed on my chest when I needed him; I called him my first boyfriend and meant it. He was my first cat-love (cue the "Endless Love" lyrics - http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/lionel+richie/endless+love_20083832.html).

And when he was hit by some driver in the street outside our house, while I was sleeping a 14-year-old sleep, dreaming, no doubt, of the terrifyingly large public high school I had just started attending (after years of small private Catholic school), my Dad dealt with it. He had Tiger put to sleep because he was just too hurt to survive. And when my Dad told me the next day, it was one of only a few times I've seen him cry. I'll bet that was really hard for him, but he did it.

And yes, as the cheesy song "Endless Love" suggests, there's nothing like the first. But just as my husband has supplanted all prior loves, Colby stole my heart from the first little meep and it's hard, hard, hard to give him up. But I will, only because I see the faint prospect of freedom, with little to no burdens, glimmering on the horizon like a beautiful Seattle sunset. And there's no end to the big adventure I'm going to have with my husband, my last love, and I have to believe that it's worth it.

I Don't Want to Think That Love is Like War

i don't think war is noble
and i don't like to think love is like war
but i got a big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot
of your front door
~ Ani Difranco "Independence Day"
(for full lyrics see http://www.danah.org/Ani/LittlePlasticCastle/IndependenceDay.html)

I wrote the below poem before I was married to my husband. We were living together and unfortunately still solidly mired in what is called the "Power & Control" phase of the relationship. I can't for the life of me locate this theory of relationships I am referring to, but it basically delineates three phases: Honeymoon, Power & Control, and Acceptance. I don't believe any couple, no matter how truly happy, gets completely and permanently beyond Power & Control - it's more like even if you do work hard enough to get to the Acceptance phase, you still circle back to the miserable middle part, with any less than completely mature argument. But maybe I should just speak for my own relationship and not generalize?

Well, with the upheaval of selling all our things and trying so hard to get to the "soft life" we desire, we are circling back to Power & Control a lot lately and fighting more - quite a bit more. Picture your biggest, worst move, and then double it in terms of stress, anxiety and uncertainty. We still don't know for sure who our tenant will be in September, although at least we've decided to just rent our unit so we can still go.

The house is such a wreck, with things in boxes and suitcases everywhere, that I'm surprised the cat isn't completely freaking out yet (he goes to his new home this coming weekend - ouch - my heart, but that will be another post). This morning I had a strong reaction ("you did what?!") to the fact that David had already given away our whisk, but then I just used a fork to beat the eggs for breakfast and got over it. But, that was one of my/our better moments, and not exactly typical of what's been going on between us recently.

I'm told that fighting under this kind of stress is completely normal, only to be expected, but I still hate it so much. It just wrenches my psyche, when there is bad feeling between us, and makes me feel like all is wrong in the world. Which is probably related to some co-dependence in me and the relationship, the need for stronger boundaries, and more work I have to do in therapy, blah blah blah but for now it still sucks.

So when a thundershower woke me at 3am last week, and I couldn't get back to sleep - and couldn't cuddle up to David even if he wasn't on the couch that evening, because we're sleeping on this crazy uneven configuration of twin mattress and box spring on the floor, since we sold our bed - I got out my writing file (which I'm supposed to be downsizing, as we speak), and unearthed this poem from long ago. I love being married to this man, but it's really hard sometimes you know?


There are places in each other
that we can never touch.

Lying next to him
among the white sheets
and plump pillow cases
where we love,
I place one hand
on the white skin
where the shirt achingly
pulls up
and look at him, little-boy-like
deep in his afternoon of sleep
face flushed and comforted
some sweet peach vision
taking shape beneath his eyelids.

There are moments with each other
that it seems we can never overcome.

Standing next to him
among clenched fists
and crossed arms on the balcony
where we battle,
I forget the sweetness
and see only ages of combat
and strange back streets
where dark things slink
around corners,
when the gorgeous
enormous language
we use, becomes booted
and repulsive -
wiping mud on the sheets
where elegant lust
turns to a brutish club.

These particular nights
and early morning hours
when the blood runs
there's a swift blade to
separate us - it hangs
in the balance of our
angry words and we
are both just begging
to have it be done.

These two sad goats
butting heads
and bleating at the sun
are nothing like
our puppy love
our licking and sniffing
and protecting each other,
when we can lay down
at each others' feet
with a big sigh
after another long day's run.

The Sweetest Baby I'll Ever Have

For Christopher James Hirning

Your voice deepens
through the phone lines
stretching across states
across time:
you've grown and I
have not been there,
know your baby years
my little brother
much better than your years
of awakening, this slowly
coming into consciousness.

Now you tell me about
computer games I've never
played, soccer matches you
don't always win, the story
you are writing for a school
assignment, you know more
about the internet than I ever
will, you say you are really into
"grunge music."

It's funny how you remember
that accident you had on my
watch, maybe because it scarred
me so, I talked about it too much:
we were playing that game where
you slid off the couch into my arms
and when your face hit that awful
marble coffee table, I screamed
and frantically felt for your poor
baby-teeth through the blood,
to make sure they were still there,
before I went to the neighbors for help.

And it is painful
growing out of little-boy
bones into facial hair and
that cracking voice I hear
when I call home.
It's painful to miss this,
to not be there to help you
with algebra or your first crush.
I almost wish I knew how
to stop your growing up, or turn you
back to two-years-old,
for one last bath and bedtime story
for a maternal me at twelve years
old and for the sweetest baby
I'll ever have.

