Small Wonder (15 page)

Well, honestly, who do those guys think I am? Thirteen seconds of whatever incident produced the most alarming visuals today, and I'm supposed to believe that's all I really need to know? One overturned fuel tanker in Nebraska is more important to me than, say, global warming? Television news is driven by compelling visuals, not by the intrinsic importance of the story being cast. Complicated, nonphotogenic issues requiring any considerable background information (global warming, for example) get left out of the running every time.

Meanwhile, viewers are lured into assuming, at least subconsciously, that this “news” is a random sampling of everything that happened on planet earth that day, and so represents reality. One friend of mine argued (even though, as I say, I'm not trying to start a fight) that he felt a moral obligation to watch CNN so he could see all there was and sort out what was actually true—as if CNN were some huge window thrown wide on the whole world at once. Not true, not
remotely
true. The world, a much wider place than seventeen inches, includes songbird migration, emphysema, pollinating insects, the Krebs cycle, my neighbor who recycles knitting-factory scraps to make quilts, natural selection, the Loess Hills of Iowa, and a trillion other things outside the notice of CNN. Are
they important? Everything on that list I just tossed off is life or death to somebody somewhere, half of them are life and death to you and me, and you may well agree that they're all more interesting than Monica Lewinsky. It's just a nasty, tiny subset of reality they're subsisting on there in TV land—the subset invested with some visual component likely to cause an adrenal reaction, ideally horror.

Print news has its multitude of agendas, to be sure, but they are not all so potently biased
against
the deeper assessment that interests me most. The overwhelming drive toward visuals in newscasting acts as a powerful influence on which bits of information will reach us. It also influences what we will retain. We are a predominantly visual species, and that's a biological fact that will never change; our brains are carefully wired to put the most stock in what they see, rather than what they hear. If we listen to a presidential candidates' debate over the radio, for instance, we'll be apt to recall, afterward, the visual components of the room in which we were sitting while we listened; if it was a fairly boring room, we'll also remember much of what the candidates said. If we watch that same debate on television, however, we will remember everything about the candidates' appearance—who was smug, who was tense, who made a funny face—but relatively few of their words. No matter what we may think of this prioritizing, it's the biological destiny of sighted people. It makes me wonder, frankly, why certain things are televised at all. If our aim is to elect candidates on the basis of their stature, clothing, and facial expressiveness, then fine, we should look at them. But if our intention is to evaluate their ideas, we should probably just listen and not look. Give us one good gander and we'll end up electing cheerleaders instead of careful thinkers. In a modern election, Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair wouldn't have a prayer—not to mention the homely but honest Abe Lincoln.

Still, there is this thing in us that wants to have a look, a curios
ity that was quite useful to our ancestors on the savannah but is not so helpful now when it makes us rubberneck as we drive past the awful car crash. So the gods that gave us TV now bring us the awfulest car crash of the day and name it
The World Tonight
. This running real-time horror show provides a peculiarly unbalanced diet for the human psyche, tending to make us feel that we're living in the most dangerous time and place imaginable. When the eyes see a building explode, and then an airplane burning, and the ears hear, “Car bomb in Oklahoma City…far away from here…equipment failure…odds of this one in a million,” the message stashed away by the brain goes something like, “Uh-oh, cars explode, buildings collapse, planes plunge to the ground—oh,
man
, better hunker down.” As a person who either reads the news or hears it on the radio, I am a bit more of a stranger to this scary-world phenomenon, so I notice its impact on other people.

The day after all the world became a ghastly stage for the terrified high school students fleeing from murder by their classmates in Littleton, Colorado, it happened that I was to give an afternoon staff writing workshop at my sixth grader's school. When we assembled, I could see that the teachers were jumpy and wanted to talk rather than write. Several confessed that they had experienced physical panic that morning at the prospect of coming to school. I sympathized with their anxiety, but since nobody ever gets shot in my house, I didn't share the visceral sense of doom that surely came from seeing a live-camera feed of bloody children just like ours racing from a school so very much like this one. I remarked that while the TV coverage might make us
feel
endangered, the real probability of our own kids' getting shot at school today had been lower than the odds of their being bitten by a rattlesnake while waiting for the bus. And more to the point, the chance of such horror's happening here was hardly greater than it had been two days before, when we weren't remotely worried about it. (The TV coverage apparently did increase the likelihood
of other school shootings, but only faintly.) It was such a small thing to offer—merely another angle on the truth—but I was amazed to see that it helped, as these thoughtful teachers breathed deeply, looked around at the quiet campus, and reclaimed the relative kindness of their lives. Anyone inclined toward chemical sedatives might first consider, seriously, turning off the TV. I know the vulnerability of my own psyche well enough to avoid certain films that are no doubt instructive and artful but will nevertheless insert violent images into my brain that I'll regret for many years. Obviously, I read verbal accounts of violence and construct from them my own mental pictures, but for whatever reason, these self-created images rarely have the same power as external ones to invade my mind and randomly, recurrently, savage my sense of wellbeing.

