I just watched an interview with a couple of authors who have both written about the myth of choice in our country. This is a subject I haven't necessarily studied at great length, but I've spent a good deal of my life thinking in terms of my own choices...or non-choices.
I remember vividly in my late 20's suddenly coming to the realization that there were some major life choices I didn't really make consciously. That is, I didn't know there were other options.
An example: I don't remember making the conscious choice about whether or not to marry. I made choices about when and who and where, just not ever making the choice to not stay single. Or, having children. I remember deciding how many kids I would have and when I would have them, but I don't remember making the choice to have them or not.
Don't get me wrong...I think I would have made the same choices anyway, and with the same result. I'm just not sure one can call it a "choice" if you don't see any other options.
The guy author, whose book is "The Myth of Choice", pointed out that perhaps we have far too many choices in our culture. Not the big ones, but the small ones. We expend way too much time and energy and capital on making choices that aren't earthshaking. It takes me far too long to do my grocery shopping, as an example, because there's like 300 different types of coffee on the shelves, with 200 different prices and 100 different ecological ramifications. It would take me far less time to complete my shopping list if there were only 10. Or 8.
In college, in a sociology class, I remember reading that we think we have choices in this country for our life mate, but really, we are so hemmed in by societal strictures about which race would be an appropriate husband material, and age and socio-economic status and education level and geographical location and...the list is endless which limits our "choice" of even whom to date, let alone whom to marry.
A man I met and dated in high school came to my college my freshman year and proposed marriage to me. Yet he was enrolled in another college located a state away and I couldn't see how a long-distance relationship would work. So, despite the fact that I loved him greatly, I sadly had to say no.
But back to the coffee analogy, maybe we are better off not having 150 million men to choose from. How would we EVER make a choice? Would we all die single and alone if we had to choose one life mate out of all the men in the world?
Not to get too political, but the Anti-Abortion folks think that, given a "choice", pregnant women would ALWAYS choose abortion over adoption or keeping the baby. They haven't a clue that sometimes, there is no other choice. If the father is absent and not wanting to be involved, if the woman is compromised by her health, if the fetus is no longer viable...the list is endless about why abortion would be a sad choice. If you do away with abortion altogether (an impossibility, but that's what they think) and one's only "option" is to carry the baby to term, regardless of the baby's health, that's really not a choice.
Or the anti-abortion folks who had a choice themselves, they just don't trust anyone else to make the "moral" choice they did. Sarah Palin once famously said (I'm paraphrasing here) that she had made the difficult choice to carry her Down's Syndrome baby and she was glad she had. Reading between the lines, she made a conscious decision to have her baby, but other women wouldn't have the same courage to make that choice as well. Ergo, they shouldn't have a choice.
I heard somewhere that we make an average of 70 choices per day. Now, most of those are trivia: what should I wear to work, should I go out to lunch or carry it, what will I have for dinner? But some of them are life-changing. Sometimes our "choices" are the result of dithering and not making a choice, which is in itself a choice.
This week's Time Magazine has an article about people who choose not to have children. I remember leaving my kids' with a childless couple up my street while on a work-related trip. When I returned home, Terry confided in me that they saw this as an opportunity to decide for good whether or not to have children and they had confirmed their latent desire to remain childless.
I was horrified, thinking that the boys had been so bad, they had perhaps pushed Terry and Dan over the childless edge. No, she hastened to reassure me, they hadn't been bad. It was just that they had taken so much time from her home-based business. She had had no idea that she couldn't just park my kids in front of a TV and go about her business.
Many childless couples receive the label of "selfish" when they say that they have chosen to be childless. Sympathies abound for those sad couples who don't choose to be childless but who nevertheless are. But perish the thought that some couples choose for whatever reason to not have kids. They are truly being selfless, not bringing a baby into this world, overpopulated as it is, to a family that doesn't want them, or wants them just to keep Grandma happy or due to societal pressure or because all their friends are doing it. (We all remember our mothers' answer to that excuse. Some variation of "If all your friends jump off a cliff...")
I moved to North Carolina on a split second decision, thinking as I did so that many of my life-changing decisions, made with a lot of thought and prayer, turned out to be so abysmal, so I should try making a life-changing decision on a whim.
