Everything is Alive

I went to a town hall meeting with state legislators Ellen Anderson, Alice Hausman (a big heroine of mine!), and John Lesch to hear more talk about the budget crisis and throw in my two cents because I seem to have officially become the library harpy who pops up at every opportunity and shrieks about the library.

I heard stories from so many heartbroken people dealing with problems that seem much more pressing than my desire to keep being able to walk to my neighborhood library.  I heard people who work with the severely disabled and people who volunteer with families who've lost loved ones to murder and people who work to try to prevent child abuse and spousal abuse.  I heard a woman weeping about how changes in "deadbeat dad" laws are basically ruining her and her children's lives.  I heard a man advocate that we should legalize marijuana so the state can legally tax growers and sellers of cannabis, thereby solving the budget problem.  I heard a man who was angry at all the people in the room advocating for higher taxes on the rich because he was afraid it would drive away businesses and jeopardize his daughter's future.  I heard about Iron Range residents who worry about the environmental impact of new mining up there but are afraid to speak up about it because people need the mining jobs so badly.  I heard a lesbian woman speak of living as a second-class citizen.  I heard about the evil and irresponsible ways our governor has played accounting tricks with state funds to hide the fact that he's been steadily selling out our future just so he can make the claim he's never raised our taxes.

Everything seems so fragile right now, so fraught with peril.  I still want the library to stay open, and I'm still going to fight for it, because I think there are a lot of people who need the library and because for me it will truly feel as if the heart's been torn out of the neighborhood if it closes.  I am just trying hard to remember something I heard Alice Hausman say years ago when I was with a small group of parents speaking up for early childhood education funding.  "You have to try very hard not to pit one small interest against each other," she said, "to say that my cause is more important than your cause.  What we have to try to do is figure out a way to lift everyone up, together." 

I am also trying very hard to remember to spend time with the kids.  I played Monopoly with my son this evening and really enjoyed that, read to my daughter, made homemade pizzas with them, scratched both their warm, soft backs before they fell asleep.  I have been neglecting them so much.  But when I look at that list, I don't feel quite so bad.

"You know why I move things around so much, Mom?" my son asked me the other day.  "Like, if I pass a big chunk of ice, I can't just let it sit, I have to pick it up and throw it?"

"Yes," I said.  "Why?"

"Because I think everything is alive, and I want to help it move around," he said.

Of course.  Everything is alive, and it wants to move around.  And we are all just getting moved around, tossed this way and that, landing new places, crashing into each other, figuring it out as we go.

Activism and Ambivalence

So our sweet little neighborhood library is still on the chopping block, but our determined band of activists is making a dent.  At the mayor's town hall meeting a few nights ago, there were so many of us, the mayor went from talking about "having to make tough choices, like closing a library" at the start of the night to saying, "No one's talking about shuttering the library.  We're talking about finding creative partnerships to keep it open" by the end of the meeting.

We've gotten lots of news coverage and now we have a meeting with the mayor scheduled at city hall AND a larger community meeting at the library with the mayor and the library director.  

Today I spoke at a press conference at our grand, imposing State Capitol with three mayors, fire fighters, and police officers to publicize the impact of state budget cuts that penalize cities unfairly rather than spreading the misery of our current economy around a little more evenly.  I had my 3-year-old daughter with me, at the press conference organizers' request and also because she said she wanted to stay with me.  

It was exhilarating to have a voice in the larger debate and to do it as a mother, with my daughter along.  So often, mothers' voices just don't get heard in the halls of power.  As a mother, though, at times I felt uncomfortable, even a little sick at heart, at the ways my daughter and I were being used as political props and my own participation in that process.  The first time we encountered a reporter in the Capitol rotunda and she tried to interview me with the camera rolling, my daughter got so scared of the big microphone and the lights, she got hysterical, and I had to tell the reporter, sorry, this isn't going to work and gave up.  I started to feel a little frustrated about my daughter's unwillingness to cooperate, but I pulled myself together and we went down to the cafeteria and had a nice snack and a talk.

