My friend, like me, married young – at least by today’s standards. We are in our late forties. And our generation seems to be one in which women are making this decision in droves, turning the old stereotype of the male midlife crisis on its head, leaving behind hurt and often clueless husbands who are incredulous that this is happening to them.

It didn’t strike me till recently that eight of the ten divorces I’ve been aware of among my circle of friends and colleagues in the last five years have been initiated by women. In every case, these have been women with children who have been devoted to their families for years. None is wealthy, none is leaving on a caprice after which they reinvent themselves with cosmetic surgery and a convertible. And none is a pop-culture cougar, pursuing her own youth via a younger man in a new version of the classic life upheaval.

For all these women, divorce means that comfortable family homes in which they have lived for decades have to be sold, the material accoutrements of lives pruned and retooled to cram into an apartment with a daunting monthly rent. Many are struggling to bring old resumes into the 21st century digital job-seeker realm. Some have prepped in advance for this day, already lining up a couple of low-paying jobs – front office at their kids’ school, piano accompanist for the school choir – before taking the plunge.

Child custody is negotiated, usually jointly, and kids start shuttling back and forth between mom’s and dad’s new residences. And for the majority of these women who have not left their marriages for someone else, most will be facing singlehood as they approach or enter their fifties. There is the online dating realm to wade into some months later, with a steady stream of not-quite-right E-Harmony candidates to fit in dates with around the kids’ soccer games and prom dates and SAT tutoring sessions.

It’s not a very romantic picture.

Granted, while the situations I am pondering are anecdotal and each is distinct, I’ve done enough casual research since my surprising ‘discovery’ to identify a trend. It’s not just here in my Boulder, Colorado bubble that midlife women are the ones choosing to upend and move on.

Several years ago AARP magazine reported that the number of people ending marriages after 50 is increasing. Two-thirds of those divorces are requested by women. And, the article notes, while women do the walking, men don’t see it coming.

In 2008, Oprah.com ran an essay by Ellen Tien called “Confessions of a Semi-Happy Wife,” in which the author suggests her “Mid-Wife Crisis” is that of Everywoman stuck in a “thumpingly ordinary” marriage who yearns for freedom, novelty and alone time.

In “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” Sandra Tsing Loh wrote in The Atlantic last summer of ending her 20-year marriage, garnering criticism for universalizing what some saw as a selfish, petty move to jettison a good guy (and dad). Yet she seems to speak for many women who look ahead to a second half of life in which they no longer wish to settle for tedium and mediocrity, even if it means venturing into a vast, unknown sea tossed with some frightening gales.

I remember asking my grandmother, as part of a college oral-history project, how it was that she and my grandpa had managed to stay married for 47 years, and her best friend across the street for nearly 50, when each had at least one child who had divorced.

“I don’t suppose we thought we had a choice,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

That’s clearly not the case today.  So what is going on?

I have a theory.

I call it the gender-generation gap. Here’s what happens: you start with a woman who’s a Gen-Xer or at the tail-end of the Boomers, who came of age in a rather heady era in which she imbibed feminist visions of possibility trumpeted by her predecessors, women who had burned bras and pushed ceilings, lobbied for daycare and flextime, hashed out a new vocabulary in which ‘head of household’ and ‘housewife’ were swapped for visions of ‘co-equal’ partnership.

The young men they married in the 1980s, however, weren’t reading advice for career girls or ‘how to have it all’ in Glamour magazine, let alone Gloria Steinem in Ms. The greater numbers of girls who had joined them in college classes was an added bonus, not a social trend to scrutinize. And when they went home on weekends, typically they re-entered a nest in which their needs were cared for by a traditional mom who fed them, kept them in new clothes, did their laundry and probably made their beds.

What we are seeing some 20 or 30 years later, I think, is a glaring gap in gendered expectations of what marriage would – and should – be.  The men who are husbands in their 40s and 50s today — despite being a decade into the 21st century, despite feminism existing in the minds of their children as a history-book relic, despite taken-for-granted rhetoric of equality – are grappling with a world framed by legions of June Cleaver moms – or at least Carol Brady — yet shared with wives who thought they’d be Claire Huxtable.

And when these wives realized, rather quickly after the kids came along, that TV show images were just that, most seemed to resign, buckle down, and get on with the task of getting babies raised and keeping a family in order. All that partnership stuff they expected? Even the best-intentioned husbands seemed to be good at “helping,” for which they are commended by their wives’ more traditional female friends, suggesting they not be taken for granted. These husbands were, after all, a good step more progressive than Ward Cleaver.

But 25 years down the track, it doesn’t seem to be enough. One thing these divorcing women friends of mine have in common is years spent begging their husbands for help in improving things. To listen to them. To divide duties and manage details. To summon empathy. To support their goals and passions. To take them seriously.

In virtually every case I’ve observed, when a woman finally files for divorce she believes she has exhausted all other possibilities for a life of meaning and satisfaction. By this point, her desire to save her marriage is over. She’s already moved on, when her husband is at long last just waking up, slammed out of inertia by this utterly unexpected step – even when she’s raised or threatened it before.

“I want a divorce” falls on male ears as inscrutably as if she had been speaking Estonian or Swahili.

Tien, who like Loh has reaped plenty of criticism for seeming to advocate leaving perfectly good, well-intended husbands, has this to say:

As one girlfriend remarked, it’s the age of rage — a period of high irritation that lasts roughly one to two decades. As a colleague e-mailed me, it’s the simmering underbelly of resentment, the 600-pound mosquito in the room…

In the beginning, we felt obliged to join the race to have it all; being married was an integral part of the contest and heaven forbid we should be disqualified. Flash-forward to 10 years later, when we discover that we can get it all but whose harebrained scheme was this anyway? We can get jobs, get pregnant, get it done. We can try — with varying levels of success — to get sleep, get fit, get control, and get those important Me-moments where one keeps a journal with thought-provoking lists that go ‘I’m a woman first, a mother second, a laundress third.’ We get upset, we get over it. What we don’t always get is: Why.

Conventional wisdom decrees that marriage takes work, but it doesn’t take work, it is work. It’s a job — intermittently fulfilling and annoying, with not enough vacation days. Divorce is a job too (with even fewer vacation days). It’s a matter of weighing your options.

For more and more women, it seems the option of chucking the drudgery of ‘tried and true’ for untried potential is a risk worth taking. Life isn’t over for women at 40 or 50 anymore; as Tien remarks, “We are still visually tolerable if not downright irresistible when we’re 30 or 35 or 40. If you believe the fashion magazines — which I devoutly do — even 50- and 60-year-olds are…pretty hot tickets.”

What worries me, though, is what sort of social legacy will be left by this growing heap of crumbled marriages. There is the inevitable splitting up of holidays at multiple parents’ and stepparents’ and then grandparents’ homes (for some kids – as was my case – parents don’t stop at just one divorce). There is the financial fallout. For every divorce, you’ve got families trying to get by on half (or less) of the resources that were once there, and almost twice the energy and environmental impact generated by dividing those material essentials into two households.

One of two things has to happen, I think, for marriage to revitalize its future and become appealing to women again. Either a current generation of young people needs to get in synch with their respective expectations for gender roles in a marriage, or marriage needs to be rethought and redefined, as Loh provocatively contends, to permit more autonomy and less demand for fidelity, if we’re talking how to sustain a 60- or even 70-year commitment.

As a mother of a 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, I am comfortably situated in one of those ‘stable, utilitarian’ marriages.  I worry about what lies ahead for my kids as they consider such a commitment one day. While I’d like to think my son will be a different sort of husband – a genuine partner, a true equal in all things domestic and relational – he is nonetheless being influenced by parents who fit the generalities I’ve outlined above: an aspiring, frustrated mom and a decent, hard-working, well-intentioned dad who nonetheless strives against the apron strings of his own traditional upbringing.

It distresses me that young men today still have visions of that gratifying lifestyle in which they go off to a great job and come home to a doting wife who makes their domestic realm an oasis. Researcher Barbara Kerr, who studies gender differences in gifted students, observed in a 2000 speech called Gender and Genius that most young people, even those with superior intelligence and higher goals, succumb to society’s conventional image of what constitutes achievement.

Kerr cites responses to a study she did on gifted students’ “perfect future day” fantasies, a favorite vision of what they might be doing in 10 years. I will quote her at length because the results are telling, and disconcerting:

A typical college male’s fantasy goes something like this: I wake up and get in my car — a really nice rebuilt ‘67 Mustang– and then I go to work, I think I’m some kind of a manager of a computer firm, and then I go home and when I get there, my wife is there at the door (she has a really nice figure) she has a drink for me, and she’s made a great meal. We watch TV or maybe play with the kids.’ Here is the typical college female’s fantasy: ‘I wake up and my husband and I get in our twin Jettas and I go to the law firm where I work, then after work, I go home and he’s pulling up in the driveway at the same time. We go in and have a glass of wine and we make an omelet together and eat by candlelight. Then the nanny brings the children in and we play with them till bedtime.’ What’s wrong with this picture?

