Peacemakers

Katie, setting down a biography of Neil Armstrong she'd been reading: "Mom, you lived through the Cold War, right?"

Me: "Yep. I sure did."

Katie: "Who was President when you were born?"

Me: "Nixon."

Katie: "Oh, that's right. For a minute I was thinking it was John F. Kennedy."

Me: "Nope, but did you know that I was born on the day Kennedy was assassinated? Just seven years later--"

Katie: "What's assassinated?"

Me: "When a political leader is murdered."

Katie: "Why was he assassinated?"

Me: "I guess because the murderer didn't agree with him and wanted him dead."

Katie: "That is so weird. You know there are 365 days in a year, right?"

Me: "Yeah? So?"

Katie: "That's just so weird. The EXACT same day. Out of 365 days in a year it had to be on YOUR birthday."

Me: "Well, yeah, seven years later. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and I was born seven years later on November 22, 1970."

Katie: "Yeah, but that's so weird!"

Me: "Why is that so weird? I just think it's a coincidence. It could have been on any day. That just happened to be the day."

Katie: "Yeah, but Mom, it's just so ironic that you were born on the day that the President was assassinated, and you're such a peacemaker."

I never thought of it that way. It's so strange to see our kids make connections about us that we don't recognize. Here I just think of myself as some random person who just happened to be born on November 22, and who just happens to have an interest in peace, and here my 9 year old thinks of me as some kind of big time peace hero. It's flattering. And a little worrisome, since I know the time will come when she'll realize I'm just some random person who happens to think peace is a good idea, not a key player in the whole scheme of world peace. Or maybe I am. Maybe that's exactly what we are, as parents. We are our children's heroes. We are the teachers of peace. We are the peacemakers.

Rules for The Game of Life

I'm a librarian, but I'm not much of a reader when it comes to instructions. I'd much rather just jump in and figure it out as we go along. I like to save my reading time for fiction, which helps me understand my cuckoo crazy fellow humans much better than most nonfiction, and certainly more than sitting face to face IRL with someone, attempting to have a meaningful conversation. I prefer to share most ideas textually, via email, blog posts, Facebook posts, and, intricately folded up notes from my nine-year-old daughter.

My husband, Will, loves to read instructions. Especially the rules to a game. The way I play games is in exact opposition to the way my husband likes to play games. When we first played Monopoly during the first few months of our blossoming romance, I saw major red flags the color of hotels rise when he questioned my move as I placed my Monopoly money into the center of the board when I had to pay taxes.

"What are you doing?" Will asked.

His slightly raised voice didn't scare me. During one of our first conversations, even before we'd started dating, while we were in the mail room, back when he worked at the library with me, we got into an argument over whether or not a movie about a marital affair, in this case The End of the Affair, should be classified as a "great" movie. I said yes. Will said no. My inner voice said, "Who is this guy, being all cute and foolishly naive about intimate relationships?"

Turns out my inner voice was totally wrong. Will's not naive about relationships at all. He takes relationships seriously. He's known his best friends since they were six, when he moved to the city in first grade. Will genuinely believes in the traditions of marriage and children and home ownership and lawn maintenance. My husband is ten years younger than I am, but he acts like a grandpa to my angsty teen.

Will had better role models for a happy marriage than I did. My parents divorced when I was twenty-one--long after they should have. The first time my mom mentioned that she was thinking of divorcing my dad was when I was four. It took seventeen years for her to finally listen to me, my other siblings, and anyone else whose advice she sought regarding her shitty marriage to my dad.

Will's parents on the other hand have been married since 1978. Thirty-seven years. Most of their lives. And they still giggle and swoon when they sing to each other. Will's dad posts Facebook status updates that say how he loves his wife mind, body, and soul. The most romantic thing I ever saw my parents do is the time my mom leaned over and pecked my dad's cheek when he said goodbye. He was getting ready to leave for a six-week business trip, and the best they could do is a cold cheek kiss.

I'm glad I found Will. He's taught me how to love in a healthy, balanced, meaningful way. Will's one of the most mature, grounded, most reliable men I've ever known. He just doesn't know how to play board games. Or so I thought.

