Summer Kinard's Blog, page 24

Weirding the Chord

The Triangle Orthodox Chorale presented a concert of Sacred Orthodox Music of the Ecclesiastical Year at St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a beautiful concert of Orthodox Church service music. During a hymn about the birth of Christ, I was stunned into chills of joy by the ongoing dissonance in the middle voices. The harmonies never resolved for the entire middle section of the work. That weirding made me hear as though for the first time how strange a story we tell at Christmas. It’s usually so familiar that I hardly think of it. I mean, I think of it, but it doesn’t get to me much. Shepherds, angels, manger, blahdeblah. The Nativity was just background noise to my daily life. It was as ubiquitous as Santa in late autumn. But those unresolved chords caught my ear and through it, my heart.

Writing is the same. Why is this cup of tea special to the character? Why describe it instead of a thousand other small actions a character might act out in the course of a day? As writers, we highlight actions that tell about a character or advance the story; preferably both. If I tell you that she holds the sugar cube over the steaming cup and bends forward to watch the tea reach out for it, watches the cube absorb the heat and liquid gold before dropping the soaked sugar into the swirl of her silver spoon, you know something about her. She is no longer just drinking a cup of tea. The chord has been weirded.

What everyday truths or habits have you come to ignore? What story might they tell if you heard them askance or askew? Have you experienced a weirded chord?

 

Waddling Toward Theosis

Every now and then, the work of years clarifies itself into a moment of grace. In May 2012, during my husband’s first iconography workshop, Fr. Mefodii invited us to tour his studio. It is a schoolroom on an old Virginia plantation where the schoolmaster had risked his life to educate all the children on the plantation, regardless of their skin color. The room is not large, but its history of good works appealed to the monk who teaches there.

I walked into the naturally lit room and immediately noticed an image I had never seen before. It looked like a picture of Christ Emmanuel, but there was no halo around him, and he was lying in a red blanket. I asked about it. Is this Christ in the womb? Where is his halo?

“Ah, that is the spermatikos logos, the seed of the Word of God that is in all humans.” I had read about the spermatikos logos many times over the years in my studies of the early church. I had taught seminarians about it. I nodded in recognition. Father, encouraged by my understanding, lifted another icon from where it cured against the wall on another table.

“And this is what happens in baptism. The seed is watered.” The image was an unusual one, not an image of the Trinity, but of the Fatherhood of God, showing Christ Emmanuel and the relationship we enter into with God in baptism. I looked from one image to another and understood for the first time. Many, many scriptures rushed to mind about growing into the full stature of Christ and becoming children of God. And that one idea that wove through the early church teachings finally hit home with me, impressing upon me the meaning of being in the image and growing into the likeness of God.

Growing into the likeness of God, the fullness of Christ, is described as theosis, literally, becoming like God. This isn’t the false promise of the serpent where one rushes off on one’s own and tries to compete with God. It is true likeness, and it happens by God’s love.

My daughter receiving her blessed cross necklace at our family’s chrismation. Photo credit: Elina Pelikan

Round about Christmas, my little sister came to visit us for a few days. She noticed the misery that we were in over the prospect of staying away from Orthodoxy and encouraged us to contact our local Orthodox priest already. She watched our children so we could go meet.

We had a great conversation, went to church there the next morning, and what do you think? The sermon was on theosis, the way of salvation that is becoming like God. We grow into the likeness of God, the fullness of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, in sacraments, prayers, and sanctifying this life. After what amounts to eleven or twelve years of kicking around the idea, we enrolled as catechumens.

I started reading about Orthodox liturgy and the theological distinctions between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. A theme emerged, one that has been in our lives for a long while, but that came to the forefront. We are saved for God in love. This Lent, I started reading Fredericka Mathewes-Green’s First Fruits of Prayer (click link for Amazon page; disclosure: I am not compensated for linking to books here). In the introduction to that work, Ms. Mathewes-Green plainly states a truth often overlooked in American Christian culture: God doesn’t need tools. He doesn’t use us; he loves us.

