Good girl gone…normal?

So I was sitting at our YMCA the other day, dutifully watching my beloved nine-year-old daughter, Alexa, during her fourth round of intensive swim lessons (I should probably note here that she has remained classified as a “Polliwog”—or, in kid-centered, “everyone-gets-a-trophy” Y-speak: the level directly above “Sinking Stone”…I’m not kidding.  My angel-faced, fifty-five pound wisp of a girl floats across the land with the grace of a dandelion puff, but somehow ejects an invisible eighty pound anchor from her arse when she hits the water), and, after eight weeks of daily lessons, I’ve yet to witness any significant improvements in her abilities (unless you count not drowning as a skill).  However, on this particular afternoon, I am utterly astonished by what I observe.

Alexa, standing at the edge of the oh-so-scary deep end—all pale skin, twitching elbows, and knocking knees—was vigorously shaking her head at her gracious and kind teacher (the fourth in a series of wonderful, supportive young women who had coddled, nurtured, and encouraged her to acclimate and accept the grace given to those with confidence in their aquatic endeavors) floating in the water before her, arms open in a welcoming embrace.  For five, full minutes, I watched the two of them in a bizarre dance of warring wills.  It went something like this—  

Teacher: patting the water, extending the day-glo colored foam noodle to bridge the space between them, gently coaxing my reticent little wogger (hipster-speak for “polliwog”) with a warm smile and a firm direction while hiding her growing exasperation; Alexa: skittering to the edge of the platform, toes curling over the brink of the board, tilting forward…then, arms flailing, leaping back to the safety of the pool deck.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  [This is not the unusual part.  This was becoming a carefully calculated habit.  But wait…]

Deadlocked in this watery waltz of authority and acquiescence, one of the lifeguards eventually approached them at the edge of the pool.  He was all muscles and tattoos, a small-town Channing Tatum (at least from where I was sitting in the remote, “parents-we-don’t-want-you-interfering-thank-you” observation deck) and I watched as he spoke to Alexa and her teacher for a moment.  Though I couldn’t hear a word of their exchange, Alexa smiled broadly and nodded cheerfully.  He extended his hand to her and, clearly besotted, she readily placed her petite palm inside of his.  Gliding like a debutante, the shirtless Prince Charming escorted my daughter down the diving board where she, without hesitation, leapt right off the deep end and slipped directly into the water.

On the drive home, I tried a light-hearted approach to understanding what happened with my little swim-class Cinderella, teasing her mildly about the new “boyfriend”—but this only earned me an “Oh, moth-ER!” face and the silent treatment until I could buy back her affections with a Happy Meal. 

[Please tell me it will always be this easy to make amends with my child?]

Other than the fact that I thought that I had another five or so years to prepare for it, this scenario didn’t particularly surprise me.  I’ve puzzled and written a lot recently about the rules of attraction and the nature of relationships—in my reaction to the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon, I briefly mulled over the economy in affairs of the heart, analyzing what it is that we are willing to barter in exchange for what we most desire.  I couldn’t help but examine what this young lifeguard represented to a girl of such limited years that would entice her (so quickly!) to abandon her fears and embrace the opportunity that all of her previous instructors had offered to her?  What mojo did this young man possess?  An awful fear gripped me unexpectedly.  Heaven help her—had my poor child inherited her mother’s preternatural attraction to the…dramatic pause…“bad” boy?

[I will quickly concede my weakness, as a young girl, to being drawn—like a hungry kitten to a saucer of yummy, yummy milk—to any young man within a five mile radius in possession of a tattoo, piercing, mullet, cigarette-smoke infused leather jacket, or rusted-out rattletrap blaring heavy metal at a level that more than alarmed my mother, but actually sent her into a frantic search for the nearest curator of chastity belts.  In fact, at sixteen sweet years old, I actually fell for a guy who fit the aforementioned description down to the very last detail; he even had a license plate that read “LOSER6” (I kid you not.  If you lived in South-Central Illinois in the early 90’s, I can almost guarantee you saw it or knew him.  I’m just going to issue a blanket apology now.  You’re all covered.)

One day I got the nerve to stop making out with him for about five minutes to ask why he actually paid good money for personalized plates that were so self-deprecating.  His response, leaning into me with his ethereal blue eyes fastened to mine, my brain blurred by his heady mix of Marlboro, motor oil, and whatever cheap cologne he’d stolen from the local Wal Mart? 

“I’ve lost in love six times.  But something tells me that my luck has changed with you.  Don’t ever make me change it to ‘LOSER7’, okay?”  

(You do realize that I just died inside writing that, right?  I mean, I threw up in my own mouth enough for the both of us.)

The intelligent young woman in me was laughing her ass off—actually screaming at me for listening to this absurdity—but the hormonally driven teenager in me with the boyfriend who looked like an even hotter Judd Nelson from “The Breakfast Club”?  Well…she was too busy cooing “Oh, you poor baby.  Here, let me love you and fix your broken-hearted booboos…” to even hear my ego trying to kick her idiotic ass. 

(I know.  I KNOW.)  Don’t judge me.   

In my defense, just so you won’t lose all respect for me, you should know that just because I was drawn to them, doesn’t mean I ended up with them.  Sheesh.  Give me a little credit, won’t you?  My “real” relationships were with artists, software engineers, attorneys, and IT consultants.  I just had a tiny addiction for a little while—just an occasional taste kept the jitters at bay.  But I’ve totally kicked the habit now, I swear.  I’m clean and sober, man.]

So…back to my precious girl and the question that would not leave my head: did momma’s predilection for rebels without a clue jump into her gene pool?  I couldn’t get any answers from Alexa, after all, she’s just a little girl.  She doesn’t yet possess the ability to articulate what it is that drives her to do anything, whether it’s shaving her cat, locking her sister in the closet for an hour, or holding hands with a strange boy to dive into nine feet of water that had her quaking in her swim shoes only minutes earlier.    

I hate pondering something and coming up without a hypothesis of some kind, so I decided to take a break from the navel-gazing and bust out the kindle to read my latest purchase—the wildly popular new Gillian Flynn novel (Gone Girl) that belongs to a genre (crime-fiction) that I never [EVER] read—just to blow off my fears that the sins of the mother would be visited upon the genetic betrayal that was to be my child’s legacy: that she would be destined to meet and love the wrong guy, over and over again. 