Women dream of dual career bliss, while men still seem to nourish the hope that they might find a woman who wants to stay home and take care of them and the children. Despite extraordinary changes in the career expectations of women, many college men have yet to acknowledge the changes in gender roles that women’s expectations imply.

Kerr adds that “it is likely that even more men who publicly endorse equity in relationships secretly wish for a more traditional lifestyle. On the other hand, college women have as their goals romantic yet egalitarian relationships for which they have no roadmaps.” Just as their mothers did, who are now driving into a new wild blue yonder with no GPS.

How do we, as a culture, create these new roadmaps?  How do I teach my teenage son what it looks like to be a partner with women — and more importantly, to want to be?

Loh suggests we need to contemplate entirely new avenues, some that may verge into French (and other) territory in which the ideal of lifelong fidelity is put out to pasture to accommodate the vicissitudes of long relationships and the realities of day-to-day life that simply cannot sustain the romantic — and utterly unrealistic — demands we place on it.

One thing seems certain amidst all this uncertainty: now that women have a choice, marriage is going to have start adapting if it is going to survive.

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. I further believe that their right to express their group disapproval stops absolutely short of causing their chosen bugaboo any actual harm… as in, breaking the laws enacted by the larger secular state in order to protect all its citizens.  Those laws, we hope, evolve in specificity and efficacy as our understanding of what constitutes demonstrable societal or individual harm evolves as well. The American legal system has always possessed the power to control, modify or ban religious practices on these grounds: for example, in direct contradiction of Biblical precedent and many current religious beliefs, women are no longer owned by their husbands, twelve-year-old girls are off limits and public stoning for adultery has been replaced by Facebook flaming.

Another example: the general population, excluding certain Louisiana JOP’s, has eventually come to understand that a union between two people of differing overall skin pigmentation does not lead to apocalyptic plagues or children with multiple heads (also, that allowing humans to own other humans is a damaging economic construct, not to mention leading to some rather hard feelings in general). Had the original Southern Baptist Conference (and by “original,” I mean the SBC from 1845 until 1995) been able to retain a state-sanctioned grasp on the laws of the Southern states, slavery would still be legal, “miscegenation” would still be a crime and hundreds of thousands of lawn jockeys would still be on proud display across the land of Dixie. The Southern Baptist Conference was created to support these ideas: in defiance of the views of other Baptist congregations, but with the full support of Messieurs Leviticus and Nehemiah, to name only two. The Old Testament is all for concubines, slaves and massacres, but not intermarriage among tribes. Is this our best authority on human relations?

And what about the endless variations on marriage sanctioned by religions just as legitimate as Decent Christians Everywhere Inc? Why aren’t we respecting their traditions? Why are we letting widows remarry, those whores (Hinduism)? Why aren’t we letting Islamic American men who can afford it collect the four wives to whom they’re entitled? Who’s in charge here? The Founding Fathers, those whacked-out Deists, should have left us some instructions about which religion is right so we would know whose tenets to make law… oh. Wait. They did mention it. NONE OF THEM.

In a democratically-based society, the general idea is that we don’t let small groups dictate to everyone, in the belief that time, evolving understanding and the collective better judgment of a larger group of citizens usually works out better for everyone.  When small groups, or large groups, or individual states or Bible-beating rednecks do attempt to tar and feather someone, we can take their asses to courts which represent successively larger segments of the population and hope that somewhere along the line, better judgment and better education will prevail.

I don’t give a damn what happens in anyone’s church if the law isn’t being broken, if children aren’t being abused, if the Kool-Aid is untainted. And if a particular religious sect decided that I was by nature a lesser human being, I think I’d leave. Wait, make that I know I’d leave – that’s essentially why I don’t consider organized religion a tool that’s safe for most people to play with.  Any system of thought which approves and allows the dehumanization of certain other humans is risky stuff.

No religion owns marriage: the concept, the reality or the word itself. Religions have their own variations on the theme and every right to them. Marry (or don’t) anyone that you like (or hate (or sadly but firmly condemn)). Your religious definition, Ms. Christian or Mr. Sikh (and you do NOT want to go to the dictionary on this), is yours to live by. But please try to understand: pair-bonding predates religion; stable, wealth-creating, ably-parenting households are the true and demonstrable societal benefit of such bonds; and there’s not one iota of real evidence that a pair of the same gender doesn’t work just as well… and your talking shrubbery or flaming cow, while inspirational and possibly entirely real, is no excuse for ignoring science, history and simple justice.

The world would be a much poorer place without the work of these institutions, whether that work is preserving fine art or wildlife habitat or educational outreach. However, there isn’t much that can be done without financial support. Consider giving a gift of membership. Typical membership benefits include free admission for a year and a guest pass or two, sometimes a bit more. You’ll need to check out the local community, and don’t overlook some of the smaller, less flashy places.

Here in Denver, not only do we have the Denver Zoo, Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but you’ll also find Denver Botanic Gardens, Butterfly Pavilion, Colorado Historical Society, Denver Firefighters Museum, Wings Over the Rockies, and many more. What’s in your area?

Robert Enke, the goaltender for Hannover 96 (who currently hover in the middle of the German Bundesliga standings) and a potential member of next year’s German World Cup team, died the other day. His death was apparently a suicide.

“At 1825 (1725GMT) he was run over by a regional express train running between Hamburg and Bremen,” said police spokesman Stefan Wittke. “The train was travelling at the speed of 160-kph.”The player’s friend and consultant Joerg Neblung told reporters: “I can confirm this is a case of suicide. He took his own life just before six (pm).

Enke lost a child in 2006 and has left behind a wife and eight month-old daughter.

Most Americans have never heard of Enke, but they probably are familiar with Andre Agassi, a former #1 world-ranked tennis player who won eight Grand Slam events (in the process becoming one of only three men in the open era to win all four Slam events during his career). In his new autobiography Agassi describes how he became so despondent at the state of his life – which also included being married to Brooke Shields, one of Hollywood’s legendary beauties – that he turned to crystal meth.

At the core of Agassi’s despair: “I really hated tennis.”

Agassi has given at least a couple of interviews in recent days, including one that some of you may have seen on 60 Minutes (he also talked with Rick Reilly of ESPN). As this Gawker post notes, the Katie Couric conversation had to have been beyond humiliating.

I suppose a lot of us look at men like Agassi and Enke and have a hard time fathoming their discontent. After all, what are the things regular people worry about? Money? Finding love? Recognition, success, professional validation? How many men out there could have looked at Agassi’s life in 1997, when things really bottomed out, and concluded that obscene wealth, tremendous talent, ubiquitous fame, a career where you get paid to play a fucking game and a wife who was one of the most stunningly fabulous women alive … well, that all just seemed a little hollow. What if I inject radiator fluid into my aorta? Maybe that’ll give life some purpose. But as he told Couric, at the time he couldn’t imagine how this drug could make him feel any worse than he already did.

I don’t know a lot about Enke’s life, but on the surface of things it probably looked pretty good compared to what millions of Joe Sixpacks trudge off to every morning. Still, he threw himself in front of a train. And Agassi risked everything for something, anything, that would help him escape a life he hated, no matter how grand it may have looked to the rest of us.

Of course, these two cases are far from perfect parallels. For one, Enke took his own life and Agassi survived. For another, friends and family members say that Enke had long struggled with depression, whereas Agassi’s issues seem less clinical and more bound up with being forced into a career that he hated (Enke reportedly loved soccer). Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger notes that Enke’s struggle was hardly the first of its kind, rattling off a litany of European footballers who, like Enke, couldn’t seem to find happiness in what most would regard as a dream life. The same is certainly true for athletes in all other pro sports – he also points to the case of Boston Red Sox centerfielder Jimmy Piersall, for example, whose “autobiography ‘Fear Strikes Out,’ [was] later made into a Hollywood movie.”

In fact, we might go so far as to argue that these two cases have nothing to do with one another. Perhaps one is a case of clinical illness, pure and simple, while the other speaks more to a cultural pathology surrounding how children are herded into sports (or acting, or when they reach college, medicine, or the law, or accounting, or whatever their parents have decided is best for them). If so, then let’s pause here to simply acknowledge the obvious: fame and wealth don’t make one immune to mental illness.

The Agassi case, though – I have to admit that I was surprised at my reaction. I’m pretty jaded about the world of pro sports and for a long time I wasn’t much of an Agassi fan. And I’ve never had much patience for rich jocks singing pitiful me songs. I know that money doesn’t guarantee happiness, but I’ve always wished for a little more perspective from those who are blessed to be free of the concerns that plague so many of us: Yes, your life isn’t perfect, but my child is sick and we can’t afford health insurance, so would you please have enough self-awareness to go somewhere and shut the fuck up?

Listening to Agassi tell his story, though, I was struck by his honesty, his humility, by his absolute refusal to blame others. More than anything, I was shocked by how very … normal his plight seemed. He clearly is aware of the apparent absurdity, of the contradiction, and he’s embarrassed by it. He’s not asking for sympathy – he’s simply telling a humiliating story because he must. And the result – here’s a rich guy telling a story that we actually can empathize with in a human way that transcends class and circumstance. With Agassi, money can’t buy happiness becomes something more than a cliché that the have-nots use to rationalize their own despair.

