Slightly Anxious, Good at Getting Stuff Done

Via Chichimama and Rev. Dr. Mom:

Your Score: Kanga

You scored 13 Ego, 14 Anxiety, and 19 Agency!

"I am not Roo," said Piglet loudly. "I am Piglet!"

"Yes, dear, yes," said Kanga soothingly. "And imitating
Piglet's voice too! So clever of him," she went on, as she took
a large bar of yellow soap out of the cupboard. "What will he
be doing next"

"Can't you see?" shouted Piglet "Haven't you got eyes?
Look at me!"

"I am looking, Roo, dear," said Kanga rather severely.
"And you know what I told you yesterday about making faces. If
you go on making faces like Piglet's, you will grow up to look
like Piglet -- and then think how sorry you will be. Now then,
into the bath, and don't let me have to speak to you about it
again."

You scored as Kanga!

ABOUT KANGA: Kanga is Roo's mother and Tigger's foster mother. While she is a kind and motherly sort of person, the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood suspect that underneath, she is a Fierce Animal. Her hobbies involve talking about Roo's health and development, watching Roo while he practices jumping, and making Roo and Tigger take their strengthening medicine.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are the kind of person who takes on other people's worries. You are efficient and a person of action - the type of person who Gets Things Done. Your friends tend to rely on you to get them moving and keep things running.

The problem is that you tend to forget about yourself in all of this. You need to remember that you are an important and worthwhile person, and sometimes it is okay to say "no" to people's constant requests and demands. Give yourself some time off.

Link: The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test written by wolfcaroling on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(wolfcaroling)

My Wednesday Book Club, 2nd semester

In the fall I posted about the books I've been reading with Curious Girl's class most Wednesdays. I go for lunch, and read to the girls afterwards, and then CG and I head over to her violin lesson and spend the afternoon together. Here are the book selections from the winter/spring Wednesday club, starting with city books to go with their city unit (Some other city books to consider are recommmended at the Miss Rumphius Effect, by the way). Then I tried to work on some art books (although every book for this age is an art book, too), and mostly tried to work on books with strong and interesting girl characters. I have only one or two more books to read, as the end of the school year is fast approaching and I'll be on the road again for most of one week. The very last book I'll read to them is one we are writing together! I'll post about our collaborative authoring project separately. Here's what we've read together so far this year:

• Knufflebunny Too, by Mo Willems. This Caldecott-honor book hardly needs any additional publicity from me, but the girls loved it. It's a great story of two city girls resolving the problem of two Knufflebunnies in one classroom! And a great two page spread of Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. This was the first book we'd read together that many of them had already read, or where they knew the characters (since almost all of them knew Knufflebunny, which a surprising majority pronounce just like Curious Girl does, "snufflebunny." Actually, there's an interesting phonetic moment in the book where we learn that Trixie pronounces the K in knuffle.)
  
• Black Cat, by Christopher Myers. I actually don't care for the scansion in this book about the ramblings of a black city cat, but the illustrations are amazing. Lots of cats-eye insights into what makes a city. We had a great conversation about whether there is a fire in the apartments/projects shown on one page, or whether the author just likes to draw with red and yellow. It's a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.
  
• Nothing but Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson, by Sue Stauffacher. A biography of Althea Gibson, presenting her as a girl whose mentors recognized her gifts and could see beyond her rough edges and childhood ways. Great colors--we had a good discussion of what the colors meant in the different illustrations when Althea was mad or playing tennis.
  
• The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,by Mordecai Gersten. I tear up at the end of this Caldecott-winning book every time. It's a true story about Philippe Petit, who did walk a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. One of Curious Girl's classmates said at the end, "I wish it were about a girl."
  
• The Silk Princess, by Charles Santore. While I think the font is too small on the pages, that's a minor quibble about a wonderful story. Ever wonder how silk got discovered? By a very brave little princess long ago in China. Gorgeous illustrations and a strong girl story: what's not to like?
  
• The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County, by Janice Harrington. I love, love, love this book, about a girl whose dream is to catch the most beautiful chicken in her grandmother's yard. Both she and the chicken learn a thing or two as the book progresses, and the collage art is amazing. The scansion is superb-this is a book meant to be read aloud.
  
• Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing and Sylvie Kantorowitz, a great story about a resourceful girl whose bedtime-avoidance drawing comes to life (and how she finally gets to sleep). Great kid-like, crayon-y drawings, and a cool story.
• Mirette on the High Wire, by Emily Arnold McCully. After the comment about The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, this was a natural selection: a Caldecott-winning story about a young girl whose enthusiasm for the tightrope and empathy for her teacher leads both of them to new heights. I see there are some sequels, too. (This same author has several other series, including one about a mouse family. Check out the utterly delightful wordless book School.)
• Nora's Stars, by Satomi Ichikawa. This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of Nora's nighttime adventures during a visit to her grandmother's rather magical house--dolls and toys come to life and the stars do some amazing things, and Nora makes a smart choice about the stars and the sky.
• Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. Told from the perspective a a young girl thinking about her elderly great aunt, this book reveals the wanderlust and love of beauty passed down from generation to generation within a family. "You must do something to make the world more beautiful," each character learns.
  

My New Old Friend

I've been e-mailing with a friend who told me he's been doing something very, very different. What's up, I wondered: it turns out, my friend has had gender identity disorder since very early childhood. George, it turns out, is Joyce.

My immediate reaction was to smile (albeit with a bit of a dropped jaw: I'm sure Joyce is enjoying the list of things her friends imagined might be the new and different thing she has been making arrangements to talk about). I quickly dashed off an e-mail to say something like this: I know I speak for Politica too; we love you; we support you--and your wife; we are your friends, and we are part of your support network.

My second reaction was to laugh. George was, is, the kind of person who's done everything. Grew up on a ranch, can ride a horse. Has lived abroad, is multilingual. Helped found a business, has disparate graduate degrees, isn't afraid to stake out controversial positions while listening well to others. George is (forgive the mixing of names, genders, and tenses: I'm mixing time and space here) gentle and forcefully quiet, so these experiences don't come out one after the other as any kind of bragging. It's just that in virtually any conversation, it seemed to turn out that George had relevant expertise. He knows the stars (that ranching big sky background, I guess). He's lived here, and there. He's parachuted. And what does the man who does everything do? Become a woman. That struck me as funny, just as the fact that George owned his own parachute did the night I found that out.

**********************

Joyce is an academic--smart, eloquent, rational. Her e-mail to me, while personalized, is one that I imagine she's sent to many friends and family members over the past few months. She gave me some reading tips (including Jennifer Finney Boylan's utterly compelling, you really-should-run-out-and-get-it, memoir of her MTF transition in her 40's, She's Not There), and mentioned that she has a blog, something she's been using to chronicle her thinking over the past year and a half, a period which opened in deep depression and has slowly moved through her decision to transition, heartbreakingly beautiful meditations on any number of aspects of the transition, and more recently, chronicles of telling family members, thoughts on conversations with friends and family, all mixed with snippets from the past. I skimmed through the blog in its entirety, and have been reading it more slowly and carefully, learning more about my friend, rethinking our past, imagining our future.

I want to be clear--for Joyce, and anyone else-- my immediate reaction to this news hasn't changed one bit. I loved my friend George; I love my friend Joyce. I feel closer to Joyce, in part because it's now clear a big wall has tumbled down , in part because I've been reading her blog, which contains some intensely intimate entries (albeit public intimacy, staged by a masterful rhetorician). At one point in her blog, Joyce hopes that her friends are writing through their reactions to her news. So this entry is one such point for me.

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Cartoonist Scott McCloud has some work titled "I Can't Stop Thinking!" In some respects, I can't stop thinking about Joyce and her wife Mary Jo. I have other trans friends, but none that I've known in the midst of transition. I just can't stop thinking about Joyce. In the couple of weeks I've been thinking about this news, I've had vivid dreams, one about George being a gay Olympic swimmer who was transitioning to being a woman, and in the dream it turned out that his partner (also an Olympic swimmer) was also a man transitioning to be a woman. How convenient! I've also had several nights of dreams involving wild animals running free, like on an African savannah. No plot, just lots of movement and energy and freedom and elation. Somehow, it seems connected to the news about Joyce, and it feels good.