Kids are Great, But We Don't All Have to Have Them

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
-Elizabeth Stone

She had entered a puritanical decade, a demographic moment - whatever it was - when the best compliment you could get was, "You would make a terrific mother." The wolf whistle of the nineties.
-Lorrie Moore, "Terrific Mother" Birds of America

Almost all of the women at the place I used to work have children. They spent the bulk of workplace "chit-chat" time talking about their kids because that is, to a great extent, what they are interested in. But I am not a mother and this sometimes made it hard to relate to them. Conversations started by the easy, innocent question "How was your weekend?" quickly turned from discussion on books read or movies watched into animated talk of the Johnny Jump-Up one mother got for cheap at a rummage sale and which diaper service is best.

When this happened I couldn't help feeling like an outsider at the white-columned Midwestern life insurance company where I used to make my living, where "family life" is so predominant it's taken for granted. There, I was that most unnatural of all species: a married woman without kids.

With every year the evidence mounted that I was an anomaly: like the women at work, many people I knew from high school and college were having children. The pressure I felt from this at one time was enormous, and it didn't help that some people, asking me when I was going to have kids, would treat my decision with disbelief. What could I mean that I didn't want to reproduce like them? I even had a friend tell me that he thought it was good people like me who SHOULD have children, implying that I was somehow doing the world a dis-service if I didn't...

On a trip back to Seattle I went to the beach where I spent much of my childhood summers, this place I passed countless hours swimming, building intricate sand castles and moats, learning to turn somersaults and stand on my hands in the gentle lake water. While I was there, I noticed a familiar looking woman - a tough street chick I barely knew in high school, tattoos covered her body, she was wearing hoop earrings and her brassy blonde hair tucked up under a green John Deere hat. I hid behind my book, observing her, but not wanting to be recognized. I watched her go into the water with her son beside her and felt livid - what the hell, even she has a kid!?

It was a feeling of being left further and further behind by my entire generation. It was the fear of not being "normal," of being so in the minority that soon I would no longer be able to speak the local language.
**********************************************************************
Even with this cultural insistence that I have children, and the fears about being so different, I am still certain that I don't want kids. Despite what some might think, it has not been an easy choice.

My older brother emailed me: "I think you don't want to have kids because 'everyone does it' and you've always thought you were different, and that is the worst reason to not have kids."

I responded: "That's not it - it's because there are other things I want to do with my life, because I don't think I'm emotionally up to it, I don't think I can give all my energy to another person. Because I actually have some realistic idea of what it takes, and because the world just seems so very very dangerous, even when it's just me and the other people I love who are already on this planet."

The slightly angry reply I wanted to give: I know some of the worst reasons TO have kids - to save a dying marriage, to pass on your genes and call your child Jr. or III in the illustrious line of your heritage. To save you from your loneliness or your boredom, or to have someone else achieve your unfulfilled dreams: get the degree, write the novel, have the career, that you never did, for whatever reason.

To save you from the prospect of an old age where no one takes care of you (using children as an insurance policy, as heatedly discussed on a financial chat site I can't seem to relocate now). To make another human being over in your image - to play God. Or to do it, like my mother's generation, simply because "everyone does it." It's a given.
*****************************************************************
I do think sometimes of missing out on what so many people experience, of never knowing how it feels to give birth, and have that mother-love come over me like a tidal wave, as so many tell me happens the first time they see their own child. I've blanched inwardly when a co-worker told me with awe in her voice how it felt to hold her weeks old baby boy, because it hurt somehow, and I found myself being jealous of something I don't want, and for a moment unsure of my choice. Sometimes I would even get angry when the baby-talk around me at work was too much, and then thought of myself as the "anti-mother" - I pictured myself as some kind of evil goddess, Kali with a skeleton necklace, Medusa with snakes in my hair.

But there has always been so much more to my story than a stereotype of the "un-maternal" woman. I've had an experience many people are fortunate or unfortunate enough not to have had: I've seen, and been deeply affected by, what it means to be a parent. But not just any parent - the parent that my husband is, who was a stay-at-home dad for the first three years of his son's life, who was always (even during teenage years when it got harder), so intimately connected with his child that it's astonishing.

And I know that I wouldn't want to do it with any less dedication, innate ability and passion. But as natural as it feels for so many women to have children, is how unnatural it feels for me. It's possible (though highly unlikely) that this would change one day, but for now I feel it as strongly as any woman listening to her biological clock ticking.
**********************************************************************
Sometimes I think that there is a hidden hand at work in my life, and one of the reasons I ended up with a man 12 years older than me, who had already been a parent, was to make it easier for me to make the decision. And yet it's been the hardest decision of my life.

The fact that my husband wasn't opposed to but also wasn't dying for more kids made it feel like the decision rested mostly on me. And it has intimidated me with its immensity, its existential implications. It's the only life decision most people face that's truly irrevocable - you can get married but if you get divorced then you are no longer someone's spouse, but you can’t really divorce your kid. Unless you give a child up for adoption or (hopefully not!) actually abandon your children, you never cease being a parent, however absent from their lives.

Am I the only one who sees what a weighty choice this is? How frighteningly permanent? For me, the thought always came back to: what if I did it and then regretted it? I'd be stuck. I couldn't bear that.

