Mama Says

I don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of making a promise to an object. I cannot be loyal to a length of printed polyester fabric. Sure, there’s also that part about “the republic for which it stands,” but I prefer to demonstrate my allegiance to the republic by casting an informed ballot. It seems a lot more practical, and a lot more sincere.

That’s really all there is to it. It would be easier to extract myself from recurring debates on this topic if I could claim that the pledge violates my religion. In point of fact, I do hold pledging to the flag to be sort of similar to worshipping the golden calf. But since that is merely a private and not an institutionalized view, I haven’t found it to be a useful talking point when debating the issue with pro-pledge people. Those folks, by definition, are all about the institutionalized view.

Fortunately, I need not engage in lengthy, unpleasant debate on the subject. I live in a democracy where, for the moment, if you don’t want to say the pledge, you don’t have to. If you are an adult, that is. For school children, it’s another thing all together.

My kids are aware that I do not say the pledge, and they know my reasons. I have also tried to emphasize to them that they will need to decide for themselves how they want to handle this issue. But from time to time, I have found myself in their classrooms at announcement time, and have watched them grow agitated as they tried to decide whether they should imitate me or imitate their teacher and classmates.

Possibly their agitation stems from a feeling that they will disappoint me if I discover that they have chosen to say the pledge. If so, it doesn’t explain why they bring the subject up when we aren’t at school. If they only want to please me, why not just let me live in blissful ignorance on the subject of whether or not they are pledging?

One day over milk and cookies after school, my son suddenly announced that during the pledge, he puts his hand on his heart and moves his lips, but doesn’t say the words. That sounds like a child who has spent the day worrying about whether he’s doing something wrong, to me.

And then yesterday, my daughter came to me asking if I would write a note excusing her from saying the pledge. I told her that wouldn’t be necessary because it is illegal for anyone to compel her to say it — children are protected by the Constitution too. But she was convinced that she’d need proof that her refusal was okay with us. So as a compromise, I told her to write her own note, stating that she does not wish to say it, and I would witness her signature.

I suppose I could make this easier on my kids. I could take a page from Ned’s book, and just mouth the parts that I don’t believe, as if this were an incantation for a spell I didn’t really want to cast.

But the easy way is very often not the best way. I am reminded of the time a couple years ago when my son had a social studies unit on Veterans Day. Instead of just sending him to the encyclopedia, we packed up the kids and drove to Washington DC to visit the war memorials. At the Korean War Memorial, we looked for the statue of the medic, and talked about the heroism of my late father, a decorated draftee in that conflict. We looked at the names on the Vietnam War Memorial, and chatted with some of the men there that still haven’t gotten over it. And yes, I mentioned that not one of those men or women “died fighting for our flag.” Not really.

Expressions like that are supposed to be figurative. Literal death resulting from a conflict over a pretty piece of cloth, a mass-produced plastic crucifix, or an insulting newspaper cartoon would be, well, blasphemous. If you commit violence in response to an insult against your treasured symbols, you are saying, “My dignity is very fragile.” I’d like to imagine that American dignity is still a little more sturdy than that. Not only can it withstand my 8-year-old’s decision not to pledge allegiance to the flag, it might actually grow stronger as a result.

The resident blog critic at our house was mocking me on Sunday afternoon. “So you post this big essay declaring, Now I shall write! and then…nothin’. What’s with that?”

I mumbled something about having no further subject at hand that was a worthy follow-up to the announcement that we’re preparing to adopt. He scoffed.

Which is how I come to be writing today about the Bee Gees.

Specifically, I am writing about an artifact displayed in the front window of a junk shop on Lorain Avenue. It was an old, blackened driftwood plank, upon which had been mounted three pages torn from some disco era teen ‘zine: full-page autographed headshots of Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb. The pages had been singed around the edges with a match — to artfully suggest the “hotness” of the brothers Gibb, no doubt —and then mounted with plenty of shiny Modge Podge to the plank.

I expect that the plank was then hung above the bed or on the paneled wall in the basement rec room of some adoring fan, probably a girl. Whenever she was listening to her 8-track of the Spirits Having Flown album, she’d probably whip out her hairbrush microphone and lipsync “Too Much Heaven” as she gazed longingly into the eyes and abundant chest hair of Barry Gibb.

There’s a touching wistfulness to that imagined scene, which may partially explain how such an object managed to survive for at least a quarter century. Nostalgia preserves where practicality and good taste would choose to destroy.

If there’s one thing this so-called blog is not, it is reliable, and that embarrasses me somewhat.