I haven't yet decided whether this post makes any sense, so I'll just post it anyway. Maybe all of us should make decisions with the clear understanding that we really don't have unlimited choices and sometimes, it's a mere choice between two evils. And never, ever judge anyone else's choice.
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
A Christmas Memory
No, this won't be nearly as well written as Truman Capote wrote his Christmas memories. But it is one of the many memories I have where I wish I could say it turned out better.
Years ago, when our children were small, we bundled them up on Christmas Eve and took them out through the snow to the Cathedral, where midnight mass was being held. No, we're not Catholic, but a friend was singing and we thought a celebration of the season was just the thing to put us in the mood for Christmas.
It was. So about 1:30 on Christmas morning, having gotten our sleeping children bedded down for the night and finished last minute wrapping and stocking stuffing, we prepared for bed ourselves. (correction: we assisted Santa in stuffing stockings and wrapping gifts...on account he's so busy, don't you know!)
Just as we were turning out lights, we realized that there was a fire truck just four doors down on our street. This neighborhood was one that city planners like to call "transitional"...that is, it was "transitioning" from crack houses and whore houses to gentrification. The houses in our neighborhood were all architectural masterpieces, with lots of wood carved staircases and mullioned windows. We were part of the gentrification, not a part of the crack houses, just for the record.
So my husband put on boots and tramped through the snow to see what was going on. He discovered a woman and her daughter, both in house slippers and nightgowns, with blankets thrown over their shoulders, standing in the freezing snow. They lived in the apartment next to the fire, but had been evacuated in case the fire spread.
He invited them to come to our house, where at the very least, they could be warm. They came, but the woman insisted on sitting on the boot bench in our front hall, her blanket regally clutched around her shoulders, back ramrod straight.
I offered coffee, hot chocolate, anything warm. She declined, not wanting to "be a bother." From the condition of their clothing and their apartment building, they were obviously not a part of the gentrification of the neighborhood.
I went into the living room and turned the tree lights back on, for the entertainment of the little girl, who couldn't have been more than six. Her eyes twinkled in the tree lights, her mouth forming an "O". "We don't have a tree, 'cause Momma says we can't afford it."
My heart sank. My mind quickly searched the wrapped packages I'd just placed under the tree (correction: Santa had placed), rejecting them all because they were trucks and little boy flannel shirts and army guys. Nothing even remotely appropriate for a girl child.
This woman, asking for nothing but a warm place for her and her child to wait for the Fire Department to complete their work, stayed only an hour or so. She didn't say much, though the child chattered in the way of a child who knows no stranger. I offered more blankets. Declined, with dignity.
The little girl eventually fell asleep on the sofa, tired no doubt by all the excitement of the evening. My husband carefully bundled her up in the thin blanket and carried her home, her mother expressing gratitude just for the warm place to sit on a frigid, snowy Midwestern night. She wouln't take anything else from us.
But til the day I die, I will always regret not having had anything under that tree that a little girl would have liked. I would have told her that Santa, in his infinite wisdom, had dropped off the package for her, knowing that her apartment was filled with smoke and water.
Every year, I donate to Toys for Tots. Let that be my penance.
Years ago, when our children were small, we bundled them up on Christmas Eve and took them out through the snow to the Cathedral, where midnight mass was being held. No, we're not Catholic, but a friend was singing and we thought a celebration of the season was just the thing to put us in the mood for Christmas.
It was. So about 1:30 on Christmas morning, having gotten our sleeping children bedded down for the night and finished last minute wrapping and stocking stuffing, we prepared for bed ourselves. (correction: we assisted Santa in stuffing stockings and wrapping gifts...on account he's so busy, don't you know!)
Just as we were turning out lights, we realized that there was a fire truck just four doors down on our street. This neighborhood was one that city planners like to call "transitional"...that is, it was "transitioning" from crack houses and whore houses to gentrification. The houses in our neighborhood were all architectural masterpieces, with lots of wood carved staircases and mullioned windows. We were part of the gentrification, not a part of the crack houses, just for the record.
So my husband put on boots and tramped through the snow to see what was going on. He discovered a woman and her daughter, both in house slippers and nightgowns, with blankets thrown over their shoulders, standing in the freezing snow. They lived in the apartment next to the fire, but had been evacuated in case the fire spread.
