hens and other layers of my life

My granddaughter, Josephine, was kicked out of her preschool this week. Her teacher said Josephine did not respect circle-time, did not share with other children, and had demonstrated herself to be a "biter." I can verify that Jo is a biter. Once when I was the caregiver she committed a crime against her brother that warranted a time out. I headed into the playroom to administer the punishment. My son, her dad, called to me from his home-office, "Be careful, Mom. She bites." Sure enough, as I was leading Jo to the time-out chair she came at me like a snapping turtle and I had to transport her by the back of her pants to keep myself out of range of her jaws. Having raised six children myself I could have told her that this grandma was not in the least intimidated by a biting child. Her uncles and aunt have tried to take me to that rodeo a few times themselves and it never turned out very well for them. Still, it is disturbing that she uses this tactic so freely. And now she has been kicked out of her preschool.

Jo's mom, Sarah, and I visited this preschool last summer and chose it for its peaceful atmosphere. The front door had no doorbell, no brass knocker, just a set of hollow beads on strings that tapped out a gentle signal that someone was approaching the door. Lovely. On the back porch Buddhist prayer flags hung at eye level and also stirred, catching the prayers and dreams of children playing there and sending them on the breeze to gods who presumably answered the prayers. There was flowing water in tiny fountains and small herb gardens tucked in among flowers edging the lawn. We were charmed. We signed Jo on as a student. Now we are wondering if perhaps this was more a place where Sarah and I wanted to spend time and not such a good fit for Josephine.

Josephine is a young hen in a family of very strong women. We are not aggressive women; we long for peace and look for peace, but there are battles to be fought, don't you know? When life presents us with a challenge we roll up our sleeves, sigh at the unfortunate abandonment of our peace, and tie into the fray. Josephine's great grandmother is almost 98 years old now and only just let go of her daily jog. A couple of years ago she was frustrated by her push lawnmower and gave the stuck blades a kick. The blades whirled a couple turns and chopped off the end of grandma's shoe and three of grandma's toes. She picked up the toes and hopped on one foot the block to the hospital. Doctors there begged her to accept a bed and surgery to try sewing the toes back on but she opted to just let it heal up. The only offer she would agree to is a ride home. The medical staff was alarmed by this reckless choice but the women in grandma's family only shrugged. Any one of us may have made the same decision.

Now Josephine is paying the price for her heritage of feminine grit. When shopping for Jo's preschool Sarah and should have been looking for something that resembled a Marine boot camp instead of a Buddhist sanctuary. The hens in the Nuxoll henhouse submit to authority when it comes from a source of high moral standards (ours) and pure intentions. We follow rules but only if we decide they make good sense. One-way streets, dress codes, and start-times are considered nothing more than worthy suggestions. Tradition, research findings, and established routes often look like the red scarf of a matador to us. My sons have added fuel to the feminine fire by marrying women who look like angels and speak softly as nurses on night-shift but, I suspect, could easily beat an intruder to death with a lego box and then coolly lie to the police about who started the fight.

We rarely bite though.

Bidding at mid-life

I have been playing the game of bridge since 1971, the year I married into a family who places bridge on the bottom level of Maslow's pyramind of needs. I was required to learn. The lessons began the day we returned from our honeymoon. All my children play bridge better than I do. Their lessons began after they learned to ride a bike but before they knew long division. It is a foundation of our family. I didn't enjoy playing bridge at first but, like drinking dark beer, one acquires a taste for it. I now find it both entertaining and challenging but no more so than say pitching horseshoes or trying to find a decent pair of shoes on a clearance table. Still, it does serve as a good metaphor for many parts of my life.

When my son, Andy, plays a hand of bridge he sometimes declares at the end of play, “Oh. It only makes three hearts.” Thus explaining that he failed to make enough tricks to satisfy the contract, not because of poor execution on his part, but because it just wasn’t possible to make four hearts. He faithfully followed the rules of bidding and then faithfully played the hand as it should be played but, alas, it turned out to be a three-heart hand, not a four-heart hand. A fluke of bridge. A shrug of the shoulders. Who could have guessed?

When he does this I look at him in amazement. Is this just hubris? And if it is how did a son of mine acquire such self-confidence? Not from modeling his mother’s approach to life. I once apologized to a driver who crashed into me at an intersection because I was thinking perhaps I should have been more attentive as I sat waiting my turn at the stop light. Andy is an accomplished bridge player so instead of being arrogant he may just be accurate. He is educating us. So the next time one of us is say sitting at a sidewalk café in Istanbul playing bridge with three serious men we might get this same sequence of cards and we could sound very wise by saying to the table, “This hand only makes three hearts. Don’t over-bid it.”

I am now in my mid-life. I could just as easily say I am fifty eight, but if I say I am “mid-life” I am implying I have another fifty eight years to live and that suits me fine. I am muddling through this stage of my life, playing my hand the best I can day by day but one critic who is my intimate recently described me with frustration as being “out to lunch.” I wanted to know exactly what that meant but only received from her a vague redundancy of description, “You’re just not yourself anymore.” I have decided to use Andy’s approach as my retort. Well, my Dear, this is just what mid-life looks like. It is what it is. I have not failed to live up to expectations; I have not miscalculated my approach to the challenge. I am clearly nailing mid-life by doing exactly what I am supposed to do. Watch me and be educated so when it is your turn you will know that how I am living at mid-life is perfectly normal.

Out to lunch, by the way, looks like this: I don’t cook breakfast, lunch or dinner if I don’t feel like it. I also don’t have to put up Christmas decorations or go to church on Sunday or send birthday cards or use make-up or go to family reunions or answer the phone or wear underwear or refrain from crying in public when I am moved, or pretend to enjoy sex when I am not moved. I can holler at basketball games and flip the bird to people who cut me off in traffic. I can say no without explanation to any invitation and be honest to salespeople when they are pressing me to buy something unappealing. I can stand and ask a question at a lecture or take a homeless person to lunch and make a new friend. I can wear clothes that make my ass look big and wear a swimming suit on a public beach. I can hold my nose and jump off the diving board and try to splash the lifeguard if he looks like a good sport. I can give my friends big smoochy kisses and tell them I love them and then tell them why until I embarrass them. I can do something really stupid and then laugh about it and then tell all my friends who didn’t witness the goof the story and then laugh about it again. The only thing that really shames me is when I look back and think of all the years I didn’t live like this.