White Evangelicals, This Is For You

Even though I prefer hymns and an organ to Christian karaoke with a guitar, even though I am pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, and even though I lean so far to the left I am pretty much a socialist, for as long as I can remember, I identify as an Evangelical Christian. I’m not about fire and brimstone, but I claim the faith. When I admit this to people, I usually get a crumpled-forehead frown.


Why would I claim a tribe I am at odds with?


I label myself “Evangelical” to indicate that my faith is a personal practice, not a box I check when admitted to the hospital. My label has never made this clear to people who aren’t Evangelical.


While it doesn’t roll off the tongue and no one knows what I mean when I say it, I am also a centered-set Christian. In centered-set Christianity, the focus is on movement toward Jesus. We leave the judgement up to God instead of burdening ourselves with it.


Centered-set Christians believe they can be pointed to God’s truth by anyone. In the Bible (from Rahab to the Magi), all-star Jews (from Joshua and the wandering Hebrews to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus) weren’t fussy about who their God spoke to and through. If God spoke, they listened.


(Centered-set Christians are partly defined in contrast to bounded-set Christians. Bounded-set Christians believe you are in or out, saved or damned, part of the tribe or wandering. Because of this, there is a good deal of focus on the boundary, what it takes to be part of the body of Christ. Sin must be defined and categorized. Rules are enforced.)


In the last twenty-five years, as I moved from New York City to Phoenix to Oakland to London to Boston and finally landed in New Orleans, I attended or was a member at ten churches: one Covenant, two non-denominational, one African Methodist Episcopal, three Episcopalian, one Vineyard, one Vintage, and one Presbyterian Church of America. Some were bounded-set and others were centered-set.


These congregations run the gamut of worship styles, leadership structures, and political leanings. Some of the services ended promptly at the 58-minute mark, others spent 10 minutes passing the peace and 20 minutes on announcements. Most of these churches were small, but a couple had almost a thousand members. Some were racially diverse, some were predominantly white. All served coffee after the service. None were perfect. Or even close.


To be a part at each of these churches I compromised. Non-dairy creamer instead of half and half, PowerPoint instead of liturgical tradition, random sermons on one verse instead of a series of sermons on a book of the Bible, and Christians who are only comfortable with Christians, unsure of how to handle the rest of my family.


Many times, I overlooked denominational policies I openly disagreed with in order to find a home where I can pray with others. I am pained when I see no women in leadership, no affirmation of LBGTQ+, and, most recently, silence on issues relating to the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration policies. Many Sundays, I want to give up on American Evangelical Christianity altogether.


I have seen two centered-set churches that I belonged to prayerfully search and shift their policies—opening their doors to all people not just in name (“we welcome gay folks but they cannot be in leadership unless they are celibate”), but in practice (“we embrace gay marriage and gay families”). I have witnessed predominantly white churches began to stand at the front lines of DACA and BLM movements. In my view, churches leaning into God will be nudged towards God’s vision of reconciliation and action.


Centered-set churches preach “let’s just look to God.” They are trying to say: we don’t care if you wear a red hat or a pantsuit. The body of Christ doesn’t register your voting record, we love you no matter what. This is true. But a fear of offending other Christians can lead to paralysis and missed opportunities to share with our fellow believers the richness of the story of a guy we call a savior, who came to free the oppressed.


I’m not saying, “You in the red hat with the NRA bumper sticker, you’re out. If you don’t love God by toting a witty protest slogan on poster board and march with me in the streets, you’re out.” I will admit I think this and grumble that we are not aligned, but I should probably repent for that. I think centered-set folks shouldn’t be afraid to share our convictions and act on them in the name of God.


Do we want to be peacekeepers (at the cost of the oppressed) or can we boldly be peacemakers (making some noise to fight for God’s justice here one earth)?


I’m looking for a church. As I search, I dig deep into denominational policies so I know what compromises I’ll be making this time around. When I scour what each sect professes at the highest levels, I grow frustrated. Often core positions stand in stark contrast to the warmth I experience as I sit in the pew.


 At one point, I clicked on a video created by a white, male leader of an Evangelical denomination. He addressed his congregations, urging white Evangelical Christians to listen to stories of Evangelical people of color, urging them to hear their brothers’ and sisters’ stories of oppression. He wrote a letter emphasizing “all lives matter.” I am going to email this leader and ask him to go further, to speak for those he’s heard and urge action. The guys in the red hats will listen to him.


I want to see his message as progress, hopeful. At least he’s listening. But today, in this climate of rising hate and oppression, it is not enough. White Christians need to go beyond listening and take action. Silence on issues of injustice in the name of “just focusing on Christ” rings as false as the televangelists who preach about giving generously while hoarding funds for their mansions.


Silence isn’t neutral anymore. Silence is part of the problem. Jesus listened to the marginalized and took action. We should too.