**********************

One of my favorite memories of all time involves George, Mary Jo, and their children. We all went camping one year, to a big festival, and it was so very hot one day that we left the festival and went to a state park nearby. We lazed around in the river, we lazed on a picnic blanket, singing songs, telling stories, laughing at the wonderful young boy that was George and Mary Jo's oldest son. That afternoon was perfect in the way that only a lazy summer day can be: a big blue sky, warm temperatures, warm water, good company, and only the rhythms of pleasure to guide us. We wrote about this day in our holiday letter (back in the days when we sent holiday letters in December. This year, look for more of a Fourth of July holiday letter. We're working on it, really.)

Now I'm thinking: did that day really happen? Having read Joyce's blog, I'm seeing the past through another lens, a lens of struggle with gender identity disorder that grew worse over time. We've not yet seen each other to have a longer conversation about this, and I wonder whether that afternoon sticks in their minds, too, with the clarity and perfection it does in mind. But how perfect could it have been if George, relaxing in an inner tube, was struggling with desires and secrets and selves he thought couldn't be revealed?

**********************

A few years ago, I met George in the hallways of our national professional association conference. Politica was in the midst of a pretty bad set of flare-ups associated with some of the chronic medical problems she has. "That's not fair," he said to me. "That's just not fair. Not fair at all." I was touched by the sweet vehemence of the phrasing. Now, I think back, and just as firmly say, "that's not fair" about the painful choices George had to make, moving through the world as a man. And I wonder, too, whether in that moment, George was aware of that pain, projecting some of it into his comment about Politica?

On Joyce's blog, she mentions being--as George-- at another conference and having a terrible time, sure that her colleagues would not be happy with the news that she's transsexual. I remember seeing George at a public event, and in my memory now, George was standing a bit apart from the crowd, looking sad. Is that real, or am I projecting sadness and separation into the past because of the blog posts I've now read, because of the memoirs I've now read? As I read the blog post about this moment, I thought "but you could have told me! I'd have hugged you." As I did hug George at the time.

I don't know how to trust my emotional memories of the past, now that I realize how much more was going on than I knew. But what I did know, was real, and the foundation of a good friendship.

**********************

I should, logistics willing, be seeing Joyce and Mary Jo sometime next month. I'm looking forward to it--I've always treasured the spontaneous meals we've managed to arrange at conferences, but this time, I'm hoping we'll be able to plan a time to be together and talk. Joyce may be looking forward to talking about anything but all this, though. I remember a point after Curious Girl came home, after her surgery, after her medical conditions seemed to be more stable. I realized I could answer the question "How are you?" without explaining her condition in great detail, or talking about adoption. It was rather liberating. I talk about feeding issues and adoption regularly, of course, but it was good to know that I had other narratives available to me. I wonder whether Joyce feels the same way: gender identity is a compelling narrative, but perhaps she wants to tell other stories.

**********************

We found a Shona sculpture in an art gallery, and bought it for Joyce and Mary Jo. The sculpture symbolizes spiritual evolution through physical transformation, and the contrast of polished curves and textured ridges seems like a tangible and beautiful reminder of friends afar. (You can see similar sculptures online, although this isn't where we bought it and I don't know the site.)

**********************

I'm still e-mailing Joyce on George's computer account.

Sometimes, I just stop and look at her name, and it seems to pop off the screen and rotate. Who are you, Joyce? I turn the name over and around, learning my way around its shape on the screen or page. Joyce isn't--alphabetically, materially--the same shape as George. Curious Girl would say, "I'm still getting used to it." (Note to self: as this is getting long, I'm going to write about my conversation with Curious Girl about all this separately.)

**********************

I'm realizing what mundane things I didn't know about George. Like clothes, and where they come from. George was, is, a pretty spiffy dresser at work: classic clothes, not flashy, good quality, nice looking. At home, nice quality clothes, practical clothes that would change depending on the activity. On the blog, Joyce wonders about where to shop for her new look. Me, I hate to shop, but I understand the questions about the new look (questions I have, in fact, about our upcoming move. Do professors at German University dress differently than professors here?) Joyce wonders whether a shirt from This Store, a skirt from That Store might be suitable. I never think about clothes like this. I bet Joyce dresses better than I do (she certainly knows more about makeup than I do!). It's interesting, discovering ways in which my friend is thinking about clothes. I'd never have thought to think that way.

