Their Eyes Were Watching American Idol

Posted on 05/25/2008 by Jane Devin

I understand, from what friends and others tell me, that I was supposed to outgrow this stage, the same way I outgrew believing in the tooth fairy, a benevolent God, or that whole “it’s what’s inside that really counts” deception. Maybe there was supposed to be a revealing shock somewhere along the way — similar to the shock of seeing my eldest sister put a dime under my pillow, or having my childhood letters to God returned “undeliverable as addressed”, or seeing a well-qualified woman turned away from a job interview because my boss didn’t like “lazy Indians” — that scraped away another layer of optimistic naivete and replaced it with cynical skepticism.

Come to think of it, there have been plenty of revealing shocks, and I’ve written or talked about them with all the exclamation points and disbelief they were due. Did thousands of people really send Oral Roberts money when he said God would kill him if he didn’t raise $10M dollars? Yes! They did! Did Tammy Faye Baker, thief extraordinaire, really go on to become a minor celebrity and gay icon? Yes! Did Hal Greenwood, a banker who bilked thousands of retirees out of their pensions, get to keep his multi-million dollar home? Yes! And after he got out of a very short prison stay, he actually ran for Mayor of Grand Marais, MN! And he had lots of community support!

Closer to home, did a family-owned real estate business really steal funds from their client’s trust accounts to pay credit card bills, get plastic surgery, and buy stuff at BabyGap? Yes. Did the state take swift and thorough action? No. They pulled the license of the business owner, but let the actual thief (her daughter!) take over for her. Did I once have a boss who said he didn’t want a woman working for him? Yes. Did the corporation see this as a problem? No, but they did have him attend an EEOC seminar, so that he could learn “more appropriate language”.

The apathetic reactions of the blindly self-involved Me generation I was born into seems to be keep trying to shock me into complacency, but somehow I just get more and more outraged. Somehow the lessons the greater part of society is trying to teach me — like how useless logic is in an illogical world, and how senseless it is to beat my head against the same brick wall, and how really, I should just worry about myself and not worry about all these things I can’t change — continue to pass me by. I keep trying. I keep believing that my generation of human beings, as a multi-billion strong entity, are smarter, more alive, and more passionate than we’ve shown. . .yet.

I thought maybe the reign of King George II, America’s first Imperialist president, might be just the shock this country needed to get off of its collective ass and do something. I was partially right. Many people have spoken out, written letters, gotten involved — yet an amazing 34-36% of Americans still approve of George W. Bush. Meaning that in a group of 100, 34 to 36 people have their heads buried in the sand, or have been brainwashed beyond redemption. That’s certainly a revealing shock, but then again so is the Democratic race this year, in which those who stand united against Bush have chosen to excoriate each other in damning, and often hateful ways, instead of drawing together to ensure a race of reason and integrity.

When Exxon Mobil reported the highest quarterly and annual profits ever for a US company, twice in recent history, I was pretty sure Americans would take to the streets — meaning that they would rebel against the glut, greed, and lies of oil companies, and start walking wherever they could, boycotting gas whenever possible. Instead, the story came and went, and most of middle America shrugged. Welcome to $4 a gallon gasoline. Exxon salutes our apathy.

Outside and inside of politics, child abuse remains the subject that no one wants to talk about anymore. Not even a world-renowned author who has written decades worth of amazingly insightful books. She doesn’t want to answer any more questions, and she doesn’t want to talk to the general public anymore outside of what she puts on her website — which means she’s limiting herself to people who already know her, and who are already in search of answers, instead of possibly educating those who have had no cause to even ask the right questions. In a recent email to me, she said, “. . .everybody who WANTS to know and understand can do it reading in the internet. For people who are afraid of understanding what I am writing I can’t do anything. Even hundreds of interviews will not do.” This is a woman who was once a pioneer, a fighter, an intelligent, guiding voice to thousands trying to escape a dark void. She has grown tired. Apathetic. Comfortable in her ivory tower world, where silence rules, and the unwashed masses are abstract theories and subjects, rather than intrusive, always hurting, slow to heal, not-quite-there-yet, constantly seeking, human beings.

There’s some solace in knowing that the author above “paid her dues” — that she did so much, for so many years for the cause of children — but it’s an empty comfort. There is no one on the horizon to take her place. There are no more Alice Millers. She will leave behind a prolific body of work, but who will there be to add to it, to keep it alive not just in the broken spirits of victims, but in the higher consciousness of the public. Who will continue to wake up the living dead in her absence? Who will be the public voice for the children who cannot speak for themselves?