As a daily user of the Internet, I get frustrated with sites that go for long stretches without updating. They remind me of the vacant storefronts along Lorain Avenue. Sure, no one else has a better idea about what to do with this chunk of virtual real estate I occupy, but long periods of disuse suggest that the landlord’s a belly-scratching, stogie-chomping land speculator.

So to begin defensively, I’d like to say that the long hiatus I’ve taken from posting to this blog corresponds with a period of unprecedented behind-the-scenes productivity. Behind the boarded-up windows, our family has been hard at work rehabbing the interior, in preparation for a grand re-opening.

Early last spring, my husband, John, and I finally answered a question that we had been asking ourselves in one form or another for over fifteen years. In its simplest form, the question amounted to, “If not us, who?” and the answer led us to begin the process of applying to adopt two children from the state foster care system. As that process began, this process of recording my parenting experiences ended, at least temporarily.

Ever since I began publishing personal essays about my family, I have thought of them as letters to my children. These essays were my way of letting them know that I was trying to parent mindfully, and that I cared enough about the job I was doing to open my mothering to some measure of public scrutiny. As a result of sharing our family’s experiences through the Mama Says newsletter, this blog, and a monthly column in the Plain Press, I have received support and constructive criticism from neighbors and friends. All of that ends up benefiting my kids.

But writing about the beginning stages of preparing for adoption didn’t really feel right. For one thing, we could change our minds and decide against adoption. In that case, this blog would have become letters to children not chosen. While documenting the process of considering but deciding against adoption might have value to someone, it seemed inconsistent with my objectives.

And making regular postings to the blog without mentioning adoption also would have presented problems. Sure, our day-to-day experiences with Ned and Audrey would have continued to supply a wealth of topics, but to avoid mentioning the daily work of preparing to adopt would have been to step awkwardly around the proverbial elephant in the room. Better not to write, I thought, than to make a point of leaving that part out.

For a couple reasons, I’ve been rethinking. We’ve quite recently moved from the stage where we were merely preparing to the stage where we are waiting. The difference is less subtle than it might sound. But we could still decide that we aren’t really as ready to welcome two more kids as we had hoped. Harder still, we could go a very long time without being matched to waiting children. After placement, we could have a very difficult time bonding with our kids, or making the changes we need to make to help them feel at home here. It could be very awkward or very painful or very much worse than either of those things. All of this argues in favor of continuing to maintain silence on this blog.

But then there’s this:

Last month, shortly before their due date, our friends Piet and Martha launched a blog to document their baby’s birth and to share news and photos with friends. They had expected a baby right around Christmas day, they had planned for a home birth, they had hoped for a labor that was smooth and reasonably brief. They got none of those things. The baby was finally born in a hospital by caesarian section after 50 hours of exhausting labor, more than ten days after her due date.

It’s all fine. Mama and daughter are healthy and happy to be home. My point here is obvious: it could have been not fine. In beginning the blog and posting to it regularly all through their difficult passage, Piet and Martha took a chance that they would be sharing much more than they originally intended. They acted on faith that one way or another, their story would be a joyful one. As a result, their daughter will have precious documentation of how her parents parented before they ever saw her face.

Not only that, the baby blog went a long way toward connecting their child to her new community and extended family. Sharing news from the blog was, for those few weeks, a regular element in all neighborly chitchat, and encouraging comments were posted daily by family and friends near and very, very far.

The children that could be ours are living their lives somewhere already, probably nearby. We may pass them on the street. When we finally meet them, I’d like to be able to show them similar evidence of how much they were wanted, how carefully we prepared ourselves and our home for their arrival, how their community waited with us. And how much faith we had that our story would turn out to be a happy one, too.

[I’ve been doing more thinking than writing in the last month or so; thus, the lack of posts. So here’s a piece I just submitted for publication to the Plain Press. If you see this excellent free monthly around town, pick it up. It’s a great source of in-depth coverage on neighborhood issues. —LTF]

When he discovered the “Jokelopedia” in his first grade library, it was to my son, Ned, what the discovery of the Rosetta Stone must have been to linguists. He studied this book — which is subtitled quite accurately “the Biggest, Best, Silliest, Dumbest Joke Book Ever” — as if by understanding its contents he might unlock the key to the most ancient secrets of humor.

For almost a year afterwards, he would come home from school every day packing a new arsenal of jokes and a trigger finger just itching to fire them all at his family. In the beginning, he found an enthusiastic audience. Even the moldiest old chestnuts can be real knee-slappers when delivered by such a charming comic.

