JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

First frost was Saturday morning…possibility of snow this coming week!

I would give anything I own

Give up my life, my heart, my home

I would give ev’rything I own

Just to have you back again

– Bread

I apologize for the quiet on this blog. But in recent days silence has seemed appropriate. Within a week’s time, three people in three different communities in my life have passed away from this world.

When I first heard the news I didn’t believe it. But there it was, first sent to me in email, then on the Bainbridge Buzz and finally published as a headline on the Bainbridge Review, written in black and white on paper, tangible and real: Artist, Teacher Wendy Jackson Hall Dies at 32. The Review added her age to the headline, as if to emphasize that all of us were surprised that someone so young could disappear from us within a weekend.

I only spent a little time with Wendy but she gave me a lot. The obituaries, I believe, only begin to tell the stories. This summer I stopped by Puppets on Parade to see new friend Kathe Fraga but instead I ended up talking with Wendy, who had organized this gift of art to the community for years, and many gifts through her Animated Adventures. We both had gone to college in Providence, she at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and I at Brown, two schools that share classes, students and connections, a hill apart from each other. She told me she had gotten married in Providence, down by the water, so beautiful was the city now. I fell in love with Puppets on Parade(blog), this vibrant celebration of creativity, where any one can come and contribute. And although I hadn’t planned to meet Wendy, I enjoyed the time I had to talk with her and I got a glimpse of who she was and how she encouraged people through art to be themselves. She gave many gifts to our community. I looked forward to returning to Puppets in 2006, and seeing her again then.

I only knew a little of Wendy, and I’ve learned more about her in the stories written since her death. Her husband posted a wonderful flickr set. I didn’t know she was also a writer, published in many places, including Wired (list of her articles).

What’s intrigued me most has been to see what’s been written about Wendy on the web, including blogs, and discovering how many miss her. Animation web site AWN published a detailed obituary. The “bainbridge island” searches I use every day in blogs brought a few posts about Wendy into my regular reading.

Cartoon Brew: She had a real passion for contemporary and classic animation – and her enthusiastic spirit will be missed.

Trauma Queen, a college friend, shared the three main points from Wendy’s eulogy:

3. If you love something, share it with everyone.

Her love of animation was infectious. It wasn’t just animation that she loved. Whenever she fell in love with something, whether it was a cookbook, a film, or turkey bacon, she would share it with everyone. And I’ll always remember her love for Porter, her husband and the brightest light of her life.

Agen, who never met Wendy but once worked with her husband Porter, described what he learned from her:

I never met Wendy, and I certainly learned a bit about her from Porter (that she was an animator who loved teaching animation techniques to kids), but what I really learned from him was how much in love a person could be with a spouse and how transcendent that happiness could be. I remember when I first announced to folks that I’d asked Mrs. F to marry me, Porter was the most gleeful of all my Amazon pals, telling me how happy this was going to make the two of us and relating to me how meeting Wendy and sharing their lives together had really transformed him.

[…]

She will be missed by many, but most especially by Porter. And I am quite saddened that I missed the opportunity to get to know her, but I have a feeling I might be joining Porter and others in a puppet parade next July.

Wendy’s family has established a scholarship fund to help income-qualifed students pursue a college education in the arts, and from Agen’s post, it sounds like it may be a special parade next year.

Within a day or two of hearing the news about Wendy, I heard that Jory and Joy had lost their beloved Joel. I never met Joel. I’ve only seen Jory briefly, during the busy Blogher conference she organized. When Jory’s mom, Joy, started blogging, I subscribed. I was curious to meet the mom who helped make Jory such a wonderful person plus I’m always intrigued by blogging families and also always hoping to gain wisdom from those ahead of me in this journey.

How they lost their father and husband reminds me in some ways of my brother’s death, everything from the sudden slope of cancer to the alliteration of family names. But this is Jory, and Joy and their family’s story, and they are telling it excellently through their blogs.

