18 posts from 2008

         Italy came to me for Christmas. She walked through the door wearing red cord and a black beret, her face still glowing from the Italian summer sun. I had forgotten what vivacity sails in the door just ahead of her. It filled the room and flooded the floor so that it was almost too slippery to walk on, or perhaps it was my enthusiasm that made it difficult to stand. I flapped to the door to greet her. She was real! She was here! My one and only Laura Marini has come once more to the states. Laughing and shouting between mouthfuls of fruit and waffle, the icy film of winter dissipates and the room begins to glow with light and warmth. Even my fingertips regain their color, tingling at the rush of blood flow.
         "What have you been doing, Laura?" Zac bellows above the gleeful tumult. "How, how on earth did you get here?"
         "I've been studying physics at ze university," she called back. "I came on ze airplane, through New York. I arrived on ze tventy-third and spent Christmas with the O.K. Langs." Amidst more shouting Laura communicated that she would be staying until the tenth of the new year. Oh the things we will do! I thought.
         Already we have dawdled about town as we used but two years ago, though under quite different circumstances. This time Laura and I have no Spanish script to write and film. Sweet relief that is! Now we can trundle around all we like, peer in shop windows, laugh at the tourists, throw slush balls, and go sledding in all the wrong places - only the best that Great Barrington has to offer ;p There is iceskating to come, swimming and the sauna, attempts of true Italian cooking, games of cranium and charades, even tango and salsa parties. We have museums to visit, pictures to take, stories to tell, and many, many incapacitating laughs to enjoy. We have already begun to revive the spring, even in the dead of winter.