That truth helped to salve a wound I had picked up without knowing it, perhaps without any of us knowing it, in my years of Protestantism. I had thought of myself as a servant of God in the same way one thinks of tools. God could “use” me. I thought that prayers and miracles worked that way, too. That God would use people to bring about a good thing. To say that’s confusing is an understatement. If a tool can be used to do something, can’t the tool learn to do the good things without being used as well? Why would it need to be wielded?

Our cultural obsession with robots that turn on their masters is an anxiety born of the idea that we are primarily God’s instruments. So is the standard midlife crisis of rejecting one’s faith when one feels one has one’s life together (or that one’s life is falling apart); God is also a tool in this model.

But God doesn’t need tools. God didn’t make us as tools. God loves us. The shocking simplicity is that God gives to us because of love; all we do is ask. Like Orual in C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, we do not always ask what we think we are asking. But the communion of saints shows the way: a humble bowed head is the face upturned to God.

The author being chrismated. “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

I started writing this post in my last week of pregnancy in early March. I was inspired by the sudden conflagration of grace that surrounded me. We were Chrismated into the Greek Orthodox Church on February 22, and I became like a baby again, fascinated by spiritual light. The kind, dear people in our lives continued to be kind and dear. They fed us.

On my last prenatal appointment, I was told that we would have to start considering inductions if the babies did not come by the following week. But I had no signs of labor. We decided to call in an order to our favorite restaurant, Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe, because it was the food I craved throughout pregnancy and seemed to help with labor. Andrew called and told our situation. We hoped the food would help me to go into labor with its rich herbs and spices, and we knew it would be nourishing. Andrew went in to pick up our order, but soon Vimala herself came out to the car and explained to me that she had prepared a special set of meals that would help me go into labor. She also included a container of ground toasted sesame seeds that I was to eat at every meal, and some roasted eggplants. I ate the food at every meal for three days and the sesame into the fourth day. That night, I went into labor.

That food, infused with Vimala’s kindness and wisdom, inspired this post. It was sacramental, specific and filled with love. It was medicine and a reminder that God always intended us to eat grace when we eat food. We were always meant to know love in the world around us. The world may be broken now, but the love is not. It helps us on our way, through meals brought by friends these first months with twins (soups and breads, chicken and biscuits, shepherd’s pie, macaroni and cheese and cookies, chili and fruit and banana pudding, spaghetti and cornbread and vegetable stews, gallons of milk when our son was in the NICU). The love is there soaked through the Sacraments – those promise filled spaces where you can’t help but be changed by participating. It’s in the cards and kind thoughts and all the people who hold our babies in church. Theosis is what we’re for and what the world is for. Even though I’m no longer pregnant with twins, I’m still waddling toward it.

My view as the first of my twins was churched. We returned to church on the Sunday of Thomas (Second Sunday of Easter).

 

Twins

Perhaps one day, when they are strong-handed men, my tiny boys will dream a green room. Quiet icons guard them fiercely. Ancient Christian chant plays in the background. A woman – warm, large, and smelling of soured milk – kisses their faces and sets their persons in order. She and a large beard below a face give the babies food. “Home,” they will whisper, and wake themselves up. They will stare at their large, strong fingers, and remember the freedom of being small.

Brotherly love. March babies.

I don’t mean to brag, but…

I just read yet another article blaming giving mothers credit for Every Damn Thing (EDT) that their children get up to throughout the entire course of their lives, and I’ve finally realized why journalists keep writing these stories. They want us to share our secrets! Without further ado, I am going to succumb to the media pressure and just admit it.

The author’s real life preschool daughter, who is so freaking smart. (According to science, which subject she has mastered more than you already.)

I don’t mean to brag, but my Kids Are So Freaking Smart!

I’m just going to list some of the causes and effects here, you know, for science. Add your own in the comments, because I know Your Kid is So Freaking Smart, too!

Pregnancy Diet:

 

Forget about just eating Omega 3′s during pregnancy. I ate ALL of the omegas. Even ones I didn’t even know about until my two year old presented a research paper to me. Omega Aleph Null oils! All of them. 
Magnesium? Calcium? Iron? Phosphorous? For noobs. I ate every element that wasn’t radioactive!*
I had my personal chef whip up 5 high protein, balanced complex carbs, high grass -fed-pastured-dairy fat meals each day. (A little hint: have chef hide your Vitamin D3 supplements in the chocolate mousse!)