Talk about irony—for the next twenty-four hours, I was courted by the strange, exotic, charming, and horrifying couple, Amy and Nick Dunne.  (Picture above-average American sweethearts—I’ve personally cast Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Gosling, but you’re graciously free to select your own images, with my permission.  You’re more than welcome.)  The thing is, Nick and Amy offer a behind-closed-suburban-doors-peep-show that makes Ana and Christian Grey look about as interesting as a pair of neutered housecats.  (And I’m not even referring to the sex, although there is some of that, too.  No offense to the Greys, but their fifty shades of kink pale in comparison to the mind-fucking drama of the Dunnes.) 

There is honestly so little that I can tell you about this book that wouldn’t be too revealing or provocative—but I will limit myself to a couple of simple statements: this is a brilliantly written he-said/ she-said transcription of the proclivities and perversities of a perfectly normal American couple.  Then again, I suppose this depends upon your definition of “normal”; the truth is, there is love and passion and anger and betrayal and murder—and there are often moments in this book that will astound you and knock you to your knees with the awareness that these two people are more like you than you may ever comfortably admit.  And that’s a pretty humbling—and frightening—thought when you lie down next to the one you love tonight.

While I am definitely recommending this wickedly clever, agitating novel to anyone and everyone, I’m more than aware that Gillian Flynn does not need my help selling her book: it does this, splendidly, on its own.  In fact, as I was writing this, I noted that it was the #4 book on the Amazon* and #5 on the Times* best seller lists. (*Note—Dear God, for the sake of all that is holy in prose, please let something that is actually well-written knock that bloated Grey trifecta off of the top of the best seller lists before I lose all faith in humanity’s ability to appreciate genuine literature.  Please?)  I cannot tell you any more—I cannot pigeonhole this book into any category: it is simply its own engaging, electrifying entity.  (Honestly, would you all just hurry up and read it so we can talk about it?  Thanks.)            

Unfortunately, in matters of human attraction, sometimes we don’t make the choices that are the best for us—sometimes, the heart simply wants what it wants.  The real hero may be standing in front of us with his bleeding heart in his hands, but we are too busy supplicating at the foot of the hunk adjusting his balls and stubbing out a cigarette to notice.  Love is rarely within our realm of control—even when we think we have it all figured out for ourselves, we’re just bullshitting and making this up as we go along.  What or who we fall in love with is not always a true reflection of who we are or what we value.  In fact, the surface of the person we fall in love with might be nothing like what lies beneath the façade at all—Poe warned us that everything we see or seem might just possibly be a dream within a dream.  Gone Girl is a fresh take on a very primitive fear—that despite our hubris and our assertions to the contrary, none of us truly knows what is lurking in the shadows of the human heart.  Perhaps we would all be wise to exercise a little more caution around those murky places—lest we be sucked into that darkness ourselves.  (I’m telling you, this book will mess with your mind.)

As for my baby girl and her poolside prince?  I’ll just chalk this one up to the classy-sweet kindness of a stranger. The hopeless romantic in me hopes that one day—many, many years from now—Alexa will find the kind of partner who would inspire her to exile her fears and hold her hand as they dive into the deep end of life’s adventures together. 

However, the neurotic mother in me is far more powerful and she is fully prepared to purchase iron window bars and stainless steel chastity belts.  Bad boys beware: I can also locate a great deal on medieval castration tools.  Nobody needs a Christian Grey or a Nick Dunne for a son-in-law; consider yourselves warned.  

You need a book to read that will impress your friends and look great on your bookshelf for years to come. Dave Hill wrote just such a book. This is that book. You are welcome.

This is Dave Hill.  What you probably can tell from the photograph is that he is clearly a sartorially splendid specimen of sexy, sexy manhood—but what you probably cannot tell, just by looking at his photograph, is that:

1)      He is an internationally celebrated rock god (just ask anyone in Osaka—he’s HUGE in Japan).

2)      Despite his delicate good looks and his discerning eye for fashion, he is actually a kick ass former hockey grinder who’ll shove a biscuit down your throat if you even think about getting chippy with him.

3)      He is not actually British (I KNOW, right? He totally looks like one of the queen’s people, doesn’t he?), but a born-and-bred son of the U.S.A.’s very own Cleveland, Ohio.

4)      He is a comedian who is actually a really good writer (which is no small accomplishment —the two are not necessarily synonymous—but I won’t name names.  I’m a lady.) 

5)      He is obsessed with the joys of dressing up as Santa Claus, nude people (especially hot, naked chicks on the internet), Japanese toilets, guitars, and doing or saying whatever it takes to make you love him.  And not necessarily in that order.  [He’d really, really like you to love him.] 

Okay, maybe his membership in the “heterosexual man club” was a giveaway clue about his fascination with the unclothed human—preferably female—form.  After all, a quick glance at basic art history would indicate that most men like looking at nekkid folks, but how many can you say have written a BOOK that includes an essay detailing their riotously sexy romp on an all-nude dinner cruise?  Dave Hill has. Ha, so there.   

While I cannot, personally, testify to his prowess as a rock god, as a hockey player, or as a comedian (at least, not without stalking his vast array of youtube video credits), I can, however, attest to his writing abilities.  Having just finished his book, “Tasteful Nudes”, I will admit that I laughed—loudly, and frequently—at his sardonic voice.  I’m not kidding, my poor cat actually catapulted (no puns, please…let’s leave the comedy to the professionals, m’kay?) from my bed, leapt into the darkness, and bounced squarely off of my nightstand because my braying was so sudden and so unexpected.  What can I say?  Dave Hill has a hilariously dual personality that ricochets between the self-deprecating and the audaciously-confident…and it is a very appealing blend of madness.  [Also, he owes me $75 for my animal clinic visit and my kitty’s valium.  It was a very traumatic experience.] 

While his stage persona sort of radiates a feigning-sycophantic-nerd vibe, Dave Hill’s essays actually exude a charismatic, irreverent swagger—a pleasing “I don’t give a damn, I’m just putting this shit out there”-kind of tone.  However, what makes his literary voice particularly likeable is that you can easily imagine his puppy-dog face popping up regularly, head cocked, silently whimpering: “I didn’t mean it—I DO give a damn!”  It is in between the cheeriest moments, when his confidence wavers and the actual vulnerability behind the casually cutting humor emerges, that his writing becomes the most engaging and Dave Hill—the real man—becomes his most endearing.  

