The sins of

When I was young -almost an adult, not a child, not anything more than a tangled mess of hormones and love and madness - I went to visit my family in Indiana. 

Indiana is a place of impossible breathlessness. Silent expanses of corn and soy are broken by the whir of cars and the distant but immutable cries of birds. In Indiana there is such a passion in waiting, in that sweet breaking moment of what if. I never liked it, I thought the place too bitter to taste, chicken and noodles and repressed, smashed down like risen dough, the things you shouldn't say. Until I was eighteen and thought myself old and suddenly, bone-shockingly loved, I felt that Indiana was a place of the end of things. 

That earlier trip, I sat with my family and wondered if the sins of the mother, and the mother, and the mother, would curse us forever with needing. Childhood means submitting perhaps to the ideas, concepts unsure and preformed, that are passed down like cobwebs, china, overeating and restraint. 

We are so much what we are made. How many of us have been told by our parents, this is what my parents did, and aren't you glad I'm different? They are sifted through that need for love and acceptance just as we, perhaps less rigorously and unjustly raised, feel the desperate search for identity and well, just being okay.

It is, I'm finding, very difficult to be an adult, mostly because no one ever tells you when it will start and you find yourself, unbelieving, living. If I talk about the sins of the parents it is only in terms of the sins that I will in turn commit because I just don't know, not yet, that I'm supposed to be perfect, a grown up, filling all the gaps and satisfying all the needs and never making a mistake.  

Parents make mistakes. So do kids. We all blame each other, because that makes it easier to bear.  We'd like to blame the people who came before us, because that is logical and can't be argued and is so often so painfully clear in our minds, those moments in which we were failed.  But it makes me sad, sometimes, to think of that night which I remember so clearly and so dimly - the fog and dismal helplessness, the glowing television, the sharp inherited angles of the people I love - that there was a moment when I understood, at last, that adults carry on the sins of their parents, and that parents aren't perfect, and that deep in me is the soft thrum of terrible anger, flashing fury, and the gentle but unyielding, we all have to grow up, sometime. 

Dr. What Now?

I have been, am, and always will be a fan of "genre fiction."  Blame it on Star Trek: The Next Generation coming out right after I was born and the many nights watching adventures and philosophy and ethics.  Blame it on my first, water-stained copy of The Golden Compass (water-stained due to far too many bath time readings).  Blame it on a gorgeous and now mostly destroyed copy of The Mists of Avalon.  Blame it on paganism, tarot, and the Renaissance Festival.  Blame it on the kanar, the saurian brandy, and the synthehol.

When I was little, Riker and Troi were like my parents.  And no, Nemesis, I will never forgive you.

All of this is to say - I am a fan of Dr. Who.  But I never was really, really into it until last night, when we watched Vincent and the Doctor.


I hadn't seen Dr. Who, ever, until college.  Of course, it and its mythos were a part of my life as a geek, because my parents and, it seemed, the whole fan world treasured the Doctor like a loved and lost member of the greatest family ever known - the nerds, the writers, the introverts.  Dr. Who was that last remnant of secret and treasured geek television.  Bad special effects, good writing, and terribly skimpy outfits.

I was born to a different world, shiny and oh-so-nineties, and the Doctor seemed as far away to me as Yorkshire on a sunny day with plain biscuits and no tea.  Until last night.  When I saw, new and fresh and painful, the power of genre fiction.  Until I saw the sky turn paint.

When I was very little I did my greatest work of art.  My father, ever the believer, still has it framed - I did Starry Starry Night.  It was spiraling triangles and stars.  It's probably the truest thing I ever made, because I made it, conscious and young, out of love.  I made it because I saw the sky that way, too.

Vincent van Gogh was bipolar, did you know?  Some blame it on the absinthe.  But let me tell you, Vincent van Gogh was bipolar, you know?  And I never knew it, I never thought, until I saw him, breathtaking, red-headed, sobbing and laughing, in a medium which is commonly derided, ridiculed, and made terribly uncool.  Genre fiction.  That thing that tells us who we really are - because far-fetched computers and mechanical friends and time travel can never, will never, take away from the human existence.  Life in genre is life - genre has the capacity to reveal to us the things we are, the things we hope to be, the things we are afraid of in ourselves.  Vincent van Gogh, fighting perhaps the biggest Cockatiel I've ever seen, said more to me about myself than I've ever read in Chekhov.