And Results:

The OBs collected graffiti samples from my placentas. Talk about baby Mozarts! My children kept calendars on my uterine walls, charted out the pH variations in their amniotic fluid, finished Shubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” and wrote a satisfactory conclusion to Mozart’s Requiem Mass that includes a new soprano solo intended for their Dear Old Ma. (Thanks, kids!)
During the worst phases of my sleep deprivation while I nursed them for 45 minutes every 2 hours around the clock, my newborns related my present sufferings to the philosophies of several major world religions, past and current, as well as developing a theology of astonishing depth regarding ascesis, ecclesiology, and theosis in the Church at large as well as her members. All this in baby signs and facial expressions.
By the time they could crawl, my children only put valuable items in their mouths like food, golden rings, and pearls, never** stink bugs or month-old cereal.

My Culinary and Gardening Skills:

I successfully converted our third of an acre plot into an organic tomato/avocado***/bell pepper/herb/omega 3 nut/blueberry/asparagus farming suburban homestead in order to make sure my children have seasonal access to fresh Superfoods and year-round access to canned and frozen Superfoods.
I keep common food preparation tools and a small sink with fresh water accessible for the children to help in the kitchen.
My personal chef and I plan kid-friendly, healthy meals like quinoa patties with cilantro/avocado/pineapple salsa and fish filets with African cave beans and homemade tomato sauce with green smoothies. We have a clean plate club even though of course we don’t need one! Which 3 year old wouldn’t eat home cooked organic meals?

Results:

 

Our homeschool science unit on crop rotation has become a regional standard model. The children advise other urban homesteaders and their children on how to gain the most yield in a small plot by means of vermiculture, standard composting, and careful tracking of nitrogen fixing plantings.
Hahaha, don’t you just love it when your five year old has to remind you not to burn the roux for the bechamel sauce? Our little sous chef is already planning his own recipe book.****
After introducing me to several foods I found repugnant about 30 or 40 times, the children let me see that I will actually eat them after all if nothing else is on offer!

Miscellaneous Predictions Based on Science:

The children will always have ideal BMIs with practically no effort on their own parts!
None of the injuries they incur from early participation in competitive team sports will make them less intelligent, since they have such great brains due to breastfeeding and a positive maternal attitude.
Due to their extraordinary emotional intelligence, the children will entirely skip the damaging effects of junior high school.
Because of their early exposure to languages via cuisine and gardening and science, the children will grow into polyglots.
My daughter will be a poster child for STEM learning for girls. She will also write sophisticated articles explaining the irony of only being a poster child because of her ideal BMI and participation in the cult of the new domesticity.
I will grow extremely tired of all the work at some point and will be a braless, mint-scented granny who feeds the grandchildren cookies instead of quinoa cakes.

What do you have to add? Brag away about how you are making your children successful and healthy and wise!

 

 

 

 

 

*Some of them were radioactive.

 

**Except when they were charting the comparative tastes of neighborhood bugs. (See Poster 2.i in the Collected Presentations of the Baby Science Fair, 2012, “Qualitative Analysis of Neighborhood Bugs as Tasted by Birds, Cats, Infants.”)

 

***My means of growing avocados in USDA Zone 7 is not exceptionally “legal” according to the HOA.

 

****You should read his inventive use of flour in corn on the cob, and who would have thought that chocolate ganache went so well in risotto?

 

Love, Chocolate, and other things Worth the Wait

My first novel ended with a song celebrating love worth waiting for and worth healing for. Here’s the recording I made of “Honey Drop Rock” when I was writing the first draft of Can’t Buy Me Love back in April 2012:

Download: honey-drop-rock.m4a

My current work in progress navigates a very different part of love, but it still involves waiting (and tea. Lots of tea.).

