Cures for Love

Lovesickness can kill you. 12th century Thomas the Younger, Archbishop of York, died of it. His doctor prescribed the standard cure, sex, and he refused. "Shame upon a malady which requires sensuality for its cure!" And proudly and virginally (and also obesely, incidentally), he departed this world.

For sixteen centuries, science and religion remained at odds over lovesickness. Based on the four humors theory, unrequited love, or just a general lack of sex, causes a disequilibrium of humors, which makes people sick: depression, despair, lethargy, fluctuation between hilarity and grief, eyelids fluttering at nothing in particular. You know what I mean -- we've all been there. Doctors prescribed sex because an expulsion of sexual fluids and energy would restore equilibrium. I don't know about the four humors part, but otherwise, the theory makes good sense to me.

Peter Lewis Allen describes the relationship between scientific perspectives and religious perspectives on sex and disease: lovesickness, leprosy, the plague, masturbation, and AIDS. It's difficult when science sees the etiology of something in terms of humors, germs, viruses, and what have you, and the church sees it only morally. The entire book is worth reading just for this quote: 17th century English author Thomas Dekker wrote to his countrymen who were threatened by the plauge, "Only this antidote apply: Cease vexing Heaven, and cease to die." The BUBONIC PLAGUE! But don't we say precisely the same thing to people today: you can avoid AIDS, infertility, singleness, and cancer by praying and avoiding sin. Allen's historic perspective provides an effective mirror for Christians to see our own constructs of causality in suffering, though it's hard to look for very long.

I'm actually heartened by the 16 century-long stalemate over lovesickness. The church never "won" -- popular understandings of melancholy and mental illness continued to use lovesickness as an organizing concept. And science never "won" -- because orgasm doesn't really restore harmony between red bile, black bile, blood and phlegm. (Or does it?) I think people's symptoms were real, but the organizing framework of both science and church was inadequate. That's what I think about homosexuality today -- the discourse itself is framed incorrectly, in a way that prevents any 'side' from ever 'winning.' But I'm hopeful for all parties: secular scientists, religious scientists, religious non-scientists, and just plain old people -- if we can stick it out for another 1600 years, maybe we'll have a breakthrough.

Just an update

I've written three posts but didn't publish them -- everything is coming out like a secret journal that a high school girl might leave lying around so someone will see her red flag emotions and come listen to her problems. And I don't really even have any serious problems.

The sad thing is that my husband took one boy to New York for the week, and I'm sort of lovesick about both of them -- listless, longing, anxious, worried, melancholy. The remaining twin has begged for daddy, for church, for a babysitter...and is doing every bad behavior he can think of to reinforce the point, so I'm wondering why God gave the poor kid me as a mother (not a helpful line of thought when, in the moment, all I really need to do is terminate the haircut he's giving himself).

The main thing is that I've been working on my book for a couple of hours each day. Though I'm on duty all the time, having three of us in the house instead of five lightens my load significantly, and in the absence of an adult companion with whom to converse, I just think about my book constantly. It's nice, but sheesh, difficult. I'm thinking of those famous writing quips, "I enjoy having written" or "Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." I am getting words on the page, which is good, but they're dredging up all manner of self-indulgent negativity. Of the 10th grade variety, seriously.

Are you reading this? Did I accidentally hit "publish"? Oops, I meant for it to be secret.

Pick a color, take a stand

This summer we're doing as much work as possible to turn this house we purchased last year into our home. Decorating stuff -- walls, rooms, even my own face -- is not my cup of tea. But we've made a little progress: some green walls, some blue walls, some bright white trim, and some shiny deep red curtains.

There's some kind of decorating conspiracy (non-radicals might call it "marketing") going on at Home Depot, Kohls, outlet stores, JCPenney, Bed Bath and Beyond, and the like. Their rugs, curtains, frames, and especially "art" are all the same color scheme, some kind of American upwardly mobile middle-class English-speaking "neutral." Can you picture it? It's framed 'art' consisting of flowers or landscapes in streaked soft strokes of burgundy, brown, brackish green, and gauzy off-white. Not a single color takes a stand: sort of red, sort of brown, sort of green, sort of white...so it will sort of match anything.