The sky turned into paint.  The artist met himself.  Genre created that truth which we see in the corner of our eyes but can't face.  He was sick and he loved and he died.  Yellow sunflowers and aliens and alcoholism and time travel and me.

I know this, because the Doctor showed me.

I went to a good school and got a good degree and never wrote one bit of genre fiction.  It wasn't done.  But don't let it fool you - genre fiction is what makes us who we are.  We are constantly more than ourselves.  We look to the future, television and books and comics, and we imagine, what if?  What if we could see that which we are with clarity and hope and a knowledge that Vincent van Gogh turned the sky into paint and was so, so human?  So impossible.  So sad.  So like me.

This post is dedicated to my stepmother.  She knows why.

A Second Chance - Oakland Mills and the New Columbia

Today, I happened to be lucky enough to experience something new.

My mother is one of the most active and vital supporters of Columbia, of her home village of Oakland mills, and of progress.  A lot of people look at progress in Columbia as the great specter of over-development and the (ever feared) traffic jam.  My mother sees progress as the re-vitalization of her village, as the happiness of my sister, a student at Talbott Springs, as the return of optimism and hope to a place that has been victim to stagnation and to, "that's how it has always been."  

My mother loves her neighborhood restaurant, the Second Chance Saloon.  Not so long ago, the Second Chance was the Last Chance (and how apt the names).  Now, this haven of Sunday sports, good beer, and quality food, is looking for more support - not only in the community but from without.  I love the Second Chance, too - I've been to all the cool new spots in Columbia, and only the Second Chance has staff and friends who know me and remember me.  I love beer and pub food; I love football and shuffleboard; I love friendly faces and good happy hours.  

Tonight, my mother and I went to ladies' pint night.  We got to sample quite a few beers, eat some I-need-bigger-pants onion rings, and sit at the same table with owners, waiters, and chefs.  Our opinions were important - as was our enjoyment.  Very few bars, from here to Philly to County Cork, could brag that they cared for their customers the way that the Second Chance does.  

My mother, her friend, and I.  Three attendees to a fabulous beer tasting.  The three only attendees.

I sat there, thinking.  If Frisco had such an event, it would be easily populated.  If Pub Dog had a beer tasting, I know I would be first in a very long line.  So what's going on, here?  Second Chance has it all - I most certainly have never had better snacks and drinks and company.  Why doesn't everyone go to the Second Chance and have good, local, honest craic?  

I know what people think about Oakland Mills.  People think ugly things.  "I would never go there after dark."  "If only there weren't so many apartments."  "I'm not one of those people."  Well, heck.  I grew up there.  I work there.  My sister goes to school there, and is getting a damned good education.  But people won't go into Oakland Mills - not even for 100 beers, onion rings, and faces so friendly that they seem like family.  I'm there a lot, and when I see kids on bikes, people in the grocery, and people on bar stools and eating dinner, the only thing I'm thinking is - this is my Columbia.  

I'm a pretty avid supporter of progress, myself.  My kind of progress means restaurants, beer, and music.  My kind of progress means going someplace where everybody knows your name.  My kind of progress means local, means honest, means open-arms and open-heart.  My kind of progress means supporting small business.  And I will not, I will not, discriminate based on economy or reputation or race.  Because, let's face it, that's pretty lame.  Is that what we want Columbia to be?  

I won't be a part of that - the easily excused narrow-mindedness.  But I will go to the Second Chance.  I'll go there for birthdays, graduation parties, a Little Lunch Music; I'll go there for beer tastings, for the very impressive bloody Mary bar, for football; and hell, I'll go there just to see some really awesome people who work hard and have fun.  I'll go there for the onion rings - as if the 100 beers couldn't tempt me!  And I'll go there because progress means having a good time.  

Progress, the New Columbia, means having real life experiences.  And it means finding pride in what is local.  And it means loving things without being bogged down by what neighborhood is better than another.  

Progress means sitting down with family, neighbors, waiters, owners, chefs - progress means sitting down with friends.  

Progress means breaking bread, cracking open a beer, and enjoying that golden diversity which is, after all, what Columbia is all about.     

World of Imagination

I have a very active imagination.

George and I went to the zoo in Baltimore today.  George had never been, and it was really neat to show him this place which holds so many memories for me.  It's not like it was when I was a kid - there are things that are the same, but the travel, the moving around, is a lot different.  No more prairie dogs at the entrance, no more pink flamingos, and most importantly, no more secret and unguarded entrance to the scum-soaked, dilapidated boat lake.  It's more limited now, and the feeling of getting lost in this maze of animals and of parkland is gone.

