Dance with the Reaper

I find that I don’t bring it up as much as I used to. I even have friends who hear me mention it and get all shocked and awkward because they didn’t know, and they wonder if they said anything they shouldn’t have, and they don’t know what to say, but the answer is that pretty much anything is the wrong thing to say, but you can’t just say nothing, so don’t worry too much about it. It doesn’t matter any more, anyway.

Like the scars all over my body, it’s fading — just like my friend-who-is-not-just-a-cancer friend said it would.

It’s not the stark division that it once was, splitting my memories into the dichotomy of before and after. The edges are blurring — or maybe it’s that I’m looking forward and not back.

This thing happens to me, wherever I go.

I fit in. Chris hates it. So does my mother, but Chris hates it more. I don’t care. I know there is nothing I can do about it anyway, and I think it’s only kinda skin deep, sorta. At any rate, I find myself turning into a Texan, a little at a time.

• I’m speaking slowly, or more slowly. Or less rapid-fire. I think. Anyway, there might be more than one syllable in most of my words now.
• I might care a little bit about the Dallas Cowboys, but I’ll still deny it.
• “There is nothing wrong with wearing metallic accessories around town during the day,” I say to myself.
• Big belts intrigue me.
• Makeup. I haz it.
• On the spectrum of blonde, I used to be here

<Blonde>—————————————————————X—-<Brunette>

and now I am here

<Blonde>————-X——————————————————<Brunette>

which I have done a couple of times before, but this time around I like it.

• I’m kinda proud of the fact that we have the hottest summers and the biggest fires and the best public universities and the craziest politics.
• We’re gonna execute a murderer and I’m happy to see him fry. I haven’t felt this way since Florida toasted Ted Bundy back in the eighties.
• I’m getting passionate about BBQ.
• I think nice is better than smart.

I’m perplexed about the push in many Christian circles to lower taxes.

Sometimes, I get it. I get what used to be the flash points.

I understand why many conservative Christians think homosexuality is wrong. I don’t agree with them, but I understand where they are coming from. Same with abortion.  I’m pro choice, but I understand the other point of view.

I also understand why some people just don’t want to pay taxes. It’s a complaint as old as civilization — no coincidence, I think, since taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Nothing is certain, they say, except death and taxes. I’ve got the death part covered. Taxes? Not so bad. But to link an fanatical anti-tax agenda to Christianity? And not just in fringe videos put on youtube by wingnuts, either. It’s out there. God wants millionaires to keep their money and not pay taxes? That’s not the Christianity I grew up with, and the Christianity I grew up with has some impeccable conservative credentials. Dan Yeary, the guy who gave the prayer at the 2008 RNC, that’s the guy who taught me how to be a Christian.

I don’t get it.

Jesus is rarely straightforward. Without a parable, he spoketh not to them, and thometimes thothe parableth…

… it’s not funny any more, if it ever was, but sometimes those parables are a puzzlement. Scholars have been debating the message of His words for 2000 years.

He was clear a couple of times, though.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. 

Pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and give unto God what is God’s. 

I like the red letters. It reminds me of the Bible I studied from when I was a kid, the King James Version with the words of Christ in red letters. “Whoa!” I thought. “That’s the important part!”

I read that Bible so much that I wore it out, and I remember it, and it informs what I do today.

Pay taxes. It’s what Jesus would do.

I was visiting my ancient neighbor, the one who let my mom live with her for a year when I had cancer. She said to me, “Stop hanging out in my living room and go write.”

I did.

She’s awesome.

Recently, one of my oldest bestest friends had a baby. I’m thrilled. I’m beyond thrilled. It’s like the BEST THING EVER, because now, finally, I can hear my friend’s take on all the various viscerally vile aspects of motherhood. I might be funny about stuff like that, but she’s infinitely funnier. This is the woman who called to tell me she had lost her mucous plug by saying, “My vagina sneezed.”

I got a note from her: placenta encapsulation.

Placenta encapsulation?

They take your placenta and turn it into vitamin pills. Evidently there is a self-regulating industrial group because, I hear, it’s important to hire a certified placenta encapsulation specialist.

I know most (other) animals eat their afterbirth. I know that some people do it as well. I know some people who have done it. Personally, I would have planted it under a tree, but I don’t even want to know what the hospital did with mine.

But turning it into an encapsulated medicine? I’m not even linking to this but you can look it up.

Thank heavens they’re not touting it as a cancer cure.