Do people really believe they are making neutral choices? Making your living room neutral is not neutral; it's choosing what corporate interests have decided to mass-market to your demographic. Not choosing is a choice.

If you like Kohl's art, that's fine by me -- you might not like the Disneyland papercut of my profile from 1978 that hangs in our bathroom, or the photographs of dearly departed cats whose names I teach to my children. But if people think neutrality is possible in home decor, then maybe they also think it's possible in life. People really do think their language neutral, their food normal, their politics harmless, their religion obviously true. Those born into dominant cultural groups can do nothing, just live by default settings, and believe that while they may not be doing much good, they're not doing much harm, either -- just coasting on neutral.

Look around your living room and wake up! If it looks like a Pottery Barn catalog or the clearance aisle at Linens N Things, then you've been sold more than just a slip cover. Maybe if we start making strong choices at home -- crimson, perhaps, or turquoise -- we'll start seeing that our lives are the result of the choices we make about them. And maybe by learning to have say about the colors of our couches, we'll learn how to say more about what's going on in the world around us.

Two hundred seventy three friends, one with benefits

I do not date my husband. Christians keep telling me we must continue dating even after marriage, which is about the silliest thing I've ever heard. Dating is about trying to see whether or not you like someone or trying to get someone to like you. It's about being available. That ship has sailed. Who's going to buy the cow when the milk is spilling out and being lapped up by a baby? My personal appearance and demeanor are much less persuasive than they were when I was available, and you know, that's as it should be.

Yesterday a beautiful teenage girl played with my baby at the public pool. She managed to keep one eye on him and the other on every male in the pool who might be looking at her. Several times each minute she adjusted the sweep of wet hair on forehead, the cling of bikini to breast, and the scarcity of fabric on butt cheek. Turns out this isn't the best strategy for childcare; Max's head went underwater while he was in her arms. My maternal child watch works even for three kids in a pool -- I watch them with both eyes. No one watches me, because like I said, that ship has sailed. She said to me, "He's sooooo cute! I hope someday I can have a baby with blonde hair and blue eyes." But her greater concern for her hair than for the blonde-haired blue-eyed cutie in her arms revealed a more powerful short-term hope: a date. And that is as it should be.

Today James and I went on a river cruise, The Pride of the Susquehanna, a historical boat ride in 97 degree heat through the majestic 36-inch-deep river criss-crossed with highways, accompanied by a blaring narrator who introduced the Susquehanna as "Native Americans, which are also known as Indians." We were without our children, enjoying each other's company, but it was not a date. I will not date this man or any other, but in the parlance of facebook, I will friend him. After the bikini no longer fits, after the hair highlights have faded, after the babies have come, a woman needs a friend more than she needs a boyfriend. Of course the romance and sexiness of dating should fold into marriage, but why use "dating" as a metaphor for intimacy in marriage? In friendship, impression management diminishes, assessment of the other declines, and two selves meet across difference and take delight. In the history of human culture, friendship and marriage rarely accompany each other -- it's a great opportunity to friend the one we wed.

What I Did This Summer

This summer I learned about poison ivy. It is very, very, very, very poisonous. That's how it got its name. It is all over my yard. My neighbor said, "You have a bumper crop!" and he laughed, but it wasn't funny. If you cut poison ivy, the poison oil stays on your garden tools for weeks. If you sever its vine, it regrows ten shoots for every one you cut off. If you burn it, you'll inhale poison particles and they will burn your lungs. If you're really allergic and breathe the air in a yard where poison ivy is, it will burn your lungs. If you spray it with chemicals twice a year for the rest of your life, you can manage it. When you go out to spray poison ivy, you have to wear a mask over your head. If the poison ivy knows it's you who is trying to kill it, it will come into your bedroom at night and rub all over your body when you're asleep. It happened to a friend of my cousin's. This photo of a man's rash is really gross. That's what I did this summer. I can hardly wait for school to start so I can stop going out in my yard.