    What in the world could possibly run through a Massachusetts country girl’s mind that would urge her to throw herself into the heart of the blazing African summer with only a backpack, a camera, and a notebook, where nothing, not even water and air, are anything like home? Everything spoke against it - my safe-seeking heritage, the language barrier, my status as an unaccompanied young female, the extreme foreignness of the several customs and cultures, my parents, everything. And still the hollow call of wild Africa drew me from my native shores. It was the power of curiosity, so irresistible, that drove Pandora to unfasten the forbidden box of unknowns. The gift from her lover Zeus was too tempting to let be.  In the same way, the earth lies before me, ominously staked out by politics and war. But it seems a sin to choose ignorance and hide in the comfort of my small New England existence, never to know what it is to be 4 in Namibia, 40 in Chad, rich in Ethiopia, poor in Ghana, educated in Egypt, illiterate in Burkina Faso – to be in someone else’s shoes, or sandals, or bare feet, or what have you. The true and selfish reason that I answered that call was because I wanted to know; I wanted to know what it was like to walk at least a mile in someone else’s shoes. To never advance beyond one’s region or country is to hear only half the story. It is equal to reading one chapter of a book somewhere in the middle with no concept of what came before or what follows after. It is only part of the song, a few frames from a film, a picture torn in two. Left incomplete nothing makes sense; the image is fuzzy, the melody, the poem, the plot all lack completion.
    I like to say I am all about the experience. I do not want to carry much baggage; I refuse to carry a cavernous purse; I thwart the desire to own every material thing I think I want in life, because what I truly want are experiences, more than clothes, more than shoes, more than money or multitudes of books even. I want the only thing I can wrap up tight and slip into my pocket, the only thing that counts in the span of a lifetime, that which will not evaporate as other things do. Experience internalizes everything you may have heard about a place, a situation, or a concept. Think of reading about racism versus experiencing first hand what it is to be rejected for who you are; imagine climbing the fierce peak of Everest instead of watching the documentary from a comfortable fireside chair; picture what it is to be welcomed, though a stranger, into the heart of the village as I was. Life is about experience!
    Before embarking on this journey my French consisted of two phrases learned from our social worker upon the occasion of my youngest brother’s adoption from Burkina Faso six years ago: “C’est le temps pour dormir” and  C’est le temps pour manger” which translate as “it is time to sleep” and “it is time to eat.” It is enough to get around a city I suppose, the countryside, however, is a whole other potbrood (South African pot bread). Armed with these phrases, an English-French dictionary, some knowledge of romantic language grammar, and much determination, I acquired enough vocabulary that summer to keep up with the conversations around me and even developed a decent accent to boot. I traveled from village to village, city to city, and even from country to country, taking in what it means to be a part of this arid continent. Every week was spent in a new location, staying with a family, working alongside them, documenting each step of the way how they carry out an ordinary life.
    I worked fields, ground grain, learned to bake bread, herded cattle, cleaned up trash from city gutters, hawked fruit in open-air markets, accompanied statesmen on business, dug wells, dug graves, built homes, and sang and pounded in the occasional drumming circles. But the most universal of these acts through out all the countries I walked through was the dance. Not every region of any culture shares the same dances, but the style of their continent is undeniably recognizable from a thousand kilometers away. No civilized westerner in his right mind ever dances like that. He would be laughed out of New York and all the way to Idaho with no afterthought as to how a human being could possibly perform such impossible feats of endurance and elasticity. The semester of West African dance that I had taken my first year at Mount Holyoke is what brought me initial acceptance in almost every village I went. Not that I was incredibly good at it mind you, but I did dance with heart, losing myself in the music, flailing just as vigorously as the rest of them.
    The dance provided a means of communication that compensated for my initial lack of French. A language barrier is an isolating handicap; it prevents the outsider from feeling completely welcomed in to a new environment no matter how hospitable the host may be purely by the fact that one cannot easily communicate even so much as a simply thought. When we danced, however, it did not matter that I was a little WASPY girl from blue Massachusetts who sounded like a speech-impaired frog attempting to croak out discombobulated French. What mattered was that dance was a language we shared in common and could throw ourselves into together, understanding fully and completely what emotion each movements came from. That was how close I came to touching the heart of Africa.
    I know it seems I speak of Africa as casually as though she is one larger country, but from her northernmost tip unto her far south tail, no one village is the same. I walked  across Africa because it is nothing like what I know. It was like living in another dimension: no ipod, no laptop, no cell phone, no billboards screaming hideous ads - just miles of desert, mountains, crushing poverty, shameless wealth. Continued tensions between many tribes, as well as the remnants of genocide in countries like Darfur and Rwanda haunt abandoned villages and thicken the air. It is not exactly the kind of place nice New Jersey families go to on holiday.
    I will always retain a lasting impression, several lasting impressions in fact, of moments I spent with my hands in the bread dough along side them, the peoples of the nations, kneading out the problems of that less comfortable life one vigorous thump at a time. I went desiring to know how other people lived in the everyday, hoping that I could better understand them and maybe even better understand myself; and, perhaps use that knowledge to relate to all people that I encounter, to let them know they are understood. Opening my Pandora’s box may mean finding some, if not much, pain and suffering as is to be expected of reality. But I also hope to find other more hopeful things as well to nurture the ties, not so much between nations, but between people. Because of this desire, I cannot leave it all to someone else - a newspaper, a reporter - to tell me what in the world is going on. I want to go and see for myself: experience it, live it, not just hear about it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this experience is worth at least a hundred thousand.

Though the above events have not actually taken place (since I have never been outside the continental United States), they are a representation, a glimpse, of what I hope to experience.

Well, I'm back. Not in full force, not quite yet. I'm still getting classes, work, sports, and other commitments figured out in such a way that I can settle into the elements of a day. Watch, I'll just be getting the hang of things and then the semester will end and then they'll go and change things on me again! But that is because college isn't strictly about book learnin' any more. If that is what you think it is then enroll in an online institution and go live in a library carrel in the back stacks somewhere. You'll make lots of old, dead friends that way, but that won't help you relate very much to the living. Of course, if you're a lab-e then you might find yourself feeling pretty smug about now with that "hands-on" approach best known as straining-one's-eyes-under-a-microscope-to-look-at-cells-preserved-in-formaldehyde. That won't make you too many friends either. Not the real live kind.