Christian communities need to educate themselves and engage in tough issues they don’t understand. We shouldn’t do it so we can tolerate one another on Sunday morning, but so we can stand up against hatred and oppression. I am so grateful for the pagans, Mormons, Jews, atheists, Hindus and others who point me toward God, toward Jesus’s truth. I wish more of the centered-set Evangelicals pointed me there too.

Thanksgiving Triage

Last week I didn’t change my wool socks for three days. My contributions to the big dinner were not my best: the stuffing was too bland, the apple galette needed more sugar, and I bought the sweet potato casserole. Tuesday night I couldn’t fall asleep until 1:00AM because I was worried about Nurse Jackie’s web of lies in season three and Zola’s separation anxiety and how to spend Phil’s day off. I ate out too much, I didn’t exercise enough, and I spent too much time scrolling through Facebook.


Our culture shouts the anthem: keep it simple, which means make things look sleek and minimal, while scurrying around frantically to hide your mess.


I have a different anthem: triage it. Do what you have to do—deal with the acute asthma attack and the guy losing blood and know you’ll eventually get to the kid who busted his lip and the possible broken wrist. Look back at what you actually did, not what you have left to do. Life will never be as simple as a centerpiece of white candles on crystal candle sticks. We all have a laundry basket of stray toys hidden somewhere. Life is complex, a tangle of what we want accomplish and what we have to do.


Last week I actually did some things. I read half of Big Little Man, I spent a day at the coast with my mom and Ramona and her friend, I found second-hand snow gear for the Littles, and I took the van to be vacuumed. I spent an afternoon and evening relaxing with family. I walked my dogs everyday, even in the rain. I made a bone broth with the turkey carcass.


My mom tells me that my Grandpa Art used to start the day with this prayer, “Dear Lord, these are my priorities, please show me yours.”


My mornings usually start with two girls climbing in bed to rouse me, one chattering in my ear because it's perhaps the only time she’ll have my attention and the other tugging on my arm to rub the mole on the inside of my elbow, dislocating my shoulder. As I stagger to pour their cereal and make my coffee, I hope that I might be able to glance at some headlines on my phone before it is time to make lunches. Usually, I forget to set the simple intention my grandfather apparently muttered each morning.


Next thing I know, I am hostage, trapped in my day, a pinball bouncing from one emergency to the next. I have to stop myself and triage: run through the list that has brought me to the boiling point and turn down the heat. The Thanksgiving blog post can be published the week after, I can say no to my children so that we don’t spin off-kilter, and no one notices my socks. Walking, even in the rain, is essential to get oxygen to my brain. Taking time to write in the midst of a major move is valuable, and whatever I think I need to buy today, can also be bought tomorrow.


So, I triage it.

My Scolding Love Letter to Salem

“The people in Salem are so nice. It freaks me out.” -A Transplant

“At least Salem is close to lots of cool things.”
-Native Salemite

“What is it like to be back? Salem is better. Right?” -Old High School Friend

Salem, please stop apologizing. Shut down your self-deprecating comments. Calm you insecurities.
You are smart enough, you are good enough, and gosh darn it, I like you.

Salem is a fabulous place to live.

The landscape surprises me everyday. It is a natural beauty who needs no make-up. While the tourists are directed to our wineries and historic sites, it is the air that catches my attention. It is crisp and fresh, earthy and leafy. There are big open spaces dotting the city: parks and farms and hills too steep to build on. They beg me to climb out of my minivan and slip on my rubber boots to tromp around, discovering the trees while my dogs run freely while I help the girls add thistles and pine cones and chestnuts to their collection. There are trees, all sorts, lining the streets and covering the hills. And what about the ingenious play structures around every turn? They kind of remind me of Paris.

Every weekend, Philip takes long bike rides. He marvels that it is so quick to get to the outskirts of Salem, and be on the country roads, pedaling by sheep and goats and Christmas tree farms and fields cleared for the winter. It reminds him of his time in Oxford, England, a city of about the same size.

The ease of living in Salem cannot be understated and there is no need to be coy about it. It is practical—affordable and manageable, but not a suburb on the end of a freeway originating in the center of a metropolis. Salem is a community that stands on its own.

Don’t be like Oakland and Baltimore, cowering in the shadow of their nearby, cool sibling cities. Envy does not become you. This isn’t a race to be the best, just settle into being you.

My father has always explained to me that Salem has a larger than average middle class—state workers and teachers and regular folk. Salem isn’t a rich, bratty snob looking for the best avocado toast in town. One of Ramona’s surprises? The amount of fundraisers the student organizations at South High do. They work for their privilege to participate.

While all of the places I’ve lived since leaving Salem are becoming less diverse, both racially and socio-economically, because of policies encouraging gentrification, Salem is becoming more diverse every year. This trend is likely to continue. (Let’s make sure to make city policies that continue to support this diversity.)

