I've noticed that whenever I've started to learn a language in a classroom setting, the building blocks arrange themselves differently from how they do if you're picking it up on the linguistic hoof, as it were. When in Italy on an art history study program, I found that I very seldom used the basic classroom building blocks-- ho una penna (I have one pen)-- but instead learned what was absolutely necessary to get by in an everyday setting-- vaffanculo (go f**k yourself) and vorebbe una birra, per favore (I would like one beer please). Such is the difference between learning and doing.
Back in a high school or college classroom, though, the first orders of business tended to be, for whatever reason, weather and family members. That it is unlikely I would ever walk up to a German person and say enthusiastically "Das wetter ist nett, ja?" seemed not to matter to my German professor. (I did, however, pick up from a German classmate the very useful phrase "ich habe doch keine anung-- verpiss dich," meaning "I have absolutely no idea-- piss off.") I suppose family members were a little more practical, but the language introduced to describe family-- generally father, mother, sister, brother-- was always very limiting, I thought. The colorful line drawings of families in their various capacities always seemed to be missing something to me, and I wondered: Wo ist der hund?
Where is the dog?
Our most beloved corgi left us more than two years ago. He was named for a 1950’s film noir actor, but was more commonly referred to as “Booger.” Even now, when I go home, getting up from the couch, I will check to make sure he is not sitting in his spot immediately below my feet. I listen for his collar and his brisk, businesslike trot across the hardwood. My parents’ house has an uncomfortable emptiness to it, and I honestly believe it is not because all of their children are grown. I believe it is because they don’t have a dog.
My family and I are, quite simply put, dog people. While we thankfully never reached crazy dog breeder levels of devotion (watch the Westminster dog show sometime-- some of those people are just plain weird), we also never saw the role of "family dog" to be essentially transferable; that is, we never thought that as long as a canine is in the role, one is pretty much as good as another. In fact, after our golden retriever, with whom my older sisters grew up, died at the ripe old age of fourteen, my parents never thought they could have another dog, because they had had the definitive dog. How can you replace the canine love of your life?
The truth is, you can’t. In a few years it became clear to my parents, however, that I needed a dog. There are all sorts of theories about how having a pet teaches responsibility, etc., but I don’t think it was about that. There was something elusive, some quality I just wouldn’t quite understand, if I did not grow up with a dog. It’s an environmental thing, something you need to soak into your skin at a young age, like a first language.
Since the thought of another golden was too painful for my parents, we looked into corgis at my grandmother’s suggestion. This suggestion eventually led us to a breeder and to our beloved Booger. The three of us, my mother, father and I, were down on the floor with him in about four seconds flat. My mother confided in me later that she never thought she could love another dog as much as she had loved our golden, named for a Welsh word meaning “beloved,” and she had been right and wrong. She loved them both intensely, but not in the same ways. After all, you never love two people in the same way, and in our family, you never love two dogs the same way.
Now, out on my own, living in a small studio apartment in the city and working a nine to five, I realize the folly in my wanting a dog. I couldn’t be a good dog owner. I’m barely a good plant owner (my African violet is much sturdier than it looks, let me tell you). But I still ache, really, honestly hurt for a dog. I’m that person who will ask to pet your dog with an almost pathetically hopeful expression on my face, and almost before you say yes, I’ll be down on the ground in a wool gabardine suit skirt speaking some language of endearment that only vaguely resembles English.
No dog will ever replace my Booger; I don’t think I could ever have another corgi. But I do know that I have this untapped reserve of dog love in my heart. I am putting down tentative roots as an adult: I own a sofa, I dust things, I hang pictures. In short, I’m making a home. And there will be a dog out there, someday, who will be miraculously shaped just right to fill up this odd hole I have in my life.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts. I never learned to speak enough Italian or German to differentiate linguistically between “house” and “home,” but in English I could tell you that home is a lot of things, which combine into a very powerful whole. And for me, one of those parts is inevitably going to shed and need to go out to pee in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter.
So then, standing by the back door in a draft, waiting for the dog to do his business so I can go back to bed, I’ll know that I’m really home.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
From the Archives: Daughters of Eve
On a bus traveling north from Boston, a little more than a year ago, I committed a cardinal sin.
I was sitting with a friend, who happened to be on the same bus, headed back to our college in New Hampshire, talking about my long weekend. I had traveled south with my then boyfriend to meet his best friend, who was only in town for a few days. This was a week after I had spent Mother’s Day with his family. Our inevitable break up, cued by my graduation from college and his departure for New York, began to waver in my mind. At that point I was still desperately applying for jobs in the arts and didn’t know where I would end up. Ironically, I was one of the few people I knew who didn’t want to end up in New York. Quite frankly, it had no allure for me. I grew up in a small Midwestern suburb, and my one trip to New York, passing through on my college tour, hadn’t been very convincing. I was miraculously immune to its pull on my peers.