More and more I care about people, and less and less about theories that don't work, or even one's that work but don't take the whole person into account. If I were on the pre-med track, you would not catch me - not in a thousand-million years, not if you paid me a thousand-million dollars - running the losing race of the bio/biochem major. It just wouldn't happen. The plan to study lots of tiny cells in a lab so that I can study lots more tiny cells in the  bigger and better labs of med school, so that one day I receive a stamped piece of paper that brings ill and broken people to my office day after day...whoa! who said anything about people here?! I thought I was dealing with capped scenarios and testtube experiments, problems that had answers, not emotions.

But that is not the kind of doctor I would want to be.

Sadly today, most angsty pre-med students I've experienced have become or are becoming that doctor. They get all their A's in school, but can't handle it when a real person walks in the door with perhaps multiple issues, all in need of address, including support from other human beings. They can't face another person's crisis with understanding compassion, only with astere lab data because that is what they know - the science, the cognitive, the reasonable, the rational, the tidy little bundle of facts that leads to a conclusions. They have not got the background to help the whole person, which is what really needs help, not just fragments, the whole person.

Since when has medicine involved looking out for the patience whole well-being? Since someone got smart and realized you can't cut off a limb and treat it. Every part is linked to another part which is linked to another part which in turn touches the source. People are not robots. They are not segmented creatures capable of compartmentalizing themelves completely. They need a new kind of doctor, one who looks at the being as a whole unit and takes every aspect into consideration; one who understands the link between body, soul, and spirit. The new doctor needs a broader education. More than a link to people, he needs an avenue, a bridge the size of the Golden Gate, to allow him to connect his medicine to the outside world in a way that will truly be effective. He needs to understand other cultures, know history and economics, develop a critical eye as well as mind, participate in a team experience, know good writing, produce good writing, attempt to understand the creative arts. He needs to dive in and take a swim in something other than formaldehyde if he wishes to be trully effective in his practice. He needs to see where someone else is coming from and he needs to know how to cross discipline bounds and find where they interweave, because they do. No discipline stands alone.

A person who can disperse the idea of these imaginary barriers and find a way to understand the world (their patient) as a big picture made up of lots of small puzzle pieces, will be the new doctor. The person who lives beyond the realm of Latin terms and ideal test tube scenarios can be that doctor. The person who is focused on the patient rather than on lab procedures is that doctor. They can mend body, soul, and spirit.

We are having a mostly exquisite summer here in Massachusetts except that it rains too often, which is, I suppose, why everything has remained so fresh and green. It is mid-July and not a dead blade of grass is to be seen. Every single branch and leaf of flora radiates a glowing, photosynthetic green. Where we now reside in Monterey our large living room window looks out across the way to large grass-rimmed pond. Every morning that the sun shines, this view is like looking out over burnished metal; the sun glare rebounds across the water until it roils silver. The view is stunning and it never ceases to blow my mind that something as simple as sun and water could outdo the most fabulous efforts of man. Not even Solomon’s most extraordinary palace could ever compare.

      Perhaps it is because of the regular rainfall, or perhaps it has nothing to do with precipitation at all, but the leaves on the oak trees surrounding our property and lining the road are another phenomenon all there own. The same sun that turns water to silver transforms leaves to emeralds. Layered in lofty spreads against the pale pre-dawn sky, the thick greenery drapes itself, a dull camouflage cloak, over brown-gray bark. From the moment the sun makes its first glittering appearance – expanding over the horizon, teetering precariously on the rim of the tree line until it tips over the edge and into the morning to expose its fullness – a fairytale begins to unfold. Like the rags of Cinderella under the persuasion of her fairy godmother, the leafy cloak begins to glow a faint yellow-gold. The opaque jacket starts to unravel layer by layer; skeins of heavy brown wool wind and coil before dropping to the ground. In an unmarked moment imperceptible to the observing eye, unseen hands reweave the leaves in gossamer-gold thread until a translucent film is all that remains. Even as the sun sets, there remains into twilight, a vague afterglow, a solar radiation still flowing in their veins from the heat of the day.

