There are things I don’t believe I do well, and don’t like to do (funny how those go hand in hand) and giving a speech is one of them. I’m grateful ….that this talkis limited to three minutes. It’s a measure of how much I love this church that I am up here speaking to you;Kevin and I feel that we receive so much more from Grace Church than we give. We give when we are asked, and ongoing, in whatever ways we can think of. It’s one of those principles of life that hopefully one discovers early on- the more you give of yourself, the more involved you are, the greater benefit you receive . This idea of giving is intrinsically linked to gratitude. Giving of oneself makes one more aware, more grateful for blessings. The more involved one is at Grace, the more blessed one feels, the more grateful. It’s a paradox, but that’s how it seems to work.
To me, gratitude is essentially an awareness.
Spiritual thinkers through the ages have posited that what we put our mind on grows, or becomes our reality. I can’t help but be reminded of those I work with as a mental health nurse…daily I meet folks who cannot stop thinking of ways to kill themselves, and sometimes they take action. In order to make an assessment, I have these odd conversations with folks in which we dispassionately discuss how they planned to jump off a bridge, take pills, or run their car into a bridge abutment. Taken out of context, anywhere else such sentences would appear as totally incongruous or even blasphemy…and yet they are spoken on the path to healing, or they wouldn’t be spoken at all, just suppressed. One has to acknowledge the present awareness in order to begin to think of living again.
On the gratitude scale, a person whose mind is constantly occupied by suicide cannot be simultaneously counting their blessings. As with many types of mental illness, a person’s equilibrium can be compromised because certain thoughts,certain emotions, predominate and become the entire awareness to the exclusion of others. It can become a negative habit of mind; the converse is also true, that maintaining a practice of gratitude is a habit of mind as well.
It’s possible that maintaining a mental stance of gratitude may even be self-protective, as it demonstrates awareness. Certainly, when we thank God in prayers, we are in this stance. Apparently the early American pilgrims built seven times more graves than they did houses, yet despite their losses, the enduring tradition they have bequeathed us is a day of Thanksgiving – fast approaching, I might add. Nor is it an accident that many of the words associated with gratitude speak to holy origins – words like benediction, invocation, blessing, and grace , to name a few.
We can demonstrate our practice of gratitude by giving, praying, doing good works, acknowledging, and maintaining awareness. I will close with these words from the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson:
There are two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give. ~
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Evidence that I May Have Become an Old Fart
2) I cannot abide the use of spandex in my long sleeve shirts, jeans or pants- nay, in any garment. Within an hour of wear my knees/elbows seem convinced they are undergoing selective waterboarding.
3) Recently attended the movie Pitch Perfect with our two female exchange students, along with a row of college girls seated behind us. At various moments, the actors would break into song. I knew not one of the words of any of the songs, but those around me enthusiastically sang everything, indicating these were major hits.
4) "Modern" cut pants liberally expose my middle-age spread. When one bends over, the 'coin slot' is revealed in all its glory.
5) I always pay the parking meter.
6) I vote in primary elections.
7) I tell my kids that when I was growing up, we didn't have malls, video recorders, cable TV, Old Navy, cell phones, or computers, let alone "social media". We played entire sides of LPs and read the album covers, rode bikes and made brownies. The idea of always reaching people instantly was off the table. When you ran out of gas, you waited patiently for a good Samaritan. They can't conceive of this existence.
8) When I see women out shopping wearing kiddie-print flannel pajamas, I am horrified and think of them as slobs who can't bother to get dressed.
9) I just started texting in the past year.
10) My mother thought that only gypsies had pierced ears, thus when I finally got them, it was considered risque. Now they won't stay open so I can no longer wear the damn earrings anyway.
11)If I don't hit the hairdresser every three weeks, I sport a 1/2 inch silver skunk stripe as my part.
12) The sight of men with tattoos is abhorrent to me, let alone women.
13) I yearn for the days when major music artists actually had bands, and everyone knew how to play at least one instrument well. Today, that is a rarity.
14) I can't be bothered to download music online, and thus still buy CDs, which I find inadequate in fidelity compared to the sound of LPs.
15) I still read books.
16) I drive a 2004 Buick Century.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
The Adventure Begins
My year perrenials ( a new verb I just coined) in September, even before I was an educator. For someone who attended no less than seven institutions of higher learning on her way to earning three degrees, the school calendar is hard-wired in. We won't count the half-finished technical writing masters at University of North Texas or the paralegal certificate, those educational u-turns... nay, verily I proclaim with a straight face that every single learning experience continues to be utilized and applied to this very day.