I remember going to the boat lake with my dad.  We walked around the green-tinged water, and stared off into the boat house, and we imagined what it must have been like - back then, you know, back then when the world was different and a little bit brighter.  The boat house looked as if it were about to fall apart with memories - dancing, picnicking, romance, and quite a lot of wood rot.  Dad and I talked and created the past like wisps of perfume, champagne, and elusive music.

The entrance of the lake was guarded by a white marble fountain, and I used to sit on the rough stone and think about dipping my feet into cool water.  This place was a secret.  This place was death-in-life, and it and its memories belonged to us.  Sweating, beating, soft-sweet-low, impressions of something gone and never to be recovered.

It's very easy for me to imagine the past.  I grew up with hundred year old transferware, and furniture to be perched upon, and pump organs, and choral music.  The past is a known quantity, in some ways - we have artifacts and treasures that give us something so full of dead passion and grace.  I can imagine the past because we, as a community, have lived it.

The future is a lot harder.  Technology beats its own drum, and things change in this uncontrollable way that is both inevitable and unbelievable.  I'd like to think that my life will continue in some known way - just like life is now, but a little different.

I feel like I'm missing something important when I think about Columbia, because when I look at the buildings I have nothing to imagine, or nothing I am capable of imagining.  That music isn't there - the scent of still waters.  We in Columbia are engaging in the practice of creating the future, and I don't quite know where I stand in that process.  I have no connection, no boat lake, no dancing with fireflies.  That doesn't mean that I won't have those things eventually.  New buildings become old, and my life becomes a part of someone else's imagination.

There's an incredible amount of love that comes from knowing the past.  I think I've mentioned identity before, and history creates identity in a lot of ways.  I don't know what it means to be a Columbian, because I don't feel I have an identity that is rooted in trees, parks, architecture, change, and the whispers of the past.  In Columbia, I don't have a boat lake.

But I want to.  I want to take my children, as my father took me, and tell stories of the imagination.  Someday this place will give me the gift of secrets, of antiquity, of the stark People Tree and still waters.

I love Baltimore, but I'm not giving up on my life here because I am determined to be a part of that thing, that soft thing, that means home.

The Real Columbia

A woman stands in the grass, the hem of her long cornflower skirt rustling, her dark skin soaking up sunlight.  She has black hair, fine and thick and curled, and a nose that seems to be a story in and of itself.

My fiance and I stop at the light on 175 and Snowden.  I stare at the woman - not at her face, but at what she has in her hands.  I look in my purse for money that I know isn't really there.  Her sign is simple - white with black block letters, and the words, "Please, in the love of God," make me hate myself and feel ashamed.

I hadn't really seen people beg on the streets in Columbia until the recession hit.  It hit hard.  I suddenly saw women - well-dressed, beautiful, mothers - with signs and hunger and bitterness and somehow still the desire, the strength, the need to protect their children.  Women you might meet at work, or at the dentist, or in Target.

Homelessness in Columbia is a shock to me - not because I'm shocked by poverty, having grown up in Baltimore and staring at the pavement and away from the desperation of urban life.  I'm shocked because I - perhaps like many others in Howard County - just don't think it could be true.  We're a community of suburbanites, yes?  Of minivans.  Of good schools and government jobs and computer programming.  How can poverty happen here?

It happens.  I see it, and working in the school system I saw it, and I felt the floor open up under me as my outdated delusions of 'burbhood became irrelevant.  We do not live in paradise.  Maybe some of us do - maybe there are people in Columbia who are living the magical and, to most, unobtainable dream of being financially secure, but I think that there aren't as many of those people as we are supposed to believe.

Columbia was an idea, a vision of intermingling, of wholeness, many races, many religions, and true happiness like marshmallow on a snowball.  But we don't really see it that way - at least not now.  We're trained not to see or not to accept the differences.  The "I don't have enough," or the, "I have too much;" the "I don't speak English," and the, "I think you should;" the "I need help," and the, "Stare at the pavement."  I've lived in Columbia since I was twelve, and it took me at least ten years to realize that there is so much disparity in this community of blind-eyed, candy-coated idealism.

I'm not trashing the original concept of this planned community.  I want us to be multi-ethnic, to have different jobs and names and village centers and identities.  That's great.  That's what a city is.

What I'm questioning is this - why did it take so long?  Why didn't I see before that there are differences in the lives of Columbians, and that we're all not doing enough to be good neighbors?