This is ultimately what I meant when I told my brother that I wasn't up to it, but I don't think he really understood it at the time, I think he just thought I was stubborn. I don't think a lot of people understand, frankly, and that is part of the problem - it's one reason for this feeling of a great divide between parents and non-parents. But it ultimately comes down to lifestyle choices, many of which are not simple decisions and none of which should be viewed as any less valid than others, no matter how in the minority.
**********************************************************************
Also, I know that I'm not completely alone in making this life choice: There are many "childfree" people in the world and many of them are blogging about it (see links below). And even at my stolid ex-workplace I found one woman with whom I could go to lunch and diapers never came up in conversation. We talked about the books we've been reading, writing we've been doing, and how we love words, the texture of them, how slippery they can be, how precise, how heart-breakingly eloquent, raw and needed.

And I get to “mother” in lots of other ways: I am an aunt to my brother's children, and to my friends' children, present and future. I've been sort-of step-parent to this sweet, bright, stubborn, funny, and frustrating now 22 year old, my husband's son from his first marriage. He would call me "step-mom" when introducing me to friends but never really saw me as such, I don't think - rather, I've been a friend who happens to be married to his Dad. And somehow this has worked for us. I've mothered cats, disdainful and sporadically needy as they can be, plants which sometimes die anyway, and poems and projects that don't always come to fruition. I mother my husband when he gets wounded or overwhelmed by the world.

I respect the choice to have children - I admire all the work it takes, the blood, sweat and tears, the years upon years of dedication. But it is my hope that my choice too will be respected and, more importantly, that parents will at least attempt to understand it. I would love it if instead of seeing me as pitiable (she must not have kids because she can't conceive), or enviable (what does she DO with all that extra time and money?) or simply dismissing my husband and I as DINKs (Dual-Income-No-Kids), obviously self-involved and probably selfish, that parents would ask what my life without children is like, how I came to this difficult decision. And my hope is that if I honestly told them, they would truly listen.

Sites listed below do not necessarily represent my personal views, but the discussions sure are interesting!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree
http://www.childfree.net/
http://www.childfreeclique.com/
http://by-choice.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-about-being-human.html
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2007/03/05/the-childfree-movement-can-t-we-all-just-get-along.aspx
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/02/22/no_kids_please/

ALittleBitMore on the Magic Man

She's the best one that we've ever had
She sits on her hair and she's tall as my dad
And she tie-died my shirt
and she pierced her own ear
And it's peace, man, cool, yeah, the babysitter's here

Her boyfriend is Tom but we call him the king of romance
He wears an American flag on the butt of his ripped up pants
And will they get married with kids of their own?
He says "Not if she's going to college we won't"
And he kisses her, oh someday I'll have a boyfriend just like that...

But it's Saturday night,
I can't sleep, and we're watching the news
She says "Do me a favor,
don't go with a guy who would make you choose"
And I don't understand, and she tries to explain
And all that mascara runs down in her pain
Cause she's leaving me, oh
~"The Babysitter's Here" by Dar Williams
http://www.darwilliams.com/index.php?page=cds&family=music&category=CD&display=82
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/d/dar_williams/the_babysitters_here.html

If I'm the slightest bit hormonal, this song can make me almost cry. It reminds me of how I looked up to my babysitters when I was young, and it recalls to mind what I went through with my own "king of romance." I love how it's written from the perspective of the kids, with child-like lyrics (and notice how it neatly ties in with my last post, about my potential new business).

And so, a few poems written from that awful time in my life seem called for, recently revised with 19 more years of writing experience and life perspective. This hopefully made them a bit better, although I suspect there's a certain adolescent anguish that I wasn't able to (maybe wouldn't want to) remove. It's scary to put full poems out here, especially such old and immature ones, but - big breath and - here goes....

I Take It Back
How I said I could
bear it, because I can't!

I want to tear my hair out
and scream and lay down
my love-hate before you like a
delicious dish of your favorite
flavor of ice cream.

I want to run to your forbidden
space and give you my arms
to make a circle around your ears,
give you my hands to kiss with those
dry, cracked lips, in need of Carmex
or Vaseline or my tears.

I want to give you my own smooth lips
and my words of love
stale as two-year old potato chips.
And my soggy desire
like Cheerios left too long in milk.
My regard for you as fragile
as a dirty shirt made of silk,
needing to be dry-cleaned on Monday.

I want to give you one almost-sincere
apology for wanting more
than those beery nights and
chronically gray
days which I fear
I will never escape if I stay.


Watch It Fade*
There it is, the twist,
the turn, of thorny love.
It rolls over
on its side and becomes a beast
a destructive storm descending
wrath from above.
I just barely escape
and I watch
electric flashes from the shore.
I do not want this empty
copper-tasting
remnants of passion
I want calm blue
bitterless waters
like love I had before.

*inspired, at least in part, by a scene in a Louise Erdrich novel, though I can't remember if it was Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, or Tracks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Erdrich

Would You Hire This Woman? Post Script

Although I think I could still help "Millie" in Florida with her things, I admit that I have more to learn about how to let go gracefully. Witness these photos of me saying "goodbye" to the dining room table we sold on Friday. That one was tough!

Would You Hire This Woman?

It's been over a month since I became voluntarily unemployed and OK, I admit it, I'm starting to worry about money. I have always worried about money actually, it's practically a family trait, and so I was mildly freaked out about it even before quitting, but now, with little-to-no income, and seeing our savings act like a balloon slowly leaking helium, I'm hitting a new level of anxiety.

It doesn't help that everything I seem to want to do costs money (as my husband generously points out). We have modified our spending habits considerably - I mean, we aren't idiots - but maybe not as much as we should have by now. But life is expensive, you know? At least while we are living in a city, buying groceries and still paying a not-inconsequential mortgage. The whole point of Panama was always the low cost-of-living but we just can't seem to get there yet!