When Will asked me what I was doing as I set my Monopoly money in the center of the board when I had to pay taxes, I said, "What?"

"Why are you putting your tax money there? It goes into the bank."

I laughed. I'd heard about these kinds of game players, sticklers. Rule followers. Instructions readers. I'd never encountered one in the flesh.

"What are you talking about? Everyone knows you put your tax money, and your Community Chest money, and all that stuff in the center so when someone lands on Free Parking they win the lottery and get to collect all that money," I explained. Will was looking at me like I'd suddenly ripped off my mask and revealed my Scooby Doo bad-guy face.

"Becky," he sighed. "That's not how the game goes."

"That's how everybody plays it."

"It's not in the rules."

"Well it should be."

"No, do you know why? Because then the game would never be over. Everyone would keep winning money and then they wouldn't go bankrupt when they land on Boardwalk with a hotel on it. They could just pay for the stay and move on. Where's the fun in that?"

Similarly, my pre-Will high-drama intimate relationships started out fun, but they drained me, leaving me lying prone across the table, exhausted and confused and just wanting the games to end.

I still don't read instructions to games, but my rules-loving husband has convinced me to at least follow them when someone else takes the time to read them to me and helps me understand.

Like today, when our nine-year-old daughter called out to me from the kitchen table, "Mom, did you know that when you land on 'night school' you can draw a new career and salary card?"

"Huh?" I replied. "No, I never played it that way. That's cool. You wanna play it that way the next time we play Life?"

"Uh, yeah. I mean. Those are the rules, Mom."

Just like her dad. Plays by the rules. Lucky for me.

Katie, age 9, reading the rules for The Game of Life

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (book review)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To Kill a Mockingbird is my all-time favorite book. I've read it many times. First, in high school, because it was assigned. Many more times during my adulthood because I love it. I love how it makes me feel while I'm reading it. As if Miss Lee waved her hand at me to come sit with her and swing for a bit, sipping sweet tea on her front porch, mesmerized by her storytelling.

View all my reviews

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume (book review)

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in fourth grade when I went through my Judy Blume phase. All my friends who hadn't yet started their periods raved about Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret but to someone like me with precocious puberty, Margaret was passé. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself was my favorite Judy Blume novel.

I remember really identifying with the main character, a ten year old girl who leaves behind her beloved father in New Jersey to move with her mother and grandmother to Florida. I could relate: half of my beloved family stayed in St. Joseph MO while the other half moved to Kansas City when I was six. It comforted me that my feelings of loss and loneliness were not weird, but something that other kids my age go through when their family breaks up.

It felt like I had so much in common with this fictional Jewish girl from the East Coast in 1947, even though I was a Christian girl from the Midwest in 1981. That's a testament to Blume's strong characters and storytelling. I'd recommend this classic to anyone.

View all my reviews

My MBTI Type Family Tree

I'm a teeny, tiny bit obsessed with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. (I'm an E/INFP.) A bit like my 14-year-old self was obsessed with astrology. (I'm a Scorpio with a Virgo moon and a Libra rising sign.) It might be a bit ridiculous to lump complex human beings into personality types, but it fascinates me.

I recently gave our soon-to-be nine-year-old, Katie, the MBTI test. The test is designed for adults, so I had to explain some of the big words and complex questions, but she had fun taking the test. She's an INFP. And a Cancer with a Taurus moon and a Taurus rising sign. OK. Maybe I haven't ever gotten over my silly obsession with astrology.

My husband Will must adore me. He is totally not the type of person who digs personality tests like I do, but he took the MBTI test to satisfy my curiosity. He's an ISTJ. And an Aquarius with a Virgo moon and a Pisces rising sign.

I found this awesome website that visually interprets each individual Myers-Briggs type. I decided to use it to create an MBTI Type Family Tree.

*Note, I'm guessing my dad's type. I've never had the guts to ask him to take the test. He thinks psychological stuff is weird hippie crap and I'd like to save my energy for a more important battle with my dad than one over whether or not he'd agree to take a personality test. Which explains why my guess is that Dad's an ESTJ. And an Aries with a Virgo moon and a Pisces rising sign.