You're Gonna Need an Ocean / Of Calamine Lotion

Bad things really do come in threes...

1. Max and I inadvertently ignored the "leaves of three, leave them be" advice, because we both have poison ivy. I ripped open my prednazone prescription at the pharmacy counter, and started pouring calamine lotion on my arms in the first aid aisle. I have about 20 spots of it on both arms and legs. Max looks awful, but doesn't act bothered by it.

2. I compiled the summer's work on my book - I've been writing every day - and have only 43 pages to show for it. And I probably shouldn't show it to anyone, anyway. Maybe I need to bump up the font size to 24 or 36. Or add "very, very" to a bunch of sentences.

3. After many hours of researching and visiting preschools, the boys finally got into one that they now can't go to because they're not potty-trained. (One sort of is and the other really isn't.) This has been devastatingly stressful for me, not to mention for the under-performing twin I've been pressuring. The only way to reduce the stress is to cancel the preschool and find another option at the last minute, which I'm doing. This is bad news, but there's a potentially different-but-great situation for the boys, so if that works out, it's OK.

This isn't much of a post...I guess I just wanted to tell the world I have poison ivy.

Blog format help

On The Paris Project, comments appear on this page when people write them. On this blog, where I'm a contributor, you have to click to see the comments. Do you know how we can make that blog have the comments appear on the page with the post?

Is the Bible fit for children?

I want to teach my children the Christian way mostly by living it. We give and receive forgiveness, look for love, thank God, and ask questions when things go wrong. And they go to Sunday School, which is their primary source of Christian-specific religious vocabulary. They come home talking about Jesus or God, and then I try to bring up those words all week. Last week it was "Bible" as in "the Bible tells me so."

So last night I got out their Toddler Bible (the one by Kenneth Taylor) and read Genesis 1-11. It was awful! They were hooked in by Genesis 1-2 and all the animals illustrated in the garden. Then bam, 'mommy and daddy' (Adam and Eve) are sad, crying, and put on time out. Why? Why would that happen to adults? Next page, Cain is killing his brother with a stone (in the illustration). Again, both boys are frightened, asking "Why hurt?" "Owie" "Why hurt brother?" Alright, next page. Shit - it's the flood. Scary storm, scary rain, people are getting hurt. We ended with the tower of babel, which wasn't so bad - a tower that doesn't get finished is everyday fare in their toy room.

I'm determined to read the Bible to my kids, but is it really appropriate for 3-year-olds? I considered starting with Jesus, but how can they come to love a character who will die at the end? And then come back - huh? Honestly, this first attempt at Bible reading didn't go well. It really scared them with punishment, sadness, death, and violence. And the interpretation of these things scares me more than them (they're more captivated by the literal story)-- but God still loved them, God punished them because he loved them, God saved the people he loved and drowned the other ones. Maybe I need to read the actual text that wouldn't have interpretation or lessons - just the raw stories that we can midrash, but that seems better suited for a later age, maybe 5 and up.

I'm realizing quickly that my religion isn't something to 'pass down', as if I hold it like the Olympic Torch, ready to pass on to the next open hand. I've known the Bible all my life, but I've never known it as a parent -- a parent who wishes her boys to become peaceful men, worried at all the violent boys and men of the Bible and the praise they often receive. I've never had so much power in a mentoring relationship, to communicate a worldview and a universal history to a blank slate who absorbs new material like a sponge and believes everything I say.

I've always understood Genesis 3-11 as establishing the profound brokenness of the world, and then things start to pick up with Abraham. I don't think I believe that, either -- what good is it to Mother Eve, bereaved and distraught, to tell her someone else's family will be greatly blessed in the distant future? When the boys are old enough, I want to ask them, "Where's the love? "Where's the grace?" in each story and see if they can find it. Maybe mining the text like that, searching for goodness in the complexity of treachery and foolhardiness will give them skills for finding, and making, joy and peace in their world.