I’ve spent all my writing moments these past months working on my next manuscript. The writing time has been minimal due to the intensity of twin pregnancy and preparing to welcome our boys next month. I’m not complaining; bearing children is an amazing gift, and I am very grateful to have good care. But twins? Very hard on the body. We’re entering the homestretch, with about six weeks till we expect our little boys. The cribs and car seats are in place, the first months of clothing and diapers are at the ready, and all the piles of domesticity are beginning to sort themselves.

The author, barefoot and pregnant and cooking. The twins are tucked under that apron!

I have become very aware of the calendar these past months. Each day that the twins gestate is a day in favor of their health. Then, there’s our little homeschool. Every day needs a small enrichment activity. So far, they have all increased our joy [and sometimes our messes]. Writing has its place even when my manuscript stares blankly back at me. I tap out notes in the middle of the night or scribble emails to myself. My preferred discipline of writing every day has slipped a little in favor of sleeping every day. Then there are the holy days and holidays that draw my attention outside my usual routine.

The upcoming Valentine’s Day has made me think of chocolate – no surprise if you’ve ever met a very pregnant woman before. Because of my soy allergy, I typically make my own chocolate desserts rather than purchasing them. Whether romance gives you butterflies or turns your stomach this year, here’s a little gift from me to you that might help your predicament:

Summer’s Favorite Brownies

(Based on the Mmm-Mmm Better Brownies Recipe on Allrecipes.com [original here])

Makes a 9″ x 13″ pan of brownies – trust me, you’ll want the double batch.

Ingredients:

2 sticks of cultured butter, melted
2 cups sugar (any combination of sugars – I use coconut sugar most of the time)
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder (Rumford is the brand I use)
1 heaping teaspoon sea salt (or 1/2 teaspoon regular salt)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs (works with duck eggs, too, though I add 2 Tablespoons more flour with duck eggs since they are bigger)
1 cup flour (I use 1/2 cup whole wheat, 1/4 cup regular flour, and 1/4 cup peanut butter powder. See below for GF variation)
3/4 cup Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon espresso powder (optional, but important for GF variation)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9″x13″ baking pan. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Add other ingredients except chocolate chips to the bowl and stir till well combined, then add chocolate chips. Spread batter into the pan evenly. Bake for 22-25 minutes. If your oven runs cool, you may have to add a couple of more minutes. Brownies pull away a bit from the sides when they are done. Let cool as long as you can manage before cutting and serving/eating.

Gluten-Free version: In place of wheat flour, use 1 cup of quinoa flour and 2 tablespoons of peanut powder. There is no need for additional gums, as the eggs bind the brownies well. If you would like to use almond flour, leave out the espresso powder. Quinoa flour has a strong flavor that tastes better when masked a bit by peanut powder and espresso powder, but almond flour has its own sweetness. If I have duck eggs, the almond flour is way worth it! Almonds and duck eggs are a true love story.

Enjoy! And if you want a quirky love story read this weekend, please have a look at Can’t Buy Me Love!

Adventually

I’m pecking along on my next novel here, but I thought I’d mention a bit of what’s going on in our lives as well. I called this blog Writing Like a Mother in part because I want to shed light on what it’s like to keep writing even when you’re very busy and juggling life with children. It’s important when you’re preparing to “be a writer” to actually be a writer, to write as often as possible on a schedule, no matter what. Trying to wait to write until the kids are grown or the debts are paid or the hair is all gray doesn’t make for a very satisfying writing life. Plus! Having too much to do makes it easier to get the writing done anyway, even if it’s not perfect. You can’t edit yourself into self-loathing when you just have to get this book done anyway.

Parenting is rife with examples of stuff you just have to do and not worry about it, not least of which is child-bearing itself. When the time comes to give birth, there’s no room for fear, excuses, doubts. You have to give over to the process and accept the grace and help that are given. This logic also works with less romanticized parts of parenting, like, say, caring for a barfing child or changing poop diapers.

Advent is like writing and parenting. It’s a season of preparation, but it’s also its own thing. You can’t avoid Advent just to get to Christmas. You have to go through it; it’s upon you and immediate and not romantic. But it can be very, very good for you. 