Unfortunately, I was not immune to the pull of this boy.
There had been, in our previous discussions, a hypothetical “we,” should my eventual job placement take me to New York. He flat out refused to consider long-distance, and up until that point, I had flat out refused to consider New York (though, in retrospect, I guess he had never asked me to consider it). Nevertheless, on this late bus with my friend, a very strange thing happened. I was in love with someone who had treated me well, which was a new experience for me, so I was in uncharted territory. Suddenly my thinking began to roll towards New York. Rationalizations started flooding in, and picked up momentum: New York was as good a place as any to find a job in the arts; I was more likely to find a job there; my sister was there… They were good reasons. They just weren’t reasons that made a difference to me. I was only thinking about being able to hold onto this love I thought was so special.
What do we know about Eve’s daughters? Nothing, because, in the strictest biblical sense, they didn't exist. Nevertheless, if such a daughter did exist, I wonder what she would have been like, the sister of Cain and Abel. She might have had to be a paragon of virtue, at the lecturing of her mother. Eve had had to suffer for her sins, so God help her (no pun intended), her daughter would not commit the same sins and suffer in the same ways.
Still, that original sin: it was pretty damn important. Eve is immortalized in that sin in Western art ad infinitum. In a way, that sin made everything else possible—so there is a certain sanctity of the sin itself. But, perhaps, not so for Eve’s daughter.
My parents are happily married. It reads like a fairy tale. They grew up across the street from one another. I wear the ring he gave her when she was sixteen. They’ve been together thirty-five years, and they are happy. In light of what I came to realize as I got older, I wonder how hard Cinderella or her Prince ever had to work for their happiness.
Both of my parents have compromised, but my mother’s more often than not is held up as the golden standard which, implicitly, I must never, ever emulate. She has moved seventeen times in her married life. She has left homes and started over, following my father, who followed his job. She has changed, and changed for love. Many of our mothers, raised in the ‘50s and ‘60s, followed similar paths. They were not primary: their husbands were. And now we, the daughters of these Eves, must be primary in our own lives. We must follow our own dreams first, we must not compromise.
Our own commitment to our dreams must bear up under our own expectations and those of our mothers’, who live vicariously through our unwillingness to bend, and never for a man.
So on that bus, as the inertia of my enthusiasm roiled in my brain, I committed the cardinal sin of my generation of women: I changed for a guy. More than that, I changed my dream. My dream had never included New York, but suddenly I rationalized that it could. I was compromising for love.
As it turned out, that hypothetical “we” in New York was apparently a hypothetical exercise and nothing more. Three days after I got off that bus, bright with the possibilities, he broke up with me. I thought I would break in half. If we can look at these situations without our mothers, we may see that we were willing to give a little, but our partners were not. But it inevitably goes deeper than that: I didn’t even have the cold comfort of my uncompromise to stand by. I hadn’t stood by my dream uncompromisingly. I had committed the sin, and I was alone.
I felt like a traitor to myself, this unyielding woman I was supposed to have become. It me feel pitifully weak. Love? I had been willing to compromise for love? It seemed ridiculous—this inconstant thing had swayed me from my constant goal. Eve stood in cold, silent judgment. I could not even have the sanctity of the sin: that was hers alone. I just had to deal with the compromises.
My mother is not Eve. She is a woman in love. Many months after my breakup, she asked me if maybe I hadn’t tried harder…? Maybe I expected too much perfection? I exploded. All over our living room, and with a furor I don’t think she anticipated. After all, it is an unconscious inheritance she has given me. It’s only me, alone in my head with my expectations, which in that instance, I failed.
There is little forgiveness in me—and my mother wonders why. Somehow I have formed the opinion that forgiveness is a weak emotion. I can’t forgive myself for thinking love would conquer all, or at least some. I can’t forgive him for being the most seductive apple. I can’t forgive Eve’s legacy, which I never asked for. I feel as though I am meant to be made of steel: unyielding, unforgiving, uncompromising. But somehow I know being an adult in love is about change, and bend, and give. If love makes you weak, and weakness is unforgiveable, where are we left?
For now, alone, confused sinners, trying to understand what compromise is acceptable.
