Lori Finding Joy

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”.     ~Audre Lorde

“The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results”.    ~Albert Einstein

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So I read the Sandberg book, after absorbing all of the talking heads weighing in on how right or wrong she is.  On the surface, I have no real issues with the book, other than she’s a ridiculously priviledged person for whom success, one way or the other, was pretty much a given. But in some respects that’s just shooting the messenger – she raises legitimate questions that shouldn’t be dismissed just because she had Larry Summers as a mentor.  While I don’t agree with all her answers, I appreciate the questions she raises.   I found most of the book thoughtful and fact-based, although I still have utterly no desire to climb the corporate ladder.

Also, I’m not a parent, so much of the book I can only empathize with – but I do empathize. My stay-at-home mom friends wish they worked and worry about what messages they are sending to their daughters, while my working mom peeps wish they could spend more time with their kids and feel guilty for missing soccer games and dance recitals. Women torture themselves with these sorts of dilemmas, while most men never think twice about being a working parent.  The stay-at-home dad is still an anomaly in our culture, and we still talk about dads “babysitting” their own kids.  Geez Louise, as I like to say.

But on a deeper level, the whole thing just enrages me. All this yapping about the glass ceiling, women still doing more work at home, perceptions of women being either too nice or too bossy…I don’t disagree, mind you, but I mostly feel like it’s been the same conversation for thirty years. Things get a little better, a little worse, but nothing seems to fundamentally change.  In the same time frame the gay rights movement has gone from the AIDS epidemic and people being terrified of homosexuals to having fairly broad support for gay marriage.  Meanwhile, we women are still twiddling around trying to get equal pay while men in suits and religious garb continue to determine our reproductive destinies.

Here’s what I want to know: if a system doesn’t work for half the population, why do we keep trying to make it work? Why do we keep having conversations about how women can make the corporate structure work for them when it’s a structure created by and designed to promote patriarchal notions about society? It’s a system designed from the get-go to keep us out.  I listen to these very accomplished women talking about their challenges as they either villify or gush about Sandberg, and think Christ, no wonder so many women drop out. *I* want to drop out after listening to them. But short of becoming a stay-at-home mother to my cat, there’s no place to drop.

Women aren’t the problem – the SYSTEM is the problem. But we continue to tinker and tweak and negotiate our way through a system designed to keep us out. Instead of “leaning in” to a system that ultimately doesn’t work for the vast majority of women, why can’t we, y’know, just create a better system?

And like Audre Lorde, I don’t think we make this shift by using the tools of the patriarchy to dismantle a patriarchal system. I don’t think asking for pregnancy parking spaces, important though they may be, is exactly the revolution we need.  I also don’t think continuing to bang our heads against the glass ceiling, hoping it will eventually break, is a particularly useful endeavor.  Frankly, my head hurts enough already.

When I was three or so, I loved to go for walks and I loved to watch birds.  One of my mother’s favorite stories to tell is one about us walking, probably home from my grandmother’s house just up the road, and I was (so she thought) jabbering away to myself.  Then I suddenly stopped, stomped my foot and said, “You know I can’t fly!”

I hadn’t been talking to myself after all.  I’d been conversing with the birds.

Not much longer after that I discovered books, and spent the next few decades much preferring to curl up somewhere inside.  I hated the outdoors, and certainly hated to waste precious reading time on a walk.  And, good lord, birds?  Those were the dead things the cats left on the deck that I made sure to avoid squishing between my bare toes in the summer.  I certainly never understood those silly people who mucked about in the woods for hours on end, trying to spy some rare whatchamacallit bird, their binoculars and field guides at the ready.

You know where this is going, right?

