Fear This

(This is my guest blog for my sister Mary Alice, From the Frontlines.)

Becoming a parent may happen on purpose or by accident, but however it comes about, parenting itself is a calling.

-Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mindful Parenting.

The other night I was chatting away with Rescue Ranger as Babou happily played in the tub. Babou joyfully scooped and spilled cup after cup of water while Rescue Ranger and I happily discussed...just about everything. The topic of high school had come up and he was telling me about his experiences.

"But you know Auntie Jo," Rescue Ranger confided in me proudly, "I never did any drugs or drank or got into any kind of trouble while I was in high school."

"Really," I replied, very impressed.

"Nope," said Rescue Ranger, "I was too scared."

I laughed, knowing what he meant. Mary Alice was a force to be reckoned with when she was mad.

"And you know what really gets me Auntie Jo?" Rescue Ranger continued, "She would guess the bad stuff before I could do it. Like I would be going out and she would say, 'I hope you are not thinking of doing such and such because I will be soooo mad if you do,' and I hadn't even thought of doing such and such until she said it and then I would get mad because it was such a good idea and I hadn't even thought of it--mom had! She was always two steps ahead of me."

After Rescue Ranger and I hung up much later that evening, I thought about what he had said. I was so impressed with Rescue Rangers respect for my sis, with his sense of self, with his way of being.

I love Rescue Ranger.

Rescue Ranger has always been so close to me and has only gotten moreso over the years. Now he is more like my best guy-friend than nephew. We call each other up and talk and talk. Nothing is off limits and we know we will always laugh. Rescue Ranger is hilarious and we both have the same quirky sense of humor.

As I tucked Babou into bed, I thought about Mary Alice and what a lovely mother she is to her children, and what a role model to me. It takes phenomenal parenting to raise such a mature and fun son, one that calls up his Auntie to discuss life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

You have done an amazing job, Mary Alice, and I am so proud of you. Thank you for producing children who are now my friends.

Surfwise? Surfdumb? Serfdom?

“Your parents would have said, you can go to school because it’s safe, but don’t go swimming with sharks ‘cause it’s dangerous. Our parents said, well you can go swimming with sharks but you’re not going to school ‘cause that's just dangerous.”
-Surfwise

Yesterday dawned rainy and remained that way for its duration. A sort of soft, silent, ever present dripping from the sky. I am catching a cold and feeling tired, as is Babou, so we decided it would be a perfect movie night. My husband got one more to his tune and I got one more to my tune.

But the one my husband chose turned out to be the more interesting and actually had me up for most of the night thinking. It is the first time I have ever seen anything close to the way I grew up.

The movie, "Surfwise," is a film about Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz and his legendary surf family. Paskowitz left a successful medical practice, after the failure of his second marriage, to find himself and develop his own philosophy of life.

This was during a moment in time rife with finding yourself and with the pursuit of individual happiness--post world war II America. The time of the Bohemian and the Bon Vivant, of Jack Kerouac and the birth of the Aquarian Age. A moment ripe with opportunity for alternative lifestyles.

Paskowitz married a like-minded woman and they set about making babies with alarming speed and making their home in vehicles. They end up with nine children and living in a 24 foot trailer. They move from place to place, camping and making do; the father believing in living in a survival state at all times.

Paskowitz believes that we have lost our essential animal nature, our grace, and develops a philosophy that he believes will return himself and others to their natural state of "superior health." Animals are not educated, they have to fight for their food every day, they don't stay put and collect "things." So money was taboo as was stability as well as education.

Although Paskowitz was a Stanford educated doctor.

The fallout from this upbringing is then recorded as each child, as an adult, talks about the experience. All of them have been crippled by it in varying degrees. It is as though their experience growing up was so intense that it has overpowered the rest of their lives. Their father did not prepare them to live in the mainstream, if he had his way they would all still be living in that 24 foot trailer.

One son's dream was to become a doctor. Upon seeing a counselor and realizing he was 10 years behind scholastically, he abandoned that dream. One son has nothing but animosity for his father, all of them battled merging with the main. All of them are successful. Most of them are artists.