As I said in one of my e-mails, it's a good friendship that is still unfolding all these years later (even if shopping for clothes isn't the most profound example. But there's something about the material intimacy of it all that fascinates me).

**********************

Some days, I wish I had a chance to say goodbye to George. But then, what would I say? And isn't George in Joyce?

George had a wonderful voice. I used to love being at his house when his mother would call, just to hear him say, "Hello, Mama," with wonderful elongated syllables in Hello and a lilting southern accent on the phrase. Of course, Mama passed away a few years ago, so I'd never have heard that again anyway.

I do wonder what Joyce sounds like.

**********************

It's not so simple as George vanishing and Joyce appearing. Gender is innate, but gender is performed, enacted, learned. Politica reminds me that George was really one of her few good straight male friends--but it turns out, he's more queer than straight. So it's not so simple. George, transitioning to Joyce, is making choices about intonation, fashion, gesture, voice...so many things. There are many narratives intersecting here: the creation of a trans identity, the creation of a female identiy, the refashioning of an academic identity, perhaps creation of an activist identity. Not to mention the recreation of a family identity, and the reshaping of friendships. So losing George isn't the only story, if it is a story at all.

As anyone who's been reading here for a while knows, I think a lot about adoption as something that happens at a moment in time, and something that unfolds over time in terms of identity and relationships. I've found myself wondering how much similarity there is between the kind of thinking I've done on adoption and the kind of work Joyce is doing now. Stories about making peace with the past, stories about making a coherent narrative of fragmented parts of the past...obviously there are many, many differences between these two situations, but the kind of emotional flexibility that adoption has promoted seems useful as I think about Joyce. Facts can be interpreted on multiple levels, interpretations can change over time, and sometimes contradictions just have to be lived with. George is(n't) Joyce; there are losses and gains, continuities and disjunctions.

**********************

I'm sorry Joyce struggled with such sadness at various points in her life. Reading the blog, I can't be anything but inspired as I look at the evolution she's gone through, and so pleased at the community around her--some of which I share with her as academics working in related fields, some of which I share from a period of shared geography, some of which I can see online.

I have a new, old friend: I like it.

Then and Now

My first Broadway show was Shenandoah, starring John Cullum (and Penelope Milford, who played the oldest daughter, who was of course the character I fixed on). My mother took me, just she and I, into the city for a matinee. I loved going into the city with my mother, who is a rather shy and naive woman. The city transformed her into someone who walked fast and purposefully, who took control, who was in charge. My father--also city-born and city-bred, albeit in Queens, while my mother grew up in Manhattan and worked there for many years as well--is curiously cowed by the city, and that reversed their usual dynamic. Not that my dad is an overly domineering sort, but in matters of logistics and transportation, he was usually the one leading the way. But not in the city.

Shenandoah just blew me away. I'd always been drawn to narrative songs. Among the belongings in the basement that I need to decide what to do with is a box of records, including my childhood recording of Cinderella, and probably Danny Kaye singing Hans Christian Andersen. As I got older, I practically wore out my copies of Jesus Christ Superstar and 1776. I loved the vocabulary of songs (I learned rubicon from a song in 1776 and grippe from Guys and Dolls, e.g.). I loved the stories of the songs. So I went to the theatre expecting to love it, and love it I did (click through the link above and you'll hear selections from the touring production starring Cullum--very cool to see him as I recall him).

Magpie posted recently about the smell of Penn Station. I love the smell of Manhattan, generally. The pretzels, the people, the trains. I love the memory of walking along the city streets with my mother, and I love the magic of my Shenandoah memories. I thought the songs were amazing, the costumes so beautiful, and the story just gosh darn romantic.