Finally, Salem, embrace your grime and call it grit. Appreciate your home-grown habits and call it culture. The woman I saw at Costco who still does her bangs with a curling iron and mousse followed by Aquanet? She’s an emblem, not an embarrassment. Stop by Happy Curry and get a dozen samosas. Thrift at your safe and steady Value Village or Goodwill by the pound on Portland Road or the higher-end Assistance League Shop and know you’re getting a deal and recycling too. Be impressed that Magoos is still open, instead of looking away as you drive by.

I must add a caveat to this tirade: I had the unlikely and strange experience of a happy childhood. And that childhood was in Salem. And so, maybe I like Salem more than other folks I grew up with here. I understand needing to get away and see the world or needing to escape the painful ruts of childhood. Place and experience weave together.

I modeled myself off of Jo March and Anne Shirley. Corny, but true. While I don’t think of them often anymore, my life mirrors theirs. Both become teachers and writers. They both fall in love with the local boy and leave him to explore far off places and find adventures. Jo, married the odd Professor Bhaer, the German tutor. I married the odd grandchild of Germans, even if he was disguised as a Southerner in white jeans when I met him. Anne and Jo return home, even though it is the last place they expect to settle. I read it as a resigned and disappointed settling for them. As far as I can remember, neither hated on Avonlea or never-named Concord. They return home, partially because of where they’d been and what they’d seen, and partially because they finally realized their origins were more than a quaint town and a cozy story. It is home.

So, Salem, I pick you. You surprise me and I love you for it.

Sex Education I Can Get Behind

As a parent, I seek assurance. I want my struggles to be validated. I want to be inspired to think about my relationship with my children in new ways.

Too often, when desperately searching the internet for advice on sticky parenting situations, I find tidy lists or prescriptions of what I must do to get this raising-kids thing right. I bristle when I browse the parenting shelf at the library because I find books by strident experts, who don’t know me and my family, simplify parenting into cliches. I rarely find a parenting book I can recommend.

Mary Gossart’s There’s No Place Like Home...for Sex Education is different. She encourages parents to have confidence in their instincts while also providing practical suggestions about how to handle conversations about sexuality at every developmental stage--from preschoolers to teenagers. This is the book I will call upon when addressing issues of sexuality with my four, six, fifteen, or eighteen-year-old children.

In it, Gossart writes, “There’s no one answer that fits all. Trust that you have some good intuition about these sorts of issues. Take your cues from your own gut and from your child’s reaction.” Amen to that. Gossart provides guidance without making assumptions about a my values or suggesting there is one way to educate your children about sexuality.

When I was in middle school, my mom attempted sex education. A permission slip from my middle school health class was sent home that asked if I her daughter was...

1. Not allowed to participate in sex education,

2. Allowed to participate in sex education, OR

3. Allowed to participate in sex education AND please send all materials home to be reviewed together.

My mom picked #3. When we read aloud the school’s curriculum, giggling when she accidentally read “pubic hair” as “public hair,” I learned that I could talk about sexuality with my mother. She was available and open to the conversation. Of course, she had to be open to many conversations about many things before for me to trust her.

In the first few pages of the book, Gossart introduces the idea of being an “askable” adult, an adult who is an approachable, available, caring resource. I want to parent as my mother did. I want to be an “askable” parent. Throughout the book Gossart emphasizes a parent’s relationship with their children is the foundation on which to have open and honest conversations about sexuality (and everything else). Her ideas about how to build this type of relationship, unlike the lists I mocked above, resonated with me.

For instance, Gossart reminded me that independent, informed decision-making in early elementary school sets the foundation for later confident decision-making. My relationship with my children facilitates self-assured choices as they develop and grow up. I want to be mindful of this as I help my six-year-old navigate playground conflicts.

Later, Gossart outlines how parents of middle schoolers need to recognize the range of sexual issues their children are curious about, listen more than talk, respect their children’s views, provide factual information, and trust their children’s decision-making. That’s radical and powerful stuff to consider in the relationship between a parent and a seventh grader.

Finally, for parents of high school students, Gossart emphasizes, in the context of our relationship with our children, the importance of being a healthy role model, staying connected to your child, and allowing adolescence to be a process, not a race. She also points out that high schoolers have two tasks: to establish independence and define their values. Important reminders for the controlling, helicopter parent in all of us.  

I am a big fan of Robie Harris’s picture books It’s Perfectly Normal and It’s So Amazing for education about sexuality because they are written and illustrated in a way that allows for children to circle back to them again and again. Gossart’s book is similar. She stresses that parents must return to the topic of sexuality with their children and her book is structured to do that. Each of the five sections of this book covers a range of topics parents might expect to face during a specific time of their child’s life. I will use this guidebook as I travel through all of these stages.

Years ago, when a parent called me to ask about why my four-year-old and her friend had “decorated their vaginas with chalk” while playing together at our house, this book would have been a help. The section “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine” would have prepared me for this natural exploration and also given me a tangible way to respond my child. The section “But Scott’s dad said…” would also help me to figure out how to talk to my child about the other family’s values and healthy boundaries.