So I glean my news from many written sources and the radio, but even that isn't constant. I purposefully spend a few weeks each year avoiding national and international news altogether, and attending only to the news of my own community, since that is the only place I can actually do very much about the falling-apart-things of the moment. Some of my friends can't believe I do this, or can't understand it. One summer I was talking on the phone with a friend when she derived from our conversation that I had not yet heard about the tragic crash of the small airplane piloted by John Kennedy Jr.

“You're
kidding!
” she cried, again and again. “It happened three days ago, and you haven't heard about it yet?”

I hadn't.

My friend was amazed and amused. “People in Turkestan already know about this,” she said.

I could have observed that everybody in the world, Turkestanis included, already knows global warming is the most important news on every possible agenda—except here in the United States, where that info has been successfully suppressed. We know so
very much about the trees, and miss the forest. I was talking with a friend, though, so I told her only that I was deeply sorry for the Kennedy family, to whom this tragedy belonged, but that it would make no real difference in my life.

It's not that I'm callous about the calamities suffered by famous people; they are heartaches, to be sure, but heartaches genuinely experienced only by their own friends and families. It seems somewhat voyeuristic, and also absurd, to expect that JFK Jr.'s death should change my life any more than a recent death in
my
family affected the Kennedys. The same is true of a great deal—maybe most—of the other bad news that pounds at our doors day and night. On the matter of individual tragic deaths, I believe that those in my own neighborhood are the ones I need to attend to first, by means of casseroles and whatever else I can offer. I also believe it's possible to be so overtaken and stupefied by the tragedies of the world that we don't have any time or energy left for those closer to home, the hurts we should take as our own.

Many view this opinion as quaint. Truly, I'm in awe of the news junkies who can watch three screens at once and maintain their up-to-the-minute data without plunging into despair or cynicism. But I have a different sort of brain. For me, knowing does not replace doing. I find I sometimes need time off from the world of things I can't do anything about so I may be granted (as the famous prayer says) the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

So for the duration of every summer, when our family migrates to a farm in rural Virginia (the place whose antique wiring would short out at the very idea of TV), I gather books and read up, seeking background information on the likes of genetic engineering, biodiversity, the history of U.S. relations in the Middle East—drifts of event too large and slow to be called news. I still listen almost daily to radio news (the Kennedy crash must not have been
among All the Things to be Considered), but I limit myself to one national newspaper per week, usually the Sunday edition of the
Washington Post,
which I can buy on Monday or Tuesday at our little town's bookstore. Here's a big secret I've discovered that I will share with you now: This strategy saves me the time of reading about the sports hero/politician/movie star whose shocking assault charge/affair/heart attack was huge breaking news in the middle of last week, because by Sunday he has already confessed/apologized/died. You'd be amazed how little time it takes to catch up, not on “all the news that's fit to print,” as one news organ boasts, but on all I really needed to be a responsible citizen.

The rest of the week I try to remember to stop by the hardware store and pick up our folkloric
County News,
which is comprised largely of farm forecasts and obituaries. I read them and make casseroles; it's a healthy exercise. It helps me remember what death really is, and helps me feel less useless in the face of it. And I decide with fresh conviction that we just don't need anybody getting killed at our house.

H
ere's a secret you should know about mothers: We spy. Yes, on our kids. It starts at birth. In those first months we spend twenty-three hours a day trying to get you to sleep, grateful you aren't yet verbal because at some point we run out of lyrics to the lullabies and start singing “Hush little baby, don't be contrary, / Mama's gonna have a coro-nary.” And then you finally doze off, and what do you think we do? Go read a book? No, we stand over your cradle and stare, thinking, God, those little fingernails. Those eyelashes. Where did this perfect creature come from?

As you grow older, we attain higher orders of sneakiness. You're playing dolls with your friend, and we just
pause outside the door of your room,
hmm-mm
, pretending to fiddle with the thermostat but really listening to you say, “Oh, my dear, here is your tea,” as you hand her a recycled plastic Valvoline cap of pretend tea, and our hearts crack, we are such fools for love. We love you like an alcoholic loves gin—it makes our teeth hurt, it's the first thing we think about before we open our eyes in the morning—and like that, we take little swigs when nobody's looking.

These days I watch you while you're sitting at the table concentrating on algebra, running your hand through the blond curtain of your hair. Or after I've dropped you off at school and you've caught up to your friends, laughing, talking with your hands while your shoulders and hips rest totally at ease in the clothes and style you've made your own. I stare, wondering, How did I wind up with this totally cool person for a daughter?