He invited them to come to our house, where at the very least, they could be warm. They came, but the woman insisted on sitting on the boot bench in our front hall, her blanket regally clutched around her shoulders, back ramrod straight.
I offered coffee, hot chocolate, anything warm. She declined, not wanting to "be a bother." From the condition of their clothing and their apartment building, they were obviously not a part of the gentrification of the neighborhood.
I went into the living room and turned the tree lights back on, for the entertainment of the little girl, who couldn't have been more than six. Her eyes twinkled in the tree lights, her mouth forming an "O". "We don't have a tree, 'cause Momma says we can't afford it."
My heart sank. My mind quickly searched the wrapped packages I'd just placed under the tree (correction: Santa had placed), rejecting them all because they were trucks and little boy flannel shirts and army guys. Nothing even remotely appropriate for a girl child.
This woman, asking for nothing but a warm place for her and her child to wait for the Fire Department to complete their work, stayed only an hour or so. She didn't say much, though the child chattered in the way of a child who knows no stranger. I offered more blankets. Declined, with dignity.
The little girl eventually fell asleep on the sofa, tired no doubt by all the excitement of the evening. My husband carefully bundled her up in the thin blanket and carried her home, her mother expressing gratitude just for the warm place to sit on a frigid, snowy Midwestern night. She wouln't take anything else from us.
But til the day I die, I will always regret not having had anything under that tree that a little girl would have liked. I would have told her that Santa, in his infinite wisdom, had dropped off the package for her, knowing that her apartment was filled with smoke and water.
Every year, I donate to Toys for Tots. Let that be my penance.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
A Question of Priorities
I'm going out on a limb here to describe some of my disquiet about our country's heroic and valiant efforts in Haiti, a country which has always struggled but which recently has been visited by a truly doomsday earthquake.
It is not that I don't care for the suffering of the people of Haiti, nor that I believe they are somehow undeserving of the enormous aid we and other nations of the world have given unstintingly. I believe in nations with more blessings sharing with those who have so little.
My disquiet is illustrated by a piece of irony from a few years ago. There was this joke making the rounds about the difference between a hurricane in Indonesia and a hurricane in New Orleans. The punch line was: If you are in Indonesia, the US government will send aid. (Ba-dum dum)
I understand that in an increasingly global economy, we are all so interconnected. United we stand, divided we fall.
Remember the old adage, "Charity begins at home"? The adage was seldom applied growing up in the deep South. Missionaries from "deepest darkest Africa" (my childish mind always envisioned a place where the sun did not shine, since it was referred to as the "dark" continent) were much lauded. Congregations hung on their every word, gathering clothing and Bibles to fill an overseas container for the "poor heathens across the ocean." While just across town, there were dark-skinned children who lived in shanties, who went to bed hungry and who weren't allowed to attend our schools and churches.
Does anyone else see the utter hypocrisy of a Congress debating whether to fund healthcare and education for US children on the one hand (evidently, we don't have all that much money) and on the other hand sending doctors and food and medicines to Haiti, whose victims are undoubtedly in more dire straits in this current crisis?
Please don't think I am unfeeling or in favor of ignoring Haiti or that I grew horns since my last post. I just wonder where our priorities lie and why.
Several years ago, a good Christian lady whom I admire and respect a great deal made the emphatic statement that we are a society who values children. She practically dropped her dentures when I responded with "No, I don't think we value children."
My argument was this: If you listen to our rhetoric, you could certainly make a case for our society's care and value of children. But if you were to look at our actions, you could equally make a case for us not giving a tinker's damn about children. Or, at least not those who live in the next block.
Our rhetoric says: "Every child deserves to grow up in safety in a loving home, nurtured and educated to achieve their God-given potential."
Our actions say: "Every child doesn't deserve to grow up in a loving home, or even grow up at all. In this country, the world's most wealthy, we have children whose only meal of the day is the one they get at school. If that. Children are regularly given back to parents who have proven to be abusers. Child molesters are released after 4 years on good behavior and our schools have become warehouses or babysitters.
While our schools are daily stressed with funding all the various programs special needs children need (not to mention the untold millions spent on children who do not speak English), our "average" and "gifted" students lanquish in classrooms that are not designed to meet their needs or grow their minds.
