A Tuesday Story

 Over the weekend, I had the sudden inspiration to glance at the expiry date on my driver's license. It was two months out of date... So I have been driving illegally for many weeks. Thanks to scheduling systems developed, I believe, during the pandemic, I got an appointment in West Seattle at the DOL for this morning between my early lessons and my afternoon lessons. As this would impact my traditional constitutional time, and as I have a kid who can still get quite anxious if I leave home without them while they are awake, I rolled the events together and took my first visit to Lincoln Park.  

I strolled the beach, which was almost overwhelming due to wind, walking on shifting rocks at an incline, and the sound of the waves. I walked the uphill woodland paths, which was just perfect and full of nature, light and dark.  

As I rounded a perfect bend, I suddenly thought to myself...

Wouldn't it be wonderful to live near this park and walk here every day! And then a quick moment of panic: No!!!! I don't want to be trapped!!! What if I don't want to walk here every day, even though I moved here for the park?!!! I can't ever come here again!!! I'll be stuck!!! Rational thought kicks in: I wouldn't HAVE to walk here every day even if I lived here.... But then again, I probably would, because once I find a routine I like, it sticks with me for a long time and I don't want to leave it.... But again, I am not moving, and I couldn't afford this neighborhood anyway. 

...and then: This sounds like the thoughts of my PDA friends. I checked in with my fave later in the day and confirmed that everything, all the time, day in and day out, is accompanied by the automatic no of the brain and ridiculous internal arguments, even when the thing is wanted. So it was a tiny microcosm, lending clarity and empathy.

Scripts

Recently before a church service I was playing, one older woman walked up to another older woman and cheerfully asked: "How's your other half?"  

The second woman replied: "He died last week."

The first woman looked stricken, muttered an "Oh" or an "I'm sorry" and walked away.

I watched this with curiosity as I did not know what I would have said either if I were the first woman.  

A third woman walked up alongside the bereaved widow.  I took note of her words carefully and put them in my mental "script files", as they seemed compassionate and helpful.  I share them here in case anyone else needs them some day in a conversation.

Woman 3: "Do you have people surrounding and supporting you?"

(Woman 2: "Yes, where I live.")

Woman 3: "I am so glad to hear that.  Are you accepting visitors?  Would you like a visit?"

...I was not able to hear the rest of the conversation,  but I knew that while both women cared deeply for the widow and her situation,  one of them had a set of words that was helpful and meaningful.  I also noticed that Woman 3 sat next to the widow for the whole service.

I made use of these scripts in altered format later in the day.  

I got a text that evening from a neighbor saying that her offspring had been hospitalized.  Immediately I went back to my study of empathetic responses and came up with an I'm sorry; that must be so hard.  Then I thought back to the morning's conversation.   It seemed that a family hospitalization might also be a situation where someone would require support, so I asked the question about support... and realized that this person probably reached out to me hoping I would be part of the support team.  So I asked what support I could offer, and she had an idea, so we came up with a concrete plan.

It was nice to know how to help rather than just feeling badly on the sidelines, and the right words got us there.

So Very Many Shades of Grey

 In sixth grade, I first read the Diary of Anne Frank.  I can't remember if it was required reading for our world history course, or if I fell into another way.  Regardless, it became mine and an integral part of my life.  That summer, my father's excess airline mileage from work took our family of five plus two of our grandparents on a two week tour of northwestern Europe; one important stop for me was the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam. For the next few years, pages from that Diary were my nightly after-lights-out reading, and it set me on my side-course of studying and reenacting Judaism in great detail.  This also put my eyes onto my friends and acquaintances and becoming hyper-aware of who around me was Jewish; plenty of our neighbors around town shared that deep heritage. One of my seventh grade classmates became particularly admired for that reason.

The Netherlands, and more particularly, the Dutch language, also became an important interest.  I studied some Dutch on the side with my German, and found the linguistic comparisons and contrasts helpful and informative. 