As far as the premature case of empty nest, it may well be the result of attempting to adopt a total of seven older children over six years and having just one manage to stick, after all the effort and heartache. Have the other six been adopted by anyone? No, but most would have if those pigheaded morons at DCYF would just listen to their parents in the trenches. The photo above was taken three kids ago. Do you think in the old days when many offspring died that parents marked the passage of time using the deaths of their children? Instead of fall or spring or a number, that time would be known as "when Sandy left us" ....such events are nearly as traumatizing as the death of a child. It has a way of stopping you in your tracks, putting life on hold. This year alone, we'd already lost two kids after one last year, although the most recent two I can't bear to talk about just yet.
They are not the reason we won't attempt to adopt again; that honor lies with the last, the final state social services caseworker who repeatedly lied and back-stabbed us over the course of 15 months. Lest you think I have it in for this class of person, I will say that my previous experiences with such workers had in fact been uniformly positive. Alas, this misguided woman was backed by her organization all the way to the very top. I was personally told by the head of the organization that the children would be taken away if I didn't toe the nonsensical party line - and then, as they had repeatedly, the organization contradicted itself. They made up new rules that applied only to our family, and subsequently refused to honor those selfsame rules when the shoe was on the other foot. The subject defies sensibility - there's a book in it somewhere. Invariably, in my life when it's time to move on and I still think this is something I need to be doing, it requires a whopping dose of something really nasty to turn me off. Finally I heeded the message, though I can't keep the kids out of my life just yet.
On a lighter note: our newfound international student exchange organization is dubiously blessed with an acronym that had to be penned by a non-English speaker. In all sincerity - phonetically, it is pronounced "Assy". Kevin and I run around the house making "assy" jokes and mimicking fake "assy" commercials, replete with butt shots, such as " Assy come home" which poses a nice double entendre on the international student side of things. The poor girls haven't arrived yet, but when they do, it will be our special pleasure to begin teaching them English slang.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
According to a 2011 report by the Evan B. Donaldson foundation http://www.adoptioninstitute.
fewer older youth are being adopted from foster care than at any time in the last ten years.
"Adoption of older youth, as well as subsidized guardianship (discussed later in this paper), are important ways to create such relationships for youth at risk of aging out of care. Each legally formalizes a relationship with an important adult or adults, removes the youth from direct involvement in the child welfare system, and typically continues state financial support, access to medical care through Medicaid, and ongoing services through the subsidy."
Numerous studies have shown that children who age out of foster care or emancipate will face high rates of homelessness (up to 49%) drug and alcohol addiction, and incarceration. Due to their lack of supports and previous emotional challenges, young adults who leave foster care without a family will disproportionately drain resources and end up costing 'the system' or the state far more than children who have been adopted.
Although the Donaldson report highlights state efforts such as "You Gotta Believe" a New York based agency targeted solely to recruiting adoptive parents for older youth. How difficult would it be to form a similar agency for the five New England states, whose goal was to prevent ANY youth leaving care without a family ? Organizations such as Adopt Us Kids ostensibly serve the same purpose, but if my experience is any guide, they serve largely as a front. Over the course of two years I submitted more than ten homestudy packets to social workers listed on that site for specific children as 'requesting homestudy' . I heard back ONCE from one Ohio social worker who said the child pictured was not yet available...and never heard from him again. From the rest I never heard anything, though the same children I inquired about (multi-racial sibling groups) continue to be pictured as available for adoption on the site YEAR AFTER YEAR ( and today). I had more luck using a state site through Maine social services when I submitted requests, and also through the Maine Heart Gallery site which has since been eliminated - in that instance I heard from workers by phone,and was even invited to two Maine 'adoption parties', but again that effort was not productive. If I, as an educated, motivated trained foster parent with homestudy in hand, knocking hard on the door, cannot get through what reality faces other potential adoptive parents, who may not even be foster parents yet?
My point is that states are not doing enough to get older children adopted- and in fact have made few changes to the way they operate social services to specifically meet the needs of older children at risk of aging out. Programs such as You Gotta Believe are an excellent response to this need; the question is, why is this organization such an isolated phenomenon?
fewer older youth are being adopted from foster care than at any time in the last ten years.