When dozens of pornographic images invaded my laptop as my eleven-year-old was using it for homework, and googling “how to discuss porn” didn’t prove too helpful, this book would have showed me how to initiate the conversation, how my panicked reaction might affect my child, and pushed me to ask myself about the many ways my child might think about porn.

I wish I’d read the section of the book on sexting before hammering my children with my perspective, based in fear and discomfort, instead of providing a reasonable perspective, based in accurate information and trust.

The one area of book that I wish was expanded is the discussion of consent. My oldest teenager has told me they wished I shared more about what a healthy consenting relationship looks like. Gossart acknowledges that it’s easy to focus on the dangers of sex and reminds parents to also talk about the joys and pleasures of sex. But, while she spend several pages talking about how to prepare teenagers to say no in the middle of a pressured sexual situation and even gives ways to rehearse these scenarios, there is little specificity in the pages about intimacy and pleasure. I would love for Gossart to script what affirmative consent looks like. She mentions that a "clear yes" is essential, but my children and I need more specifics in understanding what that looks like.

I love that Gossart covers more than just the mechanics of sex and refrains from any scare tactics. She is direct and fair. I recommend this book to any parents of children at all ages. It is one I will turn back to again and again.

Obsessions with Disney and Stuff Like It: Negotiating Life with Children and Television

“Mom, aloha means hello and goodbye. And ohana means family, like we’re all connected.” My five-and-a-half-year-old daughter just finished watching Disney's Lilo and Stitch and bragged, "I know a lot about Hawaii."


She was correct in her triumphant translations of aloha and ohana, but I insist she cannot know "a lot" about Hawaii from a Disney movie. Hawaii is more than aliens and hula and people who don't always wear shoes. She ought to know about the Kapu System, Captain Cook and King Kamehameha, and how colonization kills people and culture. I will sit her down and walk her through this another day, another age.


For a decade and a half I asked myself these questions: are 85 minutes of quiet and wonder worth the confusion a Disney movie offers? Is Disney the evil empire implanting our children with sexist and racist stereotypes that will take years of anti-racist training and a library of feminist books to undo? Should I forbid all things Magic Kingdom? Or will that make Disney the forbidden fruit, thus, more appealing?


I've answered this question differently on different days and I arriving at an answer that is as clear and flexible as the constitution. I came to this conclusion after a struggle.


I have two sets of children. The Bigs, ages seventeen and fourteen, and the Littles, ages three and nearly six. The two batches of kids are growing up with a decade between them. When the Bigs were born, we didn't own cellphones. When the Littles were born, I latched onto my smartphone for every feeding of the nearly two years I nursed both of them.


Parenting is fraught with figuring and reasoning and a fair amount of outright obsessing. I try to stick with the former and talk myself off the ledge when the latter takes hold.


When I was pregnant with my firstborn, I implored my husband to consider our embryo’s future media consumption. Once our baby was on the outside, we’d avoid Disney just as during gestation we avoided alcohol, grocery store birthday cake, and Taco Bell. I explained if we didn’t take precautions, our children would be confused about America's indigenous people. Watching the seemingly benign Peter Pan could lead to disaster. None of our friends were American Indians, so we'd have to provide them with an accurate and complete picture some other way until they could read Sherman Alexie to themselves.


Deep down I am a contrarian. If I am drawn into a conversation about school vacations, I declare a preference of nature over theme parks and unscheduled days over endless camps. If I detect a tone of superiority when I hear an overprotective parent brag about their two hours of screen time a week, I proudly confess we sometimes watch three hours a day. I pretend to be nonchalant, settled. It is my duty to be the devil's advocate.


As new parents at the close of the 1990s, a time before cellphones or Hulu or even a DSL connection at home, Philip and I sought advice from experts in books. We did the purest things we could manage. Good students, we wanted to get an A in parenting. Nearly no refined sugar for any of us and, partly to keep Mickey in his place, no television in the house. We were forced to read and play gin and have friends over for dinner.


Eventually some friends loaned us their spare TV and we bought a VCR. For movies only, we pledged. This was the thin edge of the wedge. Still, watching took effort. It required walk to the store to rent a tape. Soon enough we attached bunny ears to the TV and discovered CSI and Survivor. Still, television was confined to the living room and the hours of the evening when our baby was asleep. He remained untainted by any images on a screen, let alone Disney.


For his second birthday, one of our meddling friends bought our son a video, Winnie the Pooh Sing-a-long. It seemed harmless enough, an imaginary world created in a book in the 1920s. It was a literary classic and the 23-minute video provided us an endless amount of time to get stuff done, like the dishes. Our son said "Pooh-one-more-time" so many times that it became our password for frequent flyer accounts. Thus, Disney wormed its way into our tiny, happy family.


On vacation, two-and-half-year old Sumner watched The Lion King with his godfather. I thought: too scary, too much patriarchy, and too much Nazi imagery. And why is everything about Africa for kids only about animals? Maybe I was overreacting. Perhaps it is it just a movie about lions and sibling jealousy leading to murder? Who can argue with the artistic value of a villain voiced by Alan Rickman? His godfather is Jewish, so maybe I could trust his judgement.