Tennis was something that he had been compelled to do because his father (an Iranian immigrant) saw it as a ticket up the ladder, and as a result he liked his job about as much as millions of disenchanted people in the US like theirs. It’s just something they do – each morning they get up and trudge off to serve the necessity of paying the bills.

If I were to sneer at Agassi for being unhappy, what would I do when I realized that my life looks as affluent to billions of people around the world as his does to me? What do I do? I sit in a nice office and write, and meet with people about business issues, and in general get paid well above the national income average to use my brain. I live in a modest house – except that it’s mansion compared to what most people have.

Still, I’ve spent way too many years hating my job the same way Andre hated tennis. A few years back I spent several months working in a position that I loathed. I joke that those nine months probably took five years off my life, except I’m not really joking. After I left, I realized that for the first time in months I could breathe. The stress I had been carrying around was making me physically ill, and even to this day I can hardly think about the experience without feeling a slight surge of anxious adrenaline.

Not long ago I wrote that “reality is making us sick, and fantasy can’t cure us.” In that essay I talked about the book Affluenza, which I’d just completed. Toward the end I said this:

So here’s my theory/hypothesis/question. We’re a hollow nation, a society that provides nearly all of us with rampant access to more material goods than we know what to do with. But we cannot find happiness in the material because there is not happiness in it. On the contrary – it’s a system that’s rigged to feed us a shiny, pretty lie that hollows us out some more, all the while whispering that only more of the lie will make us happy.

Is this something like the lie that drove Andre Agassi’s father to enslave his son to tennis? Is it like the lies of so many people I’ve known in my life who wanted to teach, perhaps, but did the “sensible” thing and became accountants? Or the lies that led how many of my classmates to become lawyers or doctors or MBAs because that’s what their fathers had been?

I have multiple sig files that turn up at the bottom of the e-mails I send out. One of my favorites – it has probably appeared in more than 100,000 of my e-mails through the years, and maybe more – is a quote from Joseph Campbell. It goes like this:

You may have success in life, but then just think of it – what kind of life was it? What good was it – you’ve never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.

Campbell is talking about living an authentic life, and I’m glad to see that Andre Agassi is, finally, doing just that. Or so it seems, from watching an exposé on television.

Like many of my fellow citizens, it’s probably safe to say that I am not living an authentic life. Not yet. When I get up in the morning there are things I want to do, things that would make me far happier, but I don’t do them. My discontent hasn’t led me to crystal meth, nor is it going to, but it does lead me to thinking about a day several years ago when I stood in l’Accademia in Florence overawed by The David. I’ve never shaken the sense that, among other things, Michaelangelo was making a point about living an authentic life. David is staring off in the distance, sizing up the Goliath of his age, and he is not afraid. He does not hate the life he is living. He does not hate the moment he is in. In fact, he seems to be looking forward to the battle in front of him.

He seems possessed by a calm resolve, by that feeling that Campbell is talking about and the confidence that comes with knowing that he will not thrown off of it.

Agassi’s Wikipedia entry notes that “he is the founder of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, which has raised over $60 million for at-risk children in Southern Nevada. In 2001, the Foundation opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a K-12 public charter school for at-risk children.” Wow – a dropout investing a medium-sized fortune in helping poor kids get an education.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, and it’s too complex to trivialize it by tying it up into a neat platitude. At the core, though, lies the need to examine the relationship between our humanity and the material world that so often eats away at it.

I’m grateful to Andre Agassi for telling his story. I hope we can all learn from it, even if the story itself strikes us as so very unlikely…

Image Credits: The Brisbane Times, TheOffside.com and EagleVision Productions.

It’s also clear from an article in The Colorado Independent that this is only half of what the amendment’s authors intended.

“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning,” [Gualberto Garcia] Jones explained. (Jones heads the organization that initiated this year’s amendment)

That this law could be interpreted to include sperm is an ironic example of the law of unintended consequences.

The amendment’s final language, on which Colorado will vote in November 2010, is as follows:

SECTION 1. Article II of the constitution of the state of Colorado is amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read:
SECTION 2. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the term “person” shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

So what does “biological development” mean? Last year’s amendment defined a person as starting with a fertilized egg (and it lost by a 3:1 margin), and the new amendment could be interpreted to mean the same – a zygote is a person.

But this time, the amendment’s language is even broader. The Independent article makes it clear that this was intentional on the part of the amendment’s authors. The language was written specifically to “to be more comprehensive in our definition of a person,” and the result is that, if passed, the amendment will outlaw abortion, many types of birth control, stem cell research, and could potentially outlaw fertility clinics.

“Beginning of the biological development.” That phrase may be perfectly clear to a conservative Christian abortion activist like Jones, lawyers and judges will have a more difficult time interpreting what it does to Colorado’s laws.

Last year, our own Dr. Slammy and commenters pointed out a number of the absurdities that went along with last year’s failed amendment, such as allowing a pregnant woman to drive in the HOV lane, the legal drinking age becomes 20 years, 3 months, sex with a pregnant woman becomes menage-a-trois, a woman who is not aware that she is pregnant while engaging in a harmful activity of any kind could be charged with neglect, and so on.

The new proposed amendment is even broader in its possible interpretation because a single cell – an egg – would be defined as a “person” this time. And as a result, the possible ramifications are even more farcical.

The problem is that it’s really hard to define when a “person’s” biological development starts. You could say that it starts when an egg is fertilized and be relatively safe (if it passes in 2010 and survives the inevitable legal challenges, that’s probably how this amendment would ultimately be interpreted). But it’s possible that the amendment would be interpreted more broadly. After all, that egg started its development years or decades before it was fertilized. If the egg is damaged, then the “person’s” development will be adversely affected. And damaged eggs happen all the time – they’re one of reasons for miscarriages and failures to conceive. Does that mean that we need to protect a woman’s children when they’re eggs in a girl toddler’s immature ovaries? And how, exactly, are we going to do that?

Are we willing to charge prepubescent girls with child neglect for daring to play soccer and risking ovary damage? What’s next, forcing women to wear petticoats and ride horses sidesaddle? Actually, I suspect that many of Jones’ supporters would find cultural regression to Victorian or Puritan values to be pleasantly refreshing.

And since a human can’t develop without the aid of sperm (cloning aside), does development start when intercourse and ejaculation provide the sperm? Or does it start in the man’s testicles? Or even before then? Damaged sperm are a lot more common than damage eggs – that’s the biological reason that men produce billions of them. Is each damaged sperm an example of child neglect? Should we charge a little league coach with manslaughter if he accidentally throws a baseball into a boy’s crotch with an errant pitch? And should urologists be prosecuted for accessory to murder for performing a vasectomy?

The zygote personhood amendment last year crashed and burned because Coloradans understood that it was a legal minefield of epic scale. This proposed personhood amendment is even worse. Any legislation that makes a minimum of 20,000 separate changes to Colorado law is going to have a huge number of unpredictable unintended consequences.

One of those unintended consequences will be that Colorado will become more of a laughingstock than it was during the Amendment 2 debacle decades ago, or than Kansas was after its school board voted to permit the teaching of “intelligent design.”

It will be in the voters’ hands in 2010. Hopefully they’ll make the right decision next year just as they did last year.

You’re honey child to a swarm of bees
Gonna blow right through you like a breeze
Give me one last dance
Well slide down the surface of things

You’re the real thing
Yeah the real thing
You’re the real thing
Even better than the real thing

- U2

Fantasy stories, myths, legends, tall tales, fairy tales, horror, all these have been with us for a very long time. Science fiction, as well, has been with us since Mary Shelley found herself in a bet with Lord Byron about the possibility of writing a new kind of horror, one not grounded in the gothic.* So the presence in our popular culture of stories based in unreality of one form or another is certainly nothing new.

It seems to me that there’s been a lot more of it lately, though. I don’t have the means to conduct the kind of thorough study we’d need to prove the point, but a cursory examination of what’s on television demonstrates that a good bit of our attention is being occupied by various hyper-realities.

• In this TV.com list of most popular shows, at least 20 deal with the supernatural in some form.
• A quick look at the networks’ fall line-up reveals 11 non-reality-based shows. Add to this Chuck, which will be back mid-season sometime.
• That list doesn’t include cable, of course. In addition to SyFy (or whatever the heck it’s being called these days), HBO is currently burning it up with True Blood, an exceptional vampire/mystery series.

When you factor out reality and game shows, soap operas and children’s programming, the ratio of supernatural-to-natural (such as it is) is quite high. And we’re not even including ludicrously fanciful programming that’s ostensibly based in the plausible (think Desperate Housewives here).

Now let’s have a look at the top-grossing films of 2008:

• The Dark Knight
• Iron Man
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Hancock
• WALL·E
• Kung Fu Panda
• Twilight (2008/I)
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
• Quantum of Solace
• Horton Hears a Who!

And 2009:

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Up
• The Hangover
• Star Trek
• Monsters vs Aliens
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
• The Proposal

Beginning to notice a pattern?

