I love games. I pretty frequently lose them (unless I'm on team "Winning!" for Taboo . . . hee hee!), but I enjoy how games mentally challenge me.
I also love, love, love my brother even though we are often competitive with each other. Who's mom's favorite? Which one of us is smarter, funnier, or most beloved? We are mostly kidding about these things (but not entirely). So, when he and I came up with a makeshift and ridiculously funny game, we both went all in.
I'm not sure how this came about, but when he got his iPhone he and I were showing each other tricks, tips, and apps. I showed him how to set up folders and move apps on the screens, he showed me how to set up my navigator. I told him to get Words with Friends, and he told me to get Dictionary.com. "Why?!" I said. He said, "Well, this might sound stupid, but I like getting the word of the day. Then, even though I'm a jock and a bartender, I try to use it in a sentence three times. I don't care if people think it's weird. I do what I want."
I was pretty impressed with that so I downloaded it immediately. And somehow over the next week, what evolved was a game of our own making. We started texting each other with sentences using the word of the day. And somehow this turned into, a sentence using the word of the day making fun of something or someone in our family. This, in turn, evolved into whichever one of us got the best sentence FIRST using the word of the day gets the "point." Now, we don't (to my knowledge) ever count points across weeks or months. But whoever gets the point gets the pride of that . . . until the next day :)
The effect of this is that I get to text my brother nearly every day. a couple of weeks ago the word was "excogitate." I managed to use it in a sentence referencing another running inside joke we have going right now. So, we were both laughing at my text. Then he asked how I was. And we started talking about working out - a common theme in our conversations. He said, "Unemployment is good for working out."
He should know. He played this game for nearly two years. And I saw how hard unemployment was on him. It was a similar situation in that his job was eliminated through no fault of his. He combated the difficult emotions of joblessness through humor. He would quote the movie "Knocked up" and say, "Yeaaaahhhh. I'm uh . . . no work today!" He laughed at the lifestyle of wearing sweats every day. But I know he was also anxious, antsy, and upset about the situation. So, he made jokes. He became sarcastic, and he poured even more of himself into working out. And that's saying a lot since he had been running, lifting, and practicing Jiu-Jitsu before he was let go. He had not one, but two low-cost gym memberships during that time. And he used them both.
So, when he said, "Unemployment is good for working out." I thought about it for a minute and then knew, that of all people, he would best understand when I said," And vice versa. It helps me not get crazy or depressed."
It will not be a shocker to any of you that while I don't exactly look forward to my dates with the treadmill, I have come to appreciate my time being active. Where it used to be a chore and necessity, I now really, really need that time. It is time out of the house. It is time away from screen. It is time away from my fears that I will end up living under someone else's roof.
So, it turns out, that I am not a sloth, regardless of what my physique might suggest.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to another friend who was checking on me and I said to him, about not responding right away, "Sorry, you caught me at the end of my run." He asked if it was a good one. As it happened it wasn't, but what I said was, "There are no good runs. Only running assignments I accomplish and those I don't." This is still true almost every day. I don't enjoy how my body feels when I'm running. Pardon me while I sound like an old lady - my feet hurt, my back hurts, my knee hurts, and it takes a lot more focus than someone like me with some ADD tendency often has to get my breathing in rhythm. I often have to close my eyes and try to go inward to somewhere that has nothing to do with the people on the treadmills next to me, the TV screen above me, the (not really so awful) pain, and the voice inside my head saying, "Stop!"
But the other thing that is true is that I'm grateful for it. Where I used to be assigned 90 - 120 minutes of cardio a week and 3 hours of high interval resistance, I'm now still doing the resistance but adding to the cardio . . . on purpose. Yesterday I swam two miles and ran two miles. The day before I lifted and then swam two miles. On a treadmill I'm not second guessing a cover letter. On a treadmill I'm not wondering about an interview. On a treadmill I'm far too busy to add and re-add a budget. I can fight for something tangible on a treadmill.
I wish I had understood this before I lost my job. The truth is, this is, in very real ways, the cure for many of my very real health issues. Working out can only positively impact PCOSor anyone working against insulin by stabilizing their health through regular exercise, and particularly a good blend of cardio and resistance, interval and/or anaerobic training. Asthmatics who exercise stand to reduce stress (which can trigger respiratory issues), increase lung function, and sleep better. Whatever issues with focus I have are measurably improved by burning some energy off, and even my migraine issues are improved by exercising. While running may not be the very best thing to do for my knees (swimming IS but is not the very best thing I could do for my hair. Yes, that's right, I am a real girl somewhere underneath all of my facade and I have this one vanity) I figure this: my knees are wrecked enough that they're not going to last the rest of my lifetime. But they're working now so I should take advantage of it (because I can still remember palpably how frustrated I was when confined to an arm bike for weeks and weeks while my knees couldn't bear weight).
"But Christie, you were getting 5 hours of exercise a week before." Yes. Yes I was. But it wasn't enough. I've written about this before. Everyone else in the world gets weight control results from 3-5 hours of exercise a week. I don't. That's just the way it goes. So, if my weight goals weren't responsive to 5 hours a week, it stands to reason that my other health goals weren't being completely serviced by 5 hours a week. Also, let's be honest - 5 hours a week was the goal but between being on the road or on a plane or in a hotel it was often closer to 3 or 4 hours a week. And as I said recently to my trainer, "The thing is, before, if my exercise was on, my food wasn't. Or vice-versa. It was never both being right at the same time." I take responsibility for that. I also think, in analyzing it, I wasn't ever going to be able to fully take on changing that if half my life was spent in transit, without any schedule that resembles normal human life, and unable on many occasions to plan or cook my meals.
So, I'm aimed at 5-6 hours of cardio each week now, in addition to my other "assignments." as much as possible, I try to keep it low impact cardio, and I'm really not thinking of it being "extra" cardio right now. To me it seems more like having missed school and needing to make up for it. As a child, I was hospitalized for asthma related complications and illnesses at least 2 times a year. My shortest hospitalization was 4 days. My longest was 4 weeks. There was always some homework I could do once I had gotten a little better and wasn't fighting for my life (literal, not exaggeration. I know how to handle it, but fighting for a breath and having your oxygen levels drop despite medication is scary) but I also often had a busy schedule of blood tests, chest X-rays, respiratory therapy, and treatments. So, then, I'd go back to school and have a lot of homework to make up. I feel like that now - I'm making up homework from when I was sick. The difference is I wasn't consumed with chest x-rays or IVs, but with work before now. I did miss hours, and hours of agreed upon "homework" though.
So, when someone said to my 2 miles of running and 2 miles of swimming last night, "Gawwwd. that sounds awful," I was able to say, "I know. But it helps me not freak out right now so it's a good thing. It's hard to get too crazy when I'm this tired."