So, I'm trying to think of creative ideas for making money and yet not return to the cube and pantyhose I loathe. One of my ideas is for when we get to Florida - "Shelley and Dave's De-cluttering Services." The name is kind of an inside joke, because we are so not that couple. But it really could be perfect, I think, because it leverages what we've learned from reducing our possessions to practically nothing, including the best places to sell stuff, whether it be online or in person (taking things to antique malls and consignment shops). Just yesterday we had a garage sale and made $100 selling our crap that we were just going to take to Goodwill anyway.

And you gotta figure there's lots of elderly down in Florida wanting to reduce, whether because they need the money, or because they know their time on the planet is up soon, and don't want to burden their families with the cleanup effort afterward. Isn't everyone so equanimous and rationally thinking when it comes to their own demise? :)

David wasn't enthused, he said that their families would think we were taking advantage, and also that a lot of older people are notorious for hanging onto things. But that's precisely where I think I could really add something special to the "services" of our new proposed company. I would approach it as part psychotherapy and part really good friend who knows how to listen: flash to me at the kitchen table with "Millie" telling her gently "I know you want to hang onto xyz object, but you really have to start thinking about letting it go..." and then attending to the feelings that may come up.

I could cheerfully tell Millie, or her husband Milton, that one way to de-clutter and hang onto memories at the same time is to scan into the computer (which David would help buy and set up for them, if they didn't have one) that article about the wedding of the mayor's daughter that Millie attended. "Look there it is on your desktop, you can revisit that special occasion whenever you want and still get rid of the newspaper clipping you've kept for the last 30 years!"

Everyone wins right?

Right. Well, that's a Florida idea but we are still stuck here in Milwaukee for the time being. (Have I mentioned yet, that our beautiful "priced-to-sell" duplex is just not selling?! It totally perplexes me but then everyone just sez "oh you know, it's a bad market" - yah sure, we know that now and only wish to god we had sold 2 years earlier, but we didn't.)

So my idea for Milwaukee, should we stay long enough and I get on the stick about it, is another type of service. Enter "Shelley's Babysitting Services" and here's the flyer I've drawn up in my head, so far:
I am a 37 year old professional woman between jobs. Have no children of my own, but grew up babysitting, taking care of younger siblings, was a nanny during high school, and often filled in at my mother's in-home day-care center in Seattle, WA. I guess you could say that caring for children runs in the family! I have very flexible hours so think of me for your next last-minute date night, surprise meeting you just have to attend at work, or any other babysitting emergency. As an added bonus, I'm currently teaching myself Spanish and would love to do some fun learning activities with your children to help them acquire this beautiful language too!

I would probably need to get 1st Aid-CPR Certified again, or whatever (which I'm currently looking into), but the question I am asking my loyal blog followers (all 5 of you) is: would you hire this woman?! And do you think parents would actually pay more for an adult, versus a teenager, especially one who doubles as an uncertified Spanish tutor? Looking for any and all constructive feedback or even other creative ideas for making money, thanks! (And, also - thank you so much for reading my blog, everyone!)

Robert S. McNamara's Death and The Evil of War

Yesterday morning at my meditation class, after we had finished 30 minutes of an "acceptance" guided meditation and were talking about our experience, somehow the topic of war came up. I found myself speaking passionately about fundamentalism being the root of war, maybe even all conflict and misunderstanding; that inability we all have, at one time or another, to see anyone else's perspective but our own.

We want to - perhaps need to, at times - think we are so right. And I believe that's what happened in the Vietnam War and is happening right now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and maybe even Iran.

Perhaps this outburst came because the death this week of Robert S. McNamara has been on my mind and this post I wanted to do (something important, less personal, so I can believe this is all more than just glorified online journal-writing), percolating in the back of my head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara

I watched "The Fog of War" for the second time recently, because my husband had never seen it. Something triggered the thought, and ensuing conversation, and I got it from the library. I love the Phillip Glass score which is so evocative that it helps bring all the weight of possible human emotion to bear on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War

And it's terrifying, what's in this movie: these men making decisions about human lives, with possibly very bad information, and so that's not their fault sure, but the fact remains that - they treated human beings as numbers. That is what they were, all those young 60s boys, one of whom may have been you, or your father, or could have very easily been your father, one of whom was also almost my father. (I realize the Vietnam War extended well into the 70s, but I always think of it as a 60s thing, for some reason).

And I still don't know how exactly he escaped, was it because he was in graduate school, because he had kids, or because he participated in Kennedy's new experiment, the Peace Corps? Was that the deal, two years of service and he avoided the draft? All I know is my parents went to Ethiopia right after they got married, to teach English in a small village from 1966 to 1968, and there is still weird art work and scary-looking swords hanging on the walls of my childhood home from this strange side-trip they took.

Whatever he did, if it was calculated or not, I applaud him. To stay alive, as long as we can, and not be subjected to such pointless horrors, is paramount In-My-Humble-Opinion. I abhor the idea of treating human lives as so many ticks on an age-old punch-card system (as they did during McNamara's tenure), or even a modern excel spreadsheet or high-tech database that IBM or Microsoft sold you. What's the information technology currently counting people deployed in today's "military actions" and all the lives lost in Iraq? The morbid side of me wonders.

This week, in the face of McNamara's death, I found myself asking my chiropractor, this sweet older man who I thought might be my father's age, if he had lived, or maybe a bit younger, "how did you escape it?" and I think he was a bit flustered...only said something I didn't quite catch, about being only 18 when "tricky Dick" took office and the draft ended. Oh my god, can you imagine being an 18-year-old boy who loved his life, hearing that you weren't going to be sent over there to be slaughtered after all? I would have partied like it was 1999.