Jory wrote:

There’s been a surprisingly soothing, almost joyous tone in our house today. I can only define it as relief that Dad’s pain has ended, as have the question that lingered silently in our heads, “How long?” The feeling gets cut from time to time, and out ooozes pain, and sadness, and a little guilt for feeling relieved. My guilty tendencies make me crave for a few more weeks of suffering for Dad, or more accurately, suffering for us so that we could feel like he didn’t slip away so easily. We were enjoying ourselves too much, I thought. Then I realized the absurdity of my statement.

Joy wrote:

“He can hear you, so talk to him as much as you can,” one of the doctors said.

And, we did….often. It didn’t matter if we cried. It didn’t matter if we laughed; but it just seemed to matter. We knew he was slipping away, and it felt desperate. It was nothing unusual for Jenna and I to leave his side in tears; but when I saw my son, Joe, disintegrate into an emotional heap, my heart dropped another level. My baby, all 6’ 2+” of him, totally beside himself with the grief of seeing his father passing before his eyes.

[…]

Joel was one of life’s characters to say the least. He may be remembered fondly that way or otherwise; but I wonder if he knew how much he was loved. I’m not sure he really did; but I tried with all my heart to tell him in those last days….before he sailed away quietly into the night

Last Sunday afternoon I got an email letting me know that a family I had just seen at church earlier that morning had lost someone they thought of as their son. I never met this man who died while jogging, only a few years older than I am, leaving behind a wife and baby daughter. But the family who loved him was at our house last Friday night and it sounded like there were connections that happened in conversations at our home that may play a part in the process of going forward in the grief.

It’s been a somber week of sorrows. After Wendy died, I remembered another friend from RISD who has died in the years since college, after we lost touch with each other. I did some research on the Internet to see how her partner has been doing, and I discovered her blog.

This is the season of my brother Jim’s birth and death. Yesterday while gathered around our table, someone mentioned that Thanksgiving six years ago, the last one that both of my brothers and both of my parents spent together. I wish I had been there.

The holidays are hard. The longing for warmth, both literal and emotional, can accentuate the cold and loneliness of the season. The broken pieces of relationships seem sharp and hard.

Is there someone you know

You’re loving them so

But taking them all for granted?

You may lose them one day

Someone takes them away

And they don’t hear

The words you long to say

On Wednesday at gym class with the kids I heard Everything I Own by Bread playing on the radio background music (I had no idea how many other versions there were until I Googled for the lyrics). The song hit me immediately with its sense of loss. It’s a song that I associate with my father and his record collection that left the house when he did, and this week it was easy to associate it with other sorrows and losses. What has hit me with Wendy’s death is the fact that sometimes we only get one opportunity to speak to someone. If I had known that that July day would be the only time I’d have to talk with her, would I have said something different?

Joy wondered if Joel knew how much he was loved. I’m not sure he really did; but I tried with all my heart to tell him in those last days. ..While we can’t make someone know he is loved, we can do what we can to live and say it. Am I telling people in my life that they are loved?

The blog posts about Wendy and Joel mentioned love. Love in a family. How love can transform life. How powerful it is to know you are loved. There’s plenty of fluffy pop tunes praising love, ones that come and go on the radio, but the truth is rock solid and eternal: love changes things forever. Whom am I taking for granted? If someone in my life died today, what would I regret? What opportunities do I have today to share love?

In this week of remembering I’ve wrestled with writing this piece. As I’ve frantically cleaned and cooked in preparation for the holiday, I haven’t had the time or the emotional energy to put my thoughts into a post. But here and there, as I can, I pray. I pray for the families grieving. I pray for those of us still living, that we will have the courage to say the words we long to say.

This title is a misnomer on two accounts. First, evidence proves that I have not been blogging feverishly, in the sense of rapidly producing posts. Second, I don’t have a fever. But I am sick. I’ve caught a cold and I’m trying to get rid of it. Perhaps it happened as a result of preparing for Thanksgiving and the holidays with a bit of craziness earlier this month. Instead of catching up on life as I had planned to do with the weekend, I’m crashing into bed. I can’t remember the last time I slept as many hours as I am sleeping now. Hope you are staying healthy!