So that was my introduction to Broadway. I don't know when Curious Girl will see a Broadway show on Broadway, living as we do quite far from the city. But today I took her to her first Broadway-ish show: H.igh S.chool M.usical's national tour came through. Maybe someday she'll be blogging--or writing in whatever technology she will have available--about her memories of her first show, comparing them to what her child's first big show will be. CG was transfixed (as much by the fact that her favorite teacher and her daughter came with us as with the show). We've seen the movie too many times to count, so CG knew the plot (but sometimes, I think, got a little confused by the rearranging necessitated by the move from screen to stage). Not all the songs are the same, and I found myself nitpicking about the sound system, which just sounded so electrified. Am I just getting old and crabby, or is more amplification reducing sound quality?

We had a good time (although I think the movie is better than the play, which plays up stereotypes more sharply and more meanly, and is less emotionally subtle than the movie). And for all I know, Curious Girl fell asleep as entranced as I was by John Cullum, Penelope Milford, and the rest of the cast sometime in the mid-70s. Sweet dreams, my theatre-going girl.

First Lasts

Today feels like the first big last thing here: I chaired my last "apartment meeting," to use Curious Girl's term for it. I suppose teaching my last class here, back in December, was truly the first big last, but at the time, I wasn't so closely tied to the leaving. Now, with our house for sale, I'm beginning to leave.

These are, with slight edits, the remarks I presented to my department today. I'm not sure why I'm putting them up here, but I've got leaving on my mind tonight, and thought I'd start writing some about moving. So here's a piece of getting ready to leave my current position:

Jane Jacobs, in the final chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, notes

Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity, like the life sciences. They present situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and interacting in subtly interconnected ways (433)

and later,

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance. But vital cities are not helpless to combat even the most difficult of problems. They are not passive victims of chains of circumstances….Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties… Surplus wealth, productivity, the close-grained juxtaposition of talents that permit society to support [technological] advances…are themselves products of our organization into cities, and especially dense cities…dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves (447-448).

Jacobs speaks to me because I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 2 years pondering the size of our department, which we often construe to be a problem: we’re too big to socialize easily, too big to fit on one floor, too big to review each other quickly, too big to keep track of what goes on. Our size can be a problem—but reading Jacobs, I’m challenged to see the size a little differently. What if we considered our size to make us a dense city, in which our size becomes a virtue, in which the juxtaposition of programs and talents creates energy and sustainable life? City neighborhoods, after all, flourish only when there are safe public sidewalks, mixes of business and residences, mixes of day and evening activities, streets providing access to parks and varied schedules permitting good use of neighborhood resources.

I have cities on my mind today, as the Steering Committee’s draft strategic plan suggests that we shape a vision for ourselves of an urban English department, an English department located here, in this city. Whatever comes of the strategic planning process, I hope that we will be able to conceive of our large size as a strength. As I finish the performance review process, I’m struck by the variety of talents housed within our department. Our interests are broad, yet we are drawn together by an interest in how English functions in the world—as a literary pursuit, as a matter of personal expression, professional transactions, cinematic productions, in translation or interpretation. We’ll likely never rename ourselves the City of English, but if we could, it might inspire us to see a lively mixed use neighborhood reviving and connecting with those across its borders as a good metaphor for the work ahead.

Over the past two years, we’ve gotten organized. While I expect that some of our processes will come up for review and perhaps revision over the next year or two, the promotion and tenure processes and the performance review processes are logistically smooth. More importantly, we have good criteria for annual reviews, so our conversations about what we expect of each other have a common basis. There are good P&T matters to report: More associate professors are talking about promotion, and we have more models for promotion in our nontenured full time ranks.

So what’s left, now that things are organized: The Steering Committee has done wonderful work in jumpstarting a strategic planning process. The draft strategic plan before us today is just a beginning, and all of us on the Steering Committee fully expect there to be major changes in this document before it is adopted. A strategic plan that permits us to conceive of ourselves as a healthy, vibrant city, in which many different activities interact to create a vibrant core: that will be a document guiding the transition to the department as an organization that is truly at home with itself. I will be sorry not to be here when that plan is adopted—I would hope in late 2008—but I am pleased to be part of the group that has brought this planning process to this point.

