youth, innocence, and naïveté

Spending my teenage years surrounded by a warm church family that really believed in young people and valued their contributions to the church, society, and the world, I never thought less of myself for being young and idealistic, for being trusting and perhaps a bit too naive. In youth group we were taught that we could make a difference in others' lives, that we could "change the world." We were all about it, too: mission trips, outreaches, rallies. The older people in the faith always invited us to be a part of the "grown up" life of the church. I remember being asked to speak at ladies' meetings, preach at events, lead important groups. I felt very affirmed in my youthfulness; I believed that it was a beautiful and worthwhile time in my life.

Then I went to a Christian college where it was pretty much the same. I was rarely doubted or made to feel inferior, never condescended to because of my idealism or innocence. I just thought that innocence--voluntary innocence, I mean, the innocence that you choose even though you know how ugly the world can be--would be respected and appreciated.

And then I joined the real world. I have never in my life felt so young. When my new co-workers found out my age, they actually laughed. They make sure I know that I am a cute little girl. I get to hear about their breakups and divorces, their failed dreams, their bitter disregard for any possibility of kindness. And I feel how young I am, how trusting and sincere. And how little value the world sees in those qualities.

I'm not an oblivious little angel--I mean, I'm a little theologically and politically liberal; people don't apologize when they swear in front of me anymore (for which I'm very grateful); I'm not blind to how horrible life can be--but I do still think of myself as very innocent, and I don't see anything wrong with it. I don't trust the government; I'm scared to leave my apartment at night; I give all strange men the "I'm a bitch--don't even look at me" vibe whenever necessary. But I still trust people; I still believe that there are things like goodness and mercy, hospitality, community, honesty, integrity.

I was crushed this week when I had a traumatic dentist visit. I unthinkingly expected the dentist to do her job and to treat me like a human being; she did neither. I wasn't really as horrified by the gigantic hole she left in my tooth as by her uncaring and thoughtless conduct towards me. I complained about it to someone I work with and was told, "You're young. You're naive." And she's right. I was horrified by this experience because I deeply believe that people in the medical profession should care about their patients more than their pay checks.

Mostly though, I realize this difference between myself and others when it comes to love. I married a kind, thoughtful, gentle man who adores me. I believe in love; I believe in marriage forever; I believe that it is possible to share your life with one person as long as you live. I've also only been married for 6 months. I don't share these opinions at work because I know what I'll hear: "You're young. You're naive. Just give it a few years."

So often, the young ones are the wise ones. The ones who know how to live. If being a woman of the world means being bitter and burned-out, you can forget it. I'll take childlike innocence any day. I wrote an essay about my summer camp kids for a writing class last semester, which I think sums this whole discussion up nicely. Here's a little piece of it:

They teach me to live a freer, closer, kinder life—closer to the small things, more aware of the vast expanse of being; they show me how to care about rocks and leaves and spider webs; to be curious; to be struck with awe at the world. They remind me of the great wonder that is a human soul, remind me with their fragile, tremulous personalities that life is precious, beautiful, and a gift, even when it’s difficult. I no longer look back at my own childhood with nostalgia, mourning the loss of my innocence; in these children I’ve found a second innocence, a holy wonder I can only call grace. I find myself talking to flowers and stars, greeting the moon each night, finding joy in ladybugs and lizards and tales of dragons, in the feel of sunshine on my skin, the touch of another person’s hand, the sight of water pooled in droplets on the grass and trees after rain… My summer camp kids have helped me to see and to love these things, and to live as they do—simply, sweetly, with eyes like a little child’s.

There is a writer who talks about the second innocence--Annie Dillard? I can't remember. It's a chosen innocence, not even one you're born with. It's a choice to keep yourself unsullied; to live outside of the greed and the selfishness and the bitterness that make up most adults' lives. It doesn't mean you don't see the world's pain, its destructive sin, the possibility that it will chew you up and spit you out. You see that, but you choose to live inside of a greater truth. You choose grace, mercy, kindness, a life in the spirit. You choose to hope, to trust, and to love.

Perhaps innocence is wisdom after all.

Tuesday Blues

There are some things in life that are so utterly lonesome.