I can’t help wondering why. Cultures behave the way they do for reasons, and studied examinations of those behaviors (and most especially, of the culture’s popular artifacts) tell us a great deal about the society. What does it love, what does it hate? What does it dream of, what does it fear? What are its dysfunctions…

In this particular case, what are we running from?

We Are the Hollow Men

I have a theory. Well, actually, it’s not well developed enough to be a theory. Or even a hypothesis, for that matter. So let’s just call it a question. I recently read Affluenza, a book that sets out to examine our culture’s pathological need for stuff. The editor’s review at Amazon sums it up this way:

The definition of affluenza, according to de Graaf, Wann, and Naylor, is something akin to “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” It’s a powerful virus running rampant in our society, infecting our souls, affecting our wallets and financial well-being, and threatening to destroy not only the environment but also our families and communities. Having begun life as two PBS programs coproduced by de Graaf, this book takes a hard look at the symptoms of affluenza, the history of its development into an epidemic, and the options for treatment. In examining this pervasive disease in an age when “the urge to splurge continues to surge,” the first section is the book’s most provocative. According to figures the authors quote and expound upon, Americans each spend more than $21,000 per year on consumer goods, our average rate of saving has fallen from about 10 percent of our income in 1980 to zero in 2000, our credit card indebtedness tripled in the 1990s, more people are filing for bankruptcy each year than graduate from college, and we spend more for trash bags than 90 of the world’s 210 countries spend for everything. “To live, we buy,” explain the authors–everything from food and good sex to religion and recreation–all the while squelching our intrinsic curiosity, self-motivation, and creativity. They offer historical, political, and socioeconomic reasons that affluenza has taken such strong root in our society, and in the final section, offer practical ideas for change. These use the intriguing stories of those who have already opted for simpler living and who are creatively combating the disease, from making simple habit alterations to taking more in-depth environmental considerations, and from living lightly to managing wealth responsibly.

Grist notes that in the wake of 9/11, affluenza seems to have evolved from social disease into official policy:

In each of the past four years, more people declared bankruptcy than graduated from college. On average, the nation’s CEOs now earn 400 times the wages of the typical worker, “a tenfold increase since 1980.” Although the United States makes up less than five percent of the world’s population, we produce 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions; since 1950, we “have used up more resources than everyone who ever lived on earth before then.”

Many of us also know that bigger houses, bigger cars, more gadgets, and more expensive clothes do not make us more content, despite the glossy promises of advertisers. Yet consumer spending has long been used as an indicator of both the national economy and the national mood. The more we spend, the better off we are — or so we’ve been told. This mantra has been particularly insistent in the past year, as the great blooming bubble of stock market riches began to deflate and the Bush administration chose instant gratification as an economic strategy. Since Sept. 11, national leaders have been telling us with ever-increasing urgency that consumer confidence must and will rebound. While confidence — as an indicator of our faith in the future — should return, it’s equally clear that the past few decades’ rate of consumption is neither sustainable nor desirable. Moreover, we must assume — and hope — that tragedy has made us wiser, and tempered the impulse of so many Americans to affirm their existence with a pleasing new purchase.

To be honest, reading Affluenza is one of the hardest things I’ve done in some time. I not only saw the moral emptiness of my society laid bare, there were entirely too many pages that described my own life. Even in instances where I feel like I’ve won the battle against consumerist addiction, I still had to acknowledge that once upon a time I was eaten up by a craving for material things that not only couldn’t have made me whole, it would have made the hollow space even larger. I had to slog through passages that seemed specifically written about people I know, people close to me. Worst of all, the book flogged me relentlessly with details about how our obsessions with status and toys are annihilating the physical world that sustains us … for the moment.

Affluenza ripped at my guts in ways that brought me literally to the brink of illness. Or maybe past the brink – I haven’t written about it before, but I’m currently battling at least a couple of medical conditions that may ultimately be the result of affluenza. One of them – a blood sugar issue that I’m now taking medication for daily – is certainly a product of the American food complex. If you drink, on average, two liters of soda a day for the better part of 25 years, how many milligrams of high-fructose corn syrup have you strained through your body? I’m not blaming anybody for my stupidity, which was considerable, but let’s not pretend that our consumption patterns exist in a vacuum, either.

The physical impact pales next to the psychological, though. I grew up desperately seeking the sort of validation that comes with success in America, and if you aren’t careful you can fixate on all the wrong goals. Is success a certain income level? Is it a house in a certain neighborhood? Is it the security that comes from knowing that your children have newer, cooler and more expensive basketball shoes than their friends? Is it a Lexus or Beemer or Mercedes? Is it having a certain number of people reporting to you?

Is it the satisfaction that comes from working so many hours your wife doesn’t recognize you when you come home? Is it the number of ulcers you have? Is it having a physical stress level so consistently high that your body is more or less always sick in some way?

Affluenza made me think about the lies we tell ourselves about success. About the “American Dream.” We grow up enculterated into a consumerist assumption (unless our parents raise us in the woods, miles from the nearest television – and then we have a whole ‘nother set of problems). At some point we realize that we’re not happy (although “realize” may be the wrong word – one thing affluenza seems to do is systematically kill off our self-awareness – in any case, we aren’t happy). Everywhere we look, though, we see happy people (these are called advertisements), and the happiness we see emanates from a thing. A car, a haircut, a shirt, a house, an iPhone, a particular brand of computer…whatever it is, it’s something that can be purchased. So we purchase it. And after a few minutes, we’re not happy again.

I once watched a young boy on his first real Christmas morning. The monetary value of the presents he had under the tree was probably triple the value of all the presents I’d ever had under all the trees during my entire life. He ripped into the first present – it was spectacular. He looked at it, then put it aside and ripped into the second one. And the third. And the fourth, and fifth, and so on. He never paused to play with any of them. It was only about more, more, more. And when there were no more, he still didn’t play with them. The look on his face at that moment was one of profound and unmistakable disappointment. There were no more.

I had never seen anything like it, and I was as horrified as he was unfulfilled. That young boy has had several more Christmas mornings since then, and as best I can tell each one has been little more than a re-enactment of that first one, only with escalating price tags. He’s a smart kid and a very good kid in many ways, but I shudder at the hollowness that now threatens to consume his entire life.

Can I complain about the parenting decisions that have been made in this boy’s life? Well, I could, but in truth the significance of the story isn’t what happened to him, it’s that what happened to him happens millions of times a day all across our consumerist nation. The more we have, the emptier we are. We’re a nation of addicts, and all the stuff that we’re Jonesing for is a million times more addictive and destructive than crystal meth.

What Happens When We Run Out of Fantasies?

We are the age of insubstantiation,
a generation of digital bells,
loose change on the sidewalk.

Our days are loops,
our nights tight spirals,

and if the virtual is
          even better than the real thing

it’s only because the real thing is so goddamned empty.

So here’s my theory/hypothesis/question. We’re a hollow nation, a society that provides nearly all of us with rampant access to more material goods than we know what to do with. But we cannot find happiness in the material because there is not happiness in it. On the contrary – it’s a system that’s rigged to feed us a shiny, pretty lie that hollows us out some more, all the while whispering that only more of the lie will make us happy.

This is our reality. So should we be surprised that our favorite television shows and movies aren’t about “reality”? That instead, we turn toward the magical, the mystical, the alien, the supernatural and hyper-real realms that can promise us even more? Even when these narratives are dystopian, they can’t help but be more interesting than stories about this world. After all, we have everything that this world can offer and we’re still bored to tears.

These are heady days for fantasy merchants. But where will we go next, when even better than the real thing grows dull?

_________________

* Alkon, P. Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.

It occurs to me that these events represent something significant in our culture. Since about 1980 or so we’ve been in one of our periodic “childrens is the most preciousest things in the whole wide world” phases. (For more on the generational cycles that produce this dynamic, see Generations, 13th Gen and Millennials Rising by William Howe and Neil Strauss, two men whose work I have referenced a number of times in the past.) In the previous generation (Gen X), children were an afterthought for most parents, who had been socialized in far more self-centric times.

But around the time of the Reagan ascension we began to see signs that something was changing. Perhaps nothing better signified the new age than “cocooning” Baby Boomers driving boxy Volvo wagons with “Baby on Board” stickers in the window. Since then we’ve seen the institutionalization of the “mommy van,” mandatory helmets and kneepads for all bike-related activities, zero-tolerance school discipline policies, organized play dates and the advent of the over-involved “helicopter parent.” The same forces have driven the scourge of standardized testing (not a bad thing, in moderation, but a horrific thing taken to extremes).

Much has been written about the children of this era. On the one hand they’re very pro-social and are excellent collaborators. On the other hand, being raised at the center of the universe, where you get a gold star for showing up and you’re told that you’re precious every day of your life, regardless of whether you’ve actually done anything that day, well, that has a certain predictable impact.

Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with an involved parent caring about his or her kids. But the point here is that these things run in cycles, and as is so often the case, generations tend to react to (and rebel against) the trends of previous generations.

