I'm just saying. When I talked to the parental units this evening, they delighted in telling me that my father, the Divine Tremor, was putting whipped cream in my mother's belly button. I don't want to know more. I don't need to know more. I'm just saying. Private should be private.
The Divine Tremor, the Quixotic Tremor and I are in Washington, D.C. for a wedding. We stopped to pick up milkshakes for the younger tremors who were hanging out at the hotel; the milkshakes featured "oreos" and the take out cups were decorated with two oreos... The Quixotic Tremor dropped one cookie on the ground. While the Divine Tremor was strategizing that she should pick it up off the pavement--PAVEMENT COOKIES--she stepped on it. I asked if they ever served me food that was on the floor. Dead silence. Nice. My childhood in 5 words: organic honey-sweetened pavement cookies. No wonder I turned out the way I did.
via feminist reprise and sinister girl
Bold all those that apply to you.
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like you are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
My mom, known here as the Quixotic Tremor, is a regular reader of my blog. She read my 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade post. Here was her response:
Dear Lingual X,
Read your blog... Here is a little something for you...(lol).
Love,
Mom
Those of you who have seen A Christmas Story will get the reference. What can I say? My mom is seriously cool. Funny. But cool. And no, my mom doesn't actually call me Lingual X. :-)
Lingual Y & I have just learned that one of our dearest friends is pregnant with her first child. So, to mark the occasion, here is my first love letter to the peanut. It's sappy. It's sentimental. And? I'm just reveling in it...
Dear little peanut,
I love you before I even know you. I love the idea of you. I love that right now, you are growing more and more each day and that your mom is loving you into existence. I love knowing that there will be years of getting to know you, of watching you grow. I love that my e-mail will be filled with your baby pictures, of silly smiles, of your first day of school, of Halloween costumes, of your first missing tooth. I love that all of that is in the years to come. I love that right now, while we're waiting for you, I will knit something to keep you warm and cozy. I love that, like the little girl who will become your "Texas friend", that you will be fashionably adorned in sushi-themed baby-wear that I will force your mother to dress you in. Because, how in good conscience, can I not make you a New York baby, even when you will live in California?
Little peanut, I can't wait to read you stories and tickle you and chase you around your yard. I can't wait to play hide-and-go-seek and hear about your joys and your sorrows. I love that I get the privilege of being in your life and of being one of the grown ups who will help to teach you about the world and how to live in it. I will always be far away from you in distance, but you will always be close by, right here, in my heart.
I love that you will look like your mom and laugh like her and that you will make me fall in love with her all over again. I love knowing that when you are older and you read this note, you will die of embarrassment, but secretly love that we have all loved you since before you were born.
Little peanut, I can't wait to show you the world (especially the parts your mom forbids me to!).
Little peanut, I love knowing that you will break my heart the older you get.
Little peanut, I can't wait to meet you.
Love,
Your pseudo-aunt, & the loudest cheerleader in the peanut gallery, Lingual X
We had a busy weekend, but the Quixotic Tremor and I did manage to plant the pond garden. Same color scheme as last year, but very excitingly updated with black mulch.
And the fairy house is ready for occupancy:
I spent the weekend at the Tremor household. For regular readers of the blog, I thought I'd give an update on the Tremor menagerie:
Molly (featured previously in Cats In Sinks)
Formerly Maletin, the rescued kitten, now known as Leon. Can you spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e?
And, introducing, Maggie, the wonderpup, who did not learn to "speak" this weekend despite my fabulous lessons, including forcing the Protean Tremor to model "speak" for the puppy. We have a long way to go...
Computer tester. Two laptops, three disasters.
#1: Spilling coffee on the keyboard.
#2: Melting the laptop casing with a lamp.
#3? Running it over with her car.
The call? QT: "How do I get a new, you know, top for my computer?"
LX: "A new top?"
QT: "Yeah. You know, like the screen and stuff. Can I buy that separately?"
To IBM: Thanks for making the Thinkpad strong. It was only the screen.