This meeting marks the first of many lasts for me: it’s my last department meeting, although it seems too early in the year for that, and I struggled to decide what to say in my remarks today. While it may be my last department meeting, it’s not even close to my last day as chair, so it’s hardly time to say good bye. But it is time to say thank you: to the clerical staff, whose work enables each of us to connect more easily with the bureaucracies that govern our working lives, and whose willingness to reinvent job responsibilities has stretched our clerical talent and resources in amazing ways; to the Steering Committee, which has persevered through conflicting schedules to produce some very interesting work this year; to everyone who has said yes to my requests for help with one-off requests (scholarship committees, student awards days, just to name a few); to everyone who’s served on a standing committee; to everyone who’s been involved with public events for the department; the area coordinators and full professors, who have been generous with advice and perspectives when I needed help. You’ll notice I’m not naming names here, in part for fear of forgetting anyone, in part to save time. But I do want to thank two people in particular: J and R, who, in their different ways, have helped me be a better chair. They share an ability to look past how things are to see how they might be. J’s work on student affairs and R’s project-based work have helped me keep a focus on getting things done. My failings are my own, but I know I have fewer for having had two such wonderful associate chairs. So thanks to you two.

I’ve joked this year that in leaving unexpectedly early in term as chair, I instantly became the best chair the department would ever have, since surprise about my early resignation might obscure my shortcomings. Institutional memory is short around here—in a department and school that sometimes seems to forget more than it remembers, perhaps the best judge of success is not legacy but life in the moment. Almost every day I’ve come to work, I’ve walked into the building looking forward to the day ahead. Not just because I finally had windows—but because every day, I got to go to work, help someone solve some kind of problem, and have at least one kind of conversation about some dimension of our common mission to change the way people use language. I’m glad to have this job, and I look forward to my remaining months here. Thank you.

That's My Girl

To Every Problem, a Solution (even if impractical)
Standing in front of a bookshelf at her school, Curious Girl and I are waiting for her class to arrive. She has strep throat, but has had enough doses of antibiotics that I think it's safe enough to take her to school to go to the auditorium to see a cool guest artist perform. We're in front of the parent resources section, and there are lots of books about families. "I miss my dad," she says. "I really miss him." I squat down to be at her level. "I know you do, sweetheart." "Do you have his phone number?" she wonders. "No, I don't." "I really miss him." "Honey, I don't have his phone number. But you can draw him a picture any time you like, or write him letters, and I can help you save them in a special box. So if you ever do find out where he is, you could give them all to him. But I don't know where he is now." She shakes her head, looks discouraged. Then perks up. "Maybe you could ask someone! Someone else might know his phone number."

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How soon until she can read Marginal Utility? (or, more econ/math skills are on their way eventually, right?)
My parents sent Curious Girl a card today and included a five-dollar bill. CG literally jumped for joy. "My first real dollar!!!" She was giddy. "Is this real money? It looks like pretend money. Is it real?" The notion that it was a five dollar bill was somewhat confusing (those numbers in the corners are just details, apparently). "Someone wrote on it. Why did someone write on it?" We talk about the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer. Then we talk about Abraham Lincoln and end up discussing John Wilkes Booth and what happened to Booth.

But the moment I knew would happen, because kids her age equate quantity with value and money is, after all, pretty abstract: she sat quietly, lookng at the money, and with some wonder, as though she'd just come up with the best. idea. ever, said, "Can I pay with this? Because then I would get even more money!"

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You don't need to be older to be the mature one
I need more sleep. This morning, CG spilled her yoghurt after I'd warned her that a) she needed to eat it because it had medicine in it and b) her arm was likely going to knock it over if she kept motioning as she was. I was right: it spilled, and I just snapped and got insta-angry. I was tired, a bit out of sorts over a work problem I'd carried home a bit last night, and I don't entirely understand it but I just got mad. I raised my voice, even, then realized what I was doing--irrationally overreacting--and said I needed a break and went upstairs to just sit and find my own calm. CG came upstairs, though, and that made me angry all over again. A few minutes later I calmed enough, and went down to her. "Mama, I didn't like the way you talked to me," she sobbed. "It hurt my feelings." I told her I was sorry, that I didn't like how I had talked, asked her what would help her feel better. "That you try not to do that again." She held out her arms for a big hug. We hugged. Things were better.