I told her I really needed to be able to talk at the press conference to try to save our library, and I needed to do it without her screaming or squirming or trying to run away.  I told her if the cameras were too scary, I could drop her off to play with a friend of ours who was already watching my son, but my daughter said no--she didn't want to be with their cat Nonie.  I am not proud of it, but I worked the fear-of-Nonie angle a little to leverage some cooperation out of her.  I was, I hate to say, terrified of the prospect of trying to speak to a bunch of people in suits with cameras on and having my daughter make me look like a bad mother.  I also genuinely wanted my chance to make the case that our neighborhood really needs our library to stay open.

In the end, she did fine at the press conference.  She scored all sorts of swag from strapping men in uniforms and suits--a miniature police badge, a Junior Crimefighter sticker, and a lapel pin from the mayor of Wadena, Minnesota.  At one point she got a little restless while one of the mayors was talking (we were all standing up in front as a unified group), so I sat her down between my feet with a Where's Waldo book.  I was both happy and a little horrified when a cameraman aimed a camera right in her face while she paged through the book.  I knew this was a great image to publicize the plight of our library and the value of kids loving to read.  But it was my daughter I was turning into a poster child without her really giving me permission to do that, and I felt conflicted about it.  

So.  I'm finding that as a mother, as I put myself out there to stand up for what I believe, I need to also figure out what role I want my children to play in that--if any.  It's so tempting to get them involved--I love the idea of being a family of activists and showing them early in life how to speak up for change.  And they're just so darn photogenic, it makes it really attractive to use them to get attention for my cause.  But if I'm going to be honest with myself, I really don't know if it's the right way to treat these little people I love so much.  

Fighting to Save a Neighborhood Library

We got home from Chicago and found out that our beloved neighborhood library is endangered with closing due to city budget cuts.  Ever since, my kids have been hearing a whole lot of "I'll be there in just a second" while I'm frantically writing letters to the editor, organizing letter-writing parties, and searching out other folks working to save the library.  Next week, I'll be attending a lot of community town hall meetings about the budget.  Library supporters are planning on wearing red shirts to stand out as a unified group with a strong message.

I'm very new to this kind of grassroots organizing, and I've already learned a lot in just a few days.  Here are a few of the things that have struck me so far:

1.  You have to go ahead and take the risk of making mistakes and doing something imperfectly to start moving your agenda forward.  I'm already kicking myself for the things I should have said in a letter to the editor that just got published today, but I comfort myself with the wonderful title the editors gave the letter:  "Neighborhood needs its library." That's the kind of publicity we need to get the discussion heading in the direction we want.  By putting myself out there with my clumsy, imperfect action steps, I've met many helpful people I wouldn't have otherwise met and alerted people to the situation who wouldn't otherwise have heard about it or known how to get involved.

2.  You have to be willing to admit you're a beginner and soak up knowledge from others who've been around the activist block a time or two, even if they're less than tactful.  I talked today with an experienced neighborhood activist who bluntly labeled my ideas "minor league" and "too little" and encouraged me to think bigger:  instead of dropping off letters with an aide to the mayor, gather enough supporters to charter a bus to a public budget hearing.  Now we're talking, I thought excitedly, even if I was a little embarrassed to be called on my "minor league" approach.

3.  Think outside the usual suspects in terms of who can help your cause.  It struck me that closing the library could have a very negative impact on neighborhood housing values and property tax revenues.  I called a local realtor to get her take on things, and she gave me lots of wonderful, persuasive  new talking points I wouldn't have thought of.  She seemed surprised to be contacted and urged to get involved, but she also seemed open to getting pulled in to our efforts.  If nothing else, she expanded my thinking in helpful new ways, and she may mention the library to a few people who wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

  

4.  You may have to leave the house to make sure you pay attention to your kids.  I've been so distracted with email-sending and phone calls, the house is now a complete mess.  The kids and I had to go to the Children's Museum today so I could focus on crawling through a giant model of an anthill tunnel with them instead of hovering in front of my computer or cleaning up the Legos scattered across the living room floor.