Instead of binoculars I have a zoom lens, and instead of a field guide there’s Google.  Still, though, I’m becoming one of those weird bird people.  I’m now THAT girl who makes her boyfriend stand in the middle of a forest while trying to first locate and then photograph creatures that, by their very nature, do not sit still for very long.  (He’s a peach, that Erik.)  Also, my laptop has a file just for bird pictures, most of which are of very ordinary sparrows and finches that like to hang out in bushes near my office.  I find them ridiculously cute:

Rest assured I’m not talking to them, at least not yet.  However, my summer bucket list includes big plans for a bird feeder for the deck, along with some container gardens full of wildflowers and maybe some vegetables too (except I don’t want the birds to eat my tomatoes).  My cat is an indoor cat so there will be no bird carnage to step on, although I do anticipate her spending a lot of time glued to the window that overlooks the deck.  Meanwhile, I’m counting the days til I can get my hands dirty with some potting soil.

***

All this bird and garden planning has me thinking about my grandfather Bob, whom I called Papa (pronounced “puppa”).  He was fond of birds too – although I think it had a lot to do with the fact that they ate bugs off his plants.  Some of my earliest memories are of playing outside in his flower beds and his vegetable garden, and eating strawberries and raspberries straight off the bush, warm from the sun.  I used to follow him around dragging a green plastic watering can that, at least from the photos, was just about as big as me.  In the middle of the front lawn sat the square well cap with a cement pedastal bird bath in front of it, and I used to love watching the robins preen and chirp away.   The well was guarded by two large bushes– on one side a bluebell bush, on the other side an enormous purple lilac bush that bloomed like no other I have seen.  Every year in late May the lilacs perfumed the air with a scent so strong and beautiful you could even smell it inside the house.  Papa also grew peonies and gladiolas, and every summer strangers would stop and ask how he grew them so big.  (At the same time, he was a little clueless about some things:  my dad tells of the time they were walking out through the woods because Papa was convinced someone was growing pot back there on his land.  Papa stood knee deep in a patch of marijuana declaring he had no idea where it was, but it was somewhere.)

Some other random things:  He was a Scotchman by way of Nova Scotia, and ran an elevator business in Boston.  Every time I get into an elevator in an old building in the city, I wonder if he installed it.  My mom talks about watching him come home on the trolley, wearing a hat and tie, the newspaper tucked under his arm.  After he retired he would go to bed at 7 pm and get up at 3 am, sitting in the rocking chair in the kitchen that bore my teethmarks on its arm.    When my grandmother wanted to make him mad, she’d put Sousa marches on the record player and give us kids pots and pans to bang with metal spoons, sending him cursing out to his workshop off the kitchen.

He died twelve years ago, at the ripe old age of 96.

***

I’ve come to understand that stories like these are my inheritance; these mundane tidbits that shaped a person, made him who he was; and made me who I am, at least in part.  Separately they are ordinary, throwaway pieces, but together they can weave a unique person to life, long after they are dead.  I’ve been watching these sparrows thinking, how splendid they are in their ordinary little daily lives, busy building their nests and feeding themselves.  It’s forced me to think about how splendid we are, in our own ordinary lives, tending our own gardens, preening our own feathers.  I used to think being ordinary was the worst possible thing imaginable, but the older I get the more magic I see in every day things.  A walk in the woods, a stolen kiss, a dog’s wet nose, one perfect hot pink peony — all these things that burn in our memories long after they are over, just as people who have gone burn bright in our hearts.  And then, of course, what will my own stories be, and who will caretake them when I am gone?

No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given – so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.” 

~Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale

I tend to have short-term projects and long-term projects.  Both categories are subject to being cast aside for newer projects at any given time, only to reappear years later at the bottom of a basket or box, so it’s really the initial intent of the project that determines the classification.  The long-term projects are ones I start knowing they will take awhile, and knowing that they will occasionally get set aside for other projects.  Blankets are definitely long-term projects, just due to their sheer size, and right now I’ve got two in progress – in two different mediums.