We’re not doing a lot of fun Pinterest inspired stuff this Advent. We like to use penitential seasons to form new family habits. This year, we’ve added Evensong to our family’s practice of daily prayer. We’ve sung Compline to the children their whole lives, but adding the other monastic prayer hours has been a challenge. I’m not enough of a morning person to coherently do morning prayer — that can come later in our child-rearing years (and later in the morning, too, knowing me). Noonday prayer usually gets tossed aside in favor of trying to figure out what to feed everyone for lunch, and whether someone is napping or needs to be napping but isn’t. But Evensong is flexible. It’s just prayers at the end of the day.

We’ve adopted a simple formula: candle light, doxologies, three child-friendly hymns. We stand together as a family holding our lights against the darkness. We sing the doxology, This Little Light of Mine, a scripture-hymn, an Alleluia, and maybe another simple hymn, then close with the doxology again. On the last Amen, we blow out our candles. After candles, we don’t watch videos. We read books and cuddle and play and get ready for bed. Is our version of Evensong perfect? No. Is it meaningful and consistent and good? Yes.

There are hundreds of ways to do Advent. You can use the wreaths (we do, but it’s not a big deal). You can open windows and eat chocolates or get presents. (We don’t, but it’s because our children get enough sweets already, and we make a really big deal of the 12 Days of Christmas instead.) You can decorate, which we’ll do slowly, as we get around to it. But mostly, you get through Advent. Hopefully, blessedly, you’ll notice that that’s enough. There is so much grace in just getting through each day. Even when the day is not perfect, and the laundry is not finished, and you forgot to defrost supper, and you maybe let the children watch too many cartoons. Daily life and daily disciplines are good because love makes its footprints in our daily dust. 

This Advent, I hope that you’ll write if you want to be a writer. Just write; don’t judge, because you don’t have time for that. I hope that you’ll feel ok about yourself and your family if you’re a parent. I hope that you’ll know you’re loved right in the middle of whatever your life is giving you. The other days you’re looking forward to will get here Adventually. But today, today is where the grace is.

***

Big P.S.

Boys!!!

High Church and Pregnant

Uncomfortable Holiness

It starts with the morning sickness. You manage to get to church kind of on time, despite the overwhelming greenness of your gills. Then you go to revere the cross or altar, or bow when Jesus is mentioned, and the world spins dizzy and sick for several moments.
Then pregnancy exhaustion hits. The choir sings something soothing that day, and suddenly the sin of covetousness – which you had already confessed less than an hour before – overwhelms you. You totally understand why the cats and dogs in Tom and Jerry cartoons used toothpicks to hold up their drooping eyelids, and you would stab that cartoon cat with a fork to have that ability. You add “murder of a cartoon animal” to the list of things you have to repent from before taking communion and hope that a novice is singing the chants today and is out of tune enough to wake you up.
You also repent for being glad that the new person is not in tune. Not that you can think of a particular commandment that you’re breaking, but it seems untoward to rejoice in another’s imperfection. Figuring out which sin you’ve committed keeps you awake through the anthem, and you only get a little seasick from passing the offering plate.
You have no idea which form of prayers for the people you are using. You blink a lot and wonder how long you spaced out. You add an “Amen” to whatever is going on and give thanks that the church has other people in it.
That’s your string cheese wrapper crackling during the chanting of the Psalm. Full reverently you gobble the cheese.
You sip the wine and swallow quickly. Used to, you would cross yourself and think about the Medicine of Immortality or the Bread of Heaven or Theosis or Having God’s Presence in You to Shine Forth the Glory of God in the World. Just this moment, though, you say “Amen” and silently pray, “don’tbesickdon’tbesickdon’tbesickdon’tbesick.” You hope that prayer is kind of the same thing.
People talk to you, and you hope you don’t look as queasy and wobbly as you feel. Someone in the Narthex smells strongly of soy sauce. You’re sure of it. Or maybe the Narthex smells of soy sauce. Has it always smelled of soy sauce? Oh, no! They didn’t switch to soy candles on the prayer station, did they? Allergies must be considered. “Beg your pardon. What was that again?…Oh, yes, we’re happy about the babies.” That person seemed nice. What was her name again? I’ve known her for ten years. Maybe she’ll be a godparent?
The morning sickness eases and is immediately replaced by the need to visit the lavatory three times per service. You hope the cumulative years of church attendance make up for having absolutely no idea what the preacher is talking about when you return from trip number two. Oh, it’s something about grace. That’s nice. I need some of that.
You start crossing yourself for good measure just whenever someone says Jesus. You just can’t keep up with the subtleties any more.
E’re long, sitting in a pew becomes impossible. Your legs fall asleep after five minutes, so you move to the Narthex where you can stand easily as needed. The beauty of holiness is only slightly diminished by the constant chatter of the ushers throughout the service, and people think you’re just hanging out. You try not to be rude when you start reciting the Creed while a passerby remarks about the weather and your children’s haircuts.

