Julie Luongo

“The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt.” ~Tim Kreider

Kreider's Referendum

Tim Kreider’s always got it right. A few years ago when I was in … hmm, someplace. A bookstore in the DC area, possibly? I picked up The Pain–When Will it End and poured over it. That’s probably why I don’t remember where I was, because after I tucked in, I was only in Kreider’s world. I wanted to have penned those cartoons. I yearned for his talent not just to draw but to also get to the heart of things. Illustration was invented for Tim Kreider to divine my thoughts, illustrate them, and compile them for me. I wish someone would do that with other things I’d like to accomplish…like pay my bills and clean the house.

But, on to my point. I was just turned on to a blogger by KC (in the comments of the Bolin post, if you’re following along…thanks, KC), who in turn had a link to this Kreider article in the New York Times. (Whew. I know, that’s a lot of links to get to the point. But apparently credit is a thing that matters to most people.)

So, anyway, in this article, Kreider talks about what he calls The Referendum (see quote at the top of this post), which is basically our tendency to justify our own life choices by demeaning the choices of our peers while no-so-secretly wondering if those pastures are indeed greener. It’s as wise and thoughtful and revealing as any of his cartoons. And the comments are a trip…oh, the people who insist on “winning.” They just don’t get it.

I’d like to ramble on about how I’m OK and you’re OK, but I live a fabulously exciting and exotic existence that I have to get back to. Just wanted to share the Kreider with you.

“Well, the whole affair is about as real as Kwanza, or uh, the ‘Wookie’s Life Day,’ but I find it charming.” ~Dr. Orpheus

St. Nick: Voyeur

I’m reading a compilation of old fairy tales–Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know–introduced by Hamilton Wright Mabie (1905) with:

“The fairy tale is a poetic recording of the facts of life, an interpretation by the imagination of its hard conditions, an effort to reconcile the spirit which loves freedom and goodness and beauty with its harsh, bare and disappointing conditions.”

Around this time of year, I’m prone to thinking about the hard work our imaginations do. I believe this idea … that fairy / folk tales help us understand human nature, order our world, and reconcile the ideals of freedom, goodness, and beauty with harsh, bare, and disappointing realities of life. So, as I’m reading these tales, I’m thinking about our brain development. I appreciate that when we’re children we have a greater capacity to imagine and a lesser capacity to reason. So, instead of saying, “sometimes people are jealous of the beautiful and are wicked to the good. So, be vigilant” we say “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all.”

As it often happens, while I was milling this thought, I was sent a link to an excellent post about Christmas (thanks, Rach). The author of the post, Laura, talks about the light and dark sides of Christmas. Like many (all?) folk and fairy tales, there is a dark side that makes the light shine brighter. There had to be someone to say there was no room at the inn, just to make the birth story more dangerous and exciting.

Christmas folklore is abundant with danger … whipping, kidnapping, deportation … coal (the most terrifying of all the fuel sources). The Belsnickel or Krampus demons accompany St. Nicholas in Germany and Austria (and other European countries) to  scare children into being good … or to beat and scare the sins out of them before Christmas, depending on where you are. Le Père Fouettard or Hanstrapp whips the French children. Black Peter or Zwarte Pieten is the Dutch trickster counterpart to good old Sinterklaas. He’ll tease you and threaten to deport you back to Spain in an old sack if you’re bad. (On the subject, and if you haven’t read it yet, here’s a link to Six to Eight Black Men by David Sedaris.)

I learned about Black Peter when I was in second grade and fell madly in love with him. Naturally, when it came time to getting parts for the Christmas play, I was all over Black Peter. Sadly, there were other fans …  5, as I recall. Two of them bowed out gracefully and took other parts leaving three of us to duke it out. My teacher, who I thought was really groovy, came up with an equitable solution. We would pick a number from 1 to 10 and the closest to the number she was thinking would win. She whispered it to a student and we picked. You’re thinking it’s game over, right? Well, you’re wrong.

What happened next seemed perfectly normal at the time. The teacher asked us if we were sure we wanted those numbers. Isn’t it psychological torture to give people time to second guess themselves? I think the one kid changed his number right away. I didn’t see what difference it would make to change my number. It would just upset me if I changed it to something that made me lose. So, I was standing firm. Still, having the choice and not taking it was shaking me. And my teacher kept it up for a pretty long time, going to each of us one by one, goading us … “you can still change your number,” “this is your last chance,” “are you sure?” It was very tense.

In her final appeal, my teacher said, “you can change your number to anything between one and ten.” She started counting slowly, “ooone … twoooo … threeeee … fooour … fiiive … siiix … seeeven … eiiiight … … … … … nine, ten.” Her eyes flashed at her mistake. She tried to cover. “Any of those numbers.” My hand shot up and I said, “I wanna change my number.” She revealed her hand and I saw it. I said, “eight.” She asked me if I was sure, but the game was over. Her torture couldn’t touch me. She was definitely disappointed. I always mistook her expression as disappointment in me. Like, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of her mistake and the other kids who didn’t catch it. But now that I think of it, she was probably just having an “oh crap” moment because she’d blown the game.

Well, whatever. I got to be Black Peter, which gave me both pleasure and guilt, which I should have loved since that’s sort-of what Black Peter is all about. I mean, we’re not all good inside. We just hide enough of our darkness for people to see our merit, love us, and give us gifts once a year while we play out a folk tale and steep ourselves in pleasure and guilt, light and dark, surprise and control. And that’s why it’s magical. Because, as Hamilton Wright Mabie said, “It is … a spontaneous and instinctive endeavor to shape the facts of the world to meet the needs of the imagination, the cravings of the heart.” Of our light and dark hearts.

“He who distributes the milk of human kindness cannot help but spill a little on himself.” ~James Matthew Barrie

The Milkmaid by Vermeer

I’ve always been particularly skeeved by the idea of wet nursing. It’s probably because it brings to mind upper crusty women who couldn’t be bothered nursing because they were too engaged in being playthings to their important husbands and staving off melancholy with alcohol while their hearty and appropriately cowed maids (milk maids?) kept lactating long after their own children were weaned. Lazy, classist bitches can’t even feed their own kids. (I blame books for this bias.)

Also, the term. Wet nursing. It’s like “wet work” to describe killing missions. Gah. Go and ruin the word wet for me. I guess I wasn’t all that fond of it. But really, nursing wasn’t descriptive enough? Had to add wet to it? I really don’t think anyone would have been confused if Mrs. Haversham said, “Sally nursed baby Charles until he was out of diapers.” Nursing does the work, and context picks up the slack.

Of course I know that women giving milk to other people’s babies is probably more common in those tight, matriarchal-type communities where women clatch together and work and play and raise kids while the men do what they do (smoke and fart and hunt?) with their own kind. I get that it’s natural and practical… so are holes in the ground for pooping. But, whatever. I don’t come across a lot of references to wet nursing in my life. I don’t raise kids and only hunt in the grocery store. I don’t talk about baby feeding with my friends who have babies. As far as I know they’re cross-nursing and baking placenta although I doubt it…er, I hope not.

I bring it up because a while back a Chinese policewoman breastfed a bunch of kids after an earthquake (May, 2009). She was on the scene, her body was in the lactating way, and she eventually ended up nursing 9 babies whose mothers were too traumatized to give milk. (The kids were in a shelter without milk, powdered or otherwise). She probably saved their lives. Or at least prevented severe malnutrition. She was given all sorts of commendations and a promotion to Vice Commissioner of the Public Security Bureau. So, you know, another woman got a promotion because of her boobs. (Bah-dum-dum. Sorry. I didn’t know that’s where this was going when I wrote it.)