Why didn't I see that this place is turning into a city?  We've got poverty, and homelessness, and I (so help me) look in my purse because I can't face what's right in front of me.  Columbia is changing, and I think that instead of closing my eyes and maintaining the peace of a child with fingers in its ears, I should look up and say, this is what change means.  Instead of calling for new restaurants and theatres and the glitz of urbanity, maybe I should look up at the beautiful woman, for the love of God, and become a citizen of the real Columbia.       

The Storm

We've just experienced a terrible storm - the kind that makes you think you're going to see Dorothy, and it's not even Pride weekend yet.  Up on the third floor, in our condo, the trees have bent nearly sideways, coniferous fronds dancing violently against the siding.  It's black - the sun hasn't gone down yet, but it seems like the night will go on and on, tossed into dark with the swift crack of hail and the sharp call of sirens.

A storm.  A storm that breaks the oppressive heat.  A storm that makes me think that the world is about to be reborn, pale, naked, and twilight purple.

After the rain comes a bright, strident note - birdsong.  It's like dawn.  I asked George where the birds hid when it rained and we thought that some might fly into it and some might cling to the inner branches of the big pine trees.

The world is changed.  More sirens, more noise, and a shocking quiet like the night about to breathe.

I think that this place, Columbia, must be like that.  Some things need to be broken down into their most fundamental parts - branches and leaves and birdsong - in order to be stitched together into a whole.  I've met people who've lived here their whole lives, and they tell me that change is good - unless there's too much traffic, or not enough parking, or too much development.  I've also met people who are eager for something to break, some great dam bursting forth with promise and wildness.

Plans are made.  Trees are cut down.  Buildings go up.  And I'm looking toward the future, afraid of the storm, and looking into it - looking to something that I can't possibly know, can't imagine.

I can see why that might be scary, especially to those who have known this Columbia for so long, and who see the storm of change as something purely destructive.  And yes, it can be scary - after all, when I'm driving from my condo to my mother's house, I mourn the trees on Oakland Mills that have given way to what I can hardly believe will be "park land."

But I need that storm of change; I, who miss living in the city, who love this school system, who need open air, who need dancing and late nights and art galleries and yes, even that, even the occasional traffic jam.

It's so dark now that the doors to our porch are like golden mirrors in the lamp light.  I don't know what tomorrow's going to look like - if it's going to be hot and hellish like today, with sweaty teachers and children and parents, or if it's going to be cool-blissful as I think June should be.

Either way, I can't be afraid of the change.  I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and be in a world I know not, and I need to be ready.    

After the Change

Long story short - I'm not a HouseHon anymore, and I don't quite know what that means for my "online persona."  Such as it is!

My current, full-time job fills me with such joy.  I'm working with kids, and I'm learning so much, and I'm absolutely in love with my days.  And G, my fantastic fiance, has been away for work, which means I've been living with my Mom (my brilliant blogger).

I started this blog because I had something to say about my life as a part-time employee and full-time HouseHon. Now, I feel I have a lot to say about other things.  I have a lot to say about being with kids and being surprised and delighted by them.  I have a lot to say about learning how to be in a couple.  And I have a lot, a whole lot, to say about being a big sister.  

In the past week and a half, I have worked on pints and quarts, pictographs, checks and balances, and patience.  At home, I've been watching Disney programming for my ever-too-grown-up super sassy sis.  I've been photographing fashion shows and giggling about boys.  And frankly, this new life makes my in-between stuckness seem - seem, well, ages ago.  Done.  And there is a little part of me - I guess, somewhere, I'm mourning it.

Again, I have to remind myself to return to HoCo.  Well, here it is -- I work in a wonderful school.  These kids are so endearingly sweet and so supremely challenging, and it all happens because I work in Howard County.  What I do would not be the same if I did it somewhere else.  Recently, I attended an event at which the students showed off their own work, and I was stunned by the amount of passion and fun that came with good teaching and great support.  I'm amazed by my colleagues and mentors, and by my students, and by their parents.

And yes, I miss painting my toenails, watching re-runs, and doing dishes.  But when I was doing those things, I was missing a little, aching part of myself that knew that being a teacher was what I really wanted to do.  What I want to do.  I want to do it here, in Howard County, in this home after Baltimore, in this place of grass and no sidewalks and no real downtown.  And that - that's why I'm a HoCo - a HouseHon, a para, a sister, a daughter, and a woman about to get married and make a life.

'Cause if these are the kids that are raised here, I couldn't do better.