Don’t get me wrong—this guy is no hopeless schlub or anything like that.  He’s got some great stories—he lived in the infamous Chelsea Hotel, he worked in a homeless drug-rehab shelter, he volunteered to perform his stand-up routine for 300+ prisoners in Sing Sing, and he was a pedicab driver on the mean streets of New York City—and he depicts each of them with so much vibrant detail that they only kiss the hem of “Too much information!” without ever crossing the boundaries of “Oh, God, please stab this image out of my head!”  Some of the essays in his book are heartfelt, carefully crafted vignettes of the human experience—and some are hand-engraved invitations (printed on premium-quality gloss cardstock with velum overlays and satin bows—metaphorically, of course.  His writing is really good…) to revel in the glory, the perversion, the wit, and the insanity that is the average American male mind. 

(You know, the kind of American male who grew up with half-naked girl posters on his wall, who was hazed throughout high school by his teammates and friends, who lusted and longed and lived out loud, and who happily indulged in sampling the finest things life had to offer his generation—exceptional rock music, a quality liberal arts education, copious amounts of consequence-free drug and alcohol consumption, and generous access to internet pornography.  That American male.)    

Perhaps it is the fact that I have lived a fatherless existence, perhaps it is the fact that I am an only child who grew up without brothers or cousins—but frankly, I’ve always been especially grateful for up-close-and-personal stories from the male point-of-view.  I think that I’ve spent a lot of years trying to crawl around in the brains of men because no one in possession of the proper hardware (duh, a penis) was willing to inform me about the male perspective.  I mean, sure, after the age of thirteen, when my breasts decided to wake up and give the world a friendly “hey, y’all—what’s up?” I had plenty of offers to learn about what boys were really like up close and in person, but I was looking for an education where I could actually keep my clothes on and that went beyond the back seat of their Plymouth Satellites.  [God bless my wonderful mother for trying her best to explain the male beast to me, but 1) thrice-divorced, I believed that she was not without bias and 2) without the appropriate hardware (again, duh…), I figured her explanations were little more than theories.] 

Maybe the gap in this pivotal stage of my development explains why my formative years were spent making greater connections with the guys in my life than I ever really made with the girls—I suppose I found a certain measure of comfort surrounded by “the boys” because I was a bit of a double agent, covertly trying to decipher the codes of their behaviors and habits by hanging out, shooting the shit, bumming around town, and sometimes sucking face with them.  In retrospect, I probably [inadvertently] left behind a lot of blue balls during my reconnaissance work, but, in my defense, I swear I did it all in the name of advancement for the social and behavioral sciences. 

[However, in the event that there are any hard feelings (I swear to God that I did not intend that pun), would the following people please consider this a sincere, belated, public apology from a very naïve girl?]

Dear Patrick, Bobby, John, Tony, Tom, Matt, Mike, Sean, Joey, Craig, Jason and ______,

I’m sorry I wasn’t more of a slut and that I wouldn’t let you go past second base.  I really mean that. 

Sincerely.   

I’ve often paid private thanks to the novels of Philip Roth and John Irving and Vladimir Nabokov, the music of Freddie Mercury and Kurt Cobain and Tom Petty, for imparting much of what I know about my male friends and companions: these men were the fathers I never had—imperfect educators, certainly, but at least they were always there when I needed them.  Their collective works, along with those of their contemporaries, paved traversable routes for me to follow in my search for kinship and companionship with our masculine cohorts. 

[Parenthetically, ladies, I will share that, through these explorations, I’ve discovered that men are quite simple really—they tend to say what they mean, they are fairly honest, they have modest expectations, and ironically, they pretty much want most of the same things we do: love, laughter, companionship—a life free from drama, spent worshipping and being worshipped by the most attractive person that they can get to voluntarily come home with them (without resorting to the use of illegal narcotics or chloroform).  You know, just like us.] 

Once, in another life, when I was a teacher, I often dreamed about creating a contemporary fiction course where we would explore the desires and debauchery of men, as seen through 20^th/21^st century literature.  My fantasy curriculum involved examining books like “The Catcher in the Rye”, “Portnoy’s Complaint”, “The World According to Garp”, and “Lolita”—a sort of guided literary tour of the progressing (and often, regressing) maturity of the curious male creature.  I believe that Dave Hill’s essays would have fit very nicely into my proposed structure: each piece from “Tasteful Nudes” depicts a charmingly unsteady step taken by a silly-boy-man on his quest toward becoming a self-actualized-mature-man.  I’ll leave it to your reading to determine just how close he comes to his destination, but either way, I’m pretty certain you’re going to enjoy the journey immensely.

(Just make sure to remove any sleeping cats from your room before reading.  You cannot claim that I did not warn you and Mr. Hill cannot be held liable for any more veterinary costs.)

"Hello, teacher, tell me, what’s my lesson? Look right through me, look right through me…"

“I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm.  I could see the future…love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.”  

 ~The Age of Miracles: A Novel, by Karen Thompson Walker

Very recently, I was teaching 10^th grade reading students at a suburban high school.  They were reading “The Secret Life of Bees” and struggling to find connections to the experiences of an adolescent girl coming of age in the 1960’s.  As we read aloud, many students began to stumble or shake their heads at the main character, Lily, and her startled awareness of the unexpected happiness she discovers in the middle of so much grief.  I recall seeing the disconnection in the students' eyes, the wandering impatience of their age tugging at their attention.  Better judgment abandoned me for a moment and basic human instinct took over.  I put my book down, sighed quietly, and rubbed at my head.  I released the curriculum for a moment and let the life lesson soak in.

“Guys, close your books,” I finally said, sitting carefully atop a spare desk.  “Listen—let’s be real for a minute.”  It has been my experience that young people are not often afforded the opportunity of adults being utterly guileless with them; we so rarely allow our vulnerabilities to become completely apparent that my change in stature quickly brought their focus to me, somber and expectant.  “No one ever tells you this—people hoard this truth for reasons I can’t explain.  Maybe they feel that it wouldn’t have any effect on you unless you experience this revelation for yourselves.  I don’t really know.”