Compliments

I've received three compliments recently, all of which leave me with some ambivalence.

The first was from a shopper at Home Depot. I was there with Max, who was running around and flirting with strangers while I tried to make a decision about joint compound. A man said, "It's so good to be a stay-at-home mom. It's such an investment in your children." I who am in fact a working mom with a stay-at-home father, pretended for just a minute, smiled and said "Thank you."

The second was from an editor who wrote, "Your pieces are very well-written, however, we would like to publish none of them."

The third was from my husband, "Jenell, you're so much better than me at cleaning the big electric griddle when it's greasy." (That's a very thin compliment laid over self-interest.)

Reality Check

What I consulted before dinner...and what I made.

My Muse

Almost every morning the last few weeks, my muse wakes me up at 5:30 and I go over to my office and write for 60-90 minutes and then return home for breakfast. The day of parenting/housework is still the same length, so this approach to writing is making me tired, but I can't refuse the muse. I thought muses were sensual, complimentary young women in gauzy gowns, but mine looks just like Psalty the Singing Songbook. He's a little animated book with stubby, clumsy arms and cloddish bedroom slippers. He isn't even nice; this morning he hissed, "Wriiiiiite me! Wriiiiiite me!" in a tone that combined bad ghost and taunting sibling.

One of my other shadow selves, a me I will never be, is a married male writer who makes unilateral demands about his writing rhythm: "I simply can't finish this book without uninterrupted work time." "I need to take a long weekend and really pound out this manuscript." "The publisher's deadline/tenure application/promotion is coming up, so I need to do whatever it takes." "I can't write unless I'm in a Denver hotel room with drugs and a male prostitute." The nicest guys set up home offices, from which they emerge to eat meals someone else prepared or play with kids someone else has been supervising. And then they acknowledge their families in the book with, "My wife and eight children were so supportive and understanding when I said, 'I'll be just a minute' for the last seven years. I couldn't have written the book without them." He certainly couldn't have, but many wives would rather have had household help than a book in their hands, and every single kid in the universe would rather have a parent lying on the couch with them, sitting bored at the park with them, or even parenting with some degree of distraction and irritation with them than succeeding professionally.

So I'm writing a book in less than 90 minute increments. I wrote my dissertation in 8-10 hour chunks of time in solitude. My first book, the same way. My second book, pretty much the same way. This third book, in snippets of time that make minimal demands on my husband and don't occur during my children's waking hours. There are some costs, to be sure. I've been working on the book for five years and won't finish any time soon. And ... honestly, that's the only real cost. The research, the energy, the fun is all the same, but broken up into little chunks. And while in one sense I never get good writing time, in another sense I write all day long. I carry a journal and jot down sentences. Sermons provide wonderful time for the mind to wander. I 'feed' my brain problematic transitions or paragraphs before bed, and the muse wakes me with solutions. It makes me happy to think about the book during the 23 hours of the day I'm not working on it.

I thought privilege -- the ability to insist on one's necessary work rhythm, to work for as long as one likes, to meet the demands of bosses or guilds -- came with income-production. The person bringing home the bacon gets to do whatever it takes to slaughter the pig. But no, privilege accrues to maleness itself. When fathers want to do something 'extra' like writing a book, they can often rely on their wives to pick up the slack. When mothers want to do it, they often do it more slowly and in broken pieces of time, and they pay or beg someone outside the household to help. Margaret Mead looked cross-culturally and said that it's not the nature of the activity - hunting, building, warfare, income-earning - that accrues prestige; it's the gender of the person doing it. When men weave mats, then mat-weaving is perceived as skilled and valuable. Women's work is perceived as less valuable, whether it's producing human beings, sustaining life, or producing food. On the one hand, this is just a whine -- why can't I have whatever I want? And on the other hand I could be mis-read as hating or stereotyping men. But on the third hand, there are real systemic issues here.

