I took Wonder Woman and it’s mine (ownership, progress and individualism, chess, the joy of Latin, The Great War, Karen Joy Fowler, theater rehearsal and library checkouts ).
Rituals with superheroes and morning musings on young nations
With hoodie over my messy-haired early morning head, I grimaced at the camera as I selfied myself drinking black coffee from my beloved Wonder Woman mug.
Well…it’s not actually my Wonder Woman mug. Well…it sort of is. I took it.
The idea of ownership is fundamental to understanding who the United States is as an entity. She is a quarter of a thousand years old; a considerably shorter lifespan than so many previous civilizations, empires, and world powers.
I’m old-fashioned enough, traditional enough, conservative enough to believe in this country as a patriot and student of history; I bristle at comparisons to this country, my country, as being no better than countries with autocracies, dictatorships abhorrent living conditions and regressive policies for the majority of its citizens. I believe in what this country represents.
I’m progressive enough, hopeful enough, pragmatic enough to believe in this country as a patriot and student of history; I bristle at comments about this country, my country, as being filled with America-loathing, God-hating liberals hellbent on running the nation into the ground in conspiratorial service to some vague worldwide cabal of globalists.
These things above are not equal. Right now, the undertow is tugging, tugging, tugging hard right. I’d like a renavigation to the center; a journey filled with hope and possibility and course corrections as necessary, yet also filled with the accumulated knowledge and skills and life lessons we’ve learned already and can be proud of, together.
Owning up to your mistakes doesn’t make you weak. It makes you honest.
And with honesty comes a strength that is authentic.
This country has made a lot of mistakes. We exist on land we ripped away, with blood, from first peoples. We grew this country on land and industry built on the blood of people we enslaved - after ripping them away from their homeland to begin with. All along the way, we have found ways, at institutional levels, to discriminate against and diminish peoples whose pigmentations or ethnicities or national origins or religious beliefs or other traits place them outside the mainstream, and therefore determined to be ‘a threat’ to ‘our way of life.’
Funny thing is, ‘our way of life,’ as Americans, is a tenuous and gently-violent balance between two ideas: eternal progress and self-reliant individualism. These two things are in perpetual conflict. Doesn’t seem like it, necessarily, but it’s true. The idea of manifest destiny might seem the same thing as eternal progress, but it’s not. Manifest destiny is under the umbrella, in my opinion, of eternal progress.
This phrase I’ve coined, ‘eternal progress,’ is the embedded belief, consciously held or deep down, that things keep improving and getting bigger, better, faster, etc. In other words, the stock market will always keep going up and we will always somehow figure out a way of our current problems…which is the bridge to the other idea: self-reliant individualism.
Self-reliant individualism is the notion that we pat ourselves on the back for what we’ve done. We did it, and nobody can take it away. Nobody helped me, I did this on my own, I built this house, I built this business, I built this empire, I built this thing, and nobody can take it away or do anything about it. Including the government.
These two things are in conflict, often to our own detriment. It’s hard, really hard, if you’re a hard worker who has benefited from your hard work, to see others benefit from what you’ve done. But if we really care about moving forward, about improving and eternally progressing, then we have to sometimes set aside that other tent stake of self-reliant individualism of pride and commit to a mindset where by helping others, we also help ourselves.
And on the flip side, we have to remember the importance, moving forward en masse, that people do not contribute equally; that individuals are important - especially to America since her inception - and that role-playing, finger-pointing, grouped-together identity politics will get you only so far; that every bloc or arbitrary group designation is made up of individuals, and some of those individuals worked hard and some didn’t. Fundamentally it’s difficult to let go of credit or acknowledgment or benefit on an individual level. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge and remember individual accomplishments as well; not simply lumping into giant groups or designations where everybody can feel good and equally valued.
We have to be able to laugh at ourselves.
I looked at myself on this early morning, this early morning with my hoodie over my messy-haired early morning head as I held my Wonder Woman mug, and I thought of these things.
See, this Wonder Woman mug isn’t mine. It was Becca’s. My wife’s. Technically, it is still hers. But I really liked it, and started using it, and am a long-time fan of Wonder Woman - more so than her - , so I’ve used it long enough that people associate it with me, not her. Including myself. I think of it as my mug. I believe this concept is called grandfathering in. It’s where you do something or use something long enough that by virtue of the length of time you’ve used it, you become the owner.
From that standpoint, I’m the owner.
But you have to be honest, and you have to be able to laugh at yourself, and you have to keep a grip on reality, on what happened and what didn’t.
You can do that as an individual, and you can do that as a country.
Aren’t I just a party-favorite for light-hearted early morning musings and conversation? Anyone? Anyone?
Chess
Two pajama-clad boys at a kitchen table, leaning over a Chromebook and a tablet as the 12-year old continues educating his 6-year old brother on opening moves. A 3-year old, adjacent, soaks it in a seat away.
Interchanges
A 3-year old knocks on his big sister’s door; her lifespan exceeding his by a factor of five. He waits in the doorway while he asks a question. I do not remember what it was concerning. Possibly concerning the possibility of him coming in later to play with and organize her jewelry or jewelry-making supplies, or to tell her she’s beautiful. All of these happen, and might have happened in this moment. She patiently looks up from her laptop, from going over World Studies notes, and she listens to him, nodding and smiling, before he finally exits. Click goes the door.