"Adoption of older youth, as well as subsidized guardianship (discussed later in this paper), are important ways to create such relationships for youth at risk of aging out of care. Each legally formalizes a relationship with an important adult or adults, removes the youth from direct involvement in the child welfare system, and typically continues state financial support, access to medical care through Medicaid, and ongoing services through the subsidy."
Numerous studies have shown that children who age out of foster care or emancipate will face high rates of homelessness (up to 49%) drug and alcohol addiction, and incarceration. Due to their lack of supports and previous emotional challenges, young adults who leave foster care without a family will disproportionately drain resources and end up costing 'the system' or the state far more than children who have been adopted.
Although the Donaldson report highlights state efforts such as "You Gotta Believe" a New York based agency targeted solely to recruiting adoptive parents for older youth. How difficult would it be to form a similar agency for the five New England states, whose goal was to prevent ANY youth leaving care without a family ? Organizations such as Adopt Us Kids ostensibly serve the same purpose, but if my experience is any guide, they serve largely as a front. Over the course of two years I submitted more than ten homestudy packets to social workers listed on that site for specific children as 'requesting homestudy' . I heard back ONCE from one Ohio social worker who said the child pictured was not yet available...and never heard from him again. From the rest I never heard anything, though the same children I inquired about (multi-racial sibling groups) continue to be pictured as available for adoption on the site YEAR AFTER YEAR ( and today). I had more luck using a state site through Maine social services when I submitted requests, and also through the Maine Heart Gallery site which has since been eliminated - in that instance I heard from workers by phone,and was even invited to two Maine 'adoption parties', but again that effort was not productive. If I, as an educated, motivated trained foster parent with homestudy in hand, knocking hard on the door, cannot get through what reality faces other potential adoptive parents, who may not even be foster parents yet?
My point is that states are not doing enough to get older children adopted- and in fact have made few changes to the way they operate social services to specifically meet the needs of older children at risk of aging out. Programs such as You Gotta Believe are an excellent response to this need; the question is, why is this organization such an isolated phenomenon?
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Don't adopt in New Hampshire
In case you contemplated adopting from the state of New Hampshire- there has been no media attention to the fact - New Hampshire eliminated all special needs adoption subsidies starting this year, in July 2011, except for the most physically handicapped of children. That most children available for adoption in NH are older and have significant mental health needs and challenging behavioral problems has been ignored.
Many states do have adoption subsidies, in recognition of the fact that if you adopt a child at 13 there isn't much time to save for college, or that you will end up paying for more specialized therapies, possibly private school, childcare (even for a 15 year old, I cannot leave mine alone) and before and after school care. There are numerous studies which show that adoption subsidies prevent adoption disruption and promote healthier adoptive families. And these subsidies are only HALF funded through the state- the other half comes from the federal government.
My husband and I have adopted one child (at age 13) from the state and are now in the process of adopting two siblings ( 9 and 13), a process that, due to foot dragging by Brentwood court won't be complete until spring of 2012, possibly later. All these children are special needs and two out of three have significant mental health issues due to their previous abuse and neglect.
At minimum, emotionally these children are 3-4 years younger than their chronological age, and they need supervision all the time. Never mind the fact that after years of neglect, you want to give them swimming lessons, piano lessons, camp- the children need structured activities or they behaviorally self destruct, and they have been deprived of all the things they need to enrich their lives and grow and move forward. To give you an idea of what I mean when I say their lives need enrichment - for starters, many children that we have encountered in the system have never had a birthday party, can't tell time, can't tie their shoes - all due to neglect.
According to the NH foster adoptive parent association, most people who adopt in this state are socioeconomically lower middle class - having been to many trainings with fellow foster adoptive parents, I would agree with this; there are lots of old beater cars driving out of the parking lot at the end of the day. It would be great if loads of new Hampshire's upper middle class parents were lining up to adopt the hard to place older special needs kids, but that isn't reality.
Adoption in 2010 and 2011 was cushioned by a federal tax credit of $12,000+ per child that was made refundable- that is, a refund of that amount on your return. Prior to 2010, no such refund was available. So for a brief window, a window that closes 12-31-11, there was an opportunity to at least mitigate New Hampshire's subsidy blunder.