Since we’ve seen these dynamics before, students of generational history have been able to predict the future a bit. And in the last three or four years, in particular, we’ve begun to see some of these prophecies coming to fruition. The reason is that we’re seeing the next generation entering school. Depending on where you draw the line, the front edge of whatever we’re going to call the generation after the Millennials is now in third or fourth grade. Which means it’s time to start looking for the backlash against the excesses of Millennial child-rearing – a reaction that should be evident first in the cultural narrative and subsequently in policy.

Two particular (closely related) Millennial narratives of interest can be summed up thusly: children come first and children must be protected at all costs. If you know parents of children aged (roughly) 9-29 – or if you are such a parent – then you probably recognize the philosophy being described here. Those of us watching from the outside might be more keenly aware of some of the curiouser elements of the Millennial family (since it seems more natural and normal to those on the inside), but I suspect we all know someone who believes (whether they’d say it out loud or not) some version of the following: “My children come before my spouse.”

One observer – a minister, no less – calls this the Curse of the Child-Centered Family.

When a child becomes the central focus of the family, it interferes with the natural weaning process essential to the child’s healthy development. In fact, the child can come to bear the symptoms of the parents’ marital problems. Today I see more kids acting out, and more parents medicating them. But medication only treats the symptoms, not the cause — parents who keep the peace in their marriage by drifting apart.

Most parents would never dream that putting their children before their marriage could be wrong. They believe they just don’t have the time for their spouse. But the truth is, they often feel more love for their kids than for their spouse. Parents convince themselves that putting their kids first is child-friendly, but in doing so they make two mistakes.

First, when a child is the center of the family, it becomes harder for parents to establish and enforce the boundaries the child needs to shape his character. So he simply badgers his parents until he gets his way. Future bosses and spouses, however, will not be as patient with this behavior.

Second, the children face tremendous pressure to fulfill the parents’ emotional needs, which may lead the kids to act out. What had been a molehill then quickly becomes a mountain, as the anxious parents seek a diagnosis from physicians who are increasingly likely to medicate children. These steps can cripple a child’s development and, when played out in families nationwide, they threaten the future of our citizenry.

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed others echoing these sentiments (like this, from TheLaborOfLove.com, which is rather explicit in advising that the marriage should come before the children).

Putting your marriage first insures that your needs are being met. When you are on an airplane, the airline attendants always tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself before putting it on your children, so that you are stable enough to help them. It is the same way with marriage. By keeping your marriage strong, you keep yourself strong and much better able to care for your children.

A couple of years ago one of the morning shows did a feature on a new book, written by two women (if memory serves correctly), that went into a good bit of detail making the same case. I can’t recall the name of the book or the authors, unfortunately, but when I saw the piece I noted that the tail-end of the Millennial generation was now off to school and that this narrative had arrived right on schedule.

Also right on schedule, the “Dangerous Book for Boys” and the “Daring Book for Girls,” each preaching an anti-helicopter parent message to let kids be kids.

(Jon + New Woman) – Kate + 8 = The Next Generation

So, what do the Gosselins have to do with any of this? In a nutshell, they are the most visible repudiation to date of the Child-Centric Curse. Here you have two parents, both late Xers, who have very publicly rejected the ideology of “kids first, come what may.” After drifting apart in full televised view of whomever happened to be bored enough to be watching TLC – and drifting rather painfully, it should be noted – Jon and Kate did the unthinkable: they decided that their personal relationship took precedence over what millions of appalled viewers must have seen as the “right thing to do.” They decided that they would not stay together for the children.

There weren’t a lot of shows like this on television ten years ago at the peak of the Millennial family era, and when I think about the parents of Mills that I know personally, I cannot imagine them divorcing. And honestly, I know some who probably should, because they are not happy together.

There’s no vast network conspiracy at play here, but the timing of the Gosselin split isn’t a complete accident, either. Societies evolve, trends rise and fall, one generation rebels against the values of the one before it, and as these macro-dynamics play out it’s natural that our large public stories should also shift to reflect the underlying realities. If you’d like to think about it Darwinian terms (or free market terms – same thing, pretty much), realize that at any given moment a zillion writers and producers are trying to get their shows on the air (or books published, or movies made, etc.) and this multiplicity of stories represents a broad array of thinking about the society at the particular moment. They can’t all get produced, though. On average, the ones that are going to be successful are the ones that strike a nerve with the audience. The most successful are the ones that resonate most strongly with the broadest set of viewers.

Jon and Kate started out as an interesting little show, but its audience grew, I think, as a result of the obvious tension between the couple. I don’t know how other viewers read the relationship, but every time I caught a snippet of the show (not often, I admit) I walked away wondering how in the hell those two were together. As the unraveling became more pronounced and rumors began hitting the tabloids, I wondered how Jon could possibly leave eight kids, no matter how badly he might grow to hate his wife.

But that was last-generational thinking on my part. We’re now entering an era where adults are going to be more unapologetic about asserting the importance of their own happiness and fulfillment. Get used to the message offered by the authors quoted above – children do not benefit when parents who don’t love each other stay together.

If you’d like to argue that it’s a sad thing when the harbinger of such an important cultural shift comes in the form of a reality television show (one that tells the story of a family that appalls me in more ways than I can quickly ennumerate), go ahead. But our popular culture is what it is, for better or worse, and cultural historians will be discussing the 2009 season of Jon & Kate Plus Eight for many years to come.

I’d like to be writing about clean energy or debating health care policy. I wish I could add something astute to the discussion about the future of democracy in Iran. But to do so would mean investing the time to follow these issues closely enough to have something worthwhile to add. And then there’s the time needed to actually write something. I’ve already got four or five unfinished posts languishing on my laptop.

Yet, in the words of my 14-year-old son this morning, who is angry at my asking him to pitch in around the house prior to the arrival of weekend guests, and who can’t understand why I won’t just drop everything to pick him up from the lake with his friends later today, I don’t have a “real job” — so why can’t I be like a good stay-at-home mom and craft my life exclusively around his? If I didn’t have work to play at, I could keep the house up by myself and still have time to provide unlimited taxi service. He can’t understand why, if Dad is a doctor, I still “have to work.” (Never mind that my husband is a family physician in a small, self-owned private practice in a very affluent community – which makes us solidly middle-class amid the wealth of Boulder). My son thinks I ask him to do too much in exchange for offering too little – at least in comparison to most of his friends, whose mothers are not so audacious as to work.

No doubt his barbed comment struck too sharp a chord in me. It is too often I who question whether I have a “real job.” I mostly freelance, as a copywriter and editor. This past year, it’s been full time, which is why I’ve had to shortchange this blog, despite the gratification it’s provided for me intellectually and as a really-wanna-be journalist. On top of that, I teach off and on as an adjunct at the University of Colorado, where I finished a Ph.D. over a decade ago. No, I don’t have a “normal job with an office,” as my son pointed out. Nor benefits. Despite protestations, I don’t even get an “exclusively mine” desk at home – everyone’s always encroaching on it. Unlike more highly esteemed grad school peers, I did not pursue a tenure-track position, since I did not see how it could possibly fit with the life I had by the time I graduated, with a toddler and an infant and a husband who was often on call and never gets home till 6:30 or 7:00.

As a high school political junkie I had a T-shirt that said “A woman’s place is in the House…and Senate.” I grew up in the heady feminist days of the 1970s believing that, and believing that I could be a success in the house (small “h”) and the public sphere as well. Both, I felt, were integral to the life I wanted to craft as a woman.

I’ve done my best to cobble together a sorry-looking version of “having it all,” which means a half-assed pseudo-career; a lot of guilt about being a mother who is only half there, half the time, for her children; a house that despite my best, often solo, efforts to keep semi-ordered, usually looks like a small tornado blew through – and a chronic level of stress and sleep deprivation, not to mention perpetual frustration over not being able to do any of what I do as well as I could have if I were more singularly devoted.

Why didn’t I get a full-time nanny so I could pursue the full-time career? Which, theoretically, I might make enough at (though likely not, as an academic or journalist) to afford a housekeeper to do all the scut work I resent? I didn’t, because I chose to be a mom, and I felt it was better for my kids if they had at least one parent available to them at more than just breakfast and bedtime. And since my husband makes substantially more money than I am able to, it makes sense for him to be the primary earner. But what I didn’t know, when I made that seemingly obvious choice back when to “do it all,” is how hard it would be, and how little valued I would feel on every front, not least in my own estimation. (And yes, I realize these are the quandaries of a privileged Western woman – but that is my culture.)

The struggles that American women – and we are still talking primarily about women — continue to face as they pursue a multiplicity of identities, particularly parent versus professional, are every bit as relevant, entrenched and seemingly insoluble as they were when I graduated from high school nearly three decades ago. My conclusion, almost 15 years into parenthood, 11 years post-Ph.D. and the entirety of that time spent negotiating the “juggling act,” is that little has changed for women. I bought that whole ‘80s bill of goods that you can have it all and do it all well, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a load of crap. The reality is, in the vast majority of situations, that as a woman today you still must foreground either family or work or suffer the fallout of trying to combine them.