In the aftermath of building Holstig-Mon (You can search up a December 2022 post by that name) in the back yard, I was formulating dreams of building my own city state on farmland in the Netherlands.  As part of my research for this, I would check the weather page in the newspaper daily for both Amsterdam, and the German city closest to the Dutch border, averaging the two temperatures to estimate the weather for my proposed location.  The city plan was fairly well organized.  The whole thing would be a circle,  modeled on some circular streets I'd seen in London and Bath on that aforementioned trip.  It was to consist of a round of stone town houses with four paths leading into the center.  The center was to be natural/plant filled, and a common area, as in the colonist towns of New England.  Behind each townhouse was to be a slice of pie extending to the edge of the circle, which was for farming and grazing lands.  In keeping with the past, and also in looking to a more judicious future, each home would grow its own food, and the inner workings of the houses would not require piped-in electricity.  Using ancient Roman fountain technology, water would be pumped through the plumbing system.  The top floor of each house would be a green house, for the growing of plants and the harnessing of solar energy for heating.  Many details were left unaccounted for - access to information and ideas was rather different in those days, but the concept was fleshed out as best as possible with what data I could store in my brain.  I kept tracking weather data for those two locations through twelfth grade.

Recently, I have been back on a kick revisiting the Jewish/Dutch/WWII topic.  I started to listen to an audio version of Anne Frank's Diary, but I had to quit after about ten minutes, as the narrator had such a different interpretation to what I had heard in my head that I couldn't stand it.  However, I have recently listened to a number of other audiobooks...

My Friend Anne Frank by Hannah Pick-Gosslar, the close childhood friend of Anne's; they met as immigrant toddlers.  It tells of their family's deep friendships and life at school, the Frank family's sudden disappearance, presumably to Switzerland, and their surprise and painful re-meeting in the Bergen-Belsen camp where Anne and her sister died.  Hannah survived the camp and eventually fulfilled her now-dead father's dream of emigrating to Israel. 

Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies.  Miep was one of Otto Frank's Gentile employees, and she took on huge responsibilities in helping to hide the Frank family, their friends, and several other individuals the Franks never knew about.  It really fills in all kinds of gaps in the Diary that a teenager in hiding could never have known.  It also covers Mr. Franks's return from the death camps and how he lived with Miep and her husband for many years after the war while grieving the deaths of his family and friends.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan.  A former FBI investigator put together a team to study mountains of data from many sources to try to discover exactly how the Frank family's hiding place was betrayed to the Nazis.  While I found their likeliest explaination convincing, the book was also valuable to me in terms of explaining lots of the ins and outs of Dutch society during the German occupation.

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.  She tells the story of working with her family and the Underground to hide Jewish individuals in her own home in Haarlem, her family's and teammates' eventual arrests and the story of her time in Dutch prison and concentration camps, where her father and sister both died.

...My Jewish classmate from seventh grade returned to me in an unexpected way during the pandemic.  She now works in public health and has written articles for The Atlantic.  I read a piece she wrote on her work with the difference between perfect practice and harm reduction in STD transmission and how those lessons could be employed in better messaging to help people making choices to protect themselves and their loved ones from covid.  She pointed out that when we tell people that to protect themselves from covid, they must do X, Y, Z, and Q, many people for whom that plan seems difficult or unworkable will opt to do nothing at all.  If instead we let people know that J offers some protection in this circumstance and P can offer this type of protection and C is better than no action at all, more people are empowered to take action to reduce harm for a better net effect across the populace than if we only give the X, Y, Z, Q information.

I have found her thinking on how seeing a black-and-white best-practice vs avoid-less-than-best-practice framework can make for impossible rigidity in life, and especially in parenting.  I see how the concept of harm-reduction is helpful in the practical application of day-to-day workings out of how to raise my kids, not merely in the realm of covid.  There are some practices which would be ideal in my mind around learning, play, screens, eating, supervision, chores, etc.  And in reality, I do not have the energy or time to enact all of that to perfection.   I am working full time, tired, and permanently disorganized on certain levels, and dealing with my own challenges and pains and questions as overthinkers do.  Sometimes, impossible situations present, and there are no good solutions - only lots of bad ones.  I find it is more helpful to look at things through the framework of: several of these options are not my preference, but which of these choices causes the least harm to the largest number of people long-term?  When perfect isn't possible, what is the best harm-reduction when I look at all the factors of this very complex, soupy calculus?  Things are rarely black and white but so very many shades of grey.