To Subaru: Thanks for making a car that treads lightly over laptops.
Best quote of the night at Chez Lingual: "I don't like toys that cry in pain."
Good night.
It was the white pyrex loaf pan and it still hasn't come clean says the Quixotic Tremor. Dishwasher? Didn't take! Hand wash? The same. All ash residue all the time...
It's been a while since I've posted on all things Tremor-iffic, but this is blog worthy. As many of you know, yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Last night, the Quixotic Tremor called to complain that the Divine Tremor set palms on fire in the garage to make ashes for the Ash Wednesday service. In her baking pan. And didn't clean it up.
**For those of you unfamiliar with the "ash" part of Ash Wednesday, the ashes traditionally come from burned palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. Some large churches actually purchase ashes in bulk. But if you're the Divine Tremor? Why buy when you can make your own? In my mother's baking pan. In the garage.
"It's not DIRT, mom, it's holy seasoning!"
In a bizarre mid-life reversal, the granola crunchy (regular readers--you know: the family that made its own bread, fruit leather, yogurt and granola; the family that eschewed popular toys like Barbie and Big Wheels and Sit-n-Spin for political reasons) Tremor parental units have taken on a total fascination with Lingual Y's upbringing. If my own childhood was characterized by homemade clothes and food, Lingual Y's childhood was characterized by a complete immersion into "American" popular culture: Twinkies, Spam, television, video games, and more (!) dotted his childhood in ways that would have appalled my parents if I had taken, say, any interest at all in mass-produced, sugar-coma inducing foods like Twinkies. Today, however, my parental units delight in getting gifts for Lingual Y such as, yes it's true, The Twinkie Cookbook. And Lingual Y reciprocated by making our New Year's Day dessert: The Twinkie Trifle:
It featured fresh raspberries, fresh mint from the Quixotic Tremor's garden (thanks Global Warming!), real whipped cream, and no less than 10 Twinkies. As you can see from the third picture in the series above, the Twinkie Trifle met with the Tremors' approval.
Now that we're back in New York, I sense a series of Twinkie-inspired culinary adventures in my future. Twinkie sushi anyone?
Merry Christmas!
Well, while slow, I am making definite progress on my knitting. One of the fun moments of this fall was a knitting class at Downtown Yarns, where I learned how to make hats. Here are a few of the wonderful (although slightly flawed, I'm sure) hats I made for Christmas to warm the heads of the Tremor family (modeled by the newest addition to Chez Lingual, Daphne, our green head, purchased solely for the reason of displaying this season's hats!):
As we speak, the Tremor clan is ripping open packages with hats for everyone, in custom colors. Sadly, due to my novice ability, they are all of the same design, with the exception of Soule Mama's had (immediate left--red hat). You can see more hats (and, for fellow knitters, notes on the hat designs and yarns) at my flickr site in the "Knitting" set. My favorite hat is the middle one, made for the Quixotic Tremor, from all natural fibers.
Well, it's almost 2 a.m. here on the East Coast, and the Tremors are finally retiring after finishing a long day of church services and Christmas preparations. Today, some of us went to 3 different services; some of us went to 4! One of the things I love about being home is the way we all slide into our familial rhythm. Today, dad needed our help with services. So, across 3 different services I served as: a liturgist, a greeter, and usher, and a communion steward. It's been a long, but wonderful day.
As I was driving to church this morning, I had on 9 Lessons and Carols, broadcast live from England. This is one of my favorite holiday traditions--listening to Christmas Eve fall across the Atlantic, filling me with anticipation for our own celebrations the next day. My other favorite tradition is the reading of the Christmas cards. The Tremors save all of the cards until P.T. and I come home. Then, we read them--all--aloud at dinner. It's a wonderful time to catch up on news about old friends and to see what an amazing impact mom and dad have had on their new community as people stop to wish them well. One of the many interesting things about our Christmas cards is the cards that ministers send to one another. They range from widely inappropriate humor to my favorite, the ones that "reveal" the person. As a case in point, we got a card from a minister of my dad's persuasion. On his liturgically appropriate card, he scrawled: "Thank God for the elections. We needed that change!" This is the kind of house I grew up in--politically astute, and focused on social justice. Good, but not surprising, to see that repeated amongst our friends near and far!