I paused, my mind and stomach churning.  My better judgment returned, furious, hammering at my brain: Where are you going with this?  This isn’t a part of the plan!   I had no idea.  But I continued.

“90% of your life will be spent chasing an experience— pursuing a moment, a dream, an encounter.  The mind-blowing kiss with a person you’ve hungered for.  The exultant victory in a sport you’ve practiced endlessly for.  The dream job you’ve trained and educated yourself for.  Only about 10% of your life will be spent actually enjoying these fruits, these rewards for your chase—and that’s if you’re lucky.” 

The students blinked at me, awaiting the point.  My judgment berated me again. Move on, already.  They don’t get it. 

“The secret to life—the key to real happiness…” I dropped my volume, plucking my words carefully, “…is learning to stop, to sit back on your heels, to look up and around and appreciate the little moments within that pursuit.”

The floodgates were open.

“Sure, we’ve all pilfered pithy wisdoms like ‘Life isn’t about the number of breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away’ and pasted them on our facebook and twitter pages—but when was the last time you paid attention to those moments?   When was the last time anyone appreciated the twist in their gut, their cheeks aflame, when the person they’ve longed for, dreamed of, and loved breathlessly in the silence of their dreams actually smiles at them in passing?  When was the last time you hit your knees, grateful for the ache in your arms or the sweat upon your brows after a devastating round of physical exertion?” 

I caught my breath and the students' brows knitted as they reflected.  My better judgment was silent.

“The truly blessed are those who develop the ability to stop—right here, right now—in the very moment they live, and give thanks for the little moments that lead to those dream experiences.  Because when you’re my age, it’s never about ending up with Prince Charming, doing his laundry, shuttling your kids to school, or paying your taxes—it’s about that one, single, suspended second in time when your hands first brushed against one another and you held your breath, your mind racing and your heart quickening, nearly dying for nothing more than their fingers to weave their way into yours.”

I paused.  Some moments in life have an electricity to them, a static charge that signals that something is somehow…different.  I think that, as a defense mechanism for our overstimulated existences, we’ve attuned ourselves to overlook the clues which would signify that a moment of greater magnitude is before us—occasionally, however, if we shrug off our acquired indifference and truly focus on the moment before us, it will announce itself with an invisible thunderbolt.  In this room, in this moment, I swear I could have lit the city’s power grid for a week with what I was feeling.  

I looked into their beautiful, earnest faces and I was absolutely electrified by the potential their lives held, if only they could be persuaded to value their moments and to make them count.  I bowed my head for a moment, unsure of how to bring the closure that this moment needed, but trusting that I’d made it this far, I steadied myself to move forward.  I looked around the windowless room, at the encouraging posters on the faded yellow walls that shouted ‘Stand Up for Something or You’ll Fall for Anything!’ and ‘Read! It’s what SMART people do!’  I didn’t want to preach to these kids or lecture them with my counterfeit adult maturity—they get enough of that every day of their lives.  I just wanted to speak honestly to what mattered most to them, without condescension or hypocrisy.

“Don’t spend your lives waiting for the enchantment of those culminating moments in the 10%.  Learn to look at the journey toward them—you know, the other 90% of your days on this earth—as the true magic of your lives.  Learn to pause—whenever, wherever you can—to find the spectacular in the ordinary, the painful, the debilitating, the humanizing.  Be kind whenever you can—give of yourselves and watch how it will come back to you in ways you never expected.  How I wish someone had told me this at some point in my life—or if they did, I wish I had listened.” 

My cinematic mentor, Mr. Keating, was chanting softly in the back of my mind— “Carpe diem.  Seize the day.  Make your lives extraordinary…”  My better judgment was clucking its tongue at my pseudo-plagiarism, so I quickly brought the text back to the discussion, chastened by my own boldness.  “So I think this is what Lily is experiencing in this moment with Zach and his family—the exquisite pain of longing has kept her from seeing the happiness that was always within her reach…”

While I will likely never know the impact this little detour had on those students, if it had any at all—the short-term effects were positive.  In our remaining weeks together, the students focused, they contemplated, they produced.  I swear they were more considerate.  Their friends still came and went, their parents still coddled and nagged.  Their interests still waxed and waned.  Such is life; such is the imperious nature of youth.  It knows everything and abides nothing.

With tiny, delicate strokes, author Karen Thompson Walker paints a near-perfect portrait of the complexities of being young, confused, and hungry for experience and understanding—detailing the cruel ironies of being filled with unidentifiable passions and unanswerable questions and of being immobilized by the inability to articulate these feelings—in her debut novel, “The Age of Miracles”.  In fact, her story is so thoughtfully crafted that, after a time, the illusion that these are your memories, that these are your experiences, become almost as palpable and pervasive as the looming fate of her characters themselves.

Because I always want people to experience things for themselves, I will limit my details of the novel to a three sentence synopsis: 

1)     In an era not unlike the one in which we currently inhabit, the earth is broken; it is inexplicably slowing its rotations around the sun, stretching days and nights like taffy. 

2)     The very unit of measurement that we use to define our history—time—is now unstable, arguable, irrelevant, and polarizing; it’s wrecking societies, communities, and relationships.

3)     Life (whether it is evolving or devolving depends upon who you ask) is still carrying on—and through the eyes of the young narrator, a pensive 6^th grade girl named Julia, we learn that even without the assurance of “life-as-we-knew-it”, we still hunger and we still thirst—and not just for the endangered resources of our dying planet; things always fall apart, but to survive, people crave to be known.

The story is unsettling, troubling, and often intensely beautiful.  Much like an independent film, it is unfettered by the restraints of a ‘happily-ever-after’ narrative, choosing instead to focus its energy on the precious moments in between the ever-expanding minutes.  Be warned: just like in real life, if you wait around simply seeking the answer, tapping your foot impatiently for your Hollywood ending, the pages will pass like your days—unanswered, unfulfilled.  Instead, the reader would be rewarded if he or she would release his or her expectations and allow themselves to be led by the author’s voice, which is as gentle and probing as that of her heroine.  Together, author and narrator, pour careful servings of the horrors of the inevitable apocalypse, one chapter at a time, allowing the true sorrow of the situation to settle around the reader in time with Julia’s accelerating maturity.