The stories of protecting Dutch Jews from the gargantuan, red-taped beaurocracy of discrimination, kidnapping, imprisonment, neglect, cruelty, and murder, are filled with so many small, difficult decisions in so many shades of grey, too.  All those shades of grey added up to a better-than-worst-case-scenario outcome for a lot of people.

Haphazard Fabric

 As far as I know, this is the first time I've ever relayed this first small incident, and though it felt very awkward for a few minutes, I don't recall worrying much over it afterward. 

My first or second year at CIM, I was sitting in the small 3rd floor dorm lounge, alone. Was I looking for a place to study away from my roommate?  Was I hoping for a friend to pop in with a topic of conversation or an invite to head to the cafeteria for a meal?  Was I exhausted and staring at the wall?  No idea.

But at some point I was not alone; two other violinists showed up to make Ramen or popcorn or something in the kitchenette.  I had my back to them, and, engaged in the task at hand and their own banter, they did not notice me.  

Presently, they were speculating about who of their fellow students might be a lesbian. (This was not a particularly juicy topic, as in a music school one expects some sexual diversity amongst the cast.)  The one I knew less well suggested my name.  The one I knew only a little better said, "No, she's a Jesus Freak."  The first one, bewildered, said, "Why would anyone be that way?"  The second one said, in a tone of voice, which in retrospect, I think, suggested a respect for my person while completely disavowing the idea for themselves: "I don't know. Jesus saves?" A couple of other names I don't recall were mentioned as candidates for the lesbian category, and they were on to another topic....I waited for them to leave the room before moving a muscle.

I sort of wondered why they thought I was gay, as I had not dated anyone of any sort, and though I was privately religious, I really didn't like being called a Jesus Freak. I think if I had dared (which I did not!) share that epithet with some other of my church-going friends, they may well have suggested I should be proud of it; I know I would have felt uncomfortable in my own skin taking that praise.

Recently it has occurred to me that at that time, I had copied my basic mode of dress from a male I only vaguely knew, because I happened to have admired their musicianship.  Perhaps if I were in the right costume,  the talent I was actively seeking would flow?  Plus, it was comfortable and not fussy and would not draw attention to me.  It had not occurred to me that anyone would read anything special into the boring fabric draped somewhat haphazardly over my skinny frame.

A year or two later, I went to a Bible study which I frequented with some friends, and the man in charge that night gave an impromptu lecture, which seemed vaguely directed at someone who should know who they were, on not trying to be fashionable but rather being modest instead.  Although I do not agree with everything he had to say, I had no reason to believe I was any subject of the lecture - I cared literally nothing for fashion, and mainly just wanted to be comfortable.   Some hours later, I suddenly and horribly realized I was the target of this anonymous verbal delivery, as everyone else in that room had been wearing their same clothes, and I was wearing some new clothes my mom had sent me in the mail in the ever hopeful attempt at improving my appearance to the general public.  As it turned out, I did not wear the specific items from that day more than once or twice afterward - not out of guilt, but because the fit was uncomfortable. 

This reminds me of another time when I was probably 11 or so, I was wearing some sort of something odd from my closet, and it was demanded whether I thought my garb to be racy.  This was a word I did not know, though I could tell from the tone of voice it was a bad thing.  After I asked for and received a definition, I still had no way of answering the question, as it would involve my being aware of various social norms and the ability to measure others' perceptions of my adherence to them. As it was, whatever I was wearing at that moment I imagined to be a costume from the Ancient world, and I was immersed in that very different century, having no care for the social expectations of the 20th.

Another time in my middle school years I was asked to change as I was wearing too many layers and there was a concern about the heat.  That time I was in clothing vaguely consistent with my temporary habitation of the Victorian era.

I am sure that there are more stories along these lines, but this selection is what stands out to me just now.