Tonight, driving home after working a little late, I found myself (as usual) in an endlessly long line of traffic, watching the light go green to yellow to red five times before my car made it to the intersection. The sun was going down and the sky was pale yellow; everyone's headlights were glaring. Everyone looked bored out of their minds and irritable, in their plush cars and SUVs. Everyone was inching along, cutting each other off, honking--but mostly just sitting and waiting and wanting to get home. It seemed like there were a thousand of us, even just at that one intersection, but it still felt so lonely, so empty, so cold.

Another Tuesday in Nashville.

Please spell the words on my tombstone correctly.

Today I actually corrected a cereal box. I mean, I took out the blue ink pen and wrote in a comma and a hyphen and crossed out a period. I wish this neurotic demand for correct grammar and punctuation would cross over into clean-house-neurosis. I am happy to report, however, that following my latest confession I actually cleaned my house--and very nicely and sweetly asked John to mop. :)

While we're on the subject of punctuation and grammar, however, I just feel the need to get a few pet peeves off my chest (because I know that you are all as excited about correct usage as I am):

1. The use of its and it's--I know this is a tricky concept for people and that even the most educated make this mistake, but it really gets to me. It's translates to "it is" (as in "Boy, it's annoying when people use it's wrong) and its is used to show possession (The naked tree misses its leaves). There is no such thing as its'.

2. Unnecessary apostrophes--Everyone has seen the signs: Photo's taken here. Bananas' on sale today. This is probably my biggest pet peeve. I want to scream when I see these signs; I want to go up to their creators and demand an explanation for those apostrophes. Why are they there? What purpose do they serve? Ahhh!

3. The gradual disappearance of punctuation from the English language-- I realize that things have to change. Once upon a time, all nouns were capitalized instead of only proper, and everyday words like "today" were hyphenated (to-day)--and I think we will all agree that our evolution away from such practices brought good and necessary changes. However, why don't people use commas like they used to? And what's happened to the good old semi-colon, anyway? And let's not even talk about the fate of the hyphen...

Okay, that's probably enough complaining for one day. Thanks so much for indulging my fantasy that other people actually care to hear my grammar grievances. God will surely bless you.

Much of this is due to my own pent-up rage against illiteracy, but I've also been reading the fabulous book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, which has surely only served to exacerbate my punctuation perfection issues. She's much worse of a punctuation nazi than I am, although I must say I wish she used more commas. She seems to be a follower of the fewer -commas- the- better rule. Alas.

I would like to end with a nicely-written sentence about writing, which I like for the semi-colons and the colon and dislike for for the unnecessary comma splice and sexist language. But, hey, who am I to judge the quote-worthy?


"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop." ~Vita Sackville West

Domestic Confessions

I am a terrible housekeeper.

I have not mopped the floor since John's parents visited last, which I think was a few months ago.

The only thing I can stay on top of is laundry, and that's only because I like to fold towels.

Our apartment is decorated much more poorly than a guy's college dorm room, and there is a mountain bike in our kitchen.

There are bags of plastic recycling piling up in the living room which I've been planning to cart to the recycling place for months.

Upon opening, I immediately stick every bill, letter, card, or flyer into an overstuffed basket on the kitchen table. John regularly fishes out receipts and other important bits of information.

Everything is dusty.

I'm supposed to be doing the dishes right now, but they are "soaking."

I didn't realize how bad things were until John and I were discussing my interest in getting a rabbit from the Nashville Bunny Rescue. The conversation went something like this:
"Are you going to clean out its cage?"--John.
"Of course I will!"--me.
"We can't even keep our apartment clean."--John.
"Oh."--me.

Bunnies might have to wait.

I really don't know how this happened. In college I was a neat freak: I made my bed every day, alphabetized the poetry section of my bookshelf, color-coordinated my closet. My roommate was a clutter bug and nearly made me crazy with clothes on the floor, papers scattered everywhere, dishes left in the sink.

Alas, the tables have turned. At least I'm enough of a feminist to know that this doesn't reflect upon my intrinsic worth as a human being. And I never forget to water our bamboo.