As I peer through the window of hopeful employment this month I find myself often thinking about the logistics of different positions and quickly on the heels of that thinking, "would I still be able to count on myself to get my workouts in?" I may not, when I go back to work, keep my gym time as high as 9-10 hours a week, but I'd like for it to be higher than the minimum required 5 hours. I sleep better, I like myself better, and the treadmill and I, if no yet friends, are now showing grudging respect for one another. That would have to be considered important even if I was spending 40 hours a week working instead of 30 hours a week job hunting and interviewing.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Brothers and Sisters
I talk a lot about my friends. My friends are amazing and make me truly one of the luckiest people I know. In a lot of important ways, my friends run deep in my blood the way family does for some other people. I am often stunned at the amount of love and support my friends give away and direct to me. I hope everyone has the kind of friends who will offer a guest room in a time of need, who will accept their boyfriend even when he isn't that nice, who will bend over backwards to visit. I hope so. I know that I am remarkable though, in that when I found myself grieving two different people and all alone in a place where I knew, literally, no one, one friend quickly offered, "I can come out if you need me," and another friend pushed, "Call me if you decide to move back and need a driving companion." (Not my family, though I a lucky to have a brother who said," If I ever see the guy who did that no amount of karate will save his ass.") This seems like a happy accident to me. A windfall.
I learn so much from my friends, and that is not an accident. I pick and choose people by who fascinates me. Who makes me laugh? Who kills me at Scrabble? Who shows me a way to look at things I don't achieve on my own? Who has a skill set I can't even imagine? Who flies a plane, makes cheese from scratch, can take my computer apart and put it back together, who knows art history or poli sci? Who can play the guitar with such shocking perfection that it makes me feel feelings I can't describe? Who makes me laugh until my sides hurt even when I'm in super serious Depressio mode?
Now that I'm at a certain age, it's rare to find many of my friends who don't have children and families that they are busily building on their own (I actually can count on one hand those people and for many of them it is by choice). I actually recently realized that somewhere in the last two years, I crossed an invisible line. When I was 32 and dating I encountered a few people who had been married or had kids. Now, it's everyone. This, more than all the weddings and baby showers I've bought gifts for are the sure sign that building new families is the business of being 30 something.
Of course, this means considering the families we all came from, or at least it does for all of my friends as they try to enter into this with their eyes open. I've been thinking a lot about this for the last month, for a lot of different reasons. And then I came across this TED talk. Let's all acknowledge that TED talks are pretty cool. Not all of them are my personal cup of tea, but they are all well done and thought provoking. I typically watch about 2 or 3 of them a week because it reminds me of the lunch series my grad department used to have a couple of times a month, or better yet, the "donuts and discussion" group the grad students did. Smart, smart people sharing their well detailed outlook, and yet not hours and hours long. Just enough to give you a taste and make you want to learn more.
I urge you all to listen to this talk as it may persuade you to think beyond the surface of your family. But, I'll say a few things about this talk by Jeffrey Kluger to set up some of my thoughts. He speaks powerfully for the fact that siblings color our lives profoundly, and that this relationship can be significantly defining in positive or negative directions.
"There may be no relationship that affects us more profoundly; that's closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled with joy or fraught with woe than the relationship we have with our brothers and sister. there's power in the sibling bond," he says.
I have lived this. My happiest memories as a child revolve around hilarious or close moments with my brothers (please to note: I am not leaving out my sister here as a cut on her. We didn't grow up in the same house so my bond with her comes from a different place than playing Legos or dress up). I have significantly sentimental memories of long car trips, catching sand crabs, of building forts, of jumping on the beds in a vacation cottage by the beach, and, for some reason, of watching Star Trek with them one summer and realizing that as the oldest, it was my job to read the subtitles for them.
But some of my worst childhood memories are of brutal and vicious fights, of cruel things we did to one another, of being locked out of their room or locking one of them out of mine, of putting a CD in the microwave, of being pushed into a tree, concussions, or having toys sadistically dismembered. I'm sure I deserved this as much as every big sister, and more than many.
What stands to reason is that since my brothers were and are (and my sister now also joins in this) my peers in the family, they and I have an advantage of sharing each others' stories in a way our parents never can or could. We lived the same life, in the same house, growing up with much the same lot in life (though my youngest sibling and I not too long ago realized that in some ways we grew up in different families with different parents because the foundation of all of those relationships changed so radically when my parents divorced . . . which happened just as I left for college.)
I'm not surprised that Kluger says,"The sibling bond can be a thing of abiding love. Our parents leave us too early, our spouse and our children come along too late - our siblings are the only ones who are with us for the entire ride. Over the arc of decades there may be nothing that defines us and forms us more powerfully than our relationship with our brothers and sisters."
I've written poems about this. It's possibly one of the most difficult connections I try to maintain and understand, but when it works, it is . . . well, it makes me feel my rough edges smooth out in a way that happens maybe nowhere else in my life.
I once wrote this piece of . . . something:
(It is what it is as a piece of a poem I once wrote, good, bad, or blahhh, but it is also very, very true)
I believe in siblings. I believe they see me as no one else does, and so maybe I not only get to see them in that special light, but also borrow it and see myself differently through them. I also believe in siblings because as adults we've been able to come together to share some bigger than big things. Happy things that would have been less fun without them, sad things that would have been miserable or impossible without them. What would I have done if I couldn't turn to my sister and my brother when it came time to take care of a dying parent? What would happen if I stood alone in my family?
None of this, of course, is to say that our relationships are idyllic, or even as well knit as I sometimes wish they were. We've all had long moments of ignoring the others. When it has been my turn to do that I've sloshed back and forth between guilt and defiance. When I'm "in" and someone else is "out" I feel angry and hurt by their actions. So, the accidental bumps and bruises of riding in the back seat of the station wagon aren't that different from Kluger's assertion that our siblings are along for the ride, even as adults. I've been there for my siblings when I could and when I realized it was important, and whether that was showing up at wrestling matches, one strange afternoon spent sunbathing on the back deck with Chad hours before he graduated high school, or picking up my nephew from the airport, that's what it means. And they've been there for me. My sister brought her sister here and took me into the mountains. I will never forget that my brother Geoff drove up to my college graduation on the same Saturday as his prom, knowing he would have to immediately leave and drive 2 hours back to put his tux on.
But it's not all sunning ourselves and sand crabs, right? There's birth order, favoritism, and what Kluger calls de-identification to consider, and all of those played important roles in our house . . . though maybe not in exactly the expected ways in all cases. Here's the idea - evolution for most animals is to raise one or a very few babies at a time. Some mothers will do this by booting a smaller egg out of the nest (Crested Penguins), or letting hatchlings literally tear each other apart (Black Eagles). Humans aren't so different when we're competing for attention and resources by trying to discover our strongest selling points and hitting on them early, and often. Siblings have to de-identify with one another because if one is a talented artist, the next can pursue art for less than half of the attention the first artist in the family got. We have to differentiate to be worthy and to garner all of the attention in one area, is the idea. "Someone's the funny one, someone's the pretty one, someone's the smart one, someone's the athlete."