Other changes the state Department of Social Services has made compared to prior years- prospective adoptive parents are given little, if any weight in the adoption process. The state has insisted that our kids visit with a former foster parent we really don't care for, going so far as to mandate monthly overnight visits- at a time when we are attempting to bond with these children and create our own sense of family- our objections were denounced and we were made to feel as if we had a problem. I was told by the head of DCYF that if her foster parents weren't doing as the state wanted, maybe they shouldn't be foster parents and the state could place the children elsewhere. The implied threat was clear- do what we say or you can say goodbye to these kids.
So as prospective adoptive parents, be ready to take your kids visiting to the jail, to the relatives that abused them, and to former foster parents you can't stand- you do what the state tells you to do, even though you are assuming all of the risks and taking all of the responsibility. Once the state begins termination proceedings, you will be providing all the transportation to all these aforementioned visits you don't want, because the state no longer provides it and they will make you do it.
I've since learned that the changes to adoption subsidy law were brought in by newly elected libertarian legislators, who want to eliminate the role of the federal government in this state
( sponsored bills pending in the legislature to wipe out the Affordable Care Act)., so the fact that subsidies are 50% paid for by the federal government is actually probably the reason they were eliminated, in addition to pure ignorance.
These legislators would never take it upon themselves or their family to adopt an older special needs child from state custody and have no experience or knowledge about this population, but they want to make the lives of those who are willing to do so far more difficult.
My sincere advice to prospective New England parents who are looking to adopt from foster care - consider Rhode Island, Maine, or Massachusetts - forget New Hampshire.
Many states do have adoption subsidies, in recognition of the fact that if you adopt a child at 13 there isn't much time to save for college, or that you will end up paying for more specialized therapies, possibly private school, childcare (even for a 15 year old, I cannot leave mine alone) and before and after school care. There are numerous studies which show that adoption subsidies prevent adoption disruption and promote healthier adoptive families. And these subsidies are only HALF funded through the state- the other half comes from the federal government.
My husband and I have adopted one child (at age 13) from the state and are now in the process of adopting two siblings ( 9 and 13), a process that, due to foot dragging by Brentwood court won't be complete until spring of 2012, possibly later. All these children are special needs and two out of three have significant mental health issues due to their previous abuse and neglect.
At minimum, emotionally these children are 3-4 years younger than their chronological age, and they need supervision all the time. Never mind the fact that after years of neglect, you want to give them swimming lessons, piano lessons, camp- the children need structured activities or they behaviorally self destruct, and they have been deprived of all the things they need to enrich their lives and grow and move forward. To give you an idea of what I mean when I say their lives need enrichment - for starters, many children that we have encountered in the system have never had a birthday party, can't tell time, can't tie their shoes - all due to neglect.
According to the NH foster adoptive parent association, most people who adopt in this state are socioeconomically lower middle class - having been to many trainings with fellow foster adoptive parents, I would agree with this; there are lots of old beater cars driving out of the parking lot at the end of the day. It would be great if loads of new Hampshire's upper middle class parents were lining up to adopt the hard to place older special needs kids, but that isn't reality.
Adoption in 2010 and 2011 was cushioned by a federal tax credit of $12,000+ per child that was made refundable- that is, a refund of that amount on your return. Prior to 2010, no such refund was available. So for a brief window, a window that closes 12-31-11, there was an opportunity to at least mitigate New Hampshire's subsidy blunder.
Other changes the state Department of Social Services has made compared to prior years- prospective adoptive parents are given little, if any weight in the adoption process. The state has insisted that our kids visit with a former foster parent we really don't care for, going so far as to mandate monthly overnight visits- at a time when we are attempting to bond with these children and create our own sense of family- our objections were denounced and we were made to feel as if we had a problem. I was told by the head of DCYF that if her foster parents weren't doing as the state wanted, maybe they shouldn't be foster parents and the state could place the children elsewhere. The implied threat was clear- do what we say or you can say goodbye to these kids.
So as prospective adoptive parents, be ready to take your kids visiting to the jail, to the relatives that abused them, and to former foster parents you can't stand- you do what the state tells you to do, even though you are assuming all of the risks and taking all of the responsibility. Once the state begins termination proceedings, you will be providing all the transportation to all these aforementioned visits you don't want, because the state no longer provides it and they will make you do it.