My husband gets to leave the house every day and go to a job that, while taxing, is still gratifying and comes with a good measure of status. He doesn’t worry about whether there’ll be clean underwear for the next morning or (imagine!) whether the kids will have clean underwear. He doesn’t think about what they’ll eat for lunch or negotiate daily battles with them over fruits and vegetables versus pop and ice cream. He doesn’t have to interrupt his day multiple times to admonish them to turn off the TV or the computer and do something more productive, or summon the emotional energy necessary to brace for yet another conflict if he dares ask them to unload the dishwasher, vacuum the cat hair off the sofa, or wipe the splatter off the bathroom mirror. He doesn’t stress about how he’ll make his 5:00 deadline if he has to leave to go pick up his son who accuses his mother of being a “micromanager” if she has the gall to ask him to pin down what time his social occasion might wind up, so she can work around it – even though she doesn’t really “work,” in his youthful appraisal.

I’ve had well-meaning individuals give me two versions of advice. The more traditional set says, “This is just a season. The kids will be grown before you know it (they will – and that’s also why the attitude issues and constant conflict hurt so much); make them your focus, don’t worry about work – there’ll be time for that” — as if it’s just a little hobby. The others say, “Just don’t do it.” Let the house go. Let them worry about their own laundry. Let them eat as much junk as they please. Forgot about monitoring grades; it’s their future. Don’t worry if your husband’s parents get birthday cards or Christmas presents – it’s not up to you.

There is truth in both perspectives. But I can’t seem to embrace either. I remain torn in a maelstrom of expectations: to nurture these children I’ve brought into the world and to keep a semblance of domestic order, since I have this flexible schedule and work at home. And also to use this able brain I was born with, this analytical mind, this creative energy that, even if I were to try to subordinate, will not be repressed. Despite my son’s puzzlement, I don’t work because I “have to,” to make ends meet. I have a luxury in that regard (though he might not be skiing and traveling like his peers, were that not the case).

What I’m holding out for, I guess, is that it won’t be all over for me by the time I hit 50. Once my kids are off to college, my time-balance should shift. What I’m clinging to is the hope that society might have changed enough since the early days of feminism so that midlife women can make fresh, vital contributions and be rewarded for them with the pay and status they deserve, even if they’ve chosen, by default, the silly-sounding Mommy Track.

Am I a fool to have such faith? If the past 30-40 years of feminism’s limited accomplishments are any indicator, maybe so. As long as we live in a culture in which privileged 14-year-old boys see their mother’s choice to work as self-indulgent, progress seems elusive. But I’m also holding out hope that by making the choices I have – not to abandon my children, as so many in my generation were through divorce or neglect, and not to forsake my own gifts and goals – my son and his younger sister may grow up to see the value of both sets of commitments. Whether society will evolve to support women so that they can combine them more effectively is another matter.

Wendy Redal hopes to post more regularly in the future, with a focus on the politics of everyday culture.

I don’t garden. I don’t even know if that’s a verb. Scooting on my knees in the mud, covered by a huge floppy hat, armed with a rusty pair of pruning shears and hanging out in the elements with the snakes and bees and wasps and spiders for company reminds me of boot camp. 

“Look at that man,” sighed mom from the kitchen a few years ago. She could look out over the sink and see The Dad in the backyard, poised with a 50 cent slingshot. There had been some trouble with squirrels.

“Why does he spend so much time with those tomatoes?” I asked.

“Your father likes to garden,” she said. “But he’ll break out somebody’s window with that thing.”

“How much work does it take to get something to grow?” I asked. “Throw out a few seeds, add some water, let the sun shine and Nature takes care of it.”

“I don’t think your dad’s gardening is about growing anything,” she said. “He left school when he was 10 to work the fields, and now he’s trying to get back to that, maybe. Back to the fields or back to being 10. I don’t know why he does it. Course, I’ve only known him for 51 years. Be sure to take some tomatoes when you go.”

As I left, I waved at The Dad. He took his gaze away from the tree limbs and smiled when he saw the plastic bag of maters I was toting home. A rabbit hopped between his feet, hooked a green tomato from near his ankle, and ambled lazily away.

That weekend, I drove back to see the folks. The Dad was on the ground with my younger brother’s BB gun, scanning the neighbor’s yard with a deadly and practiced aim. He’d found out about the rabbits. As he reclined there, the squirrels above him were chewing on some tomato stalks and watching. The Dad was always jumpy when he was armed, so I walked around to the front of the house. My mom was furiously shoveling dirt into a huge pit next to the house.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Gardening,” she replied. “Hand me that pick, will you?”

I handed the pick to her, took the shovel, and begin to move the pile of fresh earth back into its place. Mom sat on the porch and started talking.

“Your uncle died,” she said.

“Which one?”

“Munge.”

“I have an Uncle Munge?” I asked.

“Not anymore,” she said. “His real name was Edward. He was an older brother of

mine, but we haven’t talked in a long time. There was something… not right about him.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Well, he had trouble with kids. His daughter Mary ran away from home when she was 14, and she’s written all of us about growing up in Munge’s house. It wasn’t… he wasn’t real good with children. He only came here once, when you kids were little, and wanted to spend the night. Your daddy wouldn’t let him, and we haven’t seen Munge since. Anyway, he died last night. He knew something was wrong with him, so he left his body to science. To Vanderbilt, I think. So they could find out maybe why he… what was wrong with him. So there won’t be a burial or anything. His wife Percussion died two years ago.”

“I have an Aunt Percussion?”

“Not anymore,” said mom. “I don’t know what her real name was. And nobody knows where Mary is.”

And then, even though it was very warm, I felt a slight shiver, I stared at the dirt under my feet. Could mom have…?

“He’s in Vanderbilt,” said mom. “Really.”

“Mom? What are you going to plant here?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought you said you were gardening?” I asked.

“I am,” she said. “And I also said gardening wasn’t always about growing things. Learned that from your father, I did. If it bothers you, I’ll put some buttercups and daffodils out next fall.”

And so, for the next two years, I lived with the fear that my mother had buried Uncle Munge in the front yard.

Oh, I don’t think that anymore. True, there is no stone for Uncle Munge, no memorial for him anywhere, no mention of him when my aunts come by to talk, and the daffodils look great. For us, it’s like he never existed at all. But for Mary he was real enough, and for mom, although she never talked about him again after that day.

Gardening isn’t for growing things. The Dad taught us that. Gardening is for digging and watching and patiently waiting and fiercely protecting. And maybe, in the rarest of times, for burying things so deep one might be free of them forever.

When I was a kid, I listened to the “Free to Be… You and Me” album incessantly. We had it on vinyl (not 8-track!) and I probably came close to wearing it out. At the time, I didn’t really care for the track “William’s Doll”. The chorus of “A doll! A doll! William wants a doll!” grated on my nerves–actually, it still does. But the song tells a story that I think is really important. William is a 5 year old boy who wants a doll. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think that this is a terrible thing for a little boy to want. His dad gets him all sorts of sports equipment instead, which he also enjoys, but he still craves that doll. Finally, Grandma hears about this and gives him a doll.

We have come pretty far since 1972 when the album came out. Girls do hear more that they can be tough or do “male” jobs. But I think we’re still mostly ignoring the flip side of that, which is that it’s okay for boys to show their nurturing side. What’s wrong with a boy playing with a doll, really? Nothing. And yet so many people who happily let their daughters play with Tonka trucks are horrified at the thought of letting their sons push a baby doll in a toy stroller.

I play this song for my kids whenever possible. And my 3 year old son? He’s way more into dolls than my 5 year old daughter has ever been.

How do I know? Let’s look at the facts. When I was a kid, I dressed up as a matador and went to school actually thinking I looked cool. I bought a book titled “How to Hypnotize Bees.“ And tried it. Twice. I believed my friends when they said emu tipping was possible. I still have that scar. Just last year, I was “It” in a game of tag with 22 middle school students. I still have that scar, too. I bought Lehman Brothers stock because Jim Cramer said it was a good idea.

But the thing that has me rattled is that the older I get, the worse my brain fag becomes. Just last week, as all of us were trying to get up and out the door for work and school, Nancy asked if I would dress Joey.

“I’ll try to get home early tonight,” she said. “We have a birthday party to go to.”

“Now, you told me there was something different about this party,” I said, “but I’ve forgotten now what that was.”

“There’s an animal guy coming,” she said. “He’s bringing rabbits and turtles and things. The kids will love it.”

“Animal guy, huh?” I said. “Yes, the kids will get a kick out of that.”

I shouldn’t have said anything else. I should have kept quiet and not mentioned which animals the animal guy might bring, but I had a Brain Fag moment. I couldn’t help it.

“Are you sure you’re OK with going?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, an animal guy probably brings all kinds of animals. Rabbits, guinea pigs, and maybe, you know, those reptiles I’m not supposed to mention by name?”

Nancy paused, mid-stroke, with her mascara dangling in the morning light, and contemplated all the disturbing possibilities.

“Oh, you don’t think he’d bring one of those things, do you?” Nancy asked. She has this thing about…those reptiles I’m not ever supposed to mention. “This is a party for small children. Surely he wouldn’t bring one of those.”