      I live on the highest hill for many towns around.  Because of the abundant vegetation there is little in the way of a surrounding view – it’s like living above the clouds. We see only the trees, the lake, the thread of dirt road that winds by our house, and the expanse of the sky. Our only pedestrians are bears, deer, and an occasional feral cat. There is one teen-aged bear who is very fond of blackberries and eats them the length of our road. Earlier this summer I had spied a number of green black and red raspberry thorns in the preliminary stages of development. Thinking to myself that I would certainly enjoy their fruits of late summer, I made a mental note of the places and continued on. Just days ago I went out for an early morning walk, in hopes of finding them full grown and ready to eat, only to discover my little black friend merrily munching by the side of the road. There was not a ripe berry to be seen. There died my idyllic hopes for raspberries and yogurt, raspberries and chocolate, raspberries and tea.

      There is more to life than raspberries and leaves that flash like emeralds: things like college, track, reading, family. But for the moment I am relaxed and blind to the urgencies that rush other people by me because I am learning to rest in the knowledge that if I allow God to order my steps, everything that must be accomplished will be, and nothing necessary or special will be left undone. Trust. It is all about learning to let go, fall back, and trust that God knows what He is about.

       Thank God life lessons come when they do - not sooner, not later. Looking back at freshman year I can sigh with relief at all the instances where experience from former lessons took over and saved me so much grief. Of course, there were moments when I thought the rules had changed and I fought to hang on to what I hoped was truth. One thing stands true, the character of humanity remains the same. If we want something to be true, we believe with all our might, against all odds that it is, regardless of what life may have already taught us. So maybe I didn't quite learn some of my lessons; maybe I'm getting a little burned now. But as much as it hurts now, the lesson pushes itself deeper into my mind, like a splinter embedded in the skin, wriggling sharply and leaving a lasting, though tiny scar.
       Scars are acceptable. They tell a story.

    “Drop and give me 50!” coach barked. Across the room forty bodies cut straight to the ground, eighty hands gripped the cement. “Now GO!” he issued. Seventy-nine pairs of arms jack-hammered. “ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO,” they pulsated up and down in unison. Only one puny pair of arms faltered, could not make fifty, crumpled after five. My choice for a hiatus from the sports field suddenly seemed like a very, very stupid idea. On good days I could sometimes manage to levitate and lower my lengthy plank of a body two or three times before my pectorals buckle and I crash face first into the floor. “ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO.” They were pumping in rhythm, while I was trying to extract my nose from the cement.

            That week I not only discovered muscles I never knew existed, but a drive and an attitude that had long lain quiescent. Right off the bat I knew I had to decide I was going to like push-ups. From the moment I encountered the sight of my piston-armed peers it was evident that the workouts were not going to get any less challenging. Might as well enjoy them, I resolved, because they are only going to keep coming; and I was right. By the end of the season, we were shooting off 100-150 pushups a day.

            The attitude that urged me to keep pumping in spite of fatigue also pushed me in ballet class to hold poses and dance combinations far beyond what my one semester of dance had prepared me for. Due to scheduling conflicts in the second semester, I had enrolled in a Ballet IV class per suggestion of my instructor, Rose. The leap from Ballet I to Ballet IV looked no less than overwhelming; however, I remained steady in my resolve to follow my passion. Fully aware that I was entering a level well beyond my experience, I was still unprepared for the humbling, and sometimes frightening, experience of dancing with girls possessing over a dozen years of experience. They looked so good, and I…well, I still had much to learn, as stated not quite so professionally by my instructor’s colleague, C__.

            One morning after an especially challenging class, I stayed late to work out a combination with Rose. While I stood by, in obvious earshot, C__ confronted her. “What is she doing here Rose? She’s only going to hurt herself. Why is she here?” His words stung me. I took a deep breath and pushed my tears back.  Several days later they still reverberated in my brain; I could not shake the defeated feeling that pressed upon me. To fail in something of lesser import is one thing; to fall short in one’s greatest passion is quite another. Despite his comments, or perhaps because of them, I enrolled in two additional off-campus classes the following week. The evening of my first class, who should walk in as the instructor but C__ himself. It took all of my courage and self-respect to hold myself at the bar, gripping for dear life, knowing that every movement was being critiqued under his hawkish surveillance.