You have confidence and wisdom beyond anything I'd found at your age. I thought of myself, at thirteen, as a collection of all the wrong things: too tall and shy to be interesting to boys. Too bookish. I had close friends, but I believed if I were a better person I would have more. At exactly your age I wrote in my diary, “Starting tomorrow I'm really going to try to be a better person. I have to change. I hope somebody notices.” My diaries, whose first pages threatened dire punishment for anyone who snooped into them, would actually have slain any trespasser with pure boredom: I resolved with stupefying regularity to be good enough, better loved, happier. I looked high and low for the causes of my failure. I wrote poems and songs, then tore them up after unfavorable comparison with the work of Robert Frost or Paul Simon. My journal entries were full of a weirdly cheerful brand of self-loathing. “Dumb me” was how I christened any failure, regardless of its source. In a few years the perkiness would wane as I began to exhibit a genuine depression, beginning each day with desperate complaints about how hard it was to wake up, how I longed
for nothing but sleep. I despaired of my ability to be liked by others or to accomplish anything significant, and I was stunned whenever anyone took any special interest in me.

Turning page after page in those old cardboard-bound diaries now, reading the faint penciled entries (I lacked even the confidence to use a pen), I dimly grasp in my memory the bleakness of that time. I feel such sadness now for that girl. This superachiever who started high school by winning a state essay contest and finished as valedictorian—why on earth did she fill her diary with the word
stupid
? What could any adult have said that would have helped? When I look at my yearbook photos, I'm surprised to see that I was pretty, for I certainly had no sense of it then. I put on the agreeable show I thought was required of a good girl, but I felt less valuable than everyone around me. I took small setbacks very hard. Every time I took a test, I predicted in my diary that I'd flunked it. I was like the anorexic girls who stare at their bony selves in a mirror and chant “I'm fat,” except the ugliness was my very self. I chanted “Worthless me” while facing daily evidence to the contrary. I've always considered this to be the standard currency of adolescence. So it takes me by surprise when we're discussing some hassle and I sigh and say, “Adolescence is a pain,” and you grin and reply, “Actually, it's not that bad.”

As your maturity dawns over our relationship, I think hour by hour about how I was mothered and how I do the job myself. It doesn't explain the differences between my thirteen-year-old self and yours; I take no credit for your triumphs, nor was it my mother's fault that I was depressed. She did her best with a daughter who was surely frustrating. I remember her arguing with me, insisting almost angrily that I was pretty and talented and refused to see it. She must have rained steady compliments over my scholastic and artistic efforts. But compliments help only if one believes them. At some point before age thirteen, many girls stop believing in all praise, even when it comes straight from a mirror.
For you it's different. I watch you talking with your friends, or combing your little sister's hair, or standing at the back of your orchestra and elegantly bowing the strong bass line that holds everything else in place, and I see a quiet pride that's just part of your complexion. When you were little I used to declare you beautiful, and you'd smile and say, “I know.” Now you're too savvy for that. But in the kitchen after school when you've reported something tough you dealt with well, and I say to you, “You have such good judgment about stuff like that,” you'll look off to the side, and it'll be written all over your face: “I know.” It's your prize possession. I'd do anything to see you keep it.

When I was pregnant with you, I read every book I could find on how to handle all things from diaper rash to warning lectures on sexually transmitted diseases. I became so appalled by the size of the task that I put my hands on my belly and thought, Oh Lord, can we just back up? But the minute you were born I looked at your hungry, squinched little face and
got
it: We do this thing one minute at a time. We'll never have to handle diaper rash and the sex lecture in the same day. My most important work will change from year to year, and I'll have time to figure it out. At first I was just Milk Central, then tiptoe walking coach and tea-party referee. Eventually I began to see that the common denominator, especially as mother of a girl child, was to protect and value every part of your personality and will, even when it differed from mine.

In this department I don't think girls of my generation got such a good shake from the guardians of our adolescence. The guidebook for parents then was organized around a whole different thesis; spanking was mandatory, and the word
self-esteem
had not been invented. The supervisors of my youth loved my accomplishments until I started campaigning against things they believed in. They thought I was beautiful, but they bluntly disparaged the getup required for
my
idea of beautiful. I wasn't even allowed to say I disliked a particular food. I made almost no significant deci
sions about my own life: I ate what I was fed, washed dishes but never planned meals, participated in school-sanctioned activities but virtually never hung out unsupervised with my friends. The parents of my time and place worried about pregnancy, drinking, and car accidents—as well they should have, since these shadows would fall sooner or later across the lives of most of my peers. I participated in a mind-boggling number of school-sanctioned activities but lacked time to be
me
, away from adults, just with peers. That must have looked too dangerous. As a child I'd spent endless hours poking around in the woods or playing disorganized games with other kids in the fields around our house, but once I grew breasts, my unchaperoned days were over. I felt increasingly scrutinized and failed to develop a natural ease or confidence with my peers. I was convinced that my parents would never let me grow up, so I railed against them internally but then felt guilty after, fearing they would mind-read my rebellious thoughts.