I don't know, I've read a few editorials about his death and what it means, was his mea culpa in his 1995 memoirs or in 2003's "Fog of War" enough, or was he still in denial about the impact of decisions made by him and a handful of other men in power? And I'm still not sure exactly what I think.

But I do know this: As much as Robert McNamara ever came to grips with what he did, what he was involved with, and the consequences, I don't think he ever fully dealt with the true evil of war. Which to me is the abstraction that allows those in power to deal with human beings as numbers, not living breathing people, with hopes and dreams and fears and heartache. To me, war is evil because at bottom it is the opposite of valuing human life. (But don't ask me how my support of women's reproductive rights jibes with this opinion, that's another much more complicated post!)

And evil also lies in the type of fundamentalist thinking I went off about in meditation class. In fact, there's a brilliant description in M. Scott Peck's book People of the Lie, of human evil as people who are unwilling or unable to look at themselves and their own flaws or failures, instead they defend their beliefs to the end and even attack other people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Lie#People_of_the_Lie

He writes "Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image of perfection." And further that "The evil are 'the people of the lie,' deceiving others as they also build layer upon layer of self-deception."

I believe it's critical for individual mental health - and maybe for the mental health of the planet - for us to admit that there may be something we can't see about any situation, that someone else does see clearly, and that it might be helpful to listen to that person. One of the most freeing thoughts I've ever had, which I have to repeat to myself often, is "maybe all my ideas are wrong" - but said in a lighthearted way, almost laughing at myself, rather than heavy and fearful. Try it out and see how things change, or maybe don't, for your thinking!

The imperative to consider other people's perspectives was demonstrated beautifully in another wonderful documentary I recently watched called "Promises." My friend Judy recommended it because she thought anyone who watched it would get a much better understanding of what it was like for her growing up in Israel, and because one of the creators is her neighbor.

This film by Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and Carlos Balado, consisted mainly of interviews with Israeli and Palestinian children living with war on a daily basis. The Israeli kids saying things like the following, about taking the bus: if see a scary person "I try to get off before he does. I keep waiting for the explosion." Can most of us in the U.S. even imagine what kind of stress that must be to live with? And Palestinian kids talking about how their brothers were killed in the conflict of 1969 or gunned down during protests for throwing rocks.

The filmmakers eventually bring the kids together, and they have frank discussions about what their lives are like. And they also just got to be kids, goofing around, although the Palestinians had to go back to their refugee camp before dark to get past the checkpoints. No, the film didn't bring peace to the Middle East but it did demonstrate that nothing can change until understanding is deepened between those on either side of any issue. And therefore, it was at least as effective as anything our so-called world leaders have done to try to resolve the conflict.
http://www.promisesproject.org/
http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=000441

There were two points in "The Fog of War" where McNamara seemed to sort-of get it. The first was when he mentioned that a former U.S.ambassador to the Soviet Union spoke up and may have single-handedly prevented nuclear war, by saying that he knew Khrushchev personally and "he doesn't want this" (escalation of the conflict surrounding Soviet missiles in Cuba). This was the "Bay of Pigs" situation, if I'm remembering the movie and history correctly. Here was a case where someone on our side knew the mind of someone on the other side, and therefore was able to avert war.

The second was when McNamara said that he sat down with a former Vietnamese leader, years after the war had ended. When McNamara expressed that U.S. motivation in Vietnam had to do with China and the spread of Communism, this leader proclaimed "China - you don't know anything about Vietnam's history - we've been in conflict with China for over a thousand years!"

He went on to say that to the Vietnamese it was a civil war and they saw the U.S. as just another invading force, in their long history of being colonized by Imperialist powers - it had nothing to do with our Cold War. Once McNamara understood his former adversary a little better, he commented on the "domino theory" - the idea that if Vietnam fell to Communism, all of Southeast Asia would be sure to follow - and was able to say those freeing and magical words "We were wrong!"

When I Was a Boy 

I won't forget when Peter Pan/came to my house took my hand I said a was a boy/

I'm glad he didn't check I learned to fly/I learned to fight/I lived a whole life in one night 

we saved each others' lives out on the pirate deck and I remember that night when/

leaving a late night with some friends and I hear somebody tell me it's not safe/

someone should help me you need to find a nice man to walk me home 

When I was a boy/I scared the pants off of my mom climbed what I could climb upon 

and I don't know how I survived/I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew 

and you can walk me home/but I was a boy too.... 

 I was a kid that you would like/just a small boy on her bike riding topless yeah I never cared who saw 

a neighbor came outside to say/get your shirt/I said no way it's the last time I'm not breaking any law 

now I'm in this clothing store/and the signs say less is more 

more that's tight means more to see/more for them, not more for me 

that can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat 

When I was a boy/see that picture that was me grass-stained shirt and dusty knees 

and I know things have gotta change/they got pills to sell they got implants to put in/

they got implants to remove 

but I am not forgetting/that I was a boy too... 