5.  You have to make sure to make time to rest and breathe if you want to show your kids that getting involved in your community can be a joy, not a stressful burden that makes you grumpy.  Enough said.

Homeward on the Empire Builder

I was sitting in the Amtrak lounge car with my son and daughter yesterday, coming back from a writers' conference in Chicago.  My daughter was making tiny green pizzas and hot dogs out of Play-Doh.  My son was putting together a jet plane with Legos. Several times, one of the Lego parts fell under our booth and sent me and my son scrambling to retrieve them.  

When my son reached Step 8 in the instructions, he couldn't find the two parts he needed in the pile of Legos, and he lost it.  "They're gone forever!" he moaned, tears running down his face.  He crawled under the table again.  "I'm NEVER going to be dumb enough to try to put together Legos on the train.  NEVER!"  

I stayed in my seat this time.  I just didn't have it in me to get under there again.  We had an eight-hour ride ahead of us.  I needed to pace myself.  My daughter continued to happily shape her green fairy-sized food.

Then my son resurfaced.  His face was still red and blotchy with tears.  He looked again at the pile of Legos.  He looked at the plane he was trying to assemble.

"Oh," he muttered.  "The parts are already on the plane.  I already did Step 8.  That's kind of annoying."  And then he calmly set to work with Step 9.  Problem solved.  I refrained from sermonizing about how there hadn't been any need to get upset in the first place, blah blah blah.  

It wasn't until afterward that I realized what a wonderfully unusual moment this was for me.  If I'd reacted the way I often do to his getting upset, I would have been frantic with anxiety, my head fluttering with thoughts about how I wished what was happening wasn't happening.  I would have been worrying about what the other people in the lounge car were thinking about me and my weeping son.  I would have been wishing that my son wasn't so upset, that he could shrug off disappointment more easily.  I would have been casting around for ideas about how to distract him.  And I would have been berating myself for bringing a toy with 52 tiny parts on the train in the first place.  

But I wasn't thinking any of those things.  I was thinking, "Well, this sucks that he might have lost the pieces he needed.  I wonder how he'll handle it.  I'll wait and see if he seems to need help before I jump in and try to fix things for him."  I didn't try to wish the moment away.  I believed my son could handle what was happening.  

Years ago, before I had kids, when I used to attend Zen meditation retreats, I remember feeling absolutely miserable during one retreat.  My leg kept falling asleep, I was hot, I couldn't settle down and stay with my breath, and I was sick of staring at a white wall for hours on end.  I wanted to be able to get up and move around.  I wanted to drink a beer.  I wanted to watch a big dumb Hollywood movie with flashy special effects.  

And then it struck me that it wasn't that there was anything all that horrible about what was happening to me at that moment.  It wasn't that bad, just sitting still and resting on my meditation cushion.  Compared to many human experiences, it was actually sort of pleasant, really.  What made it horrible was how much I wanted what was happening to be different.  What was horrible was fighting reality.

I'm finally, every once in a while, starting to be able to put this flash of realization into practice with my kids.  

We had a good trip home on the Empire Builder, all in all.  My son did get sick from too much travel food and threw up in an old bread bag, but he was a trooper through it all, taking it easy, letting his dad care for him.  My daughter and I hung out in the snack car, and I overheard a conversation at the next table between a long-haired, bearded old man and another, middle-aged man wearing a black yarmulke.  They were talking about a time an intruder broke into the younger man's house.  He held a gun aimed at the intruder and was prepared to shoot when the cops arrived, saving him from having to make that decision.

"It wasn't your time to end that guy's life," the bearded man said with a smile.  "The cops were your guardian angels."

"And his," the man who'd held the gun smiled back.

I rode through the dark with my daughter beside me, smiling too, glad, at least for the moment, to be part of the mystery of it all.