“Well, there’ll be a lot of boys at the party,” I said. “And I know it hurts you to hear this, but some boys like those…things I’m not supposed to mention. Joey might like them, too.”

“That is the worst thing you’ve ever said to me!” she snapped. “My sweet little boy would never have anything to do with those things, and you are a bad father if you ever encourage him to do so.”

“I’m not encouraging anything,” I begged. “All I’m saying is…”

“Maybe Joey would like a tarantula someday,” Nancy interrupted. “How would you like for me to buy him one? How could you sleep knowing there was a spider that big inside your own house. What would you do?”

“Well, dear, I’d have to divorce you and sell the house,” I replied. “And Joey would go straight to military school.”

Ours is a symbiotic relationship. I protect Nancy from all those reptiles I’m not supposed to mention and she stands up to all the arachnids I stumble upon or run from screaming. But Joey is the wild card. We have a great unspoken fear that he won’t share our very natural phobias, or that he might forget what rightfully terrifies his parents. Because Brain Fag runs deep in the Hargrove men. But then it was time to leave, so there was a brief round of apologies, some hugs and kisses, and off we went, each to our own separate schools.

That afternoon, as I waited for Nancy to come home, I heard Joey laughing in the bathroom.

“Daddy! Daddy! Come and look at what you did.”

Joey stood in the center of the bathroom, laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Look at what you did, daddy. You put all my clothes on, on top of my pajamas.”

And I had. I had dressed Joey that morning without bothering to undress him first. I had put shirt, underwear, pants and socks over underwear, pajama top, and pajama bottoms. He stood there laughing, in the center of a pile of clothes, as I gaped at him.

“You’re doing the face,” he chuckled. “Momma calls it your Brain Frog face.”

“It’s not Brain Frog,” I said. “It’s Brain Fag, and don’t laugh too much, because you’ll get it yourself one of these days. What was I thinking? Oh, Joey, please. Don’t tell your mom I did this.”

“I’m gonna tell her,” he sang.

“No, please!” I begged. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Then we heard the key in the door. Nancy was home. I looked at Joey. He looked at me. It was time for a rapid negotiation and I was in a weak position.

“Don’t tell her, and I’ll buy you a Lego’s Star Wars packet.”

“And a Plo Koon?” He asked.

“Deal!” I said and we shook on it, even though I had no idea what the hell a Plo Koon was. Joey pulled up his clothes over the pajamas. He looked a little lumpy, but if Nancy didn’t notice that morning, I felt confident she wouldn’t notice now.

“Is everybody ready?” asked Nancy. “We have to be at the birthday party in 15 minutes.”

The party was great. Everyone enjoyed the animal guy. I did, too, until he pulled out his tarantula and let it crawl about on his face. Joey turned white and stood shaking beside me. Nancy smiled, until the animal guy pulled out Pee Wee.

Pee Wee was some type of boa constrictor. It took about five minutes driving around before we found Nancy, near the First Congregational Church. She got in the car and was pleased when I told her that Joey had also wanted to leave as soon as the snake came into view.

“That sure was scary, wasn’t it mommy?” Joey asked.

“It sure was,” she agreed. “I’m glad you don’t like…those things I can’t mention.”

“And I’m glad you don’t like spiders,” I said.

“I don’t like snakes or spiders,” he said. “I sure am glad I had some extra underwear on. Because I… I…”

Things got very quiet in the back seat. Nancy looked ay Joey, then at me, then back at Joey.

“Why does Joey have on extra underwear?” she asked. “And why does he have your Brain Fag face?”

“Because he just lost a Plo Koon,” I said.

“What’s a Plo Koon?”

“We’ll never know,” I replied. From the back seat, Joey breathed a deep and mournful sigh. When he does that, he sounds just like me.

Kaiser Permanente (KP) is a large HMO that maintains its patient records in electronic form, a fact that makes the records very useful for researching disease. A new study performed by researcher Jason Glanz of KP finds that children who have never received a pertussis vaccine are 23x more likely to catch the disease than children who have been vaccinated. Of the approximately 800 cases of pertussis per year, that works out to 767 children who might not have caught pertussis if they’d been vaccinated, while only 33 children would have caught pertussis even after receiving the vaccine.

The interview suggests that one reason parents might be resistant to vaccinating their children is that all vaccines cary some small risk of severe reactions. Flu vaccine is produced in eggs, for example, and so a child with an undetected egg allergy could have a serious allergic reaction. Similarly, while vaccines no longer use mercury-based preservatives, such preservatives have been used in the past and parents understandably might not want to expose their children to mercury. The problem is that the vaccine risks are almost always lower than the risks of the disease being vaccinated against.

The risk of a severe reaction to pertussis vaccine is approximately 1 in 15,000. The Census Bureau estimates that there were 1.21 million children under the age of 17 in the state of Colorado in 2008. Those 767 children who weren’t vaccinated and still caught pertussis works out to a rate of unvaccinated pertussis of 1 in 1578, nearly 10x the rate of severe reactions. The rate of vaccinated pertussis is 1 case in 36,667.

In other words, your children are ten times more likely to get pertussis if they’re unvaccinated than they are to suffer from a severe vaccine reaction.

Ultimately, though, while the data is unequivical regarding the effectiveness of the pertussis vaccine, sometimes data just doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s enough to know that a “severe” reaction could be as minor as a high fever or crying for several hours or as severe as convulsions. The human mind doesn’t always pay attention to the data, after all, focusing instead on the worst case. That approach has proven to be a good survival strategy, even if it’s misguided in this case. To parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, I have only one thing to say:

Talk to your pediatrician and follow their advice. And if your pediatrician has children and vaccinated them, well, that’s called “putting your money where your mouth is,” and it’s worthy of respect.

Ok, so I have two things. In case you’re wondering, I’ve had my children vaccinated.

Wu Tao stands at the front of the bus, microphone in hand, radiating charm.

Wu “Harry” Tao (right) talks with St. Bonaventure
professors Carl Case (left) and Darwin King at the
Winter Palace in Xi’an.

As our group rides around Xi’an, Wu Tao serves as our tourguide. He stands in the bus’s center aisle and regales us with stories about the city’s past. He wears a dark t-shirt with a big numeral “8” on it—which has made him easy to find in a crowd—jeans, a pair of open-toed sandals, and a million-yuan smile.

When he points something out to us and tells us its name, he carefully repeats it and even spells it out for us to ensure we can follow him.

Tao is his given name while Wu is his family name, but Chinese custom puts the family name first, then the given name: Wu Toa.

Like many Chinese, Wu Tao has an American name, too: Harry. “Like Harry Potter,” he says with good-natured amusement. A lot of things appear to amuse him. He smiles freely and chuckles often.

The students are wild about him.

“I just want to go up there and pinch his cheeks,” one of them says.

Harry didn’t get his American name from the fictional British character, though; he got it from his school teacher, a ex-patriot from Toronto who’d come to China to teach English.

“He gave everyone in the class English names to help tell us apart,” Harry explains. In China, there are too many people with the same name—like Wu, for instance—so the teacher doled out America names in order to be able to distinguish his students when he called on them in class. It’s a typical practice throughout.

In college, Harry majored in English and tourism, which landed him in his current job at a state-run tourism agency. It’s a gig he’s been doing for fifteen years. He handles some sixty groups a year.

Between stories about Xi’an, Harry tells us a lot about himself and gives us insights into the lives of ordinary people in China.

Harry lives in a three-bedroom apartment with his wife and four-and-a-half-year-old son, Yoyo. “Like the violinist,” Harry says. Yoyo has an American name, too: Harrison. “Because he is Harry’s son,” Harry explains with another of his chuckles, and his whole face breaks out into another huge smile.

Chinese couples can have one child, although if the parents are, themselves, each single children they can petition the government for a birth certificate to have a second child. They children must be spaced at least four years apart. Having a child illegally means the child won’t have access to the health care or education systems. In the countryside, the government enforced the rule less stringently.

Harry’s parents also live with them. “It is hard to have privacy,” he admits, “but they do so much to help us. So much. That is the nuclear family in China: four grandparents, two parents, one child.”

Harry’s parents take their grandson to kindergarten in the morning, then typically go to the park for exercise. His father will do tai chi while his mother will line dance—an activity involving parasols, far removed from the American version.

Harry’s father will usually bring his pet bird with him in its small cage, and he and other retirees will have birdsong contests.

Harrison will spend the day in kindergarten from 7:45 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., when Harry’s parents will again pick him up. The schedule, including three meals, two snacks, and a nap, is designed specifically with working parents in mind.

As with most American families, Harry and his wife both work. In Xi’an, the eight-hour workday runs from eight a.m. until noon; after a two-hour siesta, workers go back from two p.m. until six.

For school kids beyond kindergarten, the day is similar. They’ll take four classes between eight a.m. and noon, get a two-hour break, and then take two classes between two o’clock and three-fifty. They might have sports or exercises after school.

Middle-school students at dismissal time on a
Sunday afternoon

Students aiming for the country’s prestigious colleges will enroll in middle and high school programs that frequently require work on the weekends. Each year, some 7.1 million kids will take college entrance exams—all on the same day across China—and about fifty-five percent pass.