Society has always bemoaned the foreseeable fate of its children and the subtle tragedies of watching them grow up too fast—imagine the conundrum of having to fit a lifetime of living into whatever minutes you have left…and the irony of the fact that, in this new world, minutes mean nothing at all.  Every pain or loss in our lives feels like a signal that the end must be near; every dark despair feels like a night whose dawn we may never see.  Paradoxically, this quiet little book, “The Age of Miracles”, lays out a story of global resonance—a tiny snapshot in a time capsule trying to explain the meaning of the human experience as it wrestles with its own possible extinction.

This novel is so very, very sad—but so very, very sad in all of the right ways.  I’ve postulated before (usually in defense of my maudlin, often melancholy, predispositions for picking at old wounds, listening to old music, and overly romanticizing every single moment of my life prior to the very one in which I am living) that hurting ourselves [emotionally] a little bit every now and then is a good thing.  I operate best under the theory that a little personal suffering somehow keeps us connected to the very elements that define us as human—qualities like pity, compassion, and empathy.  Even if we sometimes have to direct them at ourselves. 

As I said before, the Earth in “The Age of Miracles” is a mad, mad world—and not wholly different from the very one we populate today.  Within the pages of this deceptively simple story, kids still practice incomprehensible cruelty and kindness toward one another, parents still walk a razor-thin line between their marital responsibilities and their personal desires—chipping away the illusory bedrock of a stable home, the economy is unclear, the future is unknown.  Orson Welles famously said that we are all born alone, we live alone, and we die alone—and that it is only through our love and friendship that we can create the illusion—for a moment—that we are not alone.  I believe he would have been very impressed by Ms. Walker’s quietly profound elegy to the solitary human being and her single mother planet.

A bitter soul might simply shrug and spew that we never know what we have until it’s gone.  While the author’s cautionary jabs are deliberate—she pokes at our rampant consumerism, our rape of the resources that might have remained abundant had we practiced more care, our [apparently] innate compulsion to label, categorize, and subjugate our fellow man—her blows are subtle and measured.  Her restraint is a gift, allowing her readers to swallow each bitter pill that she serves—one by one—without choking on the revelation of the fate our actions have more than merited.  Perhaps what is most spectacular about “The Age of Miracles” is that, even in the face of the looming and deserved doom that threatens to blight the extraordinary lives that we have so clearly taken for granted, eradicating all memories and meaning in our existence, the author’s magnificent love for her world and for her fellow man is never lost upon her reader.  Despite the devastating losses and the bleakest realities that precocious Julia must endure, threads of the rarest commodity left upon Earth—hope—tether her to this new world she occupies. 

I have only wept reading three books in my lifetime, and while this was not one of them, make no mistake that my eyes and heart were hot and heavy and dark as I read, the penetrating self-awareness burning me from the inside out.  Though never overt, the recognition of the murkiest elements of our human nature is unavoidably mirrored in this small, masterful tale—but the deeply redemptive reminder that every single moment matters is as invisibly pervasive as the pure, white gesso atop the artist’s canvas.  Every breath we have left is a foundation for hope, a place for a new beginning. 

*NOTE*  Because when I first began reading, I couldn’t stop humming R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, (which, after a time, felt far too glib) I made a short playlist of a few songs that more accurately encapsulated the experience of this story.  Feel free to steal them, should you ever need a soundtrack for an end of the world as you know it:

Mazzy Star’s “Into Dust”, David Gray’s “The Other Side”, Gary Jules’ “Mad World”, Smashing Pumpkins’ “Blank Page”, Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”, Cinderella's “Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Til It’s Gone)”, Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic"

 

Girls Rule, Boys Drool—or, “How Hollywood and the Marketing Machine Nearly Ruined my Love Life”

McLove 

Love is an archaic notion, says the repressed pragmatic within

the girl whose wrecked, red heart still burns from the wounds of your words.

Why, how could love

possibly exist in a world

where you can pick up your marriage vows as easily

as you’d pick up a Big Mac

(I do, drive thru)

and chuck those

sacred promises

out your window & across the highway to blow and scatter like

barren, disconsolate french fry cartons?

She’s begun to think that love must have been battered

and fried then stuffed into a 100% recyclable carton

and sold with fries and a drink for $3.99

long before she was in line.

People will tell her not to give up, for perhaps

there is still love to be found

in rice cakes and cottage cheese,

but it doesn’t matter-

she hates rice and she’s lactose intolerant.

In my years upon this earth, I have had the privilege of walking in a dozen different countries and sampling the travel experiences of a lifetime—from exploring the exquisite details of Europe to lounging upon the beaches of remote tropical islands, I have been one lucky, hopefully-not-too-ugly-American abroad.  But I can say without a hint of pretense that continental road trips with my husband are among the highlights of my explorative journeys of this globe.

He and I recently had the luxury of an eight+ hour drive to our family vacation destination.  Our kids are at the delightfully distractible age where copious amounts of Spongebob DVDs, unlimited Peanut M & M’s, and heaps of fuzzy blankets turn the back half of the minivan (which, incidentally, my husband so endearingly refers to as the “scrotum scruncher”—the joke lying within the assumption that he feels emasculated to be seen perched within its confines) into a fantastical fortress of pre-adolescent adventure, allowing their father and I unadulterated chunks of time for chatting and catching up with one another, reflecting on our escapades over the eighteen years we’ve shared together.

If you know anything about my husband and I, you know that we are more than polar-opposites—we don’t even originate from the same solar system.  Him: Über-pragmatic-hard-headed-technologically-driven-conservative-fundamentalist.  Me: Utterly-over-emotional-free-thinking-head-in-the-clouds-liberal-artist.  We’re kind of two bizarre halves of one unholy whole—his chocolate is always in my peanut butter and without me, he’s just macaroni with no cheese.  (I’m hungry as I’m writing—please forgive the gastronomical digressions.)  Fortunately, our studies in opposition have never failed to provide us with endless subject matter for contradictions…er…discussions in our lifetime together: each landmark upon the highway, a new point to exchange perspectives—each song upon the radio, a veritable symposium for survey and analysis.