I've since learned that the changes to adoption subsidy law were brought in by newly elected libertarian legislators, who want to eliminate the role of the federal government in this state
( sponsored bills pending in the legislature to wipe out the Affordable Care Act)., so the fact that subsidies are 50% paid for by the federal government is actually probably the reason they were eliminated, in addition to pure ignorance.
These legislators would never take it upon themselves or their family to adopt an older special needs child from state custody and have no experience or knowledge about this population, but they want to make the lives of those who are willing to do so far more difficult.
My sincere advice to prospective New England parents who are looking to adopt from foster care - consider Rhode Island, Maine, or Massachusetts - forget New Hampshire.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Kodachrome
Everybody stand up if your dad died on your birthday. No? It's a small club. This year marked our first 'anniversary' together, me at 48, him at -83 . It was an ok day, I didn't have the time or impulse to celebrate much. Later that night I found it difficult to fall asleep, and ended up contemplating the old man.
Not that I can tell you who he was, which is what kept me awake. Of all things, watching Jon Hamm's character on Mad Men tolled a bell. It awakened me to the repressed qualities of manhood in the fifties and sixties, a familiar theme. Hey, I know that guy. He looks a bit like my dad. He wears his hair like my dad did. Don't architects think in white space, in the background that defines a building? I only knew him from the exterior; ironically, my father was the family photographer. Yes, some of the best childhood photos of me were taken by the man I never knew. And because I knew him so little, my child's eye perspective on that dad was infinitely malleable. Was he like Fred Flintstone, or Herman Munster (played by Fred Gwynne)? Well, he was about that two dimensional, and his name was Fred. To a child, any Fred would do, a screen to project on was better than a void of misunderstanding.
In reality he was truly handsome, hailed from an upper crust Chestnut Hill family,wore the right clothes,belonged to the right clubs, graduated from Yale, and pretty much stuck to the script, as long as you couldn't hear the screaming tirades delivered only to the bosom of his immediate family. Not many people were privileged with that opportunity; though now that so many of his comrades
have also fallen, I'm learning that my dad wasn't the only one who played a different role behind closed doors. So many Don Draper/Dick Whittingtons out there from his generation, Jekyll and Hydes. Much much later, much too late, we got the diagnosis of bipolar, or they called it manic-depressive then. With that knowing, dark sense of tragi-comedy I smile when I recall that after leaving home (at 17, ejected to boarding school and then college, never to return) my mother kept trying to sell me on the line that 'he's so much better now'.
My mother had her own brand of repression going on; it took two to make a marriage like that work. She's the kind of person that if you call her on something, really confront her, she stops talking to you for eight years, and whatever it was never happened, or it's still your fault. I don't understand her either, but we've been close at times, in our own dysfunctional way, the only closeness I'd known growing up. Our most recent rapprochement coincided with my dad's funeral. And even then she was accusing me of having taken all the existing family photos and slides ... I'd managed at one point to transfer all the best shots to video, and that was the last time anyone recalled touching the family photo trove. It had to be my fault, right? No, I told her, you've still got them all, in your attic probably, keep looking. All the while thinking about Kate Chopin's novella on motherhood, The Awakening, wherein a woman's consciousness is analogous to the house, with the attic symbolizing both her unconscious and her incipient madness at being relegated to a role that repressed her. I believe they termed it hysteria then.
I didn't have those slides anymore, it was true. Though when I did, the process of choosing the best shots had allowed me to almost memorize the catalogue. Is it only human or simply narcissistic to be most attracted to the pics either taken of oneself or by oneself? Even then, I didn't grasp the power of what I held in my hands, though somehow I sensed its import, finding myself fascinated without understanding why. Only now, a year after his death, realization dawns. It was the perspective of the photographer that mesmerized me, the moments he chose.
I recall the little me he captured, and wonder if seeing that moment through his eyes can help me to understand if he knew what father-love was, if he knew he was approximating a dad, or even a husband. That is as close as I can get to feeling any kind of emotion from him, and it took a lot of work on my part.
As I'm groping towards this idea, my heart finds it too far remote, too intangible. I try to recall more of his shots, but what keeps springing to mind is one I took of him. He's holding a can of black Krylon spraypaint; he'd been painting the iron patio furniture, went to open a new can and it was stuck, so he'd jammed something in the eye of the spray hole, and the paint had splayed out over him, a fine spatter of black up his neck, over his chin, and onto his nose, something like the bear in the cartoon who gets a honeypot stuck on its head. His expression was sheepish, humorous, on the edge of laughing at himself.