I worry. I worry about my kids. I suppose this is a mother’s territory, this enormous ocean of concerns, these waters that threaten to overwhelm me with responsibility and depth.

I remember holding the tiny babies in my arms and wondering if they would learn to walk. The journey from helpless infant, able only to kick and cry, to babbling toddler appeared enormous yet the transition took eighteen months at most. Mobility at first seems a miracle, improbable, amazing.

Now I am asking my children to learn how to swim. And that transition seems equally challenging. Will they make it? I wonder. I worry. I watch them as I take them to lessons at the pool in the afternoons this fall.

My children are being asked to become aquatic creatures. They will need to make new muscles and movements. Eyes red from chlorine, they will fail and struggle before they can float.

Thursday, as I sat on the bench, waiting for the two older girls to finish their lessons, I watched them, evaluating and worrying. Will they pass the class? Are they learning what they need to be learning? Will they float?

As the classes continue, large clock ticking on the wall, waves splash over the edge. I watch the water flow in and out and I realize how difficult it is for me to learn to swim as a mom. I struggle, sinking in anxiety. If only I could float. If only I could be flexible and fluid. If only I could be like liquid. Like love.

Floating is not fighting. I remember learning how to swim, my teacher’s gentle voice encouraging me to relax and look up as I paddled around the pool on my back, hands like fish fins at my sides. To survive in this environment, I must become aquatic. I want to be one with the water, allowing it to move me, not resisting its flow. With silent prayers and visible tears, I release the weights and worries. I release my children and myself. This will be difficult. I’ll have to make new muscles and new movements. I will struggle and fail. Slowly I will learn to swim. I will float with my face to the sky.

danah boyd published a passionate and profound piece growing up in a culture of fear: from Columbine to banning of MySpace

The day she posted it, Ted and I had friends staying at our home. I started mentioning danah’s ideas to Ted, asking if he had read her post yet, and it turned into a discussion with our friend. In her post, danah described the prevalent culture of fear and its power, in particular its effect on adolescents:

The culture of fear is devastating; it is not the same as safety.

I started thinking about culture of fear and culture of safety. Sitting in our kitchen, the concepts of culture of control and culture of faith also emerged. Why is youth culture controlled? Fear, yes, as danah mentioned.

I see myself as half-way between a being a teenager and being the mother of a teen. Chronologically, I’m a bit older than that balance. But I’m about 6 to 10 years from being the mother of young teenagers. 14 years from now, my kids will be in their late teens and early twenties. 14 years ago, I was in college. I can still remember high school. And I can see myself as the parent of high schoolers soon, as many of my friends already are. I can still remember my adolescent anxieties and anguish and also look from a mother’s perspective of her own adult fears. I appreciate what danah wrote as an advocate of adolescent freedoms and I also can see the other side of parenting concerns and control issues.

We live in a society which is sold on control and tries to sell it to us. – Madeline L’Engle

Sold on control

Consider the insurance we purchase: home, auto, medical, dental, to name the basics. As if risk can be calculated and compensated. Consider suburbia. I wish I’d bookmarked it, but I read an excellent description in a blog recently of suburbia as an illusion of control. As someone who lives in a new development on a small island, which features good schools and low crime rates, I see this culture maintained and this illusion made manifest in families.

Parents are fearful. Why? Because many middle-class families have done whatever they could to buy a house in suburbia (the huge price tags are no small feat to afford) and control the dangers to their children. The thought that these kids would go out and experiment with risks threatens and frightens parents and their investments, both tangible and intangible.

Another reason why parents fear is that our identity exists in our children. I don’t think I’m explicitly referring to mothers and fathers who live vicariously through their kids, pushing them into private lessons and competitions. What I mean is that we have poured our lives into our children, to the point that we don’t know who we are outside them. We fear whatever will happen to them, because we will hurt.