Alice reminded me of something, though, and that’s about “want”. Those who “WANT” to understand, she said to me. I know, however, that want actually plays a very minor part in this extended play of reality. There was a time most people did not want to believe the world was round. A time when most did not want children off the farms or out of the factories, or women or minorities to vote. It wasn’t that long ago that most Americans wanted a society where men earned more than women, and where women’s choices were extremely limited.

Want is, more often than not, a creation. A person, small group, or other entity has an idea, complaint, or belief, and pushes forward to promote their concept. Other people catch on, and the concept grows and is expanded. Eventually, the “want” of that particular something forms among a majority or a well-backed minority, and laws, systems, products, or other things change to fulfill the want that was created.

Had television never been invented, I doubt we would have ever wanted Tila Tequila or the housewives of Orange County in our living rooms. I doubt that we could have even envisioned a time when, on average, our children would be exposed to 50,000 commercial messages a year, with 1/4 of those ads being deceptive in some way. Not only would we have never envisioned it, we probably would have never approved it — but now our want for television has grown by literally hundreds of channels. The want continues to be created daily by popular culture, charismatic personalities, and marketing companies.

The world around us is struggling and failing in so many ways. From fundamentalist religions to corrupt superpower governments — from genocide to genetically engineered food crops — from gross war profiteering to bad parenting — there is plenty to keep us engaged, busy, and passionate for decades to come.

Unfortunately we, meaning the majority of my generation, have largely failed to create the “want” to better the world. We’re sitting at home, watching American Idol, cheering for one of two new age Davids, and paying little attention to the Goliath of apathy.

I want a worldwide revolution. I want the televisions turned off and the heat turned up. I want passions ignited, and the potential of billions of minds fully realized. I want to scream into the ears of the living dead — wake up! Look at what has happened in your absence! Let’s get busy and change this! Move the food trucks, educate the kids, teach ethics and logic from kindergarten to college, open the doors, let freedom ring, and the sun shine in. It’s not impossible. We just haven’t fully created our want for the best possible world yet.

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At Sixteen

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Jane Devin

ScannedImage-2 This is me at sixteen years old, writing, and appearing content with the world.

Ah, but if you could browse those pages I was writing, you wouldn’t see contentment at all. You would know about my anger, fear, dreams, and heartache, and you would know that I was planning my escape. To the beaches of Santa Cruz, where I would sell seashell necklaces and write poetry on the boardwalk. I would sit by a bonfire every night and teach myself to play the guitar. I would learn to sing in tune, and play folk music in coffee shops. I would save my quarters and crumpled dollars, and buy myself a Volkswagon van.

I never did make it to Santa Cruz, but instead landed in Sunnyvale, California just a few months after this picture was taken. I exchanged babysitting for a room in a crowded house, and went to work — during my first year of freedom — as a waitress, an ice cream server, an airplane parts greaser, and a stock clerk. Eventually, I got a furnished studio apartment with green shag carpeting and a hideously flowered daybed. I bought my first car for $250 at three o’clock in the morning after working the night shift, from a Mexican boy I worked with who spoke no English. It was a 1965 Plymouth Rambler, with wooden blocks for pedals and no rear window. Worse, what appeared to be beige in the dark was actually pale pink in the light of day.

I kept thinking it would get better, this thing called reality, but improvements came in the smallest of degrees. A .10 an hour raise at Racal-Vadic. A hanging wicker chair given to me by a neighbor who was moving. Knee-high moccasin boots and my first pair of brand new Levi 501′s.

I’m pretty sure it was the jeans-tucked-into-moccasin-boots look that brought me affection, or some facsimile of, with someone who appealed to my sense of exotic adventure. On-off-on-off, it was the kind of affection that worked best in the dark.

Three years later, I had Elisabeth, who really was my first agape and forever love. She was followed by MacKenzie shortly after, and Mr. On-Off-On-Off took off for parts unknown and no longer cared about. (I imagine, though, that he’s probably still at his best in the dark, when he’s not speaking and doesn’t have to think about much).

At sixteen, I couldn’t have imagined the life that lay ahead. I couldn’t have imagined, for instance, working in a penile implant factory, where my job was to inject saline, pump the penises up, check for leaks, and then deflate them before putting them in a box. I couldn’t have imagined being a cocktail waitress at a Reno casino, which is the last time in my adult life I ever wore a dress. I still have the scar given to me by the lit end of a poker player’s cigar, when in a fit of pique he threw his hands back to where my thighs happened to be. My nylons burned, but he didn’t apologize. He threw a $5 bill at me and asked for another beer.