Moments like that, I can feel as if I loved him. I certainly liked that he had a sense of humor. Love doesn't have to be reciprocal to exist, I understand that. There's the selfless love of monks and Mother Theresa, sure, but when you're talking about your immediate family, it just doesn't work unless its going both ways, both giving out and receiving back. So my moments of ... nostalgia are just that, because nothing from him ever reflected back at me, and when it did, at times the emotion coming at me or my mom or my brother was like a spewing hatred, a repudiation of what the relationship was supposed to be.
That vitriol sent me back inside myself, at that time a child who slept with a pillow tightly over her head and her tummy pressed deep into the mattress, though the muffled screams and epithets still came through. Because you couldn't tune it out totally - you had to be sure he wasn't coming for you, just in case. That girl with a habit of undercover listening too closely is the same person who spent twelve years as a cop listening to at least three radio channels simultaneously,a woman who has a very strong male side, who can always count on herself, who tends to be the emotional stability for others. Should I thank him for making me grow that in myself, or wonder that I still sleep with a pillow over my head, on my stomach.
Not that I can tell you who he was, which is what kept me awake. Of all things, watching Jon Hamm's character on Mad Men tolled a bell. It awakened me to the repressed qualities of manhood in the fifties and sixties, a familiar theme. Hey, I know that guy. He looks a bit like my dad. He wears his hair like my dad did. Don't architects think in white space, in the background that defines a building? I only knew him from the exterior; ironically, my father was the family photographer. Yes, some of the best childhood photos of me were taken by the man I never knew. And because I knew him so little, my child's eye perspective on that dad was infinitely malleable. Was he like Fred Flintstone, or Herman Munster (played by Fred Gwynne)? Well, he was about that two dimensional, and his name was Fred. To a child, any Fred would do, a screen to project on was better than a void of misunderstanding.
In reality he was truly handsome, hailed from an upper crust Chestnut Hill family,wore the right clothes,belonged to the right clubs, graduated from Yale, and pretty much stuck to the script, as long as you couldn't hear the screaming tirades delivered only to the bosom of his immediate family. Not many people were privileged with that opportunity; though now that so many of his comrades
have also fallen, I'm learning that my dad wasn't the only one who played a different role behind closed doors. So many Don Draper/Dick Whittingtons out there from his generation, Jekyll and Hydes. Much much later, much too late, we got the diagnosis of bipolar, or they called it manic-depressive then. With that knowing, dark sense of tragi-comedy I smile when I recall that after leaving home (at 17, ejected to boarding school and then college, never to return) my mother kept trying to sell me on the line that 'he's so much better now'.
My mother had her own brand of repression going on; it took two to make a marriage like that work. She's the kind of person that if you call her on something, really confront her, she stops talking to you for eight years, and whatever it was never happened, or it's still your fault. I don't understand her either, but we've been close at times, in our own dysfunctional way, the only closeness I'd known growing up. Our most recent rapprochement coincided with my dad's funeral. And even then she was accusing me of having taken all the existing family photos and slides ... I'd managed at one point to transfer all the best shots to video, and that was the last time anyone recalled touching the family photo trove. It had to be my fault, right? No, I told her, you've still got them all, in your attic probably, keep looking. All the while thinking about Kate Chopin's novella on motherhood, The Awakening, wherein a woman's consciousness is analogous to the house, with the attic symbolizing both her unconscious and her incipient madness at being relegated to a role that repressed her. I believe they termed it hysteria then.
I didn't have those slides anymore, it was true. Though when I did, the process of choosing the best shots had allowed me to almost memorize the catalogue. Is it only human or simply narcissistic to be most attracted to the pics either taken of oneself or by oneself? Even then, I didn't grasp the power of what I held in my hands, though somehow I sensed its import, finding myself fascinated without understanding why. Only now, a year after his death, realization dawns. It was the perspective of the photographer that mesmerized me, the moments he chose.
I recall the little me he captured, and wonder if seeing that moment through his eyes can help me to understand if he knew what father-love was, if he knew he was approximating a dad, or even a husband. That is as close as I can get to feeling any kind of emotion from him, and it took a lot of work on my part.