I like the woods where I would creep/it's a secret I can keep except when I'm tired/

'cept when I'm being caught off-guard I've had a lonesome awful day/

conversation finds its way to catching fireflies out in the backyard and so I tell the man I'm with/

about the other life I've lived and I say now you're top gun/I have lost and you have won 

and he says oh no, no, no can't you see When I was a girl/my mom and I we always talked 

I picked flowers everywhere that I walked and I could always cry/now even when I'm alone, I seldom do... And I have lost some kindness/but I was a girl too 

and you were just like me/and I was just like you ~Dar Williams

The Day The Music Died - Post Script

Only because I've yet to figure out how to insert photos into the body of the text :)

The Day The Music Died - Part Three

"Let's go fishing in the morning
just like we've always done
you can come inside and wake me up
we'll pack and leave by dawn
we will pack and leave by dawn...
and the truck will climb up slowly
and we'll see how far we've gone
and the hills will stretch before us
they are rolling on and on
they are rolling on and on
and the fish will watch our boat
with envy and with fear
because we will live forever
and our days are slow and dear
and our days are slow and dear"
~"Fishing in the Morning" by Dar Williams

After the funeral, we went up to Lake View Cemetery right next to Volunteer Park, a place so beautiful and pristine it's like a country club for dead people. I'm still not sure how we got him in and wonder what some of old money Seattle might think of having this ex-hippy, Catholic Worker House founder in their midst - a man who I think still subscribed to a Socialist newspaper at the time of his death, despite being a home and small business owner.

Dad's old friend Larry Shoup, who he and my mother met in Ethiopia during the Peace Corps (where they went shortly after their wedding in 1966), gave a graveside Eulogy. It was yet another incredible speech that revealed more aspects of his life. They regularly went on backpacking trips in the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains, and their "week-long hiking adventures were always one long conversation about all that was going on" in their lives, their families and the world.

Larry choked up and finished with:
"I want to end by discussing another of Paul's endearing attributes, his hopeful nature. Paul loved to fish, and was always optimistic about catching another big one. This hope was manifested in his fishing nickname - 'Last Cast Hirning.' So when it was time to go, he always wanted to make one last cast of his line, and then another, and another, solemnly promising each time that this was his 'last cast.' Sometimes he would indeed catch one and an enduring scene in my mind's eye is a vision of Paul reeling in a fish with the excitement that was his trademark. One has to have hope to do anything, and Paul's high level of hope, his optimism, was always an inspiration and a lesson for me."

We walked back for the wake, and my friends gathered around me in the front yard of my childhood house like mother hens, clucking and handing me beer after beer. Heidi had flown up from San Franscico, which meant the world to me and I've probably never thanked her properly for it. At one point, she and I snuck down the alley to have a clandestine cigarette, like we were thirteen again.

I remember my uncles, my mother's sweet brothers up from Portland, OR, befuddled in their grief like the rest of us, and helpless to do more than strong-armed carry in cases of Henry Weinhard's, for fortification of the mourners (one woman said it was becoming "too much of an Irish wake" for her, as she departed).

I also remember faces from communal masses of long ago at "Round Table" (an adjunct household to Pacem in Terris), tear-streaked talking about how it was the end of an era, so much seemed lost somehow now...something like that, I wish I had a been a little more sober to have taken it all in, but I guess it's pretty understandable that I needed to numb out. I don't remember how the evening ended, I just remember how empty the house seemed without him, and how I knew that it would never feel full with his presence again.

And what was the rest? Afterwards, when people gradually stopped dropping by the house with their casseroles and condolences, I prepared to go back to some kind of life in Milwaukee. But all I wanted was to remain in Seattle among all that was familiar, and with my family in that cocoon of hurt.

Before I left, I had my long hair chopped off, as if in some sign of grief, but really it was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. I was pretty much immediately sorry, and I'm sure it wasn't easy for David, who I had started dating in June before I left for "Union Summer." Even though I told him about it ahead of time, what he must have thought when he picked me up at the Chicago airport - poor guy was only just getting to know this long-haired chick and there I showed up looking like Ralph Macchio (see the "Post Script" post).

I felt so strange coming back to Milwaukee like that - I had planned to return after the internship finished and pick back up with house painting and working my cafe job and desultorily reading academic stuff to prepare for second year of grad school. When I got back into town, I wasn't due at either job yet, and so David and I went camping in Kettle Moraine State Park, among the gently rolling hills of rural Wisconsin.

After setting up the tent, we went to the beach and I walked into the slightly fishy water of the small lake, despite a sky that threatened thundershowers and lightening. I dunked my shorn head under, and hoped - for something, anything less painful to happen next.

The Day The Music Died - Part Two

I was a kid, you were my dad
I didn't always understand
I wanted freedom
You got mad
You were concerned
I got upset...
I didn't recognize you yet.
"Dad" - K's Choice

The day after the "viewing" the funeral took place at St. Joseph's church, site of baptisms, first communion and confirmation, where just a year earlier my family had all gathered for Dave's wedding, a much happier occasion that seemed a lifetime ago. Father Peter Burns, the priest who presided at that wedding, just happened to be available for the funeral mass, though he was leaving shortly for another parish. My whole family loved him, because he actually made sense of the gospel, even for a teenager, his homilies were so well-written and delivered as if he were just an excellent motivational speaker - and because he was such a real person I remember he showed up at one of my basketball practices and shot hoops with us.

I will never forget how people poured into that church, from all walks of my father's life, it was like we never realized all he had done, everyone he had touched, or what he meant to his community. Every pew was filled and there were people standing at the back.

Of course, it had also been in all the newspapers, so it's possible that some attended who wouldn't have otherwise known the funeral was happening. We even got a (probably form) letter from Seattle's Mayor and a State Senator, for whose campaigns my dad had apparently volunteered in the past. Everything is in a scrapbook gathering dust now, but of all the things I'm tossing out as we sell the house and plan to move to another state or country, that's one thing I'm keeping.