Several years ago, I observed that our Alternative Schools have become, by happenstance, our "gifted" program, "No Child Left Behind" having desimated school budgets to fund the convoluted and at times contradictory requirements of that unfunded mandate.
Alternative Schools, to the uninitiated, are set-aside schools whereby the behavior-disordered students are kept away from the "good" students, presumably so the good children won't become infected with whatever the "bad" students have.
When you look at these "disordered and disorderly" students, you realize that, in many instances, they are students who couldn't get the beleagured teachers' attention, so they acted out. They are bored and unchallenged by the dreck that our education systems spew. Teachers are having their feet held to the fire to educate the special needs children, while the average and gifted students are just supposed to get it on their own.
(A teacher friend of mine told me the apocryphal story about her child, then 9-years-old, who said that ADHD Johnny in her class was given a piece of candy every day if he sat quietly for an hour. The child complained that SHE had sat quietly all day, so why didn't she get a piece of candy? Why indeed?)
The founders of a gifted charter school have determined that, for every $10 spent on average students in the US, $100 is spent on special needs children, while $1 is spent on gifted and talented children. From which two groups are we to rebuild our technological research capabilities, to find a cure for cancer, to probe the mysteries of the universe?
Once again, I'm not suggesting that the special needs kids do not deserve the attention and financial emphasis they currently enjoy. They certainly do and in a true "No Child Left Behind" universe, they would certainly be included. But we are "Leaving Behind" the children of average and above average talents and capabilities to cater to those who might never learn enough to make it in the world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we are trailing the world in education.
Two possible conclusions come to mind and I'm not sure to which I subscribe:
1) That the world (and our country) has the wherewithal to truly take care of ALL children, whether in Haiti or in an inner city school. whether gifted or special needs, and we have chosen NOT to use our resources in that fashion (and therefore do NOT value children) or,
2) That we have limited resources and therefore should be spending those resources on children in our own country who might one day find that cure or make that technological breakthrough. Once those have been served, then we certainly should spread the wealth, but until then, charity begins at home.
Perhaps there are other conclusions, but these are the ones that spring to my admittedly limited mind. Like Jonathan Swift in his satiric "A Modest Proposal", I confess to a smallish world view. This is indeed a "modest proposal" that I would be very surprised to see come to pass whereby we gave all children what they need to become productive adults.
I understand that "poverty" in the United States doesn't look quite the same as "poverty" in a third world country. Our students consider themselves truly poor if they can't afford an iPod or the latest pair of $100 jeans. But we have children who live on the cold streets of Detroit, not on the streets in tropical Haiti. We have young teens who sell their bodies for a warm place to stay and a Big Mac. Does the child who goes to bed hungry in the good ole US of A feel any less hungry than the poor kid in Haiti?
Until we stop slashing school lunch programs, until we keep child molesters permanently behind bars, until we ensure the safety of teen sex slaves, until we make sure every child lives in a warm, safe place, with enough food to eat and access to a quality education, then we are not a society who values children.
It's just rhetoric.
It is not that I don't care for the suffering of the people of Haiti, nor that I believe they are somehow undeserving of the enormous aid we and other nations of the world have given unstintingly. I believe in nations with more blessings sharing with those who have so little.
My disquiet is illustrated by a piece of irony from a few years ago. There was this joke making the rounds about the difference between a hurricane in Indonesia and a hurricane in New Orleans. The punch line was: If you are in Indonesia, the US government will send aid. (Ba-dum dum)
I understand that in an increasingly global economy, we are all so interconnected. United we stand, divided we fall.
Remember the old adage, "Charity begins at home"? The adage was seldom applied growing up in the deep South. Missionaries from "deepest darkest Africa" (my childish mind always envisioned a place where the sun did not shine, since it was referred to as the "dark" continent) were much lauded. Congregations hung on their every word, gathering clothing and Bibles to fill an overseas container for the "poor heathens across the ocean." While just across town, there were dark-skinned children who lived in shanties, who went to bed hungry and who weren't allowed to attend our schools and churches.
Does anyone else see the utter hypocrisy of a Congress debating whether to fund healthcare and education for US children on the one hand (evidently, we don't have all that much money) and on the other hand sending doctors and food and medicines to Haiti, whose victims are undoubtedly in more dire straits in this current crisis?