            Performing tendue en arabesque at the bar, memories of my fall semester seminar came tumbling back over the piano’s vibrant melody. Nathan Margalit, an enlightening artist himself, led a seminar on the creative and learning processes of art. In Nathan’s class every process was acceptable - our focus was not the product; it was the process. We messed with every form of art from charcoal and printmaking to rhythm and movement. “The experience of the process is why the artist creates. The product is simply a result of the overflow of your heart,” Nathan constantly reminded us. Relief breathed over me. It did not matter a pin or a straw what C__ thought of my dancing. I was in this for process not product, because I cannot help but pursue what I love. The experience provided a fitting frame for my subsequent realization of self. Three springs from now, I hope to descend the steps of the Amphitheater to accept a degree in the self-designed major of music and movement therapy, which focuses chiefly on process and the continuing course of self-development.

            Three months and more than 3,000 push-ups later I can drop and give you 50. Anyone who has been through boot camp is still snorting I’m sure, but two more weeks and maybe I’ll be giving you 70. I have reached a new place of thought during our daily practices these last weeks. It’s about attitude. Track is at least 90% attitude. If I don’t think I can do it, I won’t be able to. If I choose to focus on Hammer footwork then I can do it and I do it right, but if, when my coach tells me to practice footwork, I internally groan Line drills stink! I hate spinning in circles! then I might as well leave because I know I won’t be trying that hard.

            I had to take that attitude with me to a test today. This week I have done little more than complain about a particular class and professor, seeing only the dismal side of the experience. Today we had our final. When I woke up this morning I decided to just do it. To shut my mouth and nike. That did not make the test any less difficult, but I decided to do it and give the hour and fifteen minutes my best shot – so I did. I can do anything I choose to.

            Contemplating my experiences, I realize that Nathan Margalit’s class is what I needed most to accept myself. I knew what I loved deep down inside, but could not come to terms with it because it was not “acceptable.” I thought that because I attended a women’s college it was necessary to be a strong math and science student when in reality those things do not interest me deeply. Your contribution has put me in a position to realize myself, understand others in my environment, and search for approaches to encourage and help both. Honestly, this could take place on any campus, in any town, in any school. My environment of choice is Mount Holyoke College. We are a diverse group of women, and even if we don’t have our stuff figured out, we are still going great places, we will still catalyze necessary change, we are capable - human, but capable. What you see in the shiny brochures is the vision. We are not all there yet.

            Thank you for your contribution; it has made a huge difference in my life. Your financial support is vital to my education, and none of this would have been possible without your generosity. This scholarship is extremely important to me. As one of five children, I am dependent upon myself and outside sources of financial aid to pay my tuition bills. Receiving this scholarship will allow me to afford my degree and stay on track to achieve my goals. I will be very grateful and honored by anything I receive. Already I am excited for the coming year and all that it holds.

 

    God can be so funny about the details in life. He puts clues and metaphors to his masterful plan in the least expected places. Take for example the detail of conception in the flow of genetics. Prior to the modern understanding of heredity, humanity puzzled over the hereditary connection between father and son, mother and daughter, and between father and daughter, mother and son. Various scientists of past centuries investigated the reproductive processes of multiple living beings much the way a detective reconstructs a murder – there is the body, the scene, the suspects, but what is the actual progression of the story that brought this together? Following his discovery of “animalcules” in the sperm of humans and other animals, the seventeenth century scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek speculated that he “saw a "little man" (homunculus) inside each sperm.”[1] Colleagues of his asserted, “The only contributions of the female to the next generation were the womb in which the homunculus grew, and the prenatal influences of the womb.”[2] This conjecture soon received the title spermist. Apparently there were feminists even back as far as that heavily masculine era because in response an opposing school of thought was formed which believed “that the future of the human was in the egg, and that the sperm merely stimulated the growth of the egg.” These thinkers were aptly named the ovists.     
    But as we are now clearly aware, neither is the case! The conception and development process is one of collaboration by both sperm and egg, and just as is the case with men and women, neither is more important than the other and both are necessary complements. In the past men were acclaimed as humanity's ultimate being - the powerful, the steadfast, the mighty and courageous. Today, a large part of the Western World's academia tout the Woman as the pinnacle of society. However, in conception, one of God's primary charges (be fruitful and multiply, see Genesis 1:28) research makes it clear that both the male and female are necessary. Again, it is a process of collaboration. Neither the egg is more important than the sperm, nor the male more important that the female. Both are necessary and equal. As He would have it, perfect complements.