Undignified Reverence

Back at home, you take your beeswax candle habit to the extreme. Part of you wonders if devotion for the sake of creating a non-nauseating atmosphere is too mixed a motive to count. You ring a bell to dispel niggling thoughts and pray anyway.

There’s more than one reason for those candles at Evensong.

You burp in the middle of singing Compline. This is a precursor to the other impolite noises you make during Evening Prayer and Morning Prayer.
At some point, you will find yourself rubbing your pregnancy stuffy nose with a garishly adorned handkerchief right in front of a gorgeous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos (Eleusia), and you’ll make eye contact with Mary right when the laden cloth comes away from your irritated schnoz. Some part of your mind will activate your mouth out of habit, and you’ll snuffle, “Nost Holy Teotogos Save Us.” A different part of your mind will think she smiles at this.

Mama Mary has that knowing look.

You will observe the monastic hour of Nocturns because you can’t get the pillows in just the right spot to get that one part of your back to stop hurting. Wait, now it’s your side that hurts. Ouch. Your shoulder. You’ll find a comfortable position but not trust it at first. You’ll decide to pray and read the daily lessons on your phone. Which day is it now? Is it tomorrow? Better read both sets. You will fall asleep reading one of the duller bits in the epistles. Your phone will be completely submerged in pillows when you go to use it as a flashlight to pee later.
You will observe the monastic prayer hour of Lauds by getting up to pee. You’ll also give thanks, of course, sometimes even more than just a “Thank you, Jesus!” at the relief.
You will get annoyed at every saint, mystic, and hymn that ever talked about God’s love burning in one’s heart. You wonder if it’s sacrilegious that Tums remind you of the Eucharist. Probably not if you bless them with holy water. No, that does seem weird. But you’re grateful for the Tums anyway, and that seems like a good start.

At some point, you stop feeling embarrassed or guilty about the nausea, the potty breaks, the distraction, the flatulence, the mixed motive devotions. You remember why you started all this piety in the first place: to practice the presence of God who humbled himself to become human, in order to make us divine. The saints burped through their share of psalters, too. Jesus’ mother had to get up in the night to answer the call of nature, and that in no way diminished her answer to the call of God. You feel a baby kick and smile. You recognize that smile from prayers and paintings and the long memory of the church, and just in time, you say, “Thank you.”

Dumpster diving — North Carolina — Fiction

My friend Ellen the Librarian alerted me to the fact that my novel Can’t Buy Me Love is categorized thus (see title) in the University of North Carolina library catalog. Needless to say, that knowledge made me smile.

One of the things I could not have anticipated is quite how people would categorize my book once it was free in the world. When I wrote the book, I had a clear vision of where the story needed to go and the meaning I wanted to convey. I knew the book made me smile when I read it. But it’s always pleasant when words about the book make me smile as well.

Before finding out about the card catalog cross reference, “Dumpster Diving — North Carolina — Fiction,” I think my favorite take was the Bloggess’ descriptor of the book as “fantastically odd” and “quite possibly the only romance where tacos save the day.”