Pause. Beat. Pause.
I don't know about all of your families, but this was actually literally spoken out loud in mine. In a hospital room, about 10 days before my dad died. "Chad's the charmer athlete, and Geoff is the funny one. Camille is my southern belle. And Christie? She's the smart one." All of this is ironic and scientifically fascinating all at once. First, I will note some things carefully. None of us is only that one thing that was named. My brother the charmer is also he of a genius IQ, a Midas touch for seemingly almost any pursuit be it gourmet food, music, or writing, and he is and has ever been a gifted athlete. My brother the comedian is actually phenomenally smart and possessed of a singular perspective and a voice to tell it, despite not being interested always in academics. He has amazing determination and resolve, and this combined with his natural gifts have turned him into a fierce and accomplished mixed martial arts fighter. My sister the southern belle is an undeniable beauty, imbued with both the genteel southern coating, and the steel rod for a spine underneath. She is funny, warm, loving, forgiving, smart, spontaneous, sophisticated, scientific, and has a gift for feeling people out. It's not surprising that she is a truly talented nurse.
Now, it's interesting that Chad pinned so much of himself in athletics, because, well, I couldn't. Asthma, bad knees, and lets face it, I'm just not that swift or graceful aside from all those things! Meanwhile, Chad has so many gifts, he could've claimed "smart one." Actually, all my life what I heard was, "Chad and Geoff are gifted, despite some of their learning differences. But Christie . . . well she's such a hard worker." Which isn't exactly the same as being the "smart one," is it? (You could've knocked me over with a feather in that 2008 hospital room when that was said out loud) Meanwhile, in this tangled web of what I couldn't be (umm, I sucked at soccer, and I couldn't please by playing football, cello. It remains a crappy sports gender inequality) if working hard was my most pleasing trait, you bet your boots I was going to market the heck out of it. I wonder which came first - Chad being charming and athletic because I was pursuing an academic life at an early age, or me giving up on sports because it was never going to catch the eyes and therefore claiming school since it was what was left?
Whereas our youngest sibling being the "funny one" . . . well, to be clear, he is. His tongue is sometimes barbed, but never unamusing. And this bears out exactly with expected birth order. The youngest or smallest has to develop "lower power strategy" (what a terrible phrase for that. It sounds like "Developing nation." So condescending). The idea here is that the littlest one has to make people laugh so they don't lock him in a closet (though I regret to admit, we did this so often that Geoff thought it was a game and used to bring the rope to us!) or belt him. If s/he can charm and disarm and work their way into the hearts of people, they'll be better provided for than if they fight for what they need and lose an unfair battle. So, it isn't surprising that Geoff is, truly, the funny one. What's remarkable is that he is so much more than that, and does fight so hard for what he wants . . . and wins!
This is perhaps one of a large cascade of things about my family that breaks the mold. I won't go into all of it here, but suffice it to say that there are good and hard things about the ways in which birth order was true in our upbringing, and good and hard things about the ways in which it was not true. I can't speak for everyone else, you understand, just for me.
The next fact was really, stop-me-in-my-tracks, stunning. Favoritism isn't just a joke that we've had in my family for years. It's not just my mom buying each of us a t-shirt one Christmas saying "Mom's favorite." It's real and has been investigated. There is evidence suggesting that 70% of fathers and 65% of mothers exhibit a preference for one child over another or others, and that often it's a different child for each of those parents. Some of this is influenced, perhaps, by birth order and gender, but some of it may be better predicted by what that parents values are. Well, I won't say anything about who is who's favorite in my story, but I will say that in a family of two parents, and three children, that means that someone is necessarily and mathematically left out at all times. I don't know that it was me; what I do know is that it's interesting that I wasn't making it up when I was heard to say recently, "There's not enough to go around in a family of three children. Two sounds good to me."
But if the question isn't who does this, just who does this in observable ways, then I wonder . . . is this an argument for only-children? I know that Kluger wants us all to see our siblings as the people who helped us learn to develop relationships in ways that impact us over and over in our lives. And I'm not sorry for mine. Hey, I wish my jewelry box didn't get chucked into the heater, making it impossible to retrieve my earrings. But I'm sure my brothers wish I hadn't been such an insufferable know-it-all. I'm not sorry I have them, or the addition of my sister. My therapist put it this way when we discussed my family for other reasons, "If you could change it, how would you be different and would you be giving up things you like about you." Umm, yes. Overwhelmingly. I'm a bothersome, bossy, know-it-all but I like that I can devour information and take it with me. I also like that people can count on me to get things done.
And, I would add, and have already written deeply about this, the facts of my family are these - there was love, but not without issues, and what that has meant for me is that I learned early, I learned profoundly, how to make my way outside of my family. How to not just strike out on my own, but to get wherever I was going and make for myself in that place another family to count on. There is a very real way in which I might not have the friend-families I am so often awed by if I hadn't had the bio-family I was sometimes disappointed by. I wouldn't give that up. I just wouldn't.
But, when I think of getting ready to plan kids that I want to raise, I'm no longer as sure that two is the magic number. I have a friend who recently decided to NOT have more children. She has a daughter that she loves magnificently, and when she told me this, she admitted it was "selfish." She said she felt she was supposed to give her child a sibling, and I countered that bringing a child into the world not for the fact of him or herself, but to do a job for her firstborn wasn't healthy either. Finally, what she said was, "It's a crap shoot though. I could have another child and they could be close, or I could have another child and they could care less about each other. " Yes . . . and, I would add, all of the reasons she has decided that doing another year of pregnancy, followed by a year of tending to an infant are not what will make her blissful and glowing shouldn't be discounted. When parents are happy, and stable and feel comfortable with the life they're making for themselves, they are undeniably more able to provide content, stable homes for their children. This much I know from my view outside of the parent circle.
All of this is a moot point for me, at this stage, because I am who I am and trying to turn back the clock even as a mental exercise, yields little reliable information but it makes much more deeply interested in the decisions my friends make about kids and building their families, and in the argument for siblings being the other pieces of yourself vs. never having to fight with them in the first place.
Maybe the point is this: my parents were, in a moment that held a world of pressure and lightheartedness all at once (it's impossible to describe the conversations that happen when someone is dying, or how you find yourself in those conversations. It just is.) able to boil each of us down to one, succinct characteristic. They stand in front of us, and for so long, above us knowing us by making choices for us and seeing what came of them. We know each other on a playing field where we all see each other level. Our parents were the soccer coaches, but we were the players. There were different roles in that game, but because I stand level with my brothers and my sister I can see them differently, and as more than one thing. We're all smart. We're all funny. We aren't all athletes, but hey, I'm sorry, I can't be good at everything. (It should be enough that I make award winning soup!) To be sure, we have different gifts and struggles, but there is more of us that is alike, as a unit, than different. Someday my sister and I will talk about being mothers together, and my brother will walk me down the aisle, while the other walks with my mother. I can't deny the power of those relationships, the shared stories are powerful alone.