More chess
A boy finds many different locations in the house to play, practice, and learn Chess. Many locations. Some locations are more conducive to taking pictures than others, if one is considerate of others’ privacy in certain situations. Have a book in every room, play chess in every room.
Math 7
A 7th grader works at finding solutions to inequalities in context and completing solutions. This does not fill him with joy. But I am proud of his resilience and willingness to work through the hard stuff. Two boys sit across from him and quietly, intently work in their sketch pads, bringing their ideas to life via markers, pencils, and an old egg crate.
Latin : Mens sana in corpore sano
We talk about what this means. “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” Perhaps dissecting Latin phrases is this decade’s Chinese character tattoos; in other words, phrases or ideas in a different language sound more elegant and wise. Perhaps.
There is something mesmerizing about Latin and the way you can find its secrets buried in its roots; I can barely conjugate a handful of verbs, but am familiar with many. There’s something beautiful and valuable about breaking apart the seeds of English; the roots of the language we (our family and most in our current social ecosphere) use daily. For being a ‘dead language,’ Latin has remained a lingua franca across facets of modern life, not least of which is science. Perhaps that’s another part of its beauty: a shared bridge not only across time to the ancient past, but across current geographies and separation to provide a common baseline for sharing facts and fundamental information.
I love that.
Poetry in car
I quizzed them on a handful of pieces we’ve been working on, including Yeats, Dickinson, and Frost.
History
We discussed World War I - The Great War - and recapped concepts of militarism, imperialism, and the role of the Industrial Revolution in it, as well as the sparks that escalated it from a two-country disagreement into a multi-year, multi-country war.
Every time I think of war, and of World War I in particular, I think of the millions lost, and what they would have done with their lives. What da Vincis, Einsteins, Curies, Lincolns were lost forever to enriching the world with their ideas and existence; flames blown out early, lives extinguished over a few hundred yards of no man’s land here and there?
Reading : The Bitcoin of Books
Two boys reading a stack of Shel Silverstein books. The classics that survive in time and store their value well.
Logic : When is it appropriate to use?
We sat around the table and talked about when it’s appropriate to use something. In World War I, the Industrial Revolution provided all manner of horrific new technologies for decimating and destroying human lives. We were able to do something…but should we?
Logic is an important tool to use in thinking, in reasoning, in arguing, and in conflict, but again…just because we have a weapon or a tool…should we use it?
Weaponizing Logic because we can ‘out-logic’ someone is very different from using Logic appropriately - which means using with appropriate context, humility, wisdom, and perhaps most importantly, learning to recognize when and when it isn’t helpful in a situation.
Theater
I drop off, and snap a picture as I always do. The show is imminent. They have prepared well. Becca and I split our available time to show up, consistently, and jump in wherever and however we can. Our family, along with others, has invested a great deal of time and energy in bringing this to life. What makes it worth it?
There are easy answers to that and not-so-easy answers to that.
Skate Park and Library
School for fifty percent of our children, during rehearsal, translates into time split between the skate park and the library. Upon these grounds and groupings of concrete and books, there is climbing, running, and going through the exquisite ritual of independent choosing and checking out printed literature.
A bridge between worlds
We meet up at a determined location to swap vehicles and children. The boys delight in racing Becca in the grassy strip between spaces in a giant Trader Joe’s parking lot. She got off work and is tired. I only know because I know. Not because I see it, because what I see is a mom with a giant smile oblivious to everyone around but her two young boys chasing her across wet grass on a mid-afternoon. But I know she has gone hard this week, and today. Just like last week, and the week before, and many, many days.
But now she can relax. She can take the boys on a field trip to Costco.
So she does, under the guise of getting groceries necessary for our family’s survival. Later, I discover there was an illicit ice cream purchase in-store, and the evidence is spread across the faces of two young men who love few things more than ice cream.
Especially when it’s ice cream with their mother.
Reading snippets
I sneaked in several pages of a Karen Joy Fowler short story collection. Midway through,there’s an interview with her. A couple parts I especially liked. The chapter is More Exuberant Than Is Strictly Tasteful.
Do you read on the Kindle?
‘I read on the iPad, but only when I travel. I persist in liking books on paper best. I’ve learned the sense of how close to the end of a book I am, which no electronic version can recreate for me in quite that same physical way, is an important component of my reading experience.’
I love that.
And: What authors do you think had the most influence on your work?
‘T.H. White, by a mile. Author of The Once and Future King, T.H.White is why I have never believed that I had to follow the rules or consider anything resembling a ‘contract with the reader.” T.H. White is why I never believed that I had to pick a single genre or a single tone or choose between comedy and tragedy, between historical and contemporary, bewteeen realistic and fantastical. No reason to to do them all and all the time, either piece by piece or within the same paragraph. T.H. White taught me that writing can be more exuberant than I strictly tasteful, and I like exuberance best, though I’m not sure I often achieve it.’
Love this too. Especially relevant as our 12-yo dives into this book for the first time.
Coming home
Finally, I brought our fifty percent to join up with Becca’s fifty percent, and we walked in to an evening meal prepared and beautifully set; candles and music set the tone for a most lovely goodbye to a rich week.