I would have never guessed that I would end up writing about 6000 pieces of ad and promotional copy over the course of a decade, or helping to create one of the first mylar billboards to appear on a West coast highway. I would have never planned a career in radio, newspaper, and marketing, and I never thought I’d live in the suburbs, but either on a remote beach or in the heart of a city.

I wanted to be a braver version of Sylvia Plath. A more prolific Dorothy Allison. A feminist counterpart to the ever-reclusive JD Salinger. At sixteen, I dreamed the life of a writer. Days spent at a mahogany desk, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, throwing page after frustrating page in the trash before the inspiration hit and threw me into a feverish whirlwind of perfect writing. At 46, I’ve just about got the coffee and cigarette part down to an art. The rest, including the perfect writing, has yet to come to me.

What were you doing at sixteen? Did you live the life you dreamed, or did you let the fates and circumstances decide? Do you still have any deferred dreams you’d like to live out? Curious minds want to know.

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Now that it’s legal, and I have grown up, I think…maybe. Someday.

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Jane Devin

They hang in my closet as a reminder, a small torment, and something of a life jacket. I wore them when I last fell in love, hard and with almost reckless abandon, several years ago.

There was something about this particular pair of jeans that made me feel less humanly flawed and more invincible. In the smoky lower level of the Metro, where the music played a little softer and the lights stayed dim, these jeans moved me to the dance floor, where Aretha sang “If you want my lovin’ if you really do, don’t bother askin’ baby you know I’m gonna give it to you. . .” . Sheila was particularly beautiful that night, and it was easy to forget everything else, like how I normally don’t dance in public, how chaotic my life was at the time, and how different Sheila and I were in so many ways. Love doesn’t see impediments, but possibilities. Love doesn’t plan for failure, but creates the circumstances for success. So we would dance, and I would inhale the sweet smell of her neck, and forget everything else that wasn’t in the circle of glowing possibilities.

I wore those jeans weeks later when I leaned against the door in her bathroom, conversing as I watched her shave one leg, than the other. She had the sexiest iliotibial tract I’d ever seen, and the strong legs of a dancer. When she laughed, she had a tendency to throw her head back and close her eyes, deepening the hollow between her collarbones. I loved to watch her laugh.

Neither Sheila’s body nor her psyche carried any obvious scar tissue. She was younger than I was, and not just in years. Her eyes were bright with untried ideals. She ran, she played tennis, she skied, she had never smoked, or flirted with drugs. She had never had or raised children. She had never chased after a professional career, or lived outside of Minnesota. She drank herbal tea, and wore vanilla-scented lip gloss. She preferred comedies to dramas, and upbeat pop music to old love-and-lost ballads. Her closets were full of purples, reds, greens and yellows. Her mind wasn’t filled with stories, but with expectations and hopes. She sprung up in the morning, happily ready to experience whatever the day held. There was no hesitancy, no dread, none of the panic and worry that is endemic to those who of us who have beat a path to hell and back so many times we’ve memorized the travel guide.

In the bliss of fresh infatuation, I looked at this bright-eyed, optimistic, and perpetually sensual woman and thought of change. Sheila, like everyone else I’ve ever been with, was not a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” lover. She wanted a life partner. Someone to share her days, nights, and experiences with. And because she lightened my heart and made me laugh – because she was incredibly open – because she made me feel sexy and loved and protective and generous – because she was full of pleasant surprises and kept me guessing – because she didn’t nag at me (much) for my bad habits – I thought of change and possibilities. Maybe, I thought, I don’t need to be so much of a hermit. Maybe I don’t have to write every night of my life. Maybe I can learn to like Saturday evening club-hopping and Sunday afternoons at Home Depot. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me to go jogging after dinner. These things, in exchange for a loving relationship – for all the sparks and fires and afterglows – could not be that bad.

I never considered asking Sheila to bend to my style of life. I’ve never thought of asking someone to be a hermit with me, or to eschew the social scene or ski hill for evenings spent at a desk or weekends spent with books. Somehow I suspect that the answer would be no. I even hope it would be, because I really enjoy the time I spend alone. I am very much a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine, let’s meet after” kind of lover. It seems, though, that not many people share this philosophy, and those who do aren’t generally monogamous. (I would make a lousy polyamorist, not because I have any great moral convictions, but because I really don’t like to share the people or things I love with people I don’t love – and because I have the kind of terrible curiosity that would have to know every single detail – and because, really, although I may not hold onto someone tightly, I do have a possessive streak).