But, it doesn't change the unanswered question of what I am capable of as a parent. I can't assume I would escape the statistics and manage to somehow not damage my kids through favoritism. It is true that I am often a 1% case when it comes to how medical knowledge understands this person we call Christie, but let's be honest - psychologically it's not hard to trace my path, eh? I suppose, much like my friends who have recently had children, I would have to see how that all plays out. Maybe, like my friend above, I'd discover that having parts of my pre-child lifestyle back were more crucial than raising a second child. Maybe like my other friend I would arrive, within three months, to the conclusion of, "I love this child so much it's indescribable. And, I'm also not a stay at home mom."
Because I really almost certainly can't have children, these choices are unlikely to be thrust on me suddenly by biology. I stand apart, able to consider the logistics of when and how to raise children and bring them into my home, and can probably even choose, to some degree, who they will be and where they will come from. It's a specialized vantage point when considering future parenthood. So, when Kluger puts forth that siblings are the dress rehearsal for your life what I think is, "not having siblings is just a different rehearsal for a different show."
Ok, before I close out, let me say this to all my many, many mommy friends. Whatever moments of favoritism have been in your house or not been in your house, please don't be offended by this. I know you all love your babies in ways I can't possibly fathom. I've seen it in action. I also know better than perhaps anyone else that how you act may or may not match up to every feeling you feel at any given moment. Just think about this talk and this book, that's all.
I learn so much from my friends, and that is not an accident. I pick and choose people by who fascinates me. Who makes me laugh? Who kills me at Scrabble? Who shows me a way to look at things I don't achieve on my own? Who has a skill set I can't even imagine? Who flies a plane, makes cheese from scratch, can take my computer apart and put it back together, who knows art history or poli sci? Who can play the guitar with such shocking perfection that it makes me feel feelings I can't describe? Who makes me laugh until my sides hurt even when I'm in super serious Depressio mode?
Now that I'm at a certain age, it's rare to find many of my friends who don't have children and families that they are busily building on their own (I actually can count on one hand those people and for many of them it is by choice). I actually recently realized that somewhere in the last two years, I crossed an invisible line. When I was 32 and dating I encountered a few people who had been married or had kids. Now, it's everyone. This, more than all the weddings and baby showers I've bought gifts for are the sure sign that building new families is the business of being 30 something.
Of course, this means considering the families we all came from, or at least it does for all of my friends as they try to enter into this with their eyes open. I've been thinking a lot about this for the last month, for a lot of different reasons. And then I came across this TED talk. Let's all acknowledge that TED talks are pretty cool. Not all of them are my personal cup of tea, but they are all well done and thought provoking. I typically watch about 2 or 3 of them a week because it reminds me of the lunch series my grad department used to have a couple of times a month, or better yet, the "donuts and discussion" group the grad students did. Smart, smart people sharing their well detailed outlook, and yet not hours and hours long. Just enough to give you a taste and make you want to learn more.
I urge you all to listen to this talk as it may persuade you to think beyond the surface of your family. But, I'll say a few things about this talk by Jeffrey Kluger to set up some of my thoughts. He speaks powerfully for the fact that siblings color our lives profoundly, and that this relationship can be significantly defining in positive or negative directions.
"There may be no relationship that affects us more profoundly; that's closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled with joy or fraught with woe than the relationship we have with our brothers and sister. there's power in the sibling bond," he says.
I have lived this. My happiest memories as a child revolve around hilarious or close moments with my brothers (please to note: I am not leaving out my sister here as a cut on her. We didn't grow up in the same house so my bond with her comes from a different place than playing Legos or dress up). I have significantly sentimental memories of long car trips, catching sand crabs, of building forts, of jumping on the beds in a vacation cottage by the beach, and, for some reason, of watching Star Trek with them one summer and realizing that as the oldest, it was my job to read the subtitles for them.
But some of my worst childhood memories are of brutal and vicious fights, of cruel things we did to one another, of being locked out of their room or locking one of them out of mine, of putting a CD in the microwave, of being pushed into a tree, concussions, or having toys sadistically dismembered. I'm sure I deserved this as much as every big sister, and more than many.
What stands to reason is that since my brothers were and are (and my sister now also joins in this) my peers in the family, they and I have an advantage of sharing each others' stories in a way our parents never can or could. We lived the same life, in the same house, growing up with much the same lot in life (though my youngest sibling and I not too long ago realized that in some ways we grew up in different families with different parents because the foundation of all of those relationships changed so radically when my parents divorced . . . which happened just as I left for college.)
I'm not surprised that Kluger says,"The sibling bond can be a thing of abiding love. Our parents leave us too early, our spouse and our children come along too late - our siblings are the only ones who are with us for the entire ride. Over the arc of decades there may be nothing that defines us and forms us more powerfully than our relationship with our brothers and sisters."
I've written poems about this. It's possibly one of the most difficult connections I try to maintain and understand, but when it works, it is . . . well, it makes me feel my rough edges smooth out in a way that happens maybe nowhere else in my life.
I once wrote this piece of . . . something:
I miss them as often as I forget them,
When we are apart, I have to make whole cloth
Without them.
I discount them as often as I believe we
Three were once
Mistaken for triplets, sharing
Toys and triumphs as easily as we doled out
Fists or french fries.
The memories don’t blur, but the
Bright sharpness of elbows pressing against me reminds
Me suddenly of things I have shelved
and rarely dusted off.
(It is what it is as a piece of a poem I once wrote, good, bad, or blahhh, but it is also very, very true)
I believe in siblings. I believe they see me as no one else does, and so maybe I not only get to see them in that special light, but also borrow it and see myself differently through them. I also believe in siblings because as adults we've been able to come together to share some bigger than big things. Happy things that would have been less fun without them, sad things that would have been miserable or impossible without them. What would I have done if I couldn't turn to my sister and my brother when it came time to take care of a dying parent? What would happen if I stood alone in my family?
None of this, of course, is to say that our relationships are idyllic, or even as well knit as I sometimes wish they were. We've all had long moments of ignoring the others. When it has been my turn to do that I've sloshed back and forth between guilt and defiance. When I'm "in" and someone else is "out" I feel angry and hurt by their actions. So, the accidental bumps and bruises of riding in the back seat of the station wagon aren't that different from Kluger's assertion that our siblings are along for the ride, even as adults. I've been there for my siblings when I could and when I realized it was important, and whether that was showing up at wrestling matches, one strange afternoon spent sunbathing on the back deck with Chad hours before he graduated high school, or picking up my nephew from the airport, that's what it means. And they've been there for me. My sister brought her sister here and took me into the mountains. I will never forget that my brother Geoff drove up to my college graduation on the same Saturday as his prom, knowing he would have to immediately leave and drive 2 hours back to put his tux on.