Soon after, my aunt showed him Cinderella on a playdate with his cousin. I figured having a stay-at-home dad and a mom who wore clogs would mitigate the messages woman must clean, marry a man, and have small feet to fit in tiny shoes. It was a magical world with talking animals in important roles, so how much would he extrapolate from the movie to his real world?


Before his third birthday, my mom sat him in front of the parent-approved Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Later, she found him cowering behind my father's empty recliner, afraid of the Heffalumps and Woozles. She felt like she'd just forced him to watch Scarface and vowed not to frighten him again. I reasoned he would not suffer any long-term damage as facing fear was a good thing.


I played it cool at the Tot Lot, casting my vote with the laid back moms in favor of some TV instead of cheering on the Waldorf-leaning parents' blackouts. But in private, when life with a small child felt out of my control, I looked for a culprit. Were our son’s early morning wake-ups due to a frightening reel of the final scene of The Little Mermaid running in his head? A life of sleep deprivation would be miserable. Sometimes he whined about being bored. Would Disney make his brain lazy so the complexities of Narnia and Middle Earth wouldn't appeal? When he entered preschool, would he force little girls into sparkly dresses and try to save them?


In reality, he seemed pretty well-adjusted, despite his firm footing in the wonderful world of Disney. He was comfortable wearing pink and yellow, he treated little girls just like little boys, and continued to have a flexible imagination. He was a lateral three-year-old thinker: cooking things in his play kitchen for his trains and assigning everyone he knew a Winnie-the-Pooh character or dinosaur species he expected them to personify.


By the time my son was four-and-a-half and his new sister was one-and-a-half, television became less about feeding my over zealous ruminations and more a matter of survival. My husband was a second year medical student and I was in grad school. While the new baby napped, I plugged my son in so I could get some homework done. With no godparents, aunts, or grandmas to encroach on my ideals or help out, I carefully controlled what he watched: "Thomas the Tank Engine" tapes and PBS shows. I drew a new line for aggressive sheltering: no cable. We made a Disney allowance for Mary Poppins, which we picked up for a quarter at the garage sale. I often found him clinging to the ottoman and stepping-in-time with the chimney sweeps. It was kind of magical.


There were high points in Disney's filmology. Features like Wall-E and Enchanted turned Disney conventions on their head. Wall-E's environmental allegory captivated my kids' imaginations and led to many conversations about technology and waste and the mechanized shopping carts at Sam's Club. Enchanted parodied the Disney princesses' dogged sweetness while showing kindness and optimism might prevail in a battle of good and evil. I began to relax. A bit.


When grad school ended and we moved to a house, a cable line lay next our 24 inch television hidden in the second floor playroom. The lifeline was so tempting. Within weeks, we plugged it in and became bootleggers of basic cable.


Previously Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network, luxuries left to hotel rooms and grandparents' dens, were pumped right into a room designed for play. Television was limited to an hour and Disney Channel was strictly forbidden, primarily based on my artistic objections. Hannah Montana was not funny and Zoey 101 was beyond stupid. I wouldn't raise children who liked bad comedy.


Fortunately the only thing my son at eight and my daughter at five could agree on was Sponge Bob Square Pants, a creative home run. I barely needed to intervene. We all began to say "imagination" airily like Sponge Bob and Patrick, miming a rainbow over our heads. When the family was glum, I put on my best Sandy voice, "Howdy. Holy Guacamole, Sponge Bob." My angst receded. Cartoons could be edifying. There were bigger fish to fry: keeping up with a 60-hours-a-week job, staying sane during my husband's grueling overnight shifts and sleep-deprived hangovers, and keeping us fed.


Soon enough we had a big screen television (for football games) and paid for cable (for football games). And then like most Americans, we stopped watching television. Or so we told ourselves.


We got serious about streaming. It began by catching up on a few of my favorite shows on Hulu and evolved when our Blockbuster Rental store closed. It felt less like watching television because it is so much more private. No longer did I fulfill my craving for an easy narrative by watching TNT reruns of Law and Order in the middle of the house on a shared T.V. where my husband could judge me and my children might emulate me. Now I could privately dial up the episodes I hadn't seen on my laptop, the place where I worked. I could grade papers and quietly let something play in the background. I watched more television, but it was better television, I told myself.


I lost myself in season after season of quality programming. I loved Don Draper for the vulnerabilities he let soar every so often and watch one episode after another just to see those moments revealed. One Christmas break I assembled my wedding photo album, ten years after the wedding, while watching Bill Hendrickson navigate polygamous life in a way that reflected moments of my own marriage--money was often short and blending individual agendas was tough. I dialed up an episode of Bones when I needed to fold laundry or purge old toys.