My MBTI Type Family Tree:

Glen Burton, my father: ESTJ*

Glen Burton, my father: ESTJ*

Bev Martinmaas, my mom: ISFP

Bev Martinmaas, my mom: ISFP

Becky Carleton, me: ENFP

Becky Carleton, me: ENFP

Will Carleton, my husband: ISTJ

Will Carleton, my husband: ISTJ

Katie Carleton, our daughter: INFP

Katie Carleton, our daughter: INFP

All these and more MBTI heads are found here. What's your MBTI Type Family Tree look like?

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson (book review)

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully written book about ugly subjects: sexual abuse, racism, classism, abandonment. Marie is a black girl from a well educated, affluent family. But that doesn't mean everything in her life is happy. Lena is a white girl from a poor family that just moved to town. The trashy side of town--literally--near the town dump. But that doesn't mean everything in Lena's life is shit. Both girls bond over their shared motherlessness, their ability to see the good in bad situations, and their feisty, fierce loyalty and concern for each other. In another writer's hands, the two girls, their schoolmates, their parents could have easily become caricatures, stereotypes in a "social issues" book, but Woodson treats them with the dignity and respect they deserve, fleshing them out into fully realized individuals who will stick with me for a long time.

View all my reviews

Unladylike

When I was a kid, my grandmother owned a beauty parlor. That's what it was called. Not salon. Beauty parlor.  Old ladies would stop by once a week and have their hair washed and set. They'd chit chat with the beauticians (not stylists) and the other ladies getting their hair done. They'd complain about their husbands and children. Brag about their husbands and children. They'd read women's magazines and gossip over celebrities and compliment each other on their blue eye shadow and slimming pantsuits.

It was within these walls that I was taught how to be a lady.

It's unladylike to sit with your legs spread apart. Don't take up too much space.

Fat ladies should wear black. Or navy. Bright colors don't hide your "figure flaws".

If your breasts are bigger than mosquito bites, you must wear a bra.

If your legs are covered with spider veins, you must not wear shorts in public.

If your legs are covered with hair, you'll never attract a man. Ladies shave. Everything but their head-hair. And that must be long. Unless you're over the age of forty. Only young ladies can get away with long locks.

Ladies who don't paint their face before they go out in public, or before their husband gets home from work, they have let themselves go.

Today, when I saw this photo of myself, I thought, huh, those ladies were totally wrong. I'm forty-four and my long hair looks great. And here I am, no makeup, turning my naked cheek to greet the universe.

My madeleine: Donald "Boone" Gould the piano man

Full disclosure: I'm a total music snob. I tend to not like popular music much. Especially popular music that came out during my tumultuous childhood. Late-Seventies/Early-Eighties pop songs are my madeleines. I experience involuntary memories of traumatic childhood experiences every time I hear a goddamn Styx song. That's what I get for growing up in a dysfunctional family that constantly had Top-40 radio playing in the background.

So when I say this is the best version of "Come Sail Away" I've ever heard, I mean it. Nowadays, I generally switch stations whenever this song comes on the radio. Like Lebowski hates the fucking Eagles, man, I hate fucking Styx. But this man, his performance is admirable. This man's version makes me want to keep listening. I love this man's version of that fucking Styx song, man:



Maybe I can finally get over my aversion to Late-Seventies/Early-Eighties popular music by refocusing my thoughts associated with it to this amazing story. Donald "Boone" Gould is the pianist playing in the video above. Gould is a homeless vet who treats the community to a daily five-song set list on the sidewalk pianos provided by Sarasota Keys Piano Project on Main Street in Sarasota, Florida. Sly Dylan posted a video of Gould's performance on YouTube, and it instantly went viral. Here's the interview Dylan posted the morning after, when Gould was informed that a video of his performance had 100,000 hits in one day. Fans quickly set up a GoFundMe campaign for him.

Next came an interview with ABC7 in which the reporter states that a local piano bar, Surf Shack, has offered Gould "a tryout as a potential act".

Aww! Everybody loves a potential happy ending!

But Gould's story is not a completely happy one, as no good stories ever are. As the great Bob Ross said, "you need the dark in order to show the light."