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Who Says She's an Only Child?
Right now, Curious Girl is snuggled up with a baby blanket, having a sleep over. She's on the little travel bed we used to use, on top of her bed. "I'm sleeping with all my baby sisters, and all our friends are sleeping on my big bed," she informed me. She actually fell asleep not on top of me for the first time. Siblings are a wonderful thing, and I didn't have to do a thing for the babies. What a life.

Random Update

• I am almost, but not quite, finished with the performance reviews in my department. My colleagues are unevenly invested in performance reviews: some don't seem to take any part of the process seriously (reporting or reviewing), some take it seriously and very personally, while others take it seriously with more distance. Reviewing serves some emotional purposes that I don't think we all fully understand--and certainly haven't articulated, in our very rational review standards and processes. I've been thinking quite a bit about the emotional purposes served by performance reviews, and how different people use them (or resist them) in career development. Although this is my last year doing performance reviews, I'd like to leave the department with a framework for considering how to help this task seem more useful across the board. I hope my practice of meeting with almost everyone individually is a step in that direction, but I want to explore how reviewing might be better targeted, so people feel better understood by the system.
• There's nothing like death and potty training to bring readers out to the comment boxes! Thanks so much for all the support and suggestions. It's been invaluable, and I can't thank you all enough.
  
• A potty update: I went back to reminding Curious Girl to go potty at regular intervals, usually around every 60-90 minutes, and at significant activity shifts (before a playdate, before leaving the house, upon coming home from school, before dinner). She's had only one accident in over a week now (and that was on a playdate at a friend's). She is also more likely to say "I have to go!" when I'm generally setting the structure in place. Things are good again.
• Anyone wondering whether a five or six year old child who is still having lots of accidents is normal should conclude that yes! it's very normal. Between the comments here, the private e-mail, and the comments on a yahoogroup I belong to, I've heard a lot of stories of older children who are still a little uneven on the potty front. Constipation is not always easy to detect, so there may be a medical component, but older kids with potty issues are not uncommon. I feel so relieved to hear that. I encourage--and always have encouraged--Curious Girl to be independent in some respects from a very early age (she started helping to clear her place at the table when she was probably two, for example). The week I spent convinced that The Authorities who think A Five Year Old Should be Indpendent with The Potty were correct was a miserable week. She needs a little reminding, and perhaps other kids do, too. Independence comes by many routes, and sometimes, teamwork with a parent is the best thing. We should talk more about such issues, as most of the mail I got from other parents in this situation expressed a bit of "but I thought my kid was the only one who..." Your kid isn't, and neither is mine. And she's splendid anyway.
• Curious Girl attended a Jane Brown adoption playshop this week. Jane is an amazing speaker--she did a three hour presentation for parents the night before, with no notes, very graceful and eloquent and engaging--and she's also great with kids. The two hour playshop gets adopted children and their siblings playing with each other, talking about adoption. They made little braided bracelets (one thread representing their first family, one representing themselves, one their current families) and learned how braided things are stronger than the threads alone. They did a play about a general adoption story, taking the roles of birth parents, prospective adoptive parents, children, siblings. They talked about how to respond to bullying and teasing and played different responses (and did scenes with puppets, too). They talked about how people are the same and different, about how many things are the same even if, say, skin color or eye folds are different.
• When we were watching a movie later, CG said, "the people in this movie are all the same color." Then she said, "but everyone is special. We all have eyes, and a heart inside." Tonight, she told me that she wished--in the part of the playshop where they made wishes about their birth families--that we knew more about J. and S., her birth parents. She cried a bit, told me we don't even have a picture, we don't know anything about them. "You know a little bit, but I don't know anything," she said. I told her that I would never, never, never have secrets about her first family, and that everything I know, she will know. I also said, "Sounds like you're feeling sad." So we talked about her sadness for a while, and I told her that I'm sad, too, that she doesn't know much about her first family. We ended up talking about the possibility of her having siblings in her first family, and she went to sleep planning to dream about living with her brothers and sisters and birth parents. She told me I could come in the dream, but that I couldn't live with them.
• "Pretend you're J., and you keeped me," she said, right before she fell asleep. This is a tricky situation. Politica and I are very careful never to speak for her birth parents. We have always (in age appropriate ways) tried to show CG the multiple reasons her first parents might not have been able to care for a baby when CG was born, always saying we don't know why. On a few other occasions CG has said "pretend I came from your belly," and I have always said "no, I can't. You grew inside J." but tonight, she said, for the first time, "Pretend you're J." I pretend to be any number of other people or things (in the course of today, I've pretended to be a cat, her big sister, her little sister, her baby, her student, her teacher, her ballet teacher). Can I pretend to be J.? My instinct was no, I can't, but I'm also aware that pretending is how she works things out. I don't want to block her attempts to work out adoption issues, especially now when she is clearly on the cusp of getting her mind around the fact that being adopted means that someone didn't keep her. She's coming to terms with the loss she suffered in a way she never has, despite the fact that she's long known the general facts of her story. Those facts are starting to be interpreted in a new way now.
• So I said, "What would J. say?" and she said, "I love you." I replied, "Go to bed, sweetheart," and she said, "remember, you're J." and I said, "Time for bed" (figuring mothers everywhere say that). She said again, "but you're J. Where's S.?" so I said, "I don't know." I was blurring the line about whether I was actually pretending to be J. or not, but the "I don't know" is factually true, and clearly not participating in what I believe her current J. and S. fantasy entails. She said, one last time, 'Tomorrow, remember, you're J." I'm not sure how this will play out tomorrow. Maybe I'll try to redirect her into play acting with some dolls or animals to play the parts. I really can't speak for J., and it's more important that she figure out what she thinks J. might say or do.
• I know this is important for her to do, and I'm so proud of her for being willing to name her feelings and talk about things. It is also heartbreaking to watch her hurt. I don't entirely know what I think about the primal wound, but I do know that CG has healing going on that wouldn't be needed if she hadn't been surrended by her first family and adopted by us. (She'd have likely had other problems she'd be working out, of course--I'm not idealizing alternate outcomes.) It's heartbreaking.
• Anyone want to buy a house? I should stop blogging and start cleaning. We have our first open house tomorrow, and too much clutter remains. Cross your fingers for buyers in a bad market.
  