In the scrapbook is a copy of the amazing homily given by Peter Burns. Here is just an excerpt:
"On Wednesday, July 17th two hundred and thirty passengers of TWA Flight 800 fell to their death in the Atlantic Ocean from a height of more than two miles. And we are still stunned and shocked and stricken by the fragileness of life.

A week later one single person - Paul Hirning - fell nearly two hundred feet down a mountain in the Cascade range to his death. And we are stunned and shocked and stricken at the fragileness of life, certainly Paul's life, but our lives as well.

For we realize how precarious and slender is our hold on life. We are conscious that time is not on our side. In fact we are aware what our ancestors have told us through the ages: 'We know neither the day nor the hour.'

And so weighty and serious questions are addressed to us and to our children; questions of the most ultimate import crowd into our heart and awareness, questions like: What does it mean to be a human being? And what are we to do with the one and only life we will ever have? And what is required of us with the remaining time however long or short it may be?

These are questions that Paul Hirning regularly entertained because he possessed an inquisitive mind and a searching heart and an inquiring spirit. And these are the questions that he would have us probe and allow them to probe us....

In the days since his death the stories of Paul have surfaced and emerged as they will continue to throughout the rest of today and in the days ahead....There will be stories of Paul's love for his children, stories that they themselves will tell at the end of this Eucharist and before we bless his body and commend him to God. And he did love you children tenderly."

My story took the form of a poem, of course. When Father Burns met with us to plan the service and I was unsure of what to say, what could I offer that really meant something, what would be appropriate, and I was afraid of speaking in front of people anyway....he gently asked, what would I do or say if I could do anything, with no worry about what anybody thought? And I pulled out of my memory something written years earlier - I still don't know if it had anything to do with shaping Father Burns' refrain of "fragileness" or that was just a coincidence, but here it is:
Fragile
Let our young voices resound
and record our lives
to pierce the fragile skin of those days
our childhood
and revive memories so that we
are not lost in age.

Oh Father
do not harm us keep us safe
make us sure
that your hands are on the wheel always
and have the patience
take those early evening moments
to wash us, fragile, three at a time.

Oh Mother
do not leave us keep us warm
make us sure
that your hands do good things always
create and care
and have the cheer
take those early morning moments
to wake us, fragile, rise and shine us with a song.

This is my stability my beginning
was as solid and as fragile
as it could be
and I will always have this
a touchstone
a place I can return to forever
a base where I am home
free.

The Day The Music Died - Part One

So bye-bye, miss american pie. Drove my chevy to the levee, But the levee was dry. And them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singing, "this'll be the day that I die. "this'll be the day that I die." ~Don McLean "Amercan Pie" 

It was July 1996 and I was away in Ohio for "Union Summer" - a month long internship through the AFL-CIO - with my friend Meta. I was at the house of one of the SEIU organizers, taking a break from passing out flyers and knocking on doors of low-paid nursing home workers (trying to convince them that forming a Union was in their best interest), when Meta got the page and called me. 

This was pre-cell-phone days and I had given my parents Meta's pager so they would have some way to get ahold of me while I was gone from Milwaukee. You know, you always do that, give an emergency contact number, but you never think anyone will ever need to use it. Meta didn't say much when she called, just that "you need to call your family in Seattle, now" and I knew it couldn't be anything good. 

I got my mom first, but she was crying too hard to talk so she handed the phone over to Dave, my older brother, the responsible one who always took care of things. Well, he would have to take care of things now, a lot more than he ever expected to, at the age of twenty-seven. I heard him say something like the following: "There was an accident - on the hiking trip - Dad fell, and...he died Michele..." I don't know what came out of me, probably "oh my god" and some kind of protest "how could that be?!" and then crying. Someone brought me some toilet paper for the tears and probably sat next to me, touching my shoulder. I was mostly in shock, I'm sure, and just wanting someone to tell me what I was supposed to do next. 

Meta came to pick me up, and took me back to the dorms at Kent State where we were staying, and helped me make my flight arrangements. We had to drive all the way from Akron to the airport in Cleveland? Cincinnati? I don't remember exactly, but recall there was one of those dramatic mid-western thunderstorms on the long drive, that continued during my red-eye flight back to Seattle: ...as we travel across the map of this world and move through the crowded cabin or simply stare out the small window we are given, watch god play with the fluff of our lives: the weather outside like lasers or a child playing with matches illuminating the clouds and night-sky... 

This was right after the crash of TWA flight 800, initially thought to be a terrorist bombing, and so security was newly heightened at all U.S. airports. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800] Because of this, I wasn't met at the gate like I expected; instead Dave, my sister Stephanie and Dan Raymond (close friend of the family) met me at the security checkpoint, and I remember how strange that seemed at the time. 

The next part is a bit of a blur, with all kinds of decisions and arrangements to be made about the death certificate, mortuary services, transportation of the body, the "viewing" and funeral, most of it taken on by Dave, as I remember. A lot of it seemed to be happening in gray haze and slow motion, until the technicolor moment when his casket arrived. Kenna, my mother's college roommate, had driven the body all way from Omak, her town on the other side of the Cascade mountains, where his fall happened. She had also arranged for the casket - the most simple pine box with a beautiful carving of a bear, done by a local Native American wood-worker. My aunt, who flew in from L.A. with my poor shell-shocked grandfather (your children are supposed to outlive you, after all), commented on this: that it was a perfect symbol for my father, who was gruff and forbidding, but also beautiful and cuddly and majestic, in his own way. 