Every few weeks, I Google my book to check for sneaky pirate sites –which directly steal money from me — that I then report to my publisher so they can shut the pirates down. (Seriously, stealing an ebook costs me actual money that I could have used to feed my real-life children. Don’t do it, please. Especially when you can check out a legitimately paid for copy from a library!) Today I came across this succinct and well-stated review of my book on the UNC Library’s Read North Carolina Novels blog (click bold text for link). Librarians get me!

I told you all that, though, to tell you this. See, yesterday, I participated in a friend’s research study about early childhood stories, and I was reminded of the rich nurturing and kindness of all the librarians at my old stomping ground, the Pasadena Public Library in Pasadena, Texas. My grandmother worked there as a building manager (I think), and I got to know a lot of the librarians in Acquisitions and the Book Mobile. Those ladies used to read all kinds of stories to me, usually ones that had been freshly wrapped in cellophane and had not even gone on the shelf yet. I got to hear and see new, lovely Caldecott award winners and feel the smooth new pages and the tiny pops as the books were opened all the way for the first time. There’s nothing better than old book smell, but new book smell is not bad, either.

I learned to read in first grade, got my own library card, and began devouring books on my own. Libraries were a super big, huge, gigantic, immense, gargantuan, quite substantial influence on my intellectual life. I’m grateful for those librarians then, and I’m grateful for the librarians now, who make me smile with their cross references and insightful blog posts.

Fat/thin, man/woman

I just came across this article on Salon.com: “Why the fat guy should lose his privilege” by David Sirota. Even though he wrote it over two years ago now, I want to say a public thank you for his exposure of the fat double standard. Also, I’m glad that the article put a bee in my bonnet.

See, as an obese woman who has to eat an unhealthy starvation diet and exercise too much to be a size 12 – which is why I’m typically a size 18 – I get a LOT of fat shame directed at me. Right now, I’m pregnant with twins, so I’m in an immune pocket of space where people don’t want to criticize. But usually, here’s what happens:

I go to a gathering of crunchy mamas. We’re all wearing our babies or nursing toddlers. We probably have a zillion things in common. But their dress size is a divisor of mine, probably the smaller divisor. We smile at each other, and they look at my hips, and they don’t talk to me. I can’t possibly share their values for healthy eating and living, the look says, because I am fat.

[But if I go among poor people, the looks pass from my hips to my children. More on that below.]

See, fat is a stand-in for values in our culture. It’s a visual shortcut for one’s virtue or vice. Which virtues one associates with thinness, however, are not necessarily the ones marketers would have women believe. The typical line of reasoning in advertising and public opinion pieces is that thin women practice moderation and self control. The correlating vices for the fat tend to be laziness and gluttony. So, a fat woman lacks moderation and self control and must be exceptionally lazy and prone to excessive eating. Everyone “knows” this in educated circles.

But a fat man is rarely held to the virtue/vice standard, and that is where one can crack this whole fat nut open. See, I don’t believe that fat in our culture is actually best understood on the virtue/vice scale. It’s better to look at it through the lens of household models, obedience, and servitude.

I grew up in two worlds, a Catholic matriarchal world and a Baptist patriarchal world. For many, many people in the fattest parts of the United States, the Baptist patriarchal model holds sway. In this culture, women are still shamed for being fat, and sometimes an idea of virtue is proposed as a solution to the problem. But the on-the-ground reality is not one of women as free agents. The rhetoric of their virtue is the derivative virtue of a lesser member of a household, someone who manages well and cares well for others. (Please understand that I am not criticizing the many caring, immensely wonderful persons I know who are Baptist/non-denom or otherwise live by this model. I’m just trying to expose a different standard for decoding fat.)

Thin women are not looked highly upon because they have virtues, but because they keep themselves sexy and put their families first, meaning quite practically that they eat last. The fact of the matter is that in many cultures of the world, women eat last. Even privileged women may do so, but they have abundance to support them.

Here’s how a family gathering (or a church gathering) went in my Baptist world: Women served men their plates, piled high with food. Then they served or oversaw the children’s food. Then they would go back and get a small portion for themselves from what was left over. If someone at the table needed something, the woman would pop up and abandon her plate to get it, coming back to cold food, or sometimes to a space that had been cleared by a combination of someone’s inattentiveness and someone else’s well-meaning attention. (Look, I still do this, and sometimes I don’t get to eat anything at all at a church gathering, because my options are already restricted by some severe food allergies. I’m seriously not criticizing women for doing this.)