After his discharge from the marines, Gould married and had a son. But when his wife died in 1998, he "just lost it man," and he "began to follow a destructive path that included substance abuse, which in turn led to the loss of his then 3-year-old son to Social Services."

This is why I like this man's version of the fucking Styx song, man. I can relate to his story, and to his telling of it. 

Most artists I know practice their gifts of artistry for its profound psychological healing properties. I know I do. This blog is my therapy. My mom learned to make potholders when she was in the psych ward. My brother, Pat, taught himself the guitar and played songs with a fervor only passionately damaged individuals understand.

Will and I are getting ready to adopt a child through the state's foster care system. We're preparing for the incredible emotional roller coaster we are about to embark on. We understand that children who have been through our broken foster care system have intense needs--emotional, psychological, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical--that many other children, like our Katie Bug, children who have not been through our broken foster care system simply don't have. We are psyching ourselves up for this tremendous parenting challenge.

In the courses we are taking as part of the adoption process, we have been discussing how difficult--and important--it is to have empathy for the biological parents. Parents whose custody rights of their own children have been severed. Parents who are expected to hand their own children over to other parents. Can you imagine how difficult that would be? Can you imagine how hurt you must be to lose your own child to The System? Holy shit.

And yet, you hear these stories--real life stories, actual cases from the foster care system. Stories of abuse and abandonment, neglect and illness. Emotional, psychological, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical abuse done to innocent children. Holy shit.

As an adoptive parent of a ward of the state, you must learn how to have empathy not just for the abused child, but for the abuser, too. It's hard. But it can be done. It helps to remember that most abusers were once abused themselves. How can you parent well when you are suffering?

For example, my brother, Pat. He was abused by our grandmother, and he turned around and abused me when I was very young. Who knows who abused my grandmother? Child abuse runs in families. I spent a lot of time in therapy, reading self-help books, and journaling about my experiences growing up in a dysfunctional family. It helped me to figure out a way to stop the cycle of abuse after I had my own child. I have this constant voice in the back of my head, reminding me to try something different. Do not do to her what was done to you. I have been successful at overcoming early childhood trauma by acknowledging it and wanting something better for my own child.

But what if I hadn't spent all that time in therapy and reading books and pouring my inky heart out onto paper? What if after my tumultuous childhood I jumped into a career in the marines, and when that was over, I jumped into marriage and parenthood? And then something tragic happens. My spouse dies. I'm suddenly without the love of my life. I'm a single parent of an exhausting three year old. How would I cope, stuck in life's murky mess?

I can see how people "lose it". My mom had a nervous breakdown not once, but twice. In the Late Sixties, back when housewives got shock treatments if they disobeyed their husbands. In my early twenties, I swallowed a bottle of Paxil and ended up in the ER, being force-fed some black stuff that summoned the blackness from within me with a vomitous force. Pat's told me stories of times he's struggled with wanting to take his own life.

Mom was lucky. She didn't lose her kids when she lost it. Her mother took them in during both of Mom's hospital stays. And I'm sure the stress of having your daughter in the hospital and taking care of her four young children might make someone "lose it," too.

Pat didn't have kids. By the time he found the love of his life she was past her baby-making days. They both died of alcoholic liver failure within four months of each other.

I didn't have children when I downed that bottle of anti-depressants. What would have happened if I did? Instead, I got my shit together. Oh, don't let me fool you. I have bad days. Lots of bad days. But I also have many good moments within those bad days, and I try to focus on them, which turns them into good days. I also have tremendous social support. I met my amazing husband, Will, who is the more psychologically-balanced yang to my psychologically-scarred yin. Together we've raised our eight-year-old daughter. Together I honestly think we can provide a good home for another child who needs a family.

When the day comes and we finally add a child to our family, I'm going to tell him or her this as often as they want to hear it: Your parents love you. Your parents need help learning how to take care of themselves. It's not your fault that they couldn't take care of you. Now we can take care of you. And we can love you. Your parents can't take care of you, but they love you, too.

His GoFundMe campaign page states that Gould is now searching for his 18-year-old son. I hope his adoptive parents have told him his parents love him.