Toddled Dredge

The children are fractious today.  Jealousy, whining, teething, and one disgusting diaper failure have already given my day a drama I could live without.  I would like to believe it can only get better from here, but I’ve been at this too long to be that naive.

While I try to calm the angry natives, you might enjoy this delightful hoax from the BBC.  It was the bright spot of my day so far.

I went to college at a small midwestern Christian liberal arts school.  At the time, it had about 1800 students, and perhaps fewer than fifty of those students were African-American.  The school tried to recruit more minority students, but it was a tough sell for an expensive private school with an overwhelmingly white student body and faculty in the middle of a rural, white area.

One night, the Minority Student Organization held meetings and discussion groups in our dormitory.  Students from the organization came and described the challenges of attending the school and their hopes and suggestions for how things could be improved.  It was a cordial meeting and informative.  At the end there was time for questions and comments.

After a number of people asked intelligent questions, I volunteered that I was always more nervous talking to African-American students than white students, because, being a social bumbler anyways, I was afraid I would do or say something that was accidentally racist.  The student I was speaking to said, “Just talk to us like we’re ordinary people.”

Even at the time, I found that advice unsatisfying, though it took me a while to figure out why.  We are, of course, all ordinary people, but that does not mean that we all communicate the same way.  Different histories inform our conversation.  If, for example, I were with a white male friend, I could affectionately or challengingly call him “Boy” and no one would be the least offended (if he’s old enough, he might even consider it a compliment).  But the history of that word between a white person and a black man carries the ugly baggage of disrespect, hatred and oppression. There aren’t circumstances in which it would be appropriate; it would always be offensive.

What is ordinary to one person is not necessarily ordinary to another.

I was reminded of this today when I read the guest post at Rocks in My Dryer from Jenni of One Thing.  Jenni is mother to twelve children and writes a delightful blog about their life together.  For Rocks in My Dryer she wrote a post about the reactions that mothers of large families get from the people around them.

One of the peculiar diseases of western culture is the insistence that the existence of children must be justified.  Parents of large families receive the brunt of this.  Jenni describes some of the unfair attitudes people have towards her large family.  One of her most poignant statements was her feeling that the difficulties of her pregnancies are denied sympathy from her church folk, because they are her “just desserts” for getting pregnant so many times.

Jenni describes and alludes to several ways that people can be mean-spirited and offensive toward large families.  Given the amount of harassment and hostility large families have to deal with, I can understand how even cluelessness can be upsetting on top of everything else.  But some of the comments she objects to seemed fairly innocent to me, another case of two people having different assumptions about what it means to speak like “ordinary people.”  I have expressed amazement when friends with only two kids have children that look remarkably alike.  It would never occur to me that a family with more children would find that offensive.

For relatively shy people like myself, real life conversation can already feel like walking through a field of land mines.  When it is fraught with possible unwitting offense, I want to avoid conversation altogether.  Jenni’s post on one hand made me feel sympathy and support for moms of large families, but on the other, it made me less likely to engage in the conversations where I could express it.

One of the qualities I admire in Az the Husband is his unconcern with offending people.  While sometimes that presents challenges (and makes him dangerous to quote), it has an important benefit: Az talks to everybody.  He never worries about saying the wrong thing and alienating everyone in the room.  The political correctness that is supposed to teach us all how to talk to one another merely silences me (too many non-intuitive rules to remember).  Az disregards it entirely, speaks freely and makes friends easily.

It’s one of the many ironies of life: being unafraid to offend people may actually make you less offensive.

There comes a point in every pregnancy where my brain grows sluggish.  I have trouble forming any thoughts more complicated than “My back hurts.”  The creative juices do not flow.  The blogging drafts pile up, and I wonder how I will ever finish them. Everything seems a chore - frequently a chore that makes me cry.  Even food stops tasting good.

I am now in those pregnancy doldrums, wishing for nothing more than an ocean breeze, a couple of margaritas, and a few days without children.  Needless to say, none of that is going to happen.

So in an effort to clear my head, here are summaries of the posts I have been trying unsuccessfully to write for my patient readers:

1. A list of my favorite curmudgeons.  Harrison Ford (see his Conan O’Brien interview here) and Tommy Lee Jones were on the list, but then I got bogged down with historical people.  Can I put St. Jerome on the same list with Robert Duvall?  And would it be funny or just dumb if I added my moody Hebrew teacher that none of you have met?

2. A deep and profound post about the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer and what it teaches us about God’s mercy.  This post is based largely on Charles Williams’ play Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (seriously, read it).  Problem is, once I tell myself that my post has to be “deep and profound,” nothing I write can possibly be good enough.

3. Mockery of the liberal liturgy of my denomination.  It is generally awful and fully deserves to be mocked, but at the current speed of my imagination, I just can’t make it funny enough.  Plus, I’ve been going to a conservative congregation the last two years, so I’m not sure I have the church street cred to handle this subject anymore.

4. A list of movies that really are better than the book.  Top of the list: the tv versions of the Brother Cadfael mysteries.  Derek Jacobi’s subtlety gives Cadfael a historical verisimilitude that he lacks in Ellis Peters novels.

5. A comparison of the differences between “forgiving yourself” and accepting forgiveness.  The only problem with this post is that my irritation with popular culture’s namby-pamby theology is painfully evident, and I’m really not that amusing when I’m sour and disapproving.

6.  Using Much Ado About Nothing and Dorothy Sayers’ Busman’s Honeymoon, a discussion of love and manipulation.  Is love still love if we use it to make people do what we want?

There they are, folks.  My unfinished posts, awaiting a day when I can write something more captivating than “Pregnancy is lousy.  Hurry up, baby, please.  But don’t have colic.  Cause that would be worse.”

Maybe you can do something with my incomplete thoughts that I can’t.

My posting has been a little light lately.  First, our computer broke.  Then Sunday night, lightning struck the transformer in front of our house and the power company was in the street all night fixing it.  By 4:30 am on Monday, we had power again.  Then last night a spectacular thunderstorm blew through town and knocked the power out again - this time for 27,000 people.

Az and I took the girls out for breakfast, then to the park.  We just got home and found our air conditioner back on (YAY!) and the fridge running again.  We are relieved.  Az is grumbling that we should buy a generator, but since we live in the middle of a large-ish city where power outages are rare, I think that’s silly.

Speaking of lightning striking the same place twice, I have another post up at 5 Minutes for Parenting.  In it I dare to question the culture of constant parental affirmation, and end up feeling rather grateful for the heretical realism of my own parents.

During my first three deliveries, I had an epidural. During the first birth, the epidural was not very strong, and I still felt pain and tearing. During the second birth, the epidural was so strong that I lost the ability to move my legs, which I found far more frightening than pain. During the third birth, the contractions from pitocin were so strong that the epidural was useless. I ended up rolling around, moaning and howling and clinging to the bedrails until I could push.

So none of the epidurals were a raging success. I am seriously considering going without one this time. When I was receiving the last one, I jumped when the needle went in, and the anesthesiologist gasped.

I never want to hear a gasp from someone sticking a needle so close to my spine.

I think I might skip the epidural this time, if I can handle the pain. My doctors are the supportive type and won’t pressure me into anything. So I want some advice from all of you who have delivered babies without anesthesia. How did you manage the pain? What do I need to know? Anything you recommend I read?