In that culture, if one watched what women were expected to do rather than listened to the rhetoric, in other words, if one observed the applied ethic, here’s what it meant to be thin: the thin woman put men first. And that’s why fat men are not criticized. Their fat is a symbol of their power, of their ability to amass servants and loved ones in a servant role, who put them first and give them the best food.

So a fat woman in that culture is not seen as primarily gluttonous or lazy; she’s seen as neglectful. A fat woman in most of America is characterized variously as a bad mother, possibly unintelligent or uneducated, and definitely anti-social.

Upper middle class people, caught up in the virtue/vice paradigm and looking down their privileged noses at these women, like to point fingers at what the woman eats. But middle class people and working class people know that calling a woman “fat” impugns her family. A fat woman must not love them right. She must not have the sense God gave her to put her man and her kids first. Your mama is so fat that… you are outside at 10pm on a school night and probably have not been fed yet.

In a structure of poverty, where the upper classes expect good servant attitudes from the poor AND try to apply upper class rhetoric to foreign social systems, forgetting that virtue was traditionally only seen as an option for the privileged, fat women are neglectful servants first, vicious characters second. Fat men manage to function in the educated world where virtue/vice rhetoric reigns, because on the ground, the old idea still functions. Fat means other people are feeding you, so you must have power.

A woman whose body is lean and well-dressed is seldom suspected of neglect, even if she neglects herself, her family, her job. Just as fat men get a pass for being well-fed, thin women get a pass for being caring parents and spouses and conscientious workers.

Now, I’m not suggesting that body fat or its lack is a simple issue in real life (food supply, long hours, sedentary jobs, inflammation, calories versus nutrition, blahdeblah etc). But I believe our actual working cultural assumptions are not what marketers might have us believe. There were lots of reasons for the “What’s Your Excuse?” controversy last month, but it also hit right on target for the patriarchal model of fat guilting women. “Look,” it said, “here is a mother taking good care of her children and also making sure to be sexually attractive. She certainly knows her place.” She’s a good servant.

And that is how fat functions in real life for many, many people: it demonstrates a place on the pecking order. A fat woman is only okay if she demonstrates her acquiescence to male power or has managed to live in a social bubble that subverts the common social order in favor of a different ideal. A fat man can keep his privileges wherever he goes. (Though, ironically, if he happens into the rarified upper middle class intelligentsia bubble, he will be held in suspicion until he takes up racquetball, running, or at least uses a treadmill to get down to the preferred BMI of the elite. This little quibble will not significantly affect him, though, since an expressed desire for self-improvement usually is adequate to secure the trust of this social class.)

Like a little child

Children reach an age sometime in their first year when they notice that their parents love them. Not long after, the child generally gives the stink eye to her big brother, clings to her mother, and says, “MY Mama.” When this happened with our daughter, I immediately picked up my son and hugged him and kissed his head. “I love both of my children,” I told her. And even though they occasionally stink eye each other and try to hog one parent or another, for the most part, the children feel happy knowing we love them. They rarely feel the urge to exclude their sibling from the family circle, and when they do, they get reminded that we love them both.

Earlier this week, I was thinking about the various factions in the church. Most of the discord comes down to, “MY Mama.” I can imagine God gently loving on all her kids and reminding each of his steady love.

What put me in mind of our childish ways of trying to claim God against one another was a circumstance of good news. We are expecting twins this spring!

The obligatory blurry ultrasound photo!

We’re very happy about our little ones! I’m finally at a place where the nausea is tapering off a bit, and I can return to blogging regularly. But I’ll also need to use most of my small store of energy for finishing the manuscript of my next novel before our house overfloweth with blessed children!

If you’re a twin parent with a blog, please comment with a link! I’d love to find out how others manage. And if you’re a writing parent who has managed to keep going through twins(!), please comment so I can invite you to guest post!