Please don't think I am unfeeling or in favor of ignoring Haiti or that I grew horns since my last post. I just wonder where our priorities lie and why.
Several years ago, a good Christian lady whom I admire and respect a great deal made the emphatic statement that we are a society who values children. She practically dropped her dentures when I responded with "No, I don't think we value children."
My argument was this: If you listen to our rhetoric, you could certainly make a case for our society's care and value of children. But if you were to look at our actions, you could equally make a case for us not giving a tinker's damn about children. Or, at least not those who live in the next block.
Our rhetoric says: "Every child deserves to grow up in safety in a loving home, nurtured and educated to achieve their God-given potential."
Our actions say: "Every child doesn't deserve to grow up in a loving home, or even grow up at all. In this country, the world's most wealthy, we have children whose only meal of the day is the one they get at school. If that. Children are regularly given back to parents who have proven to be abusers. Child molesters are released after 4 years on good behavior and our schools have become warehouses or babysitters.
While our schools are daily stressed with funding all the various programs special needs children need (not to mention the untold millions spent on children who do not speak English), our "average" and "gifted" students lanquish in classrooms that are not designed to meet their needs or grow their minds.
Several years ago, I observed that our Alternative Schools have become, by happenstance, our "gifted" program, "No Child Left Behind" having desimated school budgets to fund the convoluted and at times contradictory requirements of that unfunded mandate.
Alternative Schools, to the uninitiated, are set-aside schools whereby the behavior-disordered students are kept away from the "good" students, presumably so the good children won't become infected with whatever the "bad" students have.
When you look at these "disordered and disorderly" students, you realize that, in many instances, they are students who couldn't get the beleagured teachers' attention, so they acted out. They are bored and unchallenged by the dreck that our education systems spew. Teachers are having their feet held to the fire to educate the special needs children, while the average and gifted students are just supposed to get it on their own.
(A teacher friend of mine told me the apocryphal story about her child, then 9-years-old, who said that ADHD Johnny in her class was given a piece of candy every day if he sat quietly for an hour. The child complained that SHE had sat quietly all day, so why didn't she get a piece of candy? Why indeed?)
The founders of a gifted charter school have determined that, for every $10 spent on average students in the US, $100 is spent on special needs children, while $1 is spent on gifted and talented children. From which two groups are we to rebuild our technological research capabilities, to find a cure for cancer, to probe the mysteries of the universe?
Once again, I'm not suggesting that the special needs kids do not deserve the attention and financial emphasis they currently enjoy. They certainly do and in a true "No Child Left Behind" universe, they would certainly be included. But we are "Leaving Behind" the children of average and above average talents and capabilities to cater to those who might never learn enough to make it in the world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we are trailing the world in education.
Two possible conclusions come to mind and I'm not sure to which I subscribe:
1) That the world (and our country) has the wherewithal to truly take care of ALL children, whether in Haiti or in an inner city school. whether gifted or special needs, and we have chosen NOT to use our resources in that fashion (and therefore do NOT value children) or,
2) That we have limited resources and therefore should be spending those resources on children in our own country who might one day find that cure or make that technological breakthrough. Once those have been served, then we certainly should spread the wealth, but until then, charity begins at home.
Perhaps there are other conclusions, but these are the ones that spring to my admittedly limited mind. Like Jonathan Swift in his satiric "A Modest Proposal", I confess to a smallish world view. This is indeed a "modest proposal" that I would be very surprised to see come to pass whereby we gave all children what they need to become productive adults.
I understand that "poverty" in the United States doesn't look quite the same as "poverty" in a third world country. Our students consider themselves truly poor if they can't afford an iPod or the latest pair of $100 jeans. But we have children who live on the cold streets of Detroit, not on the streets in tropical Haiti. We have young teens who sell their bodies for a warm place to stay and a Big Mac. Does the child who goes to bed hungry in the good ole US of A feel any less hungry than the poor kid in Haiti?
Until we stop slashing school lunch programs, until we keep child molesters permanently behind bars, until we ensure the safety of teen sex slaves, until we make sure every child lives in a warm, safe place, with enough food to eat and access to a quality education, then we are not a society who values children.
It's just rhetoric.
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