My father was very similar to this man; similar in age, similar in the full embrace of the Bon Vivant and Bohemian lifestyle. He also came out of failed marriages wanting to escape while believing that family was the only thing that mattered.

We were brought up without any formal education, moving about a lot, and living in a VW bus for just a bit too long. He was also charismatic and used his charms to create an aura of sort of spiritual reverence. People loved my dad, thought he was so cool to be living this life in which you don't worry about money or possessions, that art and family is all. That one should be content to watch the grass grow. That one should never leave home or become part of the insanity of society.

I think both Doc Paskowitz and my father felt they were giving their children something no other children were given, the freedom to explore and learn naturally. But I also think that in essence they used their children for their own self-serving ends--wanting to escape society; create a family in which they "rule."

I think in trying to escape and be free they only succeeded in imprisoning themselves and their families with just an alternate set of rules. They imprisoned their children in self created dictatorships knowing the best way to keep loyalty is to keep the environment controlled and not to allow education. In reality there was no freedom, for the family or for the father.

Doc Paskowitz says in the movie that he wanted his children to know the difference between education and knowledge--he wanted them to have knowledge. But he trapped them in that you can only know the difference between the two if you are educated.

Everyone grows up in different ways, but some are more extreme than others and this just makes you who you are meant to be. I do not regret the way I grew up because I do not regret who I am today. But I think there is a way to be a free thinker and to let your children be free thinkers without shunning society.

That is my philosophy.

Mother Time

We sleep and wake at odd times: our tiredness, we discover, has many layers.
-Tony Cohan, On Mexican Time.

Lately I have been feeling like every day is at least two days long. And in that space of time, I am not quite sure what happens. I don’t even know how it happens. It’s as though time is actually dissolving before my grasping hands. I wish I could momentarily step out of the earth’s gravitational pull and somehow slip through the gap of a day: An entire 24 hours devoted to my renewal and to the tying up of loose ends. Unfortunately, life does not give time outs, and I am deep in the midst of a space I like to call *“Mother Time.”

The idea of “Mother Time” came to me when I started reading the virtual book club’s pick of the month: On Mexican Time, by Tony Cohan. I was immediately struck by the title and, as I delved deeper into the story, I could sense the peace and calm Cohan was trying to convey in his “sufficiency of days.” Having spent time in Mexico, and other like-minded places, I do understand this way of experiencing time on a superficial level: I enjoy it, I strive to be that groovy, but still I am a westerner…with a puritan work ethic…steeped in an ideology of production…set in the “having it all” mindset.

I have to say, however, I am beginning to cave. I hate to admit this, even to myself, but I am really tired. And besides that, I am very NERVOUS because compared with a lot of other women; I don’t think my plate is even that full. I am not a single mom and I’m not a working mother.

But still I feel like the work never ends. All the gardening, house cleaning, dog walking, baby swinging, cooking, dishes, entertaining, trying to exercise, maybe look nice, buy some new glasses because your baby broke your very last one and now your drinking coffee out of a shot glass from your college days oh OH and then try to find time to write because it clears your mind but there is no time by the time you try and then sleep beckons and oh yeah maybe I should try to seduce or be seduced but my mind is so cluttered because I haven’t had time to write and sort my thoughts and by now I have a serious writers cramp and my swirling thoughts collide in the air above my head creating such a cacophony I wonder if I might be making less sense than Babou’s first attempts at communication which makes me wonder if it was only coffee I put in that shot glass or maybe I should be using something stronger.

And that’s when I realized I am in “Mother Time.” That it is ok. The rules I once applied to myself no longer work or even really make sense. The rhythm of my day is not an agenda as much as a tango between loosely held goals and the needs of my family. The one goal and agenda I am holding firmly onto is that I will not lose myself in the fray. This is what I have come to call “Mother Time.”

My name is Jo, I am in Mother Time. Please don’t break my shot glass.