Okay, off to bed... merry, merry!
This is a cannon:
Specifically, this is a U.S. Civil War-era cannon. This weekend I went out to Gettysburg with the Tremors and a friend in from the midwest. All along our tour route, many cannons were missing. The Divine Tremor commented: "Gee, I didn't know the war in Iraq was going THAT badly..."
That is all.
This is Maletin:
He is 10 weeks old and weighs 1 pound. He came to the Tremor Homestead (that of the Divine and Quixotic Tremor) last Saturday after spending the first 10 weeks of his life at an animal rescue shelter. The Muddy Tremor, Punkalele Tremor's SO, discovered 3 kittens abandoned in a suitcase (maletin--get it?). She and PT rescued the kittens, with the help of a feral cat at the animal rescue shelter. My parents, post-weening, adopted Maletin. Suffice it to say--totally cute & completely addicting. Here, he's scarfing up kitten food like there's no tomorrow. More kitten stories to suffice after my next visit home! Here at Chez Lingual, some of us think a new kitten, to keep our older kitty company, would be a very good idea!
(Photo via Robert Campbell)
Things you never thought you'd hear your parents say:
So, this woman called me on the phone today to tell me how she had to get her goat anointed. It was sick and wearing diapers. Some other lady anointed it in the local supermarket.
????
Goat? Diapers? Anointing oil in the supermarket? Anointing A GOAT???
Yeah. Just another day at the Tremors...(to be clear: the Tremors were not doing the anointing, but reporting on it...)
If you haven't read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude, it's a good time to read his masterpiece of Latin American magical realism. I've been thinking about the town of Macondo where it rains for years & year as the weather and the plot line intersect. For me, fiction is often a good way to make sense of the events around me. For the last three days, all of the news outlets have been bombarding the air waves, our television screens, and our computer screens with images and stories of last year's Hurricane Katrina disaster.
So as the news simultaneously brings us word of Hurricanes Ernesto and John bearing down, where can I even start in talking about the ravages of a year of loss and devastation? I am just back from Louisiana where I spent my summer vacation, along with the Divine Tremor, on a mission trip to rehab homes affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We spent a grueling week in hot temperatures (and no ac!), gutting a home for a single mother with 2 toddlers. We tarped the roof, removed mold, treated the wood for future damage, and prepared for new dry wall to go up. In another home, we gutted and installed a new kitchen for another family. Both families have been living in FEMA trailers since December (and FEMA trailers, for those who haven't seen them, are ridiculously tiny).
On the one hand, it was immensely humbling to be with these families and to help them in their road to recovery. As with previous trips I've been on, I learned a lot and found myself refocused on what's important in life. It just feels good to disconnect from the world for a while. We worked in a small town without any box stores or fast food chains. The closest "shopping" district was over 1/2 hour away.
On the other hand, watching people suffer through this kind of devastation with almost no help infuriates me. For the 2 families we helped, we met dozens and dozens more who still aren't in their homes. One woman told me that she didn't know anyone who was back in his/her home. Without insurance money or FEMA money, people have been putting their lives back together one piece at a time. Out of one check they have enough to buy the razor blades to scrape up the flooring in their homes. Out of another series of checks they have the money for the dry wall. And from still another check, money for mold removal. This doesn't begin to address the $12,000-$20,000 they need to raise their homes 10 feet off the ground. Where's the help? Where's the recovery assistance?
And so the "Katrina retrospectives" this week have been getting on my nerves. They are trying to spin the "recovery" too much; Katrina and Rita aren't over--they're a constant part of people's lives. They can't walk away from Katrina or shut off the television and go off to a movie or out to dinner. From Biloxi to Gulfport to New Orleans to the bayous, there are thousands and thousands of people who are living as refugees of one of the most preventable disasters in American history. New Orleans didn't need to happen; more work could be done with building new levees in endangered areas; more work could be done in helping people hurricane proof their homes. Instead, too many of those who were affected by last year's storms have been left to the mercy of volunteer groups, private donations, and the whim of a federal government's disorganized recovery plan.