SATURDAY, MAY 24 NCAA DIVISION III CHAMPIONSHIPS @ OSH KOSH, WI

Sheridan Rose  

    Little Sheridan Rose is no longer our diminutive copper-headed dandelion but rather a flourishing lupine in every sense – tall, colorful, a breath of fresh air, and especially fond of the Maine bay. She is last of the Original Four to step into teen-age-hood, though much more responsible than most of us were at her age. In addition to her 6^th grade studies of planets, journalism, and pre-algebra Sheridan works as a dog caretaker, walking three golden retrievers and a rottweiler, heads up The Winter Wonder Club (a four member, kid-directed group that raises money for the New Engand Kewsick summer camp scholarship fund),  hammers the local basketball courts in the post (22 points this season!), while still managing to read every book in sight – twice. She is in her sixth year on the piano and uses her sharp skills to accompany friends in concert. This Christmas she and a group of self-directed girls performed “Night of Silence” and “Once Small Child” as part of the annual Messiah concert. It is not unusual to hear this little lark sing while at the keys. This spring you can look for this rare species in her favored habitats, the dirt roads, kitchens, and softball fields of muddy Massachusetts. She is mostly likely to be puddle stomping or baking something or catching fly balls.

 

 

 

 Stephon X. Z.

            Stephon X. Z. McAlister. Ladies and gentlemen it is indeed official. Stephon is no longer a denizen of the Atlantic but a true American citizen. Though, for a little while there we wondered when Burkina Faso relinquished him but America did not yet except him. On the 24 of January, 2008, amongst long over-due ceremonies, the United States of America recognized Stephon as not only an American citizen, but a McAlister as well.

            As we are all aware from the stories of the migrant-generation, part of the American experience is that start from the bottom when no one knows you and you know no one. All titles, degrees, societal statuses, and prior recognitions belong to the past and former homeland. Coming here is the eraser on the blackboard. Perhaps because of his age, or perhaps because a certain strong, no, indomitable, will, Stephon is having a bit of trouble relinquishing certain elements of his past, namely the fact that he is of royal blood. “Here in America,” my parents continually explain, “we don’t have kings. We have presidents and congressmen.” We hope he will eventually understand the concept of the popular vote and so behave accordingly; ie, we would love to have him assimilate with the family and make a few friends.

            Due to his rough and undeserved past, Stephon is having some difficulty with this. After his recent diagnoses of RAD, the family enrolled in a program at the Attachment Institute of New England in order to create the support he needs in order to learn to regulate himself. Reactive attachment disorder, a common occurrence among adopted children, is a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood due to a number of factors including neglect, abuse, and abrupt separation from caregivers when the child is between the ages of six months and three years. The result is that these children show disturbed and developmentally inappropriate ways of relating socially in most contexts. This includes lack of eye contact, frequent and heavy tantrums, manipulative behaviors, extremely destructive tendencies, and a host of other symptoms. Despite this diagnosis, or perhaps in light of it, the family has great hope to see him settle in over the next few years as he discovers his role in our unit and learns to love and value himself as well as others. He is one of us and we love him dearly.

            At the moment no one is quite sure where his likings will take him. Stephon is a tough and sturdy build with the body of a little super man at the ripe age of 6. He also has an insatiable appetite for good food and thinks on little else. The highlight of our summer visit to Maine was a dinner of fresh lobsters that he himself helped to choose. Because Stephon thinks of all great experiences in the context of food dad has begun to wonder if we might find him happily cooking his way through the great kitchens of America as a chef in another decade or two. Watch out Biba Caggiano!