The choices I relished with streaming, scared me when it came to my elementary school children. It seemed impossible to set limits for myself let alone them. We made arbitrary rules: no PG-13 until you are 13, door open if you have an electric device in your bedroom, no screens before 8:00 am on the weekends, no "Glee" (Disney for teens) ever, and no television on school nights.


When my son sometimes struggled with books assigned in middle and high school, I knew it was Disney's fault. I hypothesized he hated reading Shabanu because he was expecting Aladdin's Jasmine. He couldn't get through a book about life in Trujillo's Dominican Republic because he had no experience with life's harsh truths. He said it was about slow plots and being forced to do anything. I was convinced he would never be a feminist if he didn't eagerly read books about strong women.


Soon enough, the Bigs were sixteen and thirteen. They wielded smartphones I armed them with and watched whatever, whenever. I hate when they retreat into their caves and lay in bed stuck in the blue light of Youtube or Netflix and their ever present invitation to watch the next video.


This new world order, has some benefits. While we don't rent DVDs on Friday nights, order pizza, and watch movies together, we do show-sharing. This is when one of us watches a show and recommends it to the rest of us. Each of us watch the show at our own pace, checking in with the person a few episodes or seasons behind, delighting in all that is revealed. We've shared Veronica Mars, Parenthood, Lost, Game of Thrones, Arrested Development. Game of Thrones is inventing new story conventions, Veronica kicks so much ass, and everyone loves that I cry when the Parenthood's Bravermans yell at one another. We share the narrative.


In a world that overwhelms--social media, video games reward you for connecting jewels or candies--excellent television, even pretty good stuff, is a refuge, a shared story.


In this new landscape of television consumption, over a decade after we became parents, we pressed the reset button and had two more children. Disney is back in play. We are a million miles away from Pooh-one-more-time.


And, once again, television is survival. Everyday, at least once a day, I must freeze my small children in front of a screen so for a few moments I can catch my breath and hold back the avalanche of housework threatening to suffocate us. Streaming changes how small children watch. These platforms are smart, attuned to my littlest daughters preferences for fairies over squeaky monkeys and magical ponies over shows teaching them to read. These girls have a menu and my three-year-old tries to touch the TV like an iPad, dialing up her own destiny. I try to guide them to certain options (not too scary, not too fluffy, no repetitive sounds or songs) and still allow them choice.


Disney's marketing has shifted with this new way of watching. At our Walgreens, princesses are packaged together, a kind and controlled feminine force, capable of looking flawless, getting what they want, and smiling most of the time. Elsa and Anna are painted on a tiny lunchbox next to Cinderella, Aurora, Tatiana, and Mulan. My girls watch these films, some made in the 1950s and 1960s and some made this decade, as if they are a series, a epic of international royal cousins. The racism in the new packaging too. White princesses in front, princesses of color in the back or to the side. Mulan and Pocahontas can be streamed for free, but you have to pay to see the white princesses movies. I see where value is placed.


My dad showed the girls Peter Pan recently. One of my crunchy friends heard of this and was worried for their little minds. She wanted to know how I'd talk to them about how Tigerlily and her savage tribe were portrayed. I had forgotten about this part of the film. Am I losing my edge or maybe suffering from years of overcaffeination and sleep deprivation? I hope to chalk it up to perspective.


I do not say: you are watching racism. But I do say: I wouldn’t marry someone who was as mean and cruel as the Beast. It is so cool Pocahontas likes nature like you, but colonization didn’t happen like this. At all. And finally, why does Wendy have to take care of everyone?


Zola asks some questions too. She wonders why boys' Pull-ups have superheroes and girls' Pull-ups have pink princesses. She still wants straight hair, but thinks high heels are impractical and uncomfortable.


So, here's what I've settle on for now. We watch Disney. When Zola bragged about her solid knowledge of Hawaiian culture, I blurted out, maybe too intensely, "You can't trust Disney."


And there it was. My response was knee-jerk, immediate. No musing. I had my answer. After a decade and a half of overthinking it, I had arrived at a strategy to the problem: what to do about Disney?


You can watch it, just don't trust it.

How to Fix Your Teenager: Simple Solutions To Put This Embarrassing Period, Which You Can Only Hint About to Others Right Now, Behind You Forever and Commence Bragging About Your Cool and Successful Young Adult Who Lives in Another State

The following advice is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event or member of my family.

First, cultivate a close relationship with your child over the course of their lifetime. This may include, but is not limited to: breastfeeding until age three, sending your child to morning preschool (not ten-hour days at childcare), packing homemade lunches (not a bunch of packaged stuff thrown in a sack and certainly not hot lunch), listening to long monologues about video games you will never play, solving problems with bullies by giving assertiveness lessons, and generally making yourself available for every scrape, injury, insult, or break-up.