This past weekend I went to a women’s brunch. At one point we were asked to write down goals for ourselves in a number of areas, including talents and gifts. Of the women at my table, I was one of the few who had some idea of her interests and goals. (why blog reason #342: so you can know yourself and develop yourself better as an at-home mom!)

Many moms, if I may extrapolate from this small sample and discussion on Saturday, are consumed by their kids. Part of it probably comes from feeling the need to justify the decision to stay at home, if that was made. If we’re at home to be moms, then let’s throw all we’ve got into it. Our culture says our identity and value comes from what we do all day so we had better produce good kids to prove our worth.

See Anastasia Goodstein’s commentary in a recent post on Generation Y in the workforce:

This generation of parents is trying to right the wrongs of having to deal with their parents’ disfunction and subsequent breakdowns — so they have consciously decicded to be all about their kids instead of being all about their own self help (they probably went to therapy early on to deal with their parents’ issues).

Part of it comes from the middle-class achievement college-prep culture. Everybody’s doin’ it…and doin’ it all. Running here and there to take Jane and Johnny to Scouts and soccer practice leaves Mom little time for laundry, much less sanity. She becomes a chaffeur, defining her family by meals eaten in the minivan and responsibilities in the community taken to sustain the activities.

In a small town, probably even in a larger suburbia, our children’s reputations are our reputations. If Johnny and Jane go to jail or get in trouble with the law or school officials, it affects how others see us. When we as parents have worked hard to be presentable, polishing everything from our professional position to our landscaping and lawn, we want to make sure our children preserve this image. Yes, raising a family can involve a lot of PR. I’m kidding, of course, but I imagine many families discuss what others think of them and value how others perceive them.

Kids are scary: they are their own people, individuals with separate ideas and identities. Early on, from baby days, many parents I think realize that they can’t control their kids. They are not docile baby dolls but living beings that scream and sleep whenever they want. It can be a surprise. And so the battles begin.

One more reason parents want to control teens is the fear that comes with protection. We want to protect our kids from the pain we experienced. We want to help them learn lessons the easy way not the hard way. Sure, we selfishly may want to spare ourselves heartache. But I think parents also want to spare their kids hearts – and minds and bodies – too. Yes, as danah wrote, lessons are learned in fire. But as a parent it is hard to watch your child (choose to) be burned.

When kids are younger, perhaps they can be controlled, at least in some sense. You can put your baby in a crib or playpen. You can confine her body. And you need to do this at times, for the child’s safety and protection.

But we can’t ever confine or control their minds or hearts. Humans can manipulate each other. Deception – and abuse – only last so long.

Early childhood can be a time to try to build trust with our children, realizing all the while that they are giving us a fragile gift, one to be cherished, nutured and sustained throughout life.

As danah pointed out in her piece, alienation is a large reason why adults try to control kids, and yet it only exacerbates the problem. Why are we adults alienated from our kids? Because we lack relationship with them. We can’t communicate. Trust is lost. I’m on this path of parenting myself so I am not in a position to say how it happens. But somewhere somehow parents and kids disconnect. It might start early or happen later, depending on the family. I suspect that kids at some point begin to think we don’t care about them, who they are, what they desire and need. They doubt our love, perhaps for good reasons. And then the alienation begins. At least I remember how it happened for me, as a teen.

Our friend pointed out that we should live in a culture of faith, not one of control or fear. We lack faith. I don’t mean this in strictly a religious sense. I’m not sure what we can all agree we believe any more. Or where we find hope. Not in our government. Or in our world at large. Within our own smaller communities, we are fractured by separate values and lifestyles. See tania’s post on the isolation of motherhood. We are isolated from each other. We don’t trust each other. Certainly not our kids or their friends. We live within white-washed walls of fears.

Letting go of fear means grabbing onto faith. We can’t control life. We can’t control our kids. Parenting is scary. But if we confine our kids, we will kill them, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We have to believe in something beyond ourselves. For some it’s the goodness of humanity or the universe. Others grab onto God. We need a culture of faith for our families, so we can be free from fear and control, free to listen and learn and love.