Truthfully, I haven’t had much quilting mojo lately.  I quit my local guild because I felt like it was sucking up all my sewing time, but then promptly filled that time up with knitting. The VEB’s friends are having a baby, though, and the dad-to-be is an arborist, and I had this tree fabric sitting around, and….here’s a peek:

I like making baby quilts, in no small part because I can hand quilt them in a reasonable amount of time.  I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to machine quilting – I don’t really like it all that much.  For one thing, I like taking the time to do it by hand, it feels more authentic to me – however impractical and time consuming.  For another thing, the few things I have had professionally machine quilted were so heavily quilted they didn’t feel like anything I wanted to curl up under; all that threadwork makes the fabric stiffen up in an unpleasant-to-me way.  My grandmother tied almost all of her work, and I actually prefer that to machine quilting.

I also like baby quilts because let’s face it, babies don’t care when triangle points aren’t precise.  And, oh my, my piecing in this project was pretty badly done, which is why there’s not a picture of the whole quilt here.  *sigh*  As the Amish say, only God is perfect.

***

On the knitting front, I became fascinated with this pattern I saw on Ravelry.  It’s called Maine Woven Baby Blanket, and the recommended yarn is Swans Island, which has a fascinating story you should go read about here.  In addition to yarn, the company makes beautiful heirloom blankets that I will never, ever be able to afford.  Sadly, when I went to buy Swans Island yarn it became clear that I couldn’t afford the yarn for this project either, which was really too bad as it’s beautiful and it’s just the sort of company I’d like to support.  Alas, another day.  Instead, I’m using some 100% organic cotton yarn from Classic Elite called Seedling.  Normally I’m not a fan of using cotton yarn but this stuff is really nice to knit, and it’s machine washable to boot.  The colors are called “Summer Cloud” and “Persimmon”, perfect for a summer baby blanket:

1)  Like most of the eastern seaboard, I went to the grocery store last night.  I expected the bare bread shelves, and the low milk inventory, and having to share the aisles with hundreds of other harried and grumpy people.  I did not, however, expect a bare Diet Coke shelf.  I made three trips around the store and there was not one Diet Coke to be found.  (Regular Diet Coke, that is.  There was plenty of the caffeine-free crap.)

What is this about?  Does Diet Coke have some anti-blizzard powers I am unaware of?  Does it melt ice?  Or is it that people think, damn, I’m going to be stuck inside with my family for a few days, better make sure my caffeine and carbonation needs are met?

And if all that Diet Coke is being used as a mixer for adult beverages, I’m even more glad I’m not driving anywhere for the next few days.

2)  The other night I went to a middle-school talent show.  One act involved a kid escaping from a straightjacket.  I found myself paying very close attention.  I felt like this could be vital information someday.

3)  Also at the talent show was a little girl wearing a Lifesaver-green vest who marched to the middle of the gymnasium floor with her ukelele and belted out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.  I was entranced.  First, kudos to whoever it was that encouraged her to sing an age-appropriate song, because I find there are few more disconcerting things than listening to a 12-year old sing “ooooh baby I want you, I need you, I love you”.  (Please.)  But second, there was this quality about her that was really enchanting; my sister agreed, and said there was just this childlike innocence about her that was refreshing.  But wow.  What a sad thing, to be in the middle of a room full of kids, and have only one who actually seemed like a kid.

Driving home, though?  I realized that if the VEB and I ever had a kid, she’d be exactly the sort of kid who would lug around a ukelele and sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” slightly off-key.

4)  The cat has taken to yowling her head off every night from 10:30 – 11 pm.  I have checked all the usual issues – food, water, litter box.  I’ve also made sure I haven’t accidentally covered up one of her favorite sleeping spots.  I don’t think she’s sick.  But something is making her sit in the kitchen at this particular juncture in time and moan up at the ceiling.  Bats?  Mice?  Why at this particular point in time?  More importantly, how do I make it stop?

The other problem is, if I email my landlord and say, “Hey, my cat is losing her mind every night, I think you should check the attic for vermin”, it’s going to mean exterminators traipsing through my apartment (because the attic access is in my laundry room).  And that would mean I’d have to clean.  And we all know how I feel about THAT.