But it's not all sunning ourselves and sand crabs, right? There's birth order, favoritism, and what Kluger calls de-identification to consider, and all of those played important roles in our house . . . though maybe not in exactly the expected ways in all cases. Here's the idea - evolution for most animals is to raise one or a very few babies at a time. Some mothers will do this by booting a smaller egg out of the nest (Crested Penguins), or letting hatchlings literally tear each other apart (Black Eagles). Humans aren't so different when we're competing for attention and resources by trying to discover our strongest selling points and hitting on them early, and often. Siblings have to de-identify with one another because if one is a talented artist, the next can pursue art for less than half of the attention the first artist in the family got. We have to differentiate to be worthy and to garner all of the attention in one area, is the idea. "Someone's the funny one, someone's the pretty one, someone's the smart one, someone's the athlete."
Pause. Beat. Pause.
I don't know about all of your families, but this was actually literally spoken out loud in mine. In a hospital room, about 10 days before my dad died. "Chad's the charmer athlete, and Geoff is the funny one. Camille is my southern belle. And Christie? She's the smart one." All of this is ironic and scientifically fascinating all at once. First, I will note some things carefully. None of us is only that one thing that was named. My brother the charmer is also he of a genius IQ, a Midas touch for seemingly almost any pursuit be it gourmet food, music, or writing, and he is and has ever been a gifted athlete. My brother the comedian is actually phenomenally smart and possessed of a singular perspective and a voice to tell it, despite not being interested always in academics. He has amazing determination and resolve, and this combined with his natural gifts have turned him into a fierce and accomplished mixed martial arts fighter. My sister the southern belle is an undeniable beauty, imbued with both the genteel southern coating, and the steel rod for a spine underneath. She is funny, warm, loving, forgiving, smart, spontaneous, sophisticated, scientific, and has a gift for feeling people out. It's not surprising that she is a truly talented nurse.
Now, it's interesting that Chad pinned so much of himself in athletics, because, well, I couldn't. Asthma, bad knees, and lets face it, I'm just not that swift or graceful aside from all those things! Meanwhile, Chad has so many gifts, he could've claimed "smart one." Actually, all my life what I heard was, "Chad and Geoff are gifted, despite some of their learning differences. But Christie . . . well she's such a hard worker." Which isn't exactly the same as being the "smart one," is it? (You could've knocked me over with a feather in that 2008 hospital room when that was said out loud) Meanwhile, in this tangled web of what I couldn't be (umm, I sucked at soccer, and I couldn't please by playing football, cello. It remains a crappy sports gender inequality) if working hard was my most pleasing trait, you bet your boots I was going to market the heck out of it. I wonder which came first - Chad being charming and athletic because I was pursuing an academic life at an early age, or me giving up on sports because it was never going to catch the eyes and therefore claiming school since it was what was left?
Whereas our youngest sibling being the "funny one" . . . well, to be clear, he is. His tongue is sometimes barbed, but never unamusing. And this bears out exactly with expected birth order. The youngest or smallest has to develop "lower power strategy" (what a terrible phrase for that. It sounds like "Developing nation." So condescending). The idea here is that the littlest one has to make people laugh so they don't lock him in a closet (though I regret to admit, we did this so often that Geoff thought it was a game and used to bring the rope to us!) or belt him. If s/he can charm and disarm and work their way into the hearts of people, they'll be better provided for than if they fight for what they need and lose an unfair battle. So, it isn't surprising that Geoff is, truly, the funny one. What's remarkable is that he is so much more than that, and does fight so hard for what he wants . . . and wins!
This is perhaps one of a large cascade of things about my family that breaks the mold. I won't go into all of it here, but suffice it to say that there are good and hard things about the ways in which birth order was true in our upbringing, and good and hard things about the ways in which it was not true. I can't speak for everyone else, you understand, just for me.
The next fact was really, stop-me-in-my-tracks, stunning. Favoritism isn't just a joke that we've had in my family for years. It's not just my mom buying each of us a t-shirt one Christmas saying "Mom's favorite." It's real and has been investigated. There is evidence suggesting that 70% of fathers and 65% of mothers exhibit a preference for one child over another or others, and that often it's a different child for each of those parents. Some of this is influenced, perhaps, by birth order and gender, but some of it may be better predicted by what that parents values are. Well, I won't say anything about who is who's favorite in my story, but I will say that in a family of two parents, and three children, that means that someone is necessarily and mathematically left out at all times. I don't know that it was me; what I do know is that it's interesting that I wasn't making it up when I was heard to say recently, "There's not enough to go around in a family of three children. Two sounds good to me."
But if the question isn't who does this, just who does this in observable ways, then I wonder . . . is this an argument for only-children? I know that Kluger wants us all to see our siblings as the people who helped us learn to develop relationships in ways that impact us over and over in our lives. And I'm not sorry for mine. Hey, I wish my jewelry box didn't get chucked into the heater, making it impossible to retrieve my earrings. But I'm sure my brothers wish I hadn't been such an insufferable know-it-all. I'm not sorry I have them, or the addition of my sister. My therapist put it this way when we discussed my family for other reasons, "If you could change it, how would you be different and would you be giving up things you like about you." Umm, yes. Overwhelmingly. I'm a bothersome, bossy, know-it-all but I like that I can devour information and take it with me. I also like that people can count on me to get things done.
And, I would add, and have already written deeply about this, the facts of my family are these - there was love, but not without issues, and what that has meant for me is that I learned early, I learned profoundly, how to make my way outside of my family. How to not just strike out on my own, but to get wherever I was going and make for myself in that place another family to count on. There is a very real way in which I might not have the friend-families I am so often awed by if I hadn't had the bio-family I was sometimes disappointed by. I wouldn't give that up. I just wouldn't.
But, when I think of getting ready to plan kids that I want to raise, I'm no longer as sure that two is the magic number. I have a friend who recently decided to NOT have more children. She has a daughter that she loves magnificently, and when she told me this, she admitted it was "selfish." She said she felt she was supposed to give her child a sibling, and I countered that bringing a child into the world not for the fact of him or herself, but to do a job for her firstborn wasn't healthy either. Finally, what she said was, "It's a crap shoot though. I could have another child and they could be close, or I could have another child and they could care less about each other. " Yes . . . and, I would add, all of the reasons she has decided that doing another year of pregnancy, followed by a year of tending to an infant are not what will make her blissful and glowing shouldn't be discounted. When parents are happy, and stable and feel comfortable with the life they're making for themselves, they are undeniably more able to provide content, stable homes for their children. This much I know from my view outside of the parent circle.