As I'm groping towards this idea, my heart finds it too far remote, too intangible. I try to recall more of his shots, but what keeps springing to mind is one I took of him. He's holding a can of black Krylon spraypaint; he'd been painting the iron patio furniture, went to open a new can and it was stuck, so he'd jammed something in the eye of the spray hole, and the paint had splayed out over him, a fine spatter of black up his neck, over his chin, and onto his nose, something like the bear in the cartoon who gets a honeypot stuck on its head. His expression was sheepish, humorous, on the edge of laughing at himself.
Moments like that, I can feel as if I loved him. I certainly liked that he had a sense of humor. Love doesn't have to be reciprocal to exist, I understand that. There's the selfless love of monks and Mother Theresa, sure, but when you're talking about your immediate family, it just doesn't work unless its going both ways, both giving out and receiving back. So my moments of ... nostalgia are just that, because nothing from him ever reflected back at me, and when it did, at times the emotion coming at me or my mom or my brother was like a spewing hatred, a repudiation of what the relationship was supposed to be.
That vitriol sent me back inside myself, at that time a child who slept with a pillow tightly over her head and her tummy pressed deep into the mattress, though the muffled screams and epithets still came through. Because you couldn't tune it out totally - you had to be sure he wasn't coming for you, just in case. That girl with a habit of undercover listening too closely is the same person who spent twelve years as a cop listening to at least three radio channels simultaneously,a woman who has a very strong male side, who can always count on herself, who tends to be the emotional stability for others. Should I thank him for making me grow that in myself, or wonder that I still sleep with a pillow over my head, on my stomach.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Taken
When I first saw the trailer for Liam Neeson's film Taken (2008), I was repulsed. Another movie about sexploitation that mimed the very ills it was alleged to combat, I thought.
Wrong.
It reminded me of George C. Scott in Hardcore (1979), yet another avenging father searching for a daughter lost to the sex trade, in that case snuff films.
I knew there was some sexual slave trade out there, even trade in children and sex tourism, but stealing an American woman from an airport- nah, way too far fetched.
Wrong again.
Believe it or not we're studying this in nursing school, a group reporting on multiple aspects over a six week span. I've been a captive audience. Cross-reference that with the fact we now tune in every satellite channel available, and I end up watching Taken.
Why this is a decent movie... from the first, Neeson is driven. He plausibly reflects the ruthlessness and impetus required of an ex CIA agent whose daughter has been kidnapped by an Albanian gang that traffics in women.Where George C. Scott trailed listlessly through low life low light American landscapes, Neeson embodies a humanized Bond, international, no boundaries, technology or ninja equally at the ready.
A former co-worker counsels him that statistically he has only 96 hours or less before his daughter is lost forever. Neeson uses every skill honed from years of dark arts, and then some. The film races tautly from Parisian seedy locale to construction site to uppercrust slave auction, Neeson sparing no mercy, leaving a trail of bodies efficiently dispatched by various methods, all the while suffering from jet lag.
It's also decent because it does not seek to exploit the victims portrayed therein. The sad truth is this kind of business really does exist. It's a good action movie, but a better commentary on an aspect of our society few want to contemplate.
Wrong.
It reminded me of George C. Scott in Hardcore (1979), yet another avenging father searching for a daughter lost to the sex trade, in that case snuff films.
I knew there was some sexual slave trade out there, even trade in children and sex tourism, but stealing an American woman from an airport- nah, way too far fetched.
Wrong again.
Believe it or not we're studying this in nursing school, a group reporting on multiple aspects over a six week span. I've been a captive audience. Cross-reference that with the fact we now tune in every satellite channel available, and I end up watching Taken.
Why this is a decent movie... from the first, Neeson is driven. He plausibly reflects the ruthlessness and impetus required of an ex CIA agent whose daughter has been kidnapped by an Albanian gang that traffics in women.Where George C. Scott trailed listlessly through low life low light American landscapes, Neeson embodies a humanized Bond, international, no boundaries, technology or ninja equally at the ready.
A former co-worker counsels him that statistically he has only 96 hours or less before his daughter is lost forever. Neeson uses every skill honed from years of dark arts, and then some. The film races tautly from Parisian seedy locale to construction site to uppercrust slave auction, Neeson sparing no mercy, leaving a trail of bodies efficiently dispatched by various methods, all the while suffering from jet lag.
It's also decent because it does not seek to exploit the victims portrayed therein. The sad truth is this kind of business really does exist. It's a good action movie, but a better commentary on an aspect of our society few want to contemplate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)