Still, God help us.

Ramblings on Writers and Writing

Yesterday, John and I took the bus to downtown Nashville for the 15th annual Southern Festival of Books, a gathering for writers, publishers, book sellers, and book lovers. There were tents set up with books on sale, chances to meet the authors, different organizations for writers, etc. There were also book talks, special speakers, and book signings. Unfortunately, John and I failed to locate a program until we were leaving to catch our bus, so we missed all the good speakers, including Sherman Alexie, which was a real shame. However, I did talk John into a watermelon snowcone and a children's book reading by the author of The Knot Fairy, The Sock Fairy, and other fairy tales. Poor John was, of course, bored out of his mind, but I thought the reading was delightful.

One thing I noticed at the festival was how ordinary the writers we met were. I'm not sure what I was expecting...Jaques Derrida? Edgar Allen Poe? They were just very ordinary people who wanted to share their books with the world (and get paid for it). One very elderly woman told me all about her children's book Too Tall Alice, walking me through the whole idea and plot with so much tenderness for her dear little book. I felt like a jerk to put it back on the table and move on. She really loved that book.

I guess I'm writing this to say to all of you secretly and publicly aspiring writers: go for it! Write your books and poems and stories and blogs. Perhaps the ordinariness of life has a bigger part to play in writing well than I've realized. Perhaps being ordinary is what actually makes us good writers. I think that what makes ordinary writers exceptional is the ability to find the holy in the every day, to find beauty and meaning in laundry and dishes and stinky diapers, in the schedules and setbacks and monotony of things, in ordinary life. My very best college professor, Dr. Cotton, always says that he likes good writers better than great writers, which mostly I think means that he likes the writers who are ordinary people, not the geniuses. He likes the Mary Olivers, the Lucille Cliftons, the Raymond Carvers. Good writers are those who capture life as it is, who tell the truth about things in a beautiful way, who make us see the world as if for the first time.

I think I've been afraid to write because I fear that I won't be Virginia Woolf; I won't be Mary Oliver; I won't write the Pulitzer Prize winning piece of literary greatness. What if my writing turns out to be a Wal-mart clearance shelf book? (Shudder.) I guess that's the risk you have to take when you're writing; the risk that you won't be as good as you thought or hoped; that your book will be ignored or criticized; that no literary magazine in the entire world will want to publish your work, much less pay you for it.

Josh Ritter has a song with a line that says, "God, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored." I think that's true for writers too. You can't write for publication, for hope of being the next Denise Levertov. You have to write for the love of it, for the need of it. For the same reasons that you pray and work and live.

Braniac

My seven year old nephew called tonight to ask me how many words are in the English language and how long it would take a person to write all of them. And he really, sincerely expected me to know the answers.

It's nice to have someone think you're that smart. :)

"Mankind"

Did anyone else notice that Sarah Palin kept saying "mankind" during her debate with Joe Biden the other night? I had a stack of freshly laundered, rolled-up socks at hand and I chunked one at the television screen every time she said it. (I had to clean up my living room after the debate.)

I mean, she's a woman running for vice-president. She, of all people, should know better. The archaic language was worse than the winking.

I don't know which I hate worse: getting a letter addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. John Orzechowski" or hearing a well-educated person refer to the collective human society as mankind.

Read a grammar & usage handbook, for God's sake.

Life in Nashville.

I haven't been writing much lately. I have been working and reading the non-fiction of some very good women writers and enjoying being a newly wed. Most recently I have been spending eight hours a day reading, answer reviewing, and critiquing the Language Arts portions of standardized tests. It's my new job. I like it better than trying to keep 11 three-year olds under control or writing articles for a cheesy fundamentalist website. I don't come home with funny kid stories or paint on my shoes anymore, but now I can at least stay awake until 9.30pm. I get to find other people's mistakes, which I am very good at; my boss put a hanging plant over my desk that bears an uncanny resemblance to my hair; and I get to tell people that I work for the Discovery Channel, even though I don't actually.

Plus, it's fall now and I'm not in Florida, so that means I get to wear my fashionless brown cardigan that my college roommate said makes me look like a librarian.

Life is good.