I knew, given the divide between Sheila’s expectations and my life as it existed in reality, that I would have to be the one who changed. For her part, Sheila was naive, but nonetheless brave to take me on. I am, if I haven’t made it clear, not the easiest person to love. I am restless and jaded in so many ways. At turns, I am easygoing or moody. I am overly sensitive to noise, other people’s moods, and environment. My head is often in the clouds. I can talk a mile a minute or be silent for hours. I’m domestic only to the extent of doing what’s required for comfort. I never run out of coffee, but I don’t care if my checkbook is ever balanced. Trucking in practicalities doesn’t come naturally to me, since I so much prefer nearly every other alternative.

Still, there she was. Beautiful, glowing, and willing to love. All I had to do was bend. Expand. Set aside some things, and move forward with others. All I had to do was change.

Incredible months passed before my restless spirit began to bleat and scream steadily. I wanted to write more often. Sheila suggested that I write for one hour everyday, in the morning before I went to work. I wanted time to myself. She didn’t understand why my commute didn’t count. I wanted to skip a concert by her favorite band and suggested she go with a friend instead. Why couldn’t I just go and enjoy doing something she wanted to do? What would her friends think? Didn’t I love her anymore?

As the minor arguments stepped up, it wasn’t hard to pull the cynical piece of self I’d hidden out of reserve. Sheila had known only the smallest slice of a huge world. I would be her “best lover ever” for the time, but I knew that in the future there would be another best ever, and likely (hopefully) it wouldn’t be someone who was as skittish and cynical about commitment as I was.

I began to feel, more and more, like the big bad wolf to Sheila’s innocent Red Riding Hood, and because I loved her, I began to rewrite the story, imagining Sheila at her happiest not with me, but with a nice woman. One who taught grade school and volunteered her holidays at the women’s shelter. Someone who was supremely stable – who saved for yearly vacations to Mexico and used her Costco card to buy sensible things in bulk, like batteries and paper towels. Someone who had a collection of sweat suits for the right reason, and who enjoyed having 50 friends over for a barbeque. Not someone like me, with a penchant for rainy days, musty books, and a reclusive spirit.

We dated for a little under two years, which was just long enough for us to know that we were opposites in too many ways to be compatible, except that I realized it first and most insistently. It was painful in the way that any significant loss is, and more so because I was acutely aware of everything that I was losing. Not just the arguments (which I lost even when I won), but the love of someone who would never consciously seek to hurt me. The love of someone who let me love her, and who never doubted that either of us were deserving of whatever good things came our way. In losing Sheila, I was losing my innocent side – the bright-eyed and better part of me that didn’t see impediments, but possibilities, and that creates the circumstances for success – no matter how hard, how difficult, or how impossible.

We sat together under the trees at Calhoun Lake, my jean covered leg next to her bare one. She wore my favorite pair of sandals, and her nails were painted a pale shade of pink. Her wavy hair fell into curls with the humidity, and a lone ringlet fell over her left cheek. She looked so beautiful that night, lit by the reddish tones of sunset, that I almost stopped the inevitable.

Inside, the spirit continued to scream. Freedom, free, alone, write, be, think, dream. A split occurred, and another part of me screamed back in rebellion. Love, passion, her, companionship, sex, laughter.

Freedom won. And I have had my alone time, a surfeit of dreams, and there are reams of words – millions of words– that I have spent in the last ten years.

I have taken the jeans out of the closet, and with them, me.

The revolution continues.

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Missing Something on Mother’s Day

Posted on 05/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Being Mother’s Day, I wondered if I should write a post about my mother but then I thought, no. It’s too sad, really, and not the kind of tribute others want to read. Many mothers, it seems, left dark mysteries and heartaches as legacies to their daughters. Mine was no exception. It would be more fitting to write about MJ on some other occasion, like a cold rainy day, when there’s no sunshine to compete with my pen or my memories.

I then thought maybe I should write about my kids, but everybody who reads this blog already knows how much they mean to me, and Lis and Mac have heard it a thousand times over. We celebrated Mother’s Day early this year, and I was beautifully spoiled, but in a grown-up way I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to. Not that I don’t appreciate the thoughtful and lovely things my children pick out, but let’s face it — they’re not exactly finger paintings or handcrafted dinosaur dioramas. They’re not rhinestone studded potholders or construction paper cards. They’re not Mommy presents, but presents for a Mother. With a capital M. Meaning mature, meaning older.