In the sixteen+ roundtrip hours we recently spent together upon the highways, we heard the new Katy Perry song “Wide Awake” exactly twenty seven times.  While I could enjoy taking pot shots at contemporary music in general or top-40 radio play, I’ll avoid the easy and the obvious and, instead, share how this particular song became the grist for setting the mill of my memories to work.  After over eighteen years together (barring a couple of brief breaks for singlehood sanity) my husband and I are fortunate to have an honesty between us that allows us to discuss the relative merits and disadvantages of our two decades together rationally—and often entertainingly.

Don’t roll your eyes quite yet—this is no tribute to connubial bliss or testament to the glory of married life.  Far be it for me to give anyone else in this world advice—especially on how to better their lives…I mean, a single candid glance at my life behind-the-scenes would send the viewer clawing at his or her eyes, screaming for the sweet sanctuary of their mothers.  While I believe whole-heartedly in serial-monogamy, I am no fan of the contractual nature of marriage (just ask my husband about the twelve years we spent together before being married—he’ll fill volumes for you with my thoughts on the historical oppression of marital design.)  However, having lived it, I do know a thing or two about surviving the years with the person you fell in love with…even when you don’t really recognize them—or yourself—any longer.

So, after hearing the song several times, I casually asked my ordinarily dispassionate husband what he thought.  Without hesitating, he quietly replied: “Men are assholes.”

This blew my mind.  There was no self-pity, no opposite sex recrimination—he simply believes that men are shit by their very nature.  My first response was to chuckle—but the horror slowly trickled in.  He accepted this as fact.  How did he come to this understanding?  Have several millennia of being the oppressive force standing on the wrong side of history brought about the evolution of a cultured, neutered, homogenized hybrid of masculinity whose knee-jerk reaction to being castigated (if not emotionally castrated) is to mildly reply: “Yes, dear”???

You see, I think what began to gnaw at me was the complete exoneration that this lovely song “Wide Awake” affords Ms. Perry and the  thorough evisceration that it awards Ms. Perry’s ex, my beloved Russell Brand.  (Ahhh, now you think that because I’ve exposed my bias, I cannot be fair—but I’ve been a member of “Team: Girl” far longer than I’ve been a fan of Mr. Brand—so, despite my proclivity to find him fabulous, I do not find him without fault.  Bear with me.)

Women have come so far in the past century—we are empowered in ways that our foremothers could only have dreamed possible: we now embody the majority of those seeking and achieving higher education, our career opportunities are abundant (although we still struggle to swallow the bitter pill of our failure to achieve economic parity with our male counterparts), and our voices are growing stronger and more recognizable with every leader we create, every obstacle we overcome.

Please don’t misunderstand me—we all need emblematic anthems to buoy our spirits and rally our camaraderie in times of instability—but instead of dancing upon the ashes of our past, why can’t we shoulder some measure of responsibility for our own happiness (and the periodic causes of its loss)?  Believe me—I get it.  When I was a young girl, I bellowed “I Will Survive”, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”, and “Sisters are Doing it for Themselves”—and championed a life without love after every single break-up because, in the immortal words of Nazareth, “Love Hurts”.  When we get hurt, we need something to blame and what was once the source of our joy, is reallocated to the wellspring of our pain.

This is all nothing new.  We each suffer heartbreak at the hands of someone at some time—the industries of reality television, wine coolers, Fifty Shades of Grey publications, and Ryan Gosling’s film career depend upon our torment to feed upon the emotional decomposition.  Relationships have been falling apart since Adam first blamed Eve for tying him up and shoving that apple down his protesting throat, effectively bouncing them out of paradise.  (That’s how it all went down, right?)  The divorce rate in our country has hovered around the fifty/fifty mark for decades—and predatory pundits rub their hands together in anticipatory glee at the emerging reports that, post-recession, the billion-dollar divorce economy numbers are predicted to boom.

These thoughts tumbled through my head upon the dozenth (not a word, but remember, I am a licensed neologist) time Perry’s new ode to herself slipped through our speakers before I really began pondering the lyrics.  Now, before you laugh about how shallow the waters were that I was panning for philosophy, you should be aware of how fiercely the kids of today ascribe to this kind of thinking.  I cannot even count the times I’ve overheard the brilliant, beautiful young ladies in conversations in my classrooms or seen their status updates and tweets verbally gutting and filleting the boys in their lives for being less than what they had expected of them—punishing them publicly for being every bit of what they had always been: teenage boys.  Millions of young people look to Katy Perry as an inspiration and a role model.  Her songs are omnipresent—but I would risk to venture that the themes they are being championed for are troublesome.  While “Wide Awake” appears to be a glossy epic to regaining individual identity after a harrowing incarceration, it sends a clear message: that the only true, worthy love is one that is so powerful and all-consuming and benevolent that it should never, ever hurt you or bruise you or make any mistake of any kind.

That’s just bullshit, and it feeds the absolute wrong message to its audience.

I will pause to confirm that this is not to speak for the countless innocents who are held captive in hostile, abusive relationships—to them I give my tears, my empathy, and my permission to burn the house down the next time the bastard lays a hand upon you.  But for any person who has spent a single penny on a Chris Brown track in the last three years (you know who you are and you should be ashamed of yourselves) who coincidentally belts out the lyrics to this Katy Perry song like a tattoo straight from their hearts, I can only say: “What. The. Hell?”  As an wizened member of this “air-your-dirty-laundry-publicly-for-everyone-to-read-and-see-and-hear-and-comment-upon” twitter/facebook generation, I recognize that wagging my finger at such blatant narcissism and selective memory is a waste of energy—but do we really need to flood the airwaves with self-righteous odes that completely eliminate complicity in the demise of a relationship?  Sure, Adele and Taylor Swift’s careers would come to an abrupt halt…but what is the alternative?  To continue creating a soundtrack for the generation of blame-shifting, self-aggrandizing young people we’re breeding?  Eek. 

Even Gotye had the balls to let Kimbra come aboard, giving her side of their fictional fallout and calling him out for his bullshit in “Somebody that I Used to Know”—the nascent qualities that Katy Perry gives herself in “Wide Awake” and the complete culpability she censures her real-life former husband with are brutally misleading to her young fans.  It stirs a bitter bitchiness in me—and I can’t help but to wonder if she had put half the time and attention into her marriage as she did her albums, videos, tours, promotions, and film—well…we might not be having this discussion at all.