All of this is a moot point for me, at this stage, because I am who I am and trying to turn back the clock even as a mental exercise, yields little reliable information but it makes much more deeply interested in the decisions my friends make about kids and building their families, and in the argument for siblings being the other pieces of yourself vs. never having to fight with them in the first place.
Maybe the point is this: my parents were, in a moment that held a world of pressure and lightheartedness all at once (it's impossible to describe the conversations that happen when someone is dying, or how you find yourself in those conversations. It just is.) able to boil each of us down to one, succinct characteristic. They stand in front of us, and for so long, above us knowing us by making choices for us and seeing what came of them. We know each other on a playing field where we all see each other level. Our parents were the soccer coaches, but we were the players. There were different roles in that game, but because I stand level with my brothers and my sister I can see them differently, and as more than one thing. We're all smart. We're all funny. We aren't all athletes, but hey, I'm sorry, I can't be good at everything. (It should be enough that I make award winning soup!) To be sure, we have different gifts and struggles, but there is more of us that is alike, as a unit, than different. Someday my sister and I will talk about being mothers together, and my brother will walk me down the aisle, while the other walks with my mother. I can't deny the power of those relationships, the shared stories are powerful alone.
But, it doesn't change the unanswered question of what I am capable of as a parent. I can't assume I would escape the statistics and manage to somehow not damage my kids through favoritism. It is true that I am often a 1% case when it comes to how medical knowledge understands this person we call Christie, but let's be honest - psychologically it's not hard to trace my path, eh? I suppose, much like my friends who have recently had children, I would have to see how that all plays out. Maybe, like my friend above, I'd discover that having parts of my pre-child lifestyle back were more crucial than raising a second child. Maybe like my other friend I would arrive, within three months, to the conclusion of, "I love this child so much it's indescribable. And, I'm also not a stay at home mom."
Because I really almost certainly can't have children, these choices are unlikely to be thrust on me suddenly by biology. I stand apart, able to consider the logistics of when and how to raise children and bring them into my home, and can probably even choose, to some degree, who they will be and where they will come from. It's a specialized vantage point when considering future parenthood. So, when Kluger puts forth that siblings are the dress rehearsal for your life what I think is, "not having siblings is just a different rehearsal for a different show."
Ok, before I close out, let me say this to all my many, many mommy friends. Whatever moments of favoritism have been in your house or not been in your house, please don't be offended by this. I know you all love your babies in ways I can't possibly fathom. I've seen it in action. I also know better than perhaps anyone else that how you act may or may not match up to every feeling you feel at any given moment. Just think about this talk and this book, that's all.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Author
Have you all read, The Hunger Games? They are fantastic, and interestingly morally challenging books. Especially considering that they are intended to be young-adult reads. I had a number of different people in my life over the last year or so mention them to me, and I never did much about getting my hands on the books. I was vaguely aware that a movie was being made, and that my English teacher and reading specialist friends were ecstatic about this. But, I was busy dealing with other things. A relationship that wasn't working, a job I was feeling the need to shed but wasn't prepared to leave, this blog, finding the resolve and accountability I wanted, my spiritual center.
Honestly, I spent a lot of my time working out my "stuff" on a treadmill, on a couch in my therapist's office, and in this writing. And sadly, I didn't read much between about March of 2011 and November 2011.
But, I found myself in an airport at 5am in early November. Let me just say that, I have a lot of rules and routines. Foods I don't eat, how often I drink caffeine, my regular breakfast every morning, exercise, etc. But if I have to wake up at 3am, to leave at 4, to be at the Southwest counter at 5am, a lot of that gets suspended. So, at 5am, after making it through security (which, if I can just brag for a minute, I am such a pro at) I found myself with a bagel, a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, and 90 minutes to kill.
I was actually surprised that a book store was open, but it was. And a paperback copy of The Hunger Games was displayed and was $6.99. At shortly after 5am, it seemed like seven dollars was a good risk to take. The clerk became the 47th person to tell me how amazing the book was, and by the time I landed in Florida, I was hooked. (This is not the first time this has happened to me. I refused Harry Potter hype until after the third book was out thinking, "There's no way it's this good." Of course it was, and I'd add, I give many thanks to the dealer who pushed it on me. I now own the series and then some. I continue to resist the Twilight series . . . resistance may be futile but I just don't think I'm going to go there. For lots of reasons. And it was recently pointed out to me that it is ridiculous that I haven't read Game of Thrones yet.)
So, I've proceeded as a good addict to push this on other people. I've gotten three people so far. And the one who recently got his hands on my copy was talking to me about the book last night. He said, "Well, I think it's interesting to talk about this with an author."
What?! What?!!
I tried to play this cool, but in truth, playing things cool is not a skill I can put on my resume.
I was shocked to be referred to as an author. Yes, I publish here on a not infrequent basis, but ummm, anyone can do that. It took me all of 2 minutes to get an account established and less than an hour to design the page and set of pages holding this content.
Can anyone say the things I say? No. I like to flatter myself and think my writer's voice is unique. Certainly influenced by a lot of my reading, as well as by the audience I think of as my readers. Of course, I don't know exactly who they are. Part of the nature of blogging is that I don't know exactly who my readers are. When people comment on my posts - often on FB - I know they are reading here. Sometimes people make comments to me in other conversations and I realize, Oh, the only way they could make a joke to me about hoping I don't have to spend too much time on a stairmaster is if they read the entry on that because I haven't made that comment elsewhere. (Then I preen a little and am secretly very pleased with myself for writing things that people are interested enough in to think of after the fact of reading it. It's totally egotistical, but true.) So, I can list for you two dozen people that I know have read this blog at some point, but what I can't tell you for sure is who's not reading this (my aunt? The guy who sells me bandaids? My next door neighbor?) or who is reading exactly what in here. Just because my friend Rebecca and I had a deep discussion about one of my posts, doesn't mean she reads the next.
I suppose this is the same for any "published" writer - that once you let your words out into the world, you don't know exactly where they will go. But, since the "publishing" is so informal, I feel that all the more palpably.
I have been published in small ways, but this is the most substantial, varied, lengthiest writing I've done that other people read. I have and continue to sometimes be a very amateur poet. I have and continue to write short stories (less and less . . . I like short stories, but it doesn't feel as connected to me when I'm writing them). And I am still pecking away at some children's books ideas (Oh, Deliliah the duck, I haven't forgotten you and your electric blanket). I also wrote a thesis, two masters, and countless papers in grad school. And when one reader remarked of this blog in the fall, "Christie, you should really look into writing professionally," my sharp tongued answer was, "I do write professionally. I write memos, communication documents, letters that my boss signs, and field visit reports." That sarcasm was ill placed since writing is central to someone I know myself as. I've been writing words and proudly displaying them as "stories" since I was 5.