I value my writing and my professor job and so does my husband -- I'm not commenting on my household or marriage per se, but rather the confluence of social patriarchy and personal maternal desire as it bears on my writing life. If I insisted on taking days and days this summer to write my book, my husband would say "Come on!", my kids would be disappointed, and I would be lonely. I want to write this book like nobody's business, but even more, I want to be there with cupped hands and sympathetic eyes when someone feels like vomiting in a carpeted area. (Well, not if that person is my husband. Come on!)

Ode to blogging

Someone recently talked with me about what from her blog might be publishable, turned into something 'real.' Some in the academy have suggested to me that my blog is too personal, too unsystematic, scattered, a little irresponsible, and perhaps even an expression of my psychological instability.

The belief that writing is valuable when it is peer-reviewed, written by someone with a graduate degree, in formal voice, published on paper, accepted by an editor or by a corporation, and on an impersonal topic is a social construction that legitimates and reproduces the academy. This belief has meaning and helps cultivate quality, but it is also self-serving and hierarchy-producing. Popular writing (for laypersons outside one's disciplinary guild) is a rung down from peer-review academic publication, and then blogging... well, blogging is seen as more or less public journaling. My blog isn't on my vitae partly because I don't want the blog to be related to writing that earns social capital in my job, and partly because I can't let a promotion/tenure committee see this writing and think I intend for it to be taken seriously. (But to everyone else in the world, yes, I intend it to be taken seriously!)

I reject the status structure of writing in the academy. I say
it's good to be edited and it's good to be raw
it's good to be in print and it's good to reach an audience directly and immediately
it's good to be systematic and organized and it's good to be free
it's good to be serious and it's good to be funny
it's good to be an integrated thinker, and it's not very good to be a talking head

But it's also good to use the academic paradigm to cultivate critical thinking and carefully crafted argumentation, it's good to earn tenure, and it's very good to get paid for purchased, edited, and printed on paper words. So there's that.

But to my blogging friend I say, "This is real: these words, this post, this moment. Nothing else you do with these words will make them any more real than they are right now."

Tech question

I have a personal website hosted at Messiah College, but you'd have a hard time finding it if you google my name. I think you'd have to go to the sociology department website and look under faculty...which means you'd have to know I work at Messiah and in which department. I would for that page to be found by people who google my name (these people are surely out there by the thousands).

I asked the web people to add tags to my website that would be 'read' by google, which they did. But why, still, is my page so obscure to search engines?

Opinions, advice, suggestions, criticisms, and sympathetic comments are welcome.

Num-Nums Galore

A conversation last night meandered from memoir to manipulative nursing, which sparked this brainstorm: I'm going to write my memoir about manipulative nursing and title it "Num-Nums Galore." I'll tell the story of when I called this fundamentalist radio host while he was denigrating public nursing for being sexual and 'oo-ey.' I said if he's really pro-life and pro-family then he should support nursing women and their children with no caveats. Then I said, "And hey, I'm nursing right now as I talk to you. Does that make you uncomfortable? Do you find that sexual?" Or the time I nursed my infant twins simultaneously and they craned their necks to see each other and couldn't nurse for laughing so hard. That deserves a whole chapter. It was hilarious.

With Max, my 14-month-old, we've moved from nursing as life-sustaining nutrition into co-dependent nursing based on manipulation, anger, and fear. I fear Max's anger so I nurse him -- that's the gist of it. He nurses to avoid the more difficult work of chewing food, to make me stop talking to another adult, to get my attention away from the twins, and when he's bored. It's not right, but I'm powerless in the relationship -- you should see this kid get angry.

In memoir, there's always the danger of being too self-absorbed or too self-revealing, and I can see as well as you that nursing is a subject that approaches both of those boundaries. My story will do what memoir ought to do: connect the personal to the universal and develop a theme that everyone can relate to even if their experiences are different. Here's the theme: letting people put their mouth on your private parts for less than excellent reasons is a bad habit to start, and a tough one to break.

Time to start writing.