None of us legitimately knows what goes on behind someone else’s doors—we can only presume and postulate.  But Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s inalienable right to publicly discard their marital commitment after little more than a year awakens a profound resentment in me. Societally, we can’t seem to put aside our bigotry and agree that two consenting adults who love one another should have the right to legally wed in our country, regardless of sex or orientation—but these two can so quickly dishonor the privilege that they never even had to lift a finger to earn?  It’s appalling.

Oh, don’t get me wrong—I’m not demonizing the little pop tart or her satyr-suitor, but they represent a machine that as a young person, I would never have even recognized or acknowledged and I wish someone had pointed out to me before I entered the harpy/crone phase of my life.  That we even look to celebrities as role models or to be the architects of modern societal norms is patently absurd—but the fact remains that they are the pulse in the beating heart of pop culture.  The troves of magazines, films, albums, and merchandise we purchase prove our compulsions; we drink from their veins, we feed from their waste, and—like it or not—they influence more of our lives than we may [ever] be ready to admit.  We bring our precious children into the world, nurture them, teach them right from wrong—then, somewhere along the road, we step back and allow the cult of personality to determine the rest.

“But, it’s just so HARD!” the young lovers cry.

 

“Love isn’t supposed to be this difficult…” they sniffle.

Pssst.  Hey kids, lemme let you in on a little secret: YES, IT IS.  Here are a few little nuggets of wisdom that no one ever tells you and you’d be lucky to learn before you reach my ancient age.  I bequeath to you my four epistles, certified authentic by my husband:

1)      Sometimes, when you most want to scream or throw something or throw something while screaming, the best thing to do is just shut the hell up.  Silence is a remarkable salve to the savaged soul.  Your brain continues firing off the violent missives that you long to spew aloud, but you have the space and the silence to edit and construct the clearest distillations of your feelings instead of flying off hot-headed, slinging out verbal arrows that you can never retrieve.  (Just ask my husband—those suckers stay lodged and infect for years—I’ve got festering sores from 1994 still splintered in my head to pick at on the slow nights…)

2)      Ingrain the following into your brainà not every affront to what you thought the relationship was or should be is a reason to fall out of love.  Not every series of affronts to what you thought the relationship was or should be is a reason to fall out of love.  If you are looking for a reason to get out anyway (perhaps you are bored or you are simply ready to find something new) then you don’t need to find some fault of theirs to give you permission to go—just open the door.  If those are truly the extent of your reasons, you’ll be doing them the favor.

3)      BELIEVE this—while the grass may be greener over there, it has its own lawn shed full of insecurities, inhibitions, and a cargo-hold full of its own baggage.  Are new relationships fun—is it refreshing to be dazzled by the tummy-butterflies and stars-in-your-eyes antics of bourgeoning love?  Absolutely.  But you will eventually unlock the metaphorical shed on the other side and, when you do, I can promise you that what you find may make what you have now look like Eden before the fall.

4)      If you leave, you leave with you.  You’ll wake up with you.  You’ll fall asleep with you.  Before you tip too many cocktails with your friends or chug too many beers with your bros, regaling them with the horror that was your previous relationship, remember: you’re the common denominator in all of your own messes.  What are you doing to make yourself any better before the next new beginning comes along…?  Nothing?  History repeats itself for a reason—you’ve heard the clichés.  Don’t doom yourself to repeat your own mistakes.

Toward the end of her song, Katy warbles that she is “letting go of illusion”—and you know what?  THAT is a great message.  Truly.  But the thing is, you don’t have to let go of a relationship simply because you grow up a bit.  We should all let go of the expectations we built about someone and love them for who they are…if we don’t, the love isn’t unconditional… and if it isn’t unconditional, what is the damn point?  Frankly, I’m simply scared for how this will add to the screwed up template that has been created for the young people today.  My god—we are told to accept and love complicated, brooding, despondent men in fiction—the Fitzwilliam Darcys, the Tyler Durdens, the Mr. Bigs, the Christian Greys—but when the real men in our lives fail to measure up to the image issued to us by Hollywood and marketing geniuses, we are disgusted, disappointed, and…disinterested???  The potent cocktail of mixed messages that they serve us roofie our better judgment and feed upon our insecurities about our bodies, our intelligence, our worthiness—and then we invert these fears and wreck the real relationships in our lives for…WHAT???  The pattern is so dysfunctional that it needs its own syndicated talk show.

Men have illusions and expectations, too, you know.  They believe that the Victoria Secret commercials do not lie and that it will be this way forever—and that you want it to be.  (Any young lady who wants to get inside their heads—even a wee fraction—should read Nick Hornby’s hilarious and painfully honest “High Fidelity”—or you could always cheat and see the film, they’re both great.)  Men are perpetually fifteen year old boys inside their lovely heads.  Watch any Kevin Smith film and smoosh all the male characters into one and you’ve got the idea.  They think you will desire them as much eighteen years from now as you did eight minutes ago.  And heaven help them, they WILL want a trophy for their sympathy for your cramps or picking up a box of tampons.  But, you see—just wait.  You’ll get your laughs when they’re there for your tonsillectomies or episiotomies or lumpectomies—that is, if they’re even there then.  That’s my point.  Whether you push them away or you leave, they will not be there for you if you won’t let them be there for you.

Hmmm…I think Epistle #1 needs a subsection, for clarity.  Be aware: sometimes the person you have loved and given yourself to will not be enough.  Sometimes they will fail you.  Sometimes they will make you cry and ache and wish you had never even laid eyes upon them.  Sometimes they will make you question every choice you have made since being with them.  They will learn your buttons and they will push them when you least need them to—and you will want to hurt them.  Wound them.  Strike out for the things in your life that hurt you.  So you will want to run, this is a given.  But know this—running away when it gets hard is the EASY thing to do.  That’s the surest route to leave the pain of the past, right?  Because these things will never come back to haunt you, will they?  Oh wait…

Katy wails that she’s “falling from cloud nine”—and this absolutely needs to happen…you can’t walk beside someone if you’re on a damn cloud.  Put your feet on the ground, bear down, and work your shit out.  Sometimes, no matter how much you put into something you love, you will fail—but will you honestly be able to say that you gave it everything you had?  If you can, if the scars you bear script a roadmap of the routes in your struggle to stay alive in a relationship, then you have earned your right to a reprieve.  Right this way, next exit.  But if not, sit the fuck down and study the map again.  TOGETHER.  And pardon my expletives, but if you have kids, man the fuck up.  Enough of this “right to personal happiness”-crack pipe that every overindulged American has been sucking upon for the last couple of decades.  Give in before you get out—what will it cost you?  A little pride?  A little time?  A mere pittance.