In that sense, I identify very strongly as a "writer." It is part of who I am and how I interface with the world, and more importantly, the people in it. It is part of how I experience myself, or at least a side of myself that I don't fully know otherwise. I see and feel differently when I am bent on fixing words to what I'm experiencing. It sounds almost . . . autistic but it is an important thing to know about myself. This was never more evident than when I was in high school. I had a group of friends who were, perhaps not unsurprising to all of you now that you know me a little, very intense, and maybe just a little more grown up than teenagers are good at being. Because we spanned three graduating classes, a lot of different class schedules and interests, and housed some romantic relationships within the circle, there was often a lot to discuss. Problems to solve. Feelings to be tended. Wounds to clean out and salve. But we couldn't always find the 2 or 4 or 6 hours to do this in person. I found myself often exploring things that needed to be told, handled, discussed, or admitted by writing long notes. This was my primary occupation in high school. It might have looked like I was sitting in history class, but in practice what I was really doing was penning novel-lengthed letters most of the time. This had variable results with different people in the group, and at different times in different situations.
It is not, I don't think, an accident that the person who received and responded to most of those letters was the person in all the world I was most connected to then, and still today. (Oh the many blessings of having someone who has seen just exactly who you are for 32 years and still calls you "friend.")
I began to notice that while writing everything down was slow, and not immediate, I was able to process and feel things in a deeper way than if I just held it in and blurted it out loud when we were able to talk. This was the seeds of recognizing that the place that I am most introspectively honest with myself is on paper, and that sharing that is much less difficult for me than it might be for other people. Importantly, when I am able to be that honest to myself, to really access what is most deeply felt, deeply held, deeply raw for the person I am to myself, I am better able to be better at being that person to others.
There is no discounting that. I am a writer in that this is a very important part of the tools I bring to the task of walking through this world and the outlook I have. It is woven into the fabric of who I am and won't change.
In that sense, I suppose I am an author. I frame words around things and other people read them. I share who I am by being more verbal and articulate than is reasonable for most people. I am a creator, originator, and where others use pictures, musical notes, code, paint, I fit words together to try and create the feeling I want others to understand . . . more often, if I'm honest, the word-fitting and puzzle-piecing is for my own peace of mind and comprehension and those who read it and "get it" are secondary.
But author feels a step removed. Should that be defined by how many people have read me? Whether or not it's a professional pursuit? The manner of being published? Probably not, if I'm careful to think about the lifestyle of writing and what it means for me.
Like many writers, or artists for that matter, I feel compelled to write. It's not always easy or comfortable. But it often feels like less of a choice and more of a . . . necessity. I find myself writing more and more often than the average person. I feel convicted by what I have to say and by getting it set down correctly. In college, while other students lamented revisions, I looked forward to getting feedback and getting what I printed on paper right. In high school I arranged my schedule around a new and experimental creative writing class. It has always been the case that when doing homework I make myself do busy work, math, calculations first and reward myself with writing papers. I often don't feel cold, hungry, tired or notice external indicators of normal life when I'm writing. I once wrote a paper I was thrilled about in 8 straight hours, from 9pm until 5am. Three revisions included, and forgot to check the time and go to bed. It's not a chore or a task for me often, and even when it isn't a joy it is a need as strong as or stronger than the need to eat or sleep. Even now in the cold and sober light of being a real grown up, I often find myself writing these posts and realizing after . . . oh, it's 2 hours later than I intended to eat lunch. Or, oh, it's the middle of the night now. and I have an interview tomorrow. Huh.
There are other creative pursuits in my life, and I mostly do those for fun or because I want to challenge myself. I sing because it turns on part of my emotional faucet that I don't control otherwise, and it accesses my issues around being guarded or vulnerable more succinctly than anything else. I take pictures because the combination of science, technology, and artistic vision involved in getting that right still baffle and amaze me. (When I get it right these days, it is usually an accident, but I'm getting better at reproducing those accidents.) The difference is, I have always written, and do so even when there is seemingly NO REASON to, and sometimes reason not to! The other pursuits are choices. I benefit from those choices, and I love singing and photography no less for being things I pursue consciously, but writing for me is a passion akin to the innate faith that some of my friends have, and have never questioned. It is simply what I do.
Annie Dillard has written copiously about The Writing Life. I'm not sure I can match myself up to that austerity and drive, though, I know other authors who have written about their processes as being far more practical. The theme is, most of the authors I admire started writing not to make money, but because they couldn't not.
In some senses, it's strange that the question of writer vs. author hasn't occurred to me before. I think I'm still likely to hedge my bets and not claim author-hood until I have some external and overwhelming reasons to claim it, but I can claim being a writer firmly as a lifestyle and outlook. this is the unrelenting fact of my life - that since I could speak and understood words could be written and read, I have felt the unrelenting need to participate in that activity. Whether that becomes a full time pursuit or something I do because it's who I am regardless of paycheck source, well that story is still unfolding.
Honestly, I spent a lot of my time working out my "stuff" on a treadmill, on a couch in my therapist's office, and in this writing. And sadly, I didn't read much between about March of 2011 and November 2011.
But, I found myself in an airport at 5am in early November. Let me just say that, I have a lot of rules and routines. Foods I don't eat, how often I drink caffeine, my regular breakfast every morning, exercise, etc. But if I have to wake up at 3am, to leave at 4, to be at the Southwest counter at 5am, a lot of that gets suspended. So, at 5am, after making it through security (which, if I can just brag for a minute, I am such a pro at) I found myself with a bagel, a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, and 90 minutes to kill.
I was actually surprised that a book store was open, but it was. And a paperback copy of The Hunger Games was displayed and was $6.99. At shortly after 5am, it seemed like seven dollars was a good risk to take. The clerk became the 47th person to tell me how amazing the book was, and by the time I landed in Florida, I was hooked. (This is not the first time this has happened to me. I refused Harry Potter hype until after the third book was out thinking, "There's no way it's this good." Of course it was, and I'd add, I give many thanks to the dealer who pushed it on me. I now own the series and then some. I continue to resist the Twilight series . . . resistance may be futile but I just don't think I'm going to go there. For lots of reasons. And it was recently pointed out to me that it is ridiculous that I haven't read Game of Thrones yet.)
So, I've proceeded as a good addict to push this on other people. I've gotten three people so far. And the one who recently got his hands on my copy was talking to me about the book last night. He said, "Well, I think it's interesting to talk about this with an author."
What?! What?!!
I tried to play this cool, but in truth, playing things cool is not a skill I can put on my resume.
I was shocked to be referred to as an author. Yes, I publish here on a not infrequent basis, but ummm, anyone can do that. It took me all of 2 minutes to get an account established and less than an hour to design the page and set of pages holding this content.