But as time wore on, and each after-school snack time continued to feature a live performance by our own small Rodney Dangerfield, our response dwindled to a tired chuckle and a pat on the head. And then, finally, I imposed the “3-Joke Limit.” Henceforth, I decreed, no parent would ever be required to laugh appreciatively and with gusto at more than three knock-knocks, silly riddles, puns or guy-walked-into-a-bar stories told in succession, unless said jokes were genuine, certifiable gut-busters.

The 3-Joke Limit was then entered into the family canon, and remains in effect to this day. When we invoke this rule, there may be some good-natured debate about, say, whether the famous “Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana” knock-knock counts as one joke or several. And then, typically, there is graceful compliance. The performance stops and we return to a conversation where anyone can speak.

Imposing the 3-Joke Limit at first felt sort of mean. After all, here I had been blessed with a talkative little son for whom nothing gave him more pleasure than to voice to his mother the first thing that came into his head, and every other little thing that followed after that. It seemed cruel and ungrateful of me to suggest that there might be a time when I grew weary of the music of his sweet voice.

For us, however, the 3-Joke Limit was our way of conveying in a light-hearted way a point that had the potential for creating hurt feelings. We needed Ned to understand a whole array of realities about growing up: that not everything he says or does is amusing to everyone all the time, that family members need to be prepared to yield the floor to each other, that all kinds of fun have their limits.

This, to me, is among the most challenging of all parenting tasks: to educate children about the subtle niceties of adult interactions in a mutually respectful society. Learning how to read body language, pick up unspoken clues, and observe the complex protocol of everyday life takes a lot of practice. Indeed, these are skills which could use some polishing even by the adults in our household.

But it is child-rearing work that is well worth doing. If we can teach our kids in a gentle but honest way about the give-and-take of human interactions, they stand to give and receive more real joy in their future relationships than they could derive from all the hilarious yuck-yucks the “Jokelopedia” has to offer.

It’s been a year and a half since you could drive over the Madison Avenue bridge between West 58th and West 65th. It was closed back in the summer of ‘03 due to its advanced state of decay. Concrete is crumbled, rusty strands of mangled rebar poke out. But because vehicular traffic no longer passes this way, it has become one of the near west side’s better bridges for pedestrians who want to stop for a moment to consider the city spread out around them.

If you walk across Madison Avenue bridge, here is what you will see:

First, look over the north side. If you’ve come on a weekday, you will see crews of men and women in hard hats and heavy boots. They have recently begun placing the structural steel for the adjacent West 65th Street bridge, which has also been closed for some time. The process of demolishing the old bridge and constructing the foundation for the new one seemed to take an eternity. And then all of a sudden, the huge steel beams arrived and were up in an instant. Suddenly, a worker can walk (very carefully) across the entire span.

Now cross the glass-strewn street and look over the south side of the bridge. The most obvious structure before you is the EcoVillage RTA station that was dedicated last summer. From the front — the Lorain side — the station blends in with the modest houses nearby. From the back, it holds its own well enough with the monumental grandeur of St. Colman’s church, school and convent. I love this new station, partly because I think it turned out very well and partly because I am aware of some of the high hopes that surrounded its conception. Years ago, my friend David Cornicelli stopped by my house to show me a concept drawing on the day that the decision was made to build it as a cornerstone to the EcoVillage development. At that point, the whole idea seemed pretty far-fetched. But there it is.

Now, look down. Beneath you, visible through the basketball-size holes in the bridge there are the trash-covered banks of the Rapid line, especially along the east side of the tracks. How does the garbage get there? The homes in this section of Detroit Shoreway are modest but well cared for. Walk along this quiet stretch of Madison on any nice morning and you will almost always see someone out raking his leaves or picking up her trash. I don’t think these neighbors are responsible for this mess. Maybe the litter is just carried to this unlucky spot by the wind.

Two weeks ago and two weeks from now, this part of the view was and will be merely depressing. But just now, if you stand close to the east end of the bridge and look straight down, you will see “a cloud of daffodils” growing up among the overgrown brush and debris.

Like the litter, it’s a mystery how the daffodils got to this unlikely spot. What Clevelander once thought to climb down that treacherous slope to bury dozens of bulbs which — unless he was standing in this very spot or riding the Rapid — he would never see in flower?

Actually, the planting of the daffodils is a fairly easy scenario for me to imagine. It’s an example of the kind of quiet generosity that is one of Cleveland’s better personality traits.