Please trust me when I say that I know what I’m talking about.  The poem earlier was written by a puerile nineteen year old girl who didn’t know shit about love (and still needs a lifetime to learn, if we’re going to be discursive.)  I was a calf fattened on a steady diet of films like Say Anything, Pretty Woman, and Ghost, listening to Bono crooning to me in one ear that he can’t live with or without me and Bret Michaels caressing the other ear about every rose having its thorn—so is it any wonder why I so willingly laid myself at “true” love’s altar like an ancient vestal virgin?  I didn’t want to be someone’s “bitch” or to feign indifference to the “boys will be boys” antics of the potential suitors out there—I wanted the pure, transcendental, magical love of Lloyd Dobler (look it up if you must—but really, you should know better).  Unfortunately, it didn’t hit me for about another decade that the “magical love” guys weren’t that great either—didn’t Richard Gere originally only want Julia Roberts because she rocked the slutty dress and the hooker-heeled, thigh-high boots…and didn’t Patrick Swayze have to be dead for days before he could finally utter the words to Demi Moore that he loved her?  Hell, even Bret Michaels took twenty five years of hard partying with bus-loads of syphilitic strippers before he was finally ready to put a ring on the mother of his children.  Prince Charmings all around.

I was naïve, but in a way, triumphant.  In our years together, my husband and I have put each other through a lot—I do mean a lot, the details of which might send the average tender-hearted youngster crying to the nearest monastery or convent, disavowing the notion of “love” forever—but we are still here, better together than apart.  If we fail or do not make it to the end of our journey together, we may rest assured that it will not be for lack of effort.

Though she may balk at the kind of investment I’ve made in my relationship, today’s young girl isn’t so terribly different—whether she wants to admit it or not.  She is infinitely more sophisticated than the young ladies of my generation—and while I am sad that she had to cut her teeth on role models like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or sisters Kardashian, she was blessed to have had a Hermione Granger, a Natalie Portman, and a Chelsea Clinton to look to for balance.  Weaned from the bittersweet milk of her empowering godmothers Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, she may have had her naïveté stripped from her early-on, but not her tenacity nor her confidence in herself: she has been directed to embrace her superiority as a member of the sisterhood.  However, to be clear, while I am thrilled that turnaround has become fair play between the sexes—I do not believe that this self-entitled hubris has done much (at least, so far) for the young women of today—that is, other than to make them as irascible and unyielding as their male counterparts have been for centuries.  In fact, in a sense, she is even more torn than before because she is constantly warring with the lack of limitations for what society says she can be, what she wants to be, and how she wants to be perceived.  Unfortunately, these are rarely aligned.

From my observations, I sense that today’s young woman wants to author her own sexual identity—a confusing and contemporary blend of virgin, harlot, mother, or crone—but blanches at even the gentlest suggestion that she cannot authentically be all these things at once.  She resents being labeled, but the moment a companion or love interest fails to meet whatever impossible archetypal amalgam of Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic”, Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook”, or Rob Pattinson in the “Twilight” films that she has been fed or constructed, she feels betrayed—and likely has no idea why she even feels this way.

I suppose this is an extreme oversimplification of human needs—no two people want the exact same thing.  While some desire to be comforted and treasured, others want to be challenged and dominated.  Personally, I hate games—I value honesty and directness, but the unfortunate fact is that love is indeed a game and the rules are completely arbitrary. Now I think Epistle #4 needs an amended subsection: If you don’t know who you are, what you believe in, or what you want to do in this world yourself, how in the name of Aphrodite can you expect another person to be able to navigate the uncharted expectations inside YOUR head successfully?

As the road trip relationship revelations continued, I focused on the half-dozen or so people I know personally who carry songs like Katy Perry’s as badges—as power ballad-token tributes to their unbearable first-world problems of not being loved enough or treasured enough or supported enough by the mates they couldn’t bear to stand beside long enough to earn their survival together.  I know this sounds harsh—but there are truly abused, truly heartbroken, truly empty and alone people out there…and to them I say—I am so sorry.  As for the rest of you, if you need a song like this to empower you to get on to something or someone newer or hotter, I hope you find what you seek—and I think you’ll deserve what you find.  People’s affections are not used cars…you don’t trade them in for better models with newer features.  And you certainly can’t pay a mechanic to do the work for you—you have to stick around and write the manual together.

In defense, I will say that the video for “Wide Awake” gets one thing right: it is time for us, as a society, to collectively train our daughters to abandon the antiquated idea that perfect men will arrive upon their alabaster steeds to rescue them from their own lives.  But while it is time to embrace the beauty of independence and self-worth, we must be careful not to berate the opposite sex or push the young people to live lives free of partnerships.  That isn’t right either.  Life’s journey is made better by companionship—but we must seek partners who enrich our identities, not serve as scapegoats for our own incomplete selves.

As for our two young daughters, half-unconscious in the back seat, drenched in their respective chocolate and Spongebob fogs?  I hope they find partners that make them laugh and make them feel good about themselves…always.  I hope they find people who give to their lives more than they take, and make each moment they share together better than the moments that came before.  I hope they have confidence in themselves to stand beside someone—but are unafraid to stand alone until that person comes along.  I hope they never think themselves above or better than anyone else—but never accept ever being treated as less than they deserve.  I hope when they commit themselves to something—a hobby, a career, a relationship—they will see it through, even when it isn’t always as fun or as easy or as charming as it once was.  I hope they will have the good judgment to know the difference between giving in and giving up.  Finally, I hope they learn that life isn’t supposed to be a party—it’s a trip.  I hope they stay the course and enjoy the ride. 

Arriving safely at home, my husband and I wearily carry the precious sleeping bodies of the children we created in the life we’ve made together into our house—and I steal a quick glance at my travel companion.  I’m wide awake, and you know what?  The view is pretty damn good.