A year ago, many of us in the blogosphere spent time writing about how we couldn't believe the images we saw on our television screens. Over and over again, we wrote about our disbelief that a disaster and a governmental paralysis of this magnitude could strike the United States. Once again, just a few short years after 9/11, the United States again proved unable to meet the significant challenges
At a town meeting in New Orleans today, President Bush said:
"We're addressing what went wrong," he told residents at a high school gymnasium in an uplifting speech that spoke to the heroic efforts of rescuers and the death and despair left behind when the floodwaters receded.
"Unfortunately, the hurricane also brought terrible scenes we never thought we'd see in America," Bush said. "Citizens drowned in their attics. Desperate mothers crying out on national TV for food and water. A breakdown of law and order and a government, at all levels, that fell short of its responsibilities. (via cnn.com)
Telling us what we saw isn't enough. I'd like to see the government roll up its sleeves. After Katrina hit New Orleans, Michael Moore took his entire staff (and paid them!) to the south to do recovery work. What would happen if every member of Congress took his/her staff and went to the affected areas and spent 2 weeks working? Imagine that kind of commitment instead of speeches analyzing what went wrong.
As we were working, we heard a lot of understandable grumbling about FEMA. Here's a sampling of what people on the ground are saying:
Heard out and about in town:
Heard on the local radio:
"Today marks the anniversary of the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. FEMA has processed 60% of the applications."
At the end of 100 Years of Solitude, Macondo slides into oblivion, almost drowning under the weight of the waters that have deluged it. Some of Macondo's demise centers on the inability of the community to support one another. I had an amazing time working on homes and meeting the families and working side-by-side with them. However, I wonder about where we're headed as a society when we can allow so many people to have so little, and to allow them such little avenue for hope, when so many others have so much.
Action Steps:
The Purple Tremor called me yesterday from a family wedding (she is a relatively new owner of a "Migo," and she loves to use her phone!). She informed me that she was very disappointed because she thought they were going to a commitment ceremony and not at a wedding. I asked, "what's the difference"? Here is her answer:
"A commitment ceremony is for anyone who loves each other and wants to be together forever."
"A wedding is for people who might get divorced."
Yeah. That's my little sister. Could I be more proud?
We were home at the Tremor homestead for the fourth of July and had a fantastic time, but what's most blog-worthy is the Quixotic Tremor's preparations for our visit. She decided to do some cleaning, some consolidating, some organizing (fascinating for a woman who abhors my every attempt to alphabetize her spice rack).
This, dear reader, is scotch, labeled scotch whisky:
This, is whisky:
The Quixotic Tremor? She mixed them together so that she only had 1 bottle. Since they both said "whisky," she assumed they were the same. So much for the Divine Tremor's nightcap.
The Artistic Tremor has respectfully requested that she be called the Punkalele Tremor because she "hates" the name Artistic Tremor. Whatever. Get your damned MFA already. I reserve the right to shorten Punkalele Tremor to Punk't at my whim.
For those of you who missed the Punkalele catastrophe, click here and here.
For the record, the Purple Tremor says the punkalele is "annoying" as is Punk't. She really emphasized "annoying"--like this: a (insert several breath rest here) nnoy (insert several breath rest here) ying. I couldn't agree more.
Dramatis Personae:
The Divine Tremor (aka Male Parental Unit, M.Div.)
The Quixotic Tremor (aka Female Parental Unit, Ph.D.)
The Artistic Tremor, my younger sister
The Purple Tremor, my youngest sister
The Protean Tremor, my baby brother
Lingual Y, my better half, who although he does not appear in this story, is always important to every story!
While I regularly write about feminism and disability studies in my academic work, this is my first foray into biographical writing about my family, feminism and disability studies. This post is inspired by Welcome to the Nuthouse's call for posts on feminism and disability for the 16th Carnival of Feminists.