Yet.

A boy in my daughter’ Catherine’s* class has been calling her ugly and stupid.

Before I go any further, please know that I have brought the teacher into the loop and I understand that these things happen in the third grade, and I am 100% thrilled with the way the teacher and school administration are handling the situation. That’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the effect on my daughter of being called ugly and stupid for months.

“Months,” you say? But school has only been in session for a few weeks.

Evidently this name calling has been going on since last year, and my daughter only told me about it recently, but she’s been dwelling on it since last spring, and it’s gone on long enough that she has begin to believe that she truly is both ugly and stupid.

It started when he started bringing her presents every day. At first, she was thrilled. Then, he began telling her what games to play on the playground and demanding that she play with him, and let him kiss her. I told her that if it made her uncomfortable she didn’t have to let him, so she told him, “No.”

That’s when the ugly and stupid name calling started, she tells me now, but I didn’t find out about it until recently.

When she wants attention, it’s obvious. This wasn’t. I had to sit on her to squeeze out what was wrong. She whispered it to me.

“Am I ugly and stupid,” she asked? “I feel like I’m ugly and stupid.”

For the record, my daughter is neither. I haven’t lavished praise on her because I don’t want her to get conceited, but other people tell me she is beautiful, and her teachers tell me that she is very smart. She does well in school and in her activities. When she told me she felt ugly and stupid, I was dumbfounded. A few days later, I asked her, “What on earth made you think you are ugly and stupid?” Two tears squeezed out. My daughter, the Drama Queen, usually cries in torrents, but this was different. “Alex** has been calling me ugly and stupid.”

“Since when?”

“Since he stopped giving me presents.” Then she collapsed into a puddle. I hugged her until she felt better; dinner was late, that day.

We talked about it some more — a lot more — and then we did some role playing. I knew it was important to stop the namecalling, and also to empower her to stand up for herself.

“I’m not stupid, I just don’t like you.”

“As if…” with the perfect eyeroll.

“My little brother’s cooler than you.” He is.

“Like I care what you think,” with the perfect withering inflection.

So far so good. She talked to her teacher about the problem, and the teacher told my daughter Catherine to let her know the next time it happened.

It did, and she told on him, and Alex got a stern talking-to.

He picked on her and she rolled her eyes at him and sassed him back and the other girls in the class gave her “thumbs up.” She was jubilant.

So far so better.

Until today.

During P.E., under sketchy pretenses, he beamed her in the chest with a soccer ball hard enough to make her cry for a long time, and he told another boy, a friend of hers, to push her off the bleachers.

I’ve got my own ideas as to what’s going on.

First of all, I want to make it perfectly clear, I have met this boy’s mother and she is lovely. It’s not a case of one bad apple.

I think it’s much, much worse.

For whatever reason, I think this boy is already acting out a textbook pattern of relationship abuse, in the second and third grade.

I’m not sure what to do next. One thing is to have another serious conversation with the teacher. That’s already in the works. Another thing is to alert the parents of the other girls in the class as to what our experience with this boy has been. The third thing is to tell the story, because being silent about this kind of thing is just so last millennium.

I’m so proud of my daughter. I promised her, when she confided in me, that I would do everything I know to do about her situation, and I always keep my promises.

*Her middle name. I’ve started doing that for my kids on this blog.

**Not his real name, obviously. I am neither ugly nor stupid.

It’s time for hyperbole.

1. They found the cure for cancer (sort of, maybe) or at least a cure for some cancers, maybe, but anyway, they definitely got a new crazy-complicated targeted immuno-genetic technology  to work on at least one person. Using the AIDS virus. How wild is that?

2. They discovered an M-class planet a mere 36 light-years away. When I was in elementary school, we were taught that someday, maybe in my lifetime, they would have the technology to identify planets, and maybe find one similar to earth. Woot! I think even Pluto must be wobbling in his excitement over it. And yeah, I think we do need a space program, because humanity needs a dream.

3. The Back to the Future sneakers.

This is what I think about when the doublespeak of the upcoming Presidential election gets me down. Sneakers.

I just sent an email to a literary agent I met this summer, pitching a cancer memoir. I’m kinda nervous. This is it, right? The beginning of the what now?

Check out this article.

The irresponsible headline would be “Cure for Cancer Discovered,” which has already happened with the advent of modern surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Sort of. I mean, here I am and all that good stuff.

But this. This is different. I can’t even get my hopes up, but they are up.