Second, engage your child in a variety of activities. While it may seem obvious, many parents do not realize well-adjusted children are overloaded, overachieving children. Start year-round sports by age four and continue, at least on an intramural level, through college. Humans need endorphins produced by extreme physical fitness. Stock an orderly art station near your kitchen to stimulate creativity and allow expression of emotion in quiet ways. Require your child to begin each day with meditation and goal setting. Make second-language learning part of every dinner. Travel to awe-inspiring locations on breaks from school and team practices. Please note: If your child gets overwhelmed or anxious keeping this pace, medicate. Once you figure out what drug he needs based on your webmd research, see your doctor for a quick prescription.  

Third, set boundaries and limits. Make sure your child never has too much or sees you have too much. Of anything, ever. This includes, but is not limited to, food, alcohol, mind-altering drugs, material possessions, exercise, dieting, volunteering, sleeping, cleaning, religion, and Tylenol. This perfect modeling will show your child too much of a good thing is a bad thing. As adolescence blossoms, make explicit the boundaries and limits you have always practiced. If your child crosses a line, make the boundaries and limits clear again. Then ground your child. Then kick your child out, so as they are floundering, lost and out of control, they will feel more alone and vulnerable. This usually fixes things. 

Fourth, keep open lines of communication. Begin in the tween years with half-honest and carefully-contrived stories from your youth, illustrating how easy it is to make bad choices and how bad choices lead to disaster unless you (and your rescuing parents) catch you. This works best if one parent has contrasting stories of an drug-and-alcohol-free youth that was also angst free. Tidy narratives win. Ask your child to tell you about their days at school and nights on the town. Do not ask them to evaluate these experiences, just recount. Do not immediately pass judgement on their immature and ill-advised choices to smoke pot before a shift at Seven Eleven, drink until they pass out, or try mushrooms procured from an unfamiliar dealer. Instead, listen and let the truth roll out in waves. Be thankful for the honesty and do your research. Then bribe your child to have lunch with you at an expensive burger place and tell them how stupid they are as they sip a $ 6.00 milkshake from a very wide straw.

Fifth, remember it takes a village to keep children under surveillance raise children. This is especially true if you live in a community where anyone ever judges anyone else. Call the parents of the children your child played with in elementary school. Feel them out, see if they are entirely-too-permissive or ridiculously-rule-bound. Either way, do not reveal the real truth of your parenting strategy, because you are flying by the seat of your pants. Also, tell them a few impressive things about your child, honorable mention at the Easter Regional Soccer Tournament and the A received on the poem “Green Grass Grows,” written in freshman English. Do not reveal your suspicion that your child tried a friend’s Ritalin last weekend. Finally, ask them to look out for your child, as you will be looking out for their child. End the call by asking for the phone numbers of the parents of the teenagers your child now actually hangs out with. 

A Note on Your Personal Failures

If you are unable to follow all of these steps, remember the phrase “is not limited to” in number 1 and 3. Brainstorm the items left off the list, which you must have missed. It is too late to do anything about these, but you may want to keep your expanded list next to your bed so when you lay awake at night worrying, you can pull out the list and turn your anxieties to your past failures instead of your child’s future downfall.

What the Beard Reveals

A few days before Halloween, my solemn yoga teacher began class with some thoughts on identity. He encouraged us to be mindful of the masks we “put on” for trick or treating. He warned: our costumes might hide our true selves. He said we must also be careful not to lose our sense of self in a persona we “put on” each day. He admitted even yogis don a identity, actors performing enlightenment. The Halloween costume was his symbol of our pretending.

Poised with my hands flat on my knees, I smiled at the teacher. Inwardly my knee jerk reaction was: that’s not it. He’s got this wrong. In a costume, I feel the most me I can be. In a costume, I am comfortable, complete.

While I cycled through some cat-cows, I worried: maybe he is right? Are costumes some strange extension of our secret self-hate? Does the cheerleading costume hide my critical nature so I feel positive? Does the wig conceal my gray hair so I act younger? Does the eyeliner open my eyes so I can fake being more awake, present?

For the last four months, in the steady build up of indulgences (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Twelfth Night, and then the endless balls, parties, and parades of Carnival) to Mardi Gras Day, I have been considering costumes and masks.

On any given day, I hate thinking about clothes and hair and eye shadow. While I might be uncomfortable in clothes that don’t flatter me or worse, just don’t fit, I hate spending time on the daily procedure of readying for the day. I also hate shopping and taking time to set myself up with a comfortable and appropriate wardrobe.

I used to be a “wash and go girl.” As I mother, I guess I am just a “go woman,” meaning showers are no longer a daily routine. Most of the men in my life, from my brother to my college roommate to my husband, generally take significantly more time to get ready for the day than me.

While my mom used to pester me to brush my hair and take my chipped toenail polish off, she’d also say, “I get it. You have more important things to worry about.” Still, when I was staying with her a few years ago and slept in eyeliner and mascara, she brought me make-up remover and cotton balls in the morning.

In high school, I baffled at put-together girls wearing cotton leggings and matching flats. Often, even their bracelets and earrings coordinated with their outfits. I don’t believe in changing jewelry on a daily basis and too-much matching is somehow oppressive to me. How did they do it?