College tuition in Xi’an runs about 2,800 yuans—about $415—plus room and board. Tuition in a big city like Beijing or Shanghai might run anywhere from between five thousand to twenty thousand yuans.

Ping pong is the country’s most popular sport, although soccer is gaining popularity. Basketball is huge, too, in part because of the success of NBA star Yao Ming, the seven-foot, six-inch center for the Houston Rockets, who hails from Shanghai. Basketball is also so popular because most schools have the space to accommodate a basketball court, while the space for a soccer field is tougher to come by.

Politics gets much less attention from people. “Ordinary people don’t care about politics,” Harry says. “Ordinary people care about our food, our clothes, our house, our future.”

Citizens gain the right to vote at sixteen, and they have nine parties to choose from, although the Communist Party is the only one that matters. “Look at [our political system] as one big red flower with eight tiny green leaves on it for decoration,” Harry says.

“Do people vote?” a student asks him.

Harry pauses. Pauses. Pauses.

“We have the right to vote,” he finally says, chuckling, his face breaking out into another of his smiles. “Most people don’t care.”

For all its influence, only one in twenty-four people belong to the Communist Party, giving it a membership of about 68 million.

Party members are not allowed to have any religious affiliation. In China, though, that hardly seems to be a problem. In the shaanxi province, where Xi’an is located,only about 750,000 people belong to a religion, Harry says. The province has about 250,000 Christians, about 150,000 Muslims, and another 350,000 fall into a variety of other sects like Buddhism and Taoism, although Buddhism is the largest organized religion in the rest of the country. “Most have no belief,” Harry says, adding that he and his wife are among them.

He chats freely with the students, answering their questions with politeness and honesty. When someone asks him about free health care for everyone, for instance, Harry shakes his head: “In China, there are too many people. Impossible.”

At one point, he mentions the fact that many young people from the countryside aspire to go into the army after they graduate from school because service guarantees a government job, which is better than farm life. “The People’s Liberation Army has three million soldiers,” he says.

“Three million soldiers to protect one-point-three billion people?” a student asks. “That doesn’t seem like enough.”

“We also have nuclear weapons,” Harry reminds her.

Harry and me outside the Xi’an airport

Harry remains with us during our entire trip, all the way through the check-in process at the airport as we head off to Beijing. Students stop to get their photo taken with him. I grab one too. He graciously allows us to snap away with our cameras.

“He was so good,” one student says. “He was awesome,” says another. The flock around him like he was one of the Beatles.

“Your trip is so smooth, my job is so easy,” Harry tells us with another of his smiles. “I hope you enjoy rest of your time in my country!”

We recently had the Cruel Weekend here in Connecticut. The Cruel Weekend is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs every March, when the temperature flirts with 60 and everybody gets out and walks or jogs or washes the car. The forecast for tomorrow is rain and snow, but the Cruel Weekend has put spring in my mind, and once the idea of spring gets inside, there is no getting rid of it. Lord, how I want spring! Green grass, leaves, flowers, a pond I can wade into rather than walk over. And I want it all to be really slow.

The worst thing about this year’s Cruel Weekend is how I squandered it. I went to the movies! I know I should have been outside, but I’ve waited a whole year to see Watchmen fail to live up to my expectations, so I had to go on opening weekend to get the disappointment over with quickly. The extended Director’s Cut comes out in June, so I‘ll get to be disappointed all over again. When I came home, there sat Joey on the couch, looking sad.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with him is he needs to be outside,” answered Nancy. “It hasn’t been this nice since last October, and all he wants to do is play games on the computer.”

“Why didn’t you take him outside?” I asked. I have to stop talking. It only hurts me.

“Why didn’t I… OK, sure. I’ll just stop ironing and washing clothes and fixing lunches and going to the store and cleaning the house.”

“Hey, I was busy, too,” I countered weakly. “I went to the movies. Come on, buddy. Let’s go ride your bike. Quick. What do you say?”

“I can’t ride my bike because I don’t have a helmet,” he replied.

Ah, yes. The helmet. You see, “Santa” brought Joey a bicycle helmet, but he foolishly brought one that was too small, because he was tired and didn’t know there was anything other than a one-size-fits-all bicycle helmet for kids Joey’s age. I have heard many times how foolish “Santa” must have been not to know this, but perhaps “Santa” isn’t as perfect as people think he is.

“What Joey needs is someone to ride with,” said Nancy. “He needs to see some good modeling. Maybe we, I mean Santa, should get you a bicycle, too. Then you guys could ride around whenever it finally stays warm for longer than a few hours. I think I have Santa’s phone number around here, somewhere, and I‘ll bet if I call him right now, daddy will have a bicycle before you know it.”

You know the old saying about confession being good for the soul? It isn’t. Maybe a dramatic confession helps craft a good movie, but in the real world, I don’t think it makes practical sense. I couldn’t stand by and let “Santa” shell out money for a bicycle for me. I didn’t have it! It was time to release another in a long list of secrets I had kept from my wife since 1995.

“Don’t call Santa. It wouldn’t do any good.” Here, I paused for dramatic effect. Time to throw it out there. “I, I, I don’t know how to ride a bicycle.”

There. I said it, and now the whole world knows. Nancy and Joey looked at me, then at each other, then back at me. Then they started laughing.

“Wait, wait, wait,” giggled Nancy. “You can’t ride a bike? I don’t believe that. There isn’t a man in America who grew up in the ’60s who didn’t ride a bicycle. You’re making this up.”

“Well, on a technical level, I guess I did ride a bike,” I replied. “Once.”

“Didn’t you ever own a bike when you were a kid?”

“Nope,” I said. “We were poor and there were a lot of us. Mom and The Dad couldn’t buy just one bike, they would have had to buy a half dozen, and that wasn’t going to happen. Oh, I remember seeing a bike in the front yard every now and then, but we referred to them as community bikes. For anybody to ride. The police called them something else. Stolen property, I think. But I had bike fear, a deep, and I must add, natural distrust for a thing that wouldn’t stand up straight when it wasn’t moving, rolled on wheels when it was moving and required you to pedal backwards just to stop. No thanks. I don’t trust them. Never have, never will.”

“I don’t wanna ride my bike ever again!” cried Joey.

“Great, just great,” sighed Nancy. “Now you’re scaring Joey. Joey, honey? Santa put a lot of money into that bike of yours, so don’t be like daddy, OK? Now, back to you, Lance. You say you rode a bike one time? What was that like?”

“Well, it was horrible. I pushed a community bike to the top of the hill behind the park, swung a leg over the thing, and nudged myself forward. I didn’t try to peddle. I just sat up there and hung on for dear life. It was terrible! I went flying downhill faster than I could run. Trees rushed past, the ground was a green blur. I wanted to scream, but I feared that would make people get out of the way, and I might need them to break my fall. So I clammed up and rocketed silently through the park. When I began to run out of real estate, I realized I didn’t know how to stop and I was running out of time! I had four choices: the rock wall (certain hospitalization), the horse shoe pit (possible death), Fat Charlie (I could bounce off him and he wouldn’t even know it) or my sister Connie. There was only time to aim for one of them.”

“Goodness,” said Nancy. “Did you hurt Charlie?”

“Aw, I didn’t hit Charlie,” I said. “I hit my sister Connie. Charlie was my buddy, after all. She had just come out of the library and the books went everywhere. I caught The Sound and the Fury across my teeth. I haven’t cared for Faulkner ever since.”

“That is just very, very sad,” said Nancy, trying not to laugh. “But at least you weren’t hurt. Little boys do the strangest things, and you were no exception. But why didn’t you try again? You know, get right back on the horse?”

“Well, I didn’t really have to,” I said. “I made sure Connie was OK, then got in my truck and drove home.”

“Your truck?”

“Yeah. I was 23 years old when I rode a bike for the first time,” I said. “I think once you pass a certain age, you can’t develop the balance skills necessary to ride a bike. That’s been my story for 30 years anyway.”

Nancy sat and looked at me for a long time. She has this ability to make a stare last just long enough to be really unnerving. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, she spoke, and her words were terrible.

“I am going to call Santa,” she said. “And he is going to bring you a bicycle. And you are going to learn to ride it. Joey can teach you, can’t you, Joey?”

Yes, I should be concerned, but if I know my Connecticut weather, it will be weeks before we have another warm Saturday. But Santa does need some practice before he lays out good money for a new bicycle. I think I’ll take a drive around the neighborhood and see if any community bikes are just lying around.

__________________

Terry Hargrove is a classic example of the dreaded “Fourth of Seven Child Syndrome.” He left his native Tennessee in 2005 to teach English and language arts in a strange and exotic land called Connecticut. He lives with his wife Nancy and their son Joey in beautiful but expensive Old Saybrook, home of Katharine Hepburn, who never returns his calls. He tries to follow in the steps of his hero Mark Twain, and just like Mark Twain, he is losing all his money. If you know how to get butterfly stains off a sofa, you can contact him at tnjhargrove@comcast.net.