At age fifteen I was allowed to go on a trip with the high school English classes to see a performance of
Measure for Measure
in a nearby city. It was my first experience of Shakespeare (my first real play at all), and I felt elated afterward by this exposure to mature ideas and drama. But discussing it with my parents that night at dinner, I grew tense. There had been some implied sexuality in the play; my brother and I had made a pact not to mention it, but I feared somehow they knew anyway, and I was too nervous to eat. I felt sick inside, as if by watching this wonderful work, and loving it so much I'd betrayed my parents' trust in me and my own goodness.

When I went off to college at eighteen, I promptly went straight off the deep end of the social/recreational pool. It frightens me to look back on that reckless period of my life, but I also understand it perfectly. I'd been well under control up to that point, but I had no practice in
self
-control. I was extremely lucky not to damage myself in the process of learning moderation.

As penance for this close shave, I vowed early on to give you more choices than I had, so you could learn self-control in a safer laboratory than I did. The dance of letting go the reins is never easy—two steps forward, one step back. I've spent so much of my life stitching together the answers to the hard questions that it's natural for me to want to hand them down like a glove, one that will fit neatly onto an outstretched little clone hand. I try sometimes. But that glove won't fit. The world has changed, and even if it hasn't (drinking, drugs, and pregnancy are still at the top of the immediate-worry agenda), the answers will work for you only when you've stitched them together yourself.

People say it's because parents
love
their kids so much that they want to tell them how to live. But I'm afraid that's only half love, and the other half selfishness. Kids who turn out like their parents kind of validate their world. That was my first real lesson as a mother—realizing that you could be different from me, and it wouldn't make me less of a person. When you were three, in spite of all the toy socket wrenches and trucks I'd provided in my program of teaching you that women can be as capable and handy as men, you basically wanted to be the Princess Fairy Bride. You'd have given every one of your baby teeth for a Barbie doll. I tried to explain how this doll was an awful role model, she didn't look the way healthy women should, she was obsessed with clothes, blah blah. Translation: My worldview doesn't have room for Barbie in it, and I'd be embarrassed to have her as a houseguest. I wouldn't give in on Barbie.

Then one day you and your friend Kate were playing in your room, and I was spying just outside the door (yep, fiddling with the thermostat again) when I heard you say, “My mom won't let me have Barbies. But you know what? When I grow up I'm going to have
all the Barbie dolls I want!
”

Yikes, I thought to myself. Soon afterward, Barbie joined our family.

That was a stunner for me. Believe it or not, it was the first time I really pictured you as a someday-grown-up, completely in charge of yourself (and your menagerie of dolls). Eventually I'd have zero power over you, I realized, so this might be a good time to start preparing for it by shifting from 100 percent to 99 percent control. Let the Barbies come, and let you handle the Social Impact. You did, and along the way you probably learned a thing or two about physics: What happens when you shoot Barbie from a paper-towel tube? Also about disabilities: When the puppy found your abandoned Barbie party and left it looking like the Plane-Crash Barbie Close-Out Sale, I made you keep most of the Barbies, asking, “If your friend lost a leg or a hand, would you throw her away?” (The headless ones we laid to rest.) And I learned to say, when you dressed yourself in bridal veil, roller skates, rouge, and a tutu, “Wow, you have a really creative sense of style.” I've never lied to you. I didn't say I thought you looked
good,
just creative. Maybe that's why you believe in my compliments now.

Every mom has to set limits, but that's never been so difficult with you. When you want something that I truly think will do you harm, I explain my reasons, and then usually let you have a
little
of it (except if it's illegal, or skydiving) or give you permission to abide by your friends' mothers' rules when you're at their houses (case in point: watching TV). Though you may not notice it, I'm keeping an eye out to see how long it takes you to decide you've had enough. Except for that one time when you put your whole face in the birthday cake, your judgment has proven exceptional.

All your life you've been apprenticing for adulthood. I recognized that when you were in preschool, learning how to be social: having feuds with girlfriends, then forgiving or sometimes moving on. One week they'd shun you, the next week you were queen bee while somebody else suffered. It tore me to pieces to watch, but I knew I couldn't save you. You were saving yourself, slowly. In fifth grade, it suddenly got harder: A boy started picking on you, mostly
trying to embarrass you with sexual innuendo. Oh, man, did I want to walk into that classroom and knock some heads together. But I took a deep breath, knowing that even this—
especially
this—you had to learn to do for yourself. I was scared. It was my hardest mom event so far, and I didn't want to screw it up.