I miss the days of getting misty-eyed over Crayola drawings. I miss reading children’s books out loud. I miss writing stories for my own kids. I miss the smell of freshly shampooed heads, and the feeling that the crook of my arm had a divine purpose. I miss having a little person to go places with, and I miss how everything that was old and boring to me was brand new and exciting to them, like light switches, twinkling stars, ice cubes, and telephones. I miss the grade school essays they wrote about family, even when they were embarrassing. Along with “I love my mom. She is funny and good and paints my fingers,“ my daughter also once wrote, “My mom’s favrite thing is be naked and eat spaggetti.” (Meaning — I like to take baths and eat spaghetti. Separately. One is a naked activity, the other is not).

My son once told his school principal that I gave him fifteen names, and then proceeded to tell him all the derivations, terms of endearment, and nicknames I gave him. The principal called me and told me I was confusing my son, who apparently didn’t know what his birth name was. Of course MacKenzie Richard Cooper Ross Love Honey Boychik Sweetie Handsome Boo Bear LittleMan Mackie Deega Daw knew his name. He just thought it was funny to string the principal along. The same way he thought it would be funny, at three years old, to sneak to the top of my closet, where I kept a whole bunch of promotional materials left over from radio remotes. One of the boxes contained colored and glow-in-the-dark condoms. Mac decided these would be great for preschool. We were living in uber-conservative Montana then, and the preschool owner was a devout Christian. I got the call about an hour after dropping Mac off. She was not amused, and Mac was kicked out of preschool. (Is there a doubt which of my kids were the problem child? Of course, it was the one most like me).

I really should have had 10 more kids, spaced two-four years apart each, so that I could always have one in tow. It’s strange to me being the mother of grown-ups. I still have a lot of child left in me, and am often surprised by the mirror image of a 46 year old woman. I am nineteen, fourteen, ten, and five in so many ways. I remember viscerally every moment and milestone of childhood — my own, and my children’s. I remember the taste of Pixie Stix even though I haven’t had one in years, and I still get a little thrill over seeing old favorites like Old Maid, Chinese jump ropes, Jacks, and real roller skates in the toy section of the department store.

I coo over other people’s babies and toddlers, and think how very lucky they are. And I have to admit I feel a small pang of envy every time I see one of those big toothless smiles from an infant, or watch a toddler doing the it’s-all-new-to-me mummy walk. I still browse the children’s section in a store, and wish more of my friends had babies so I’d have an excuse to buy tiny shoes, jeans, and dresses.

Neither my recently engaged daughter or my college-attending son want children any time soon. My daughter hasn’t decided if she wants children at all. She dreams, instead, of an inter-species ranch, with dozens of feathered and furry beings to fill her time.

So I’m in the in-between stage. No longer a mother to little ones, and not yet a grandmother. (Yikes. If I don’t feel old enough to be the mom of grown-ups, I sure don’t feel old enough to be called grandma. Still, if it happened tomorrow, I’d be thrilled. And I’d be called Nana). In the meantime, of course I think about it. Adoption. Giving birth. Doing it all over again, but better, with more experience, more wisdom, and more purposeful intentions.

Then I look around. The world outside is growing colder by the minute. People are just a shade crueler than they have ever been before. Apathy not only abounds, but has become a way of life for millions. Irrationality is still acceptable, and even promoted and catered to in some circles. Opportunities slip and slide and no matter how good or smart a person is, there are no guarantees of success. There are pains involved in raising children, and those pains almost always involve other people, like bad parents, bullies, and tired teachers. The rest of the world will never care about or want to protect your children as much as you do.

I look, too, at my clean apartment. There are no crumbs on the floor, no piles of school papers on the kitchen table, no mountains of laundry waiting to be done. Didn’t I wait for this? Didn’t I long for the day when I wasn’t mopping up after muddy shoes and endlessly folding clothes? Didn’t I yearn for the day when I could take a long, uninterrupted bath, or write for hours at a stretch? Of course I did. But the frustrating part of parenting was the smallest part. The larger part — the gold stars and long talks, the small hands in clay and the school age dramas — never got old. Only my children did. I, on the other hand, hardly aged at all, unless one counts in years and biology. I don’t. I count in words and memories. In experiences and feelings.

And on this Mother’s Day, I feel both fulfilled and empty. Like a mother, of course, and one who is well-loved and appreciated, but one who’s also missing the days of being a Mommy. Missing the goodnight kisses, the tuck-ins, and those sweet hours between their bedtime and mine, when I actually relished my “alone time” and felt compelled to do something grand, special, or important with it. Now there are many such hours. I fill them as well as I can, with work, writing, books, projects, friends, pets, and more — but.

I just miss being a stroller-toting, school work correcting, dinner fixing, Band-Aid carrying, bath running, toy buying, tickle your back, love you to infinity and bigger than the universe, crook of the arm Mom.

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