In college we were all supposed to wear baggy jeans at our hips and as a teacher it was colored khakis and t-shirts from the fancy end of the Loft spectrum. At every life stage, I opted for comfortable shoes. I admit, I wear heels and a sheath dress whenever I present at a conference and I clean up well and slip on a LBD when a evening event requires it. But, as a rule, I am more Eleanor Roosevelt than Michelle Obama. Practical and sensible.

Now, as a stay- at-home mom, I wear yoga pants nearly everyday in hopes that I may fit in a workout. What a cliche. When I put on a frumpy jean skirt a few weeks ago, my six-year-old told me, “You look fancy. It’s funny when you don’t wear leggings.” I never really liked that skirt anyway.

The reason I do not relish, in fact I inwardly groan, at the readying process each day, is it is fraught with so many expectations. Be cute. Look together. Be professional. Look feminine, but not too soft. Be approachable. Look laid back. Be in control. Look like an expert. Be fit. Hide your tummy. Smooth your flyaways. Moisturize your face, hands, and lips, but don’t be greasy or oily. Hold the camera above your head to hide your chin.

I'm already drowning in expectations. Some are self-imposed, some are placed on me by others. Be an ever-present mother and wife, available. Keep a cleaner house or at least one where the laundry gets folded and put away. Cook healthy things from scratch. Be a smashing success in a professional capacity. Take care of yourself--exercise, be social, take quiet time, and go on dates with your husband. Do everything right.

I spend each day convincing myself to live by more a reasonable code. I am human and I need to accept the human condition. Perfection is impossible. I fight the shoulds from dawn to dusk. I’ve convinced myself it’s pretty alright that today I “dressed up” in jeans and slipped on a bracelet. Still, I’m working on letting go of the fact it took me a week to revise and edit this post and am fighting an urge to squander this writing time clearing off the dining room table.

Costuming gives me a break, true freedom from the dance of constantly readjusting expectations and accepting what is. Costuming is my unmasking.

In costumes, especially Mardi Gras costumes, there are few rules. For the first event of the season, I wore my pink wig and favorite green shawl and then entered a silly contest where I pretended to be a nutria and chewed my way through a cabbage to find a surprise. Last week my husband and I dressed in matching cheerleading costumes. On Fat Tuesday I wore a beard and he wore a dress. And several glorious days and nights he danced in powdered blue shorts for the masses while I provided security at the curb. For one night, I even had purple Barbie-doll hair and though it was tangled, I didn’t brush it.

Costumes cultivate real moments when I can shed codes, customs, and habits that dominate my psyche and just be me. Costumes silence my inner critic, weaken him and strengthen the person I am called to be.

I Am a Writer

Wearing Ramona’s highlighter, eyeliner, and mascara and Philip’s coat, I went to a writing conference in DC for five days. I can't get my head around putting highlighter, it really just seems like eyeshadow, under my eyes and I was self conscious the whole time about a button missing on the coat. I smiled at everyone, hoping to distract them from my sparkling under-eyes and shabby coat.

#AWP. A conference for writers and poets. This was my effort to join the club, scope out literary journals, and see how I might fit into this world in a DIY sort of way. I have no time or inclination to buy my way in through an MFA, so I just went for it, hoping to figure out how to be a real writer.

“I’m pivoting from teaching to writing,” I repeated to everyone I met. “I want to be, I mean, I am a writer.”

Writing is unlike teaching. As I teacher I was center stage, telling my stories to a captive, if not always rapt, audience. I write alone, even when I am at the coffee shop surrounded by people. I work and rework my stories, shaping the narrative of my life. #AWP taught me to label my writing as CNF, Creative Non-Fiction. As I met writers further along the road I kept worrying I would say CFN instead of CNF in the same way I mix up SVU and SUV.

Writing is like teaching in one way: half of the time I know I am onto something brilliant and half of the time I am sure this is a fruitless endeavor.

But, like the guy starting paleo or the friend preparing for a marathon, I need to publicly announce my intentions. This post reminds me of what my father-in-law told Philip and I about a wedding, “It’s important. It’s important to stand in front of your friends and family and God and commit.” So here I am publicly declaring myself a writer. In fact, after I post this, I will change my Facebook occupation from nothing to writer, making it officially official.

#AWP was worthwhile, but I was searching for a secret handshake and I already knew what I needed to do to be a writer.

How to be a writer:

1. Write as much as possible.

2. Read too.

3. Take really good care of yourself so that you can write. And read too.

4. Live frugally so you can write. Saving money is the same as making money.

5. Set up several writing related gigs to generate income and community, but make sure these gigs don’t capture or crush your soul.

6. Submit your stuff all over the place all of the time. Pick one day per week (or every other) to do this.

7. Write across genres. Work on several projects at once, including your manuscript.

8. Build a community of writers to support you.

Now, I just have to (keep) doing it.