When I was 16, the Tremor parental units adopted two babies with special needs, both with significant cognitive disabilities. Our familial rhythm necessarily changed as these two new children changed what we meant by the word family.
One concrete example of this, and the most compelling to my argument today, is the dining room table. Before the adoption, our family dinners were consumed by politics and debate. From a very early age, the Artistic Tremor and I cut our teeth on the fine art of creating an argument during dinner. That precious time, after NPR and before our parents' rounds of evening meetings was devoted to my sister's and my intellectual development. And to this day, both she and I regard dinnertime as more than a meal.
When our new brother and sister arrived, this rhythm was interrupted, first by the needs and paraphernalia of babyhood: from high chairs to baby food, dinnertime was chaotic between feeding the babies and arguing about abortion politics.
But later, as the littlest tremors began to grow, dinnertime changed as we all worked together to find ways to include them in the larger conversation. Much of our work as a family has been trying to help them understand the larger world in which they live. while our conversations had a different rhythm, we did not exclude the Purple and Protean Tremors from those conversations.
Specifically, we have tried to politicize their education and to offer them a larger world than the one the school system imagines for them. Feminism and progressive politics have no place in the special needs classroom. But why shouldn't they?
Words of theological wisdom from the Divine Tremor (aka Male Parental Unit, M.Div.):
When fundamentalist Christians argue that "abstinence" only is the answer to sex ed in the United States, they fundamentally contradict their literal interpretations of the Bible. The Virgin Mary, by all accounts, was practicing abstinence only.
Let's hear it for a little liberal theology!
This is what a punkalele case looks like:
9 scarves, 1 hat, and 22 balls of yarn later (and after two Christmas Eve and one Christmas Day services), Christmas Day finally arrived. In the spirit of my “rampant consumer Christmas” posts, I made everyone in the family scarves, so the living room was adorned with Peruvian wool, baby alpaca, Irish mohair and Italian silk.
The day was full of nice moments, from the Quixotic Tremor and I playing a duet in church this morning to our knitting exchange. The Quixotic Tremor surprised me with a hand-knit hooded cape and I gave her a hand-knit shawl. We had a lovely candlelit dinner and ended the day watching Real Genius, an old family favorite.
Best gifts ever:
Hand-knit hooded cape (!), New York Public Library membership, a book of meditations, a Darth Vader voice changer, a stained glass panel, a handmade corkboard, a donation to Planned Parenthood in my name (everyone in the family received a donation to a social justice/political project that matches his/her interests), and oodles of awesome books (and lots of other cool things)!
Also, the Quixotic Tremor bought Hungry Planet: What the World Eats for the entire family and I bought Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices for my the Divine Tremor. We’ve been really working on the idea of social justice and responsible citizenship with the Protean and Purple Tremors. After we opened presents, we watched the documentary and discussed it as a family; the kids were really intrigued by the video, especially after this summer when they attended several anti-Wal-Mart protests with the tremor parental units.
Worst gift ever:
The “punkalele”: the Divine Tremor gave my sister a ukulele and she immediately began composing punk songs about the gifts people received. In response to a photo of a young boy in a Mexican cemetery I gave to my mother as a possible print for her next watercolor project, she composed the following song:
Pumpkin Boy, Pumpkin Boy,
I want to paint you.
I love you.
Calabaza, Calabaza Boy,
I love your pumpkin,
Pumpkin Boy, Pumpkin Boy...
The lyrics repeated over and over with slight punk'd variations, head banging and punkalele plucking for about 45 minutes...
I'm sure I didn't pop out of my mother's uterus with a fist raised in solidarity, but I did get my radical training wheels very early on. To understand the Sunshine Family is to understand my parents' theory of raising a young feminist.
While other young girls my age had Barbie dolls, I had Steve, Stephie, Sweets and their politically correct greenhouse (in which, I have suppositioned for years, my parents grew pot).
Continue reading "Warrior Wombs and Radical Training Wheels" »
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