I was sitting with a friend, who happened to be on the same bus, headed back to our college in New Hampshire, talking about my long weekend. I had traveled south with my then boyfriend to meet his best friend, who was only in town for a few days. This was a week after I had spent Mother’s Day with his family. Our inevitable break up, cued by my graduation from college and his departure for New York, began to waver in my mind. At that point I was still desperately applying for jobs in the arts and didn’t know where I would end up. Ironically, I was one of the few people I knew who didn’t want to end up in New York. Quite frankly, it had no allure for me. I grew up in a small Midwestern suburb, and my one trip to New York, passing through on my college tour, hadn’t been very convincing. I was miraculously immune to its pull on my peers.
Unfortunately, I was not immune to the pull of this boy.
There had been, in our previous discussions, a hypothetical “we,” should my eventual job placement take me to New York. He flat out refused to consider long-distance, and up until that point, I had flat out refused to consider New York (though, in retrospect, I guess he had never asked me to consider it). Nevertheless, on this late bus with my friend, a very strange thing happened. I was in love with someone who had treated me well, which was a new experience for me, so I was in uncharted territory. Suddenly my thinking began to roll towards New York. Rationalizations started flooding in, and picked up momentum: New York was as good a place as any to find a job in the arts; I was more likely to find a job there; my sister was there… They were good reasons. They just weren’t reasons that made a difference to me. I was only thinking about being able to hold onto this love I thought was so special.
What do we know about Eve’s daughters? Nothing, because, in the strictest biblical sense, they didn't exist. Nevertheless, if such a daughter did exist, I wonder what she would have been like, the sister of Cain and Abel. She might have had to be a paragon of virtue, at the lecturing of her mother. Eve had had to suffer for her sins, so God help her (no pun intended), her daughter would not commit the same sins and suffer in the same ways.
Still, that original sin: it was pretty damn important. Eve is immortalized in that sin in Western art ad infinitum. In a way, that sin made everything else possible—so there is a certain sanctity of the sin itself. But, perhaps, not so for Eve’s daughter.
My parents are happily married. It reads like a fairy tale. They grew up across the street from one another. I wear the ring he gave her when she was sixteen. They’ve been together thirty-five years, and they are happy. In light of what I came to realize as I got older, I wonder how hard Cinderella or her Prince ever had to work for their happiness.
Both of my parents have compromised, but my mother’s more often than not is held up as the golden standard which, implicitly, I must never, ever emulate. She has moved seventeen times in her married life. She has left homes and started over, following my father, who followed his job. She has changed, and changed for love. Many of our mothers, raised in the ‘50s and ‘60s, followed similar paths. They were not primary: their husbands were. And now we, the daughters of these Eves, must be primary in our own lives. We must follow our own dreams first, we must not compromise.
Our own commitment to our dreams must bear up under our own expectations and those of our mothers’, who live vicariously through our unwillingness to bend, and never for a man.
So on that bus, as the inertia of my enthusiasm roiled in my brain, I committed the cardinal sin of my generation of women: I changed for a guy. More than that, I changed my dream. My dream had never included New York, but suddenly I rationalized that it could. I was compromising for love.
As it turned out, that hypothetical “we” in New York was apparently a hypothetical exercise and nothing more. Three days after I got off that bus, bright with the possibilities, he broke up with me. I thought I would break in half. If we can look at these situations without our mothers, we may see that we were willing to give a little, but our partners were not. But it inevitably goes deeper than that: I didn’t even have the cold comfort of my uncompromise to stand by. I hadn’t stood by my dream uncompromisingly. I had committed the sin, and I was alone.
I felt like a traitor to myself, this unyielding woman I was supposed to have become. It me feel pitifully weak. Love? I had been willing to compromise for love? It seemed ridiculous—this inconstant thing had swayed me from my constant goal. Eve stood in cold, silent judgment. I could not even have the sanctity of the sin: that was hers alone. I just had to deal with the compromises.
My mother is not Eve. She is a woman in love. Many months after my breakup, she asked me if maybe I hadn’t tried harder…? Maybe I expected too much perfection? I exploded. All over our living room, and with a furor I don’t think she anticipated. After all, it is an unconscious inheritance she has given me. It’s only me, alone in my head with my expectations, which in that instance, I failed.
There is little forgiveness in me—and my mother wonders why. Somehow I have formed the opinion that forgiveness is a weak emotion. I can’t forgive myself for thinking love would conquer all, or at least some. I can’t forgive him for being the most seductive apple. I can’t forgive Eve’s legacy, which I never asked for. I feel as though I am meant to be made of steel: unyielding, unforgiving, uncompromising. But somehow I know being an adult in love is about change, and bend, and give. If love makes you weak, and weakness is unforgiveable, where are we left?
For now, alone, confused sinners, trying to understand what compromise is acceptable.
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