I remember being there when the van pulled up with his casket - I had been in high-stress mode in moments leading up to the viewing, with all the family and friends in town, and wanting to do right by him, trying to take some of the burden off Dave. When my father's body finally arrived, and they brought its heavy weight in to rest on casters among flowers and photos, it suddenly seemed all too real and I just broke, cried my first really hard cry, which was like lifting a burden I hadn't even realized I was carrying.

Growing Up Catholic Worker

When my parents were younger than me and had a lot less money, they did an incredible thing: they packed up everything they owned into a blue Volkswagen bus and drove, with their kids (a two-year old me and my five-year old brother Dave, not to be confused with David, my husband), and another couple with their 2 children, roughly the same ages (Heidi and Johnny).

They drove from Los Angeles, CA - where the two couples had met in UCLA married-housing, location of my father apparently giving up on his dream of being a professor, because no one was hiring white men doing African History any more, and the dissertation was too hard to complete while working to feed a family - to Seattle, WA to start a Catholic Worker House.
http://www.catholicworker.org/historytext.cfm?Number=4

Growing up, I took it for granted that my parents had done this sort-of weird thing, in their mythical hippy past, back when they didn't have wrinkles or IRAs and probably smoked something called "grass" - but now I'm amazed by it, what bravery it must have taken, what faith and belief that they really could change the world with their actions.

I wish I could have witnessed the conversations leading up to their decision, how they planned it all out, or didn't - maybe they just went? What were they thinking though, as they left L.A., what did they think as they drove all that way on Interstate Highway 5 to Seattle, how were they imagining this was going to work out for their young families, did they think that if it went bust oh well, we have time to figure out some alternative? Legend has it that I pulled poor Heidi's hair the whole trip up there - between that and whatever else four young kids can dish out, plus the usual road-trip frustrations, I don't know how they made it.

They arrived late-summer 1974, in pre-Microsoft Seattle, before a Starbucks on every corner and McMansions springing up in the ever-expanding suburbs. I picture it all pioneer-rough, the air smelling of salt from the still pristine Puget Sound, with way more trees and overall "green space" than exists now. When the guys at Pike Place Market threw fish because it was just what they did, not because tourists stopped and took photos, or anyone had written about it for a business book parable. A new place, and one hospitable to young people with ideals and the energy to make the much-talked-about actually happen. But admittedly, some or all of this could be my own romanticization of the past...

In any case, with some help from the local Jesuit parish, they found a large house in what was, at that time, a slightly marginal section of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. There they created Pacem in Terris ("peace on earth" in Latin), envisioned as a "house of hospitality" for the hungry, the poor, the sick and lame, for battered women and their children, for those down on their luck and even just the lonely who wanted to serve; "what Jesus would do" for people, if he were alive and owned a house, basically.

And a soup kitchen in downtown Seattle, called the “Family Kitchen” was soon to follow. There are photos of me having my third birthday party there, standing up on a chair with ice cream on my face and cake in my hair, grinning without restraint, among Seattle's homeless. I don't remember much, not the peace protests or strange transient men or communal masses, but I remember drinking powdered milk (it was awful), and the produce from their dumpster diving, gathering fruit flies in the room off the kitchen (kind of awful also, but it was cheap and therefore fit the mission).

But it wasn't sustainable, at least not for my family, or not for my father. We moved out after about a year, to rent a house a few blocks away that my parents eventually bought and in which my mother still lives. I don't know why we left exactly but it may have had something to do with what's mentioned in this excerpt from a 1974 Seattle Times article -
"The Ray-Keils and the Hirnings decided to pool their resources and try communal living in Seattle, on Capitol Hill. They freely admit the still young experiment has not been all roses. 'The thing is that Larry and Alice have moved a lot further from consumerism or middle class lifestyle than I have.' Paul said. 'Intellectually, I’ve reached the same conclusions they have, but I’m finding it a lot harder to adapt my life.'"

He went on to talk about how hard vegetarianism was for him, how he couldn’t give up meat, but I think it was more than that. I think it was a lot of things I would love to be able to ask him about now, but mostly I think it's like my friend Heidi (still my friend, despite all the hair-pulling) says:
...here you are, thinking in some ways that quitting your job and looking for a new better way to live is giving your dad the F- you, or defying him, or letting him down somehow – but really, you’re living the life he couldn’t maintain. One he could intellectualize but couldn't risk committing fully to. The life he wanted when he had young children and he was dreaming of the future and wanted to make it right for you.

Don't know what my life would have been like, had my family stuck it out at Pacem in Terris. Heidi has her own story to tell, as part of the family that stayed, but we were the family that started it and then went away. Even so, I love and admire my parents for trying, for doing something incredible with their lives, that I get to inherit, and fully appreciate now. As Heidi also remarked -
Maybe they didn’t make huge change in the world like they tried. Maybe there is still injustice, and war and nuclear weapons and overwhelming poverty. But the one thing they certainly changed was who we are. Maybe that’s the real change they accomplished, and what they should be most proud of, in some ways. That's the you that's willing to give yourself to this new life -- and not let fear stop you.
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The Catholic Worker movement has a long and illustrious history which this post can't hope to encompass, see links below for general info, but in terms of the specific Catholic Worker house I experienced, this was all I could find online (a very cursory search):
http://www.pieandcoffee.org/2005/06/09/catholic-workers-of-the-pacific-northwest/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Worker_Movement
http://www.catholicworker.com/
http://www.catholicworker.org/communities/volunteers.cfm
http://lacatholicworker.org/
http://www.occatholicworker.org/
http://karenhousecw.org/
http://www.geocities.com/casa_maria_worker/