Can anyone say the things I say? No. I like to flatter myself and think my writer's voice is unique. Certainly influenced by a lot of my reading, as well as by the audience I think of as my readers. Of course, I don't know exactly who they are. Part of the nature of blogging is that I don't know exactly who my readers are. When people comment on my posts - often on FB - I know they are reading here. Sometimes people make comments to me in other conversations and I realize, Oh, the only way they could make a joke to me about hoping I don't have to spend too much time on a stairmaster is if they read the entry on that because I haven't made that comment elsewhere. (Then I preen a little and am secretly very pleased with myself for writing things that people are interested enough in to think of after the fact of reading it. It's totally egotistical, but true.) So, I can list for you two dozen people that I know have read this blog at some point, but what I can't tell you for sure is who's not reading this (my aunt? The guy who sells me bandaids? My next door neighbor?) or who is reading exactly what in here. Just because my friend Rebecca and I had a deep discussion about one of my posts, doesn't mean she reads the next.
I suppose this is the same for any "published" writer - that once you let your words out into the world, you don't know exactly where they will go. But, since the "publishing" is so informal, I feel that all the more palpably.
I have been published in small ways, but this is the most substantial, varied, lengthiest writing I've done that other people read. I have and continue to sometimes be a very amateur poet. I have and continue to write short stories (less and less . . . I like short stories, but it doesn't feel as connected to me when I'm writing them). And I am still pecking away at some children's books ideas (Oh, Deliliah the duck, I haven't forgotten you and your electric blanket). I also wrote a thesis, two masters, and countless papers in grad school. And when one reader remarked of this blog in the fall, "Christie, you should really look into writing professionally," my sharp tongued answer was, "I do write professionally. I write memos, communication documents, letters that my boss signs, and field visit reports." That sarcasm was ill placed since writing is central to someone I know myself as. I've been writing words and proudly displaying them as "stories" since I was 5.
In that sense, I identify very strongly as a "writer." It is part of who I am and how I interface with the world, and more importantly, the people in it. It is part of how I experience myself, or at least a side of myself that I don't fully know otherwise. I see and feel differently when I am bent on fixing words to what I'm experiencing. It sounds almost . . . autistic but it is an important thing to know about myself. This was never more evident than when I was in high school. I had a group of friends who were, perhaps not unsurprising to all of you now that you know me a little, very intense, and maybe just a little more grown up than teenagers are good at being. Because we spanned three graduating classes, a lot of different class schedules and interests, and housed some romantic relationships within the circle, there was often a lot to discuss. Problems to solve. Feelings to be tended. Wounds to clean out and salve. But we couldn't always find the 2 or 4 or 6 hours to do this in person. I found myself often exploring things that needed to be told, handled, discussed, or admitted by writing long notes. This was my primary occupation in high school. It might have looked like I was sitting in history class, but in practice what I was really doing was penning novel-lengthed letters most of the time. This had variable results with different people in the group, and at different times in different situations.
It is not, I don't think, an accident that the person who received and responded to most of those letters was the person in all the world I was most connected to then, and still today. (Oh the many blessings of having someone who has seen just exactly who you are for 32 years and still calls you "friend.")
I began to notice that while writing everything down was slow, and not immediate, I was able to process and feel things in a deeper way than if I just held it in and blurted it out loud when we were able to talk. This was the seeds of recognizing that the place that I am most introspectively honest with myself is on paper, and that sharing that is much less difficult for me than it might be for other people. Importantly, when I am able to be that honest to myself, to really access what is most deeply felt, deeply held, deeply raw for the person I am to myself, I am better able to be better at being that person to others.
There is no discounting that. I am a writer in that this is a very important part of the tools I bring to the task of walking through this world and the outlook I have. It is woven into the fabric of who I am and won't change.
In that sense, I suppose I am an author. I frame words around things and other people read them. I share who I am by being more verbal and articulate than is reasonable for most people. I am a creator, originator, and where others use pictures, musical notes, code, paint, I fit words together to try and create the feeling I want others to understand . . . more often, if I'm honest, the word-fitting and puzzle-piecing is for my own peace of mind and comprehension and those who read it and "get it" are secondary.
But author feels a step removed. Should that be defined by how many people have read me? Whether or not it's a professional pursuit? The manner of being published? Probably not, if I'm careful to think about the lifestyle of writing and what it means for me.
Like many writers, or artists for that matter, I feel compelled to write. It's not always easy or comfortable. But it often feels like less of a choice and more of a . . . necessity. I find myself writing more and more often than the average person. I feel convicted by what I have to say and by getting it set down correctly. In college, while other students lamented revisions, I looked forward to getting feedback and getting what I printed on paper right. In high school I arranged my schedule around a new and experimental creative writing class. It has always been the case that when doing homework I make myself do busy work, math, calculations first and reward myself with writing papers. I often don't feel cold, hungry, tired or notice external indicators of normal life when I'm writing. I once wrote a paper I was thrilled about in 8 straight hours, from 9pm until 5am. Three revisions included, and forgot to check the time and go to bed. It's not a chore or a task for me often, and even when it isn't a joy it is a need as strong as or stronger than the need to eat or sleep. Even now in the cold and sober light of being a real grown up, I often find myself writing these posts and realizing after . . . oh, it's 2 hours later than I intended to eat lunch. Or, oh, it's the middle of the night now. and I have an interview tomorrow. Huh.
There are other creative pursuits in my life, and I mostly do those for fun or because I want to challenge myself. I sing because it turns on part of my emotional faucet that I don't control otherwise, and it accesses my issues around being guarded or vulnerable more succinctly than anything else. I take pictures because the combination of science, technology, and artistic vision involved in getting that right still baffle and amaze me. (When I get it right these days, it is usually an accident, but I'm getting better at reproducing those accidents.) The difference is, I have always written, and do so even when there is seemingly NO REASON to, and sometimes reason not to! The other pursuits are choices. I benefit from those choices, and I love singing and photography no less for being things I pursue consciously, but writing for me is a passion akin to the innate faith that some of my friends have, and have never questioned. It is simply what I do.
Annie Dillard has written copiously about The Writing Life. I'm not sure I can match myself up to that austerity and drive, though, I know other authors who have written about their processes as being far more practical. The theme is, most of the authors I admire started writing not to make money, but because they couldn't not.
In some senses, it's strange that the question of writer vs. author hasn't occurred to me before. I think I'm still likely to hedge my bets and not claim author-hood until I have some external and overwhelming reasons to claim it, but I can claim being a writer firmly as a lifestyle and outlook. this is the unrelenting fact of my life - that since I could speak and understood words could be written and read, I have felt the unrelenting need to participate in that activity. Whether that becomes a full time pursuit or something I do because it's who I am regardless of paycheck source, well that story is still unfolding.
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