Soggily, Regretfully, Right

This morning, when I went to pick up Curious Girl--who is now five-and-three-quarters-years-old-- at religious school, she was just coming out of the bathroom. Despite the convenient of three! toilets in our house, she didn't set foot in a bathroom again until bedtime (when, not surprisingly, her clothes were wet from an accident). Increasingly, when we are hanging around at home, she simply will not use the bathroom.

Potty training hasn't come easily to CG. She asked for underwear when she was two-and-a-half, but had tons of accidents all the time. By the time she was three, she got to the point of wearing underwear to school, but over the three-year-old preschool year, she was having more accidents at school, not less. That following summer, we did a timed voiding thing (we took her to the bathroom every 15 minutes for 3 days, then every 30 minutes for a few, then every hour), and also started using a laxative (b/c it turned out she was slightly constipated and that was likely interfering with her ability to tell when she had to go or not). All this helped, and over last year, she had accidents sometimes--much more often than any other kid in her class, it seemed--but things were better. I admit that when we decided to repeat pre-K, I joked that I'd learned how to make sure your kid was potty trained for kindergarten: repeat pre-K. These days, I"m not sure that's right.

Things have taken a turn for the worse in the past few months (when, yes, Politica has been off on a sabbatical adventure). Her teachers caught her twice squatting behind the bathroom door trying to poop there ("I want to be a baby and wear diapers," she told them), and there have been two incidents of, um, odd choices of location for some elimination in the house. Only two, granted, so it's not that common, but still. She is also having more accidents at home (not so much at school, squatting aside, but at home)--one day at Whole Paycheck, she just sat down and peed in the aisle. One happy, whodathunkwewerehaving issues day.

I set up a conference with her teachers to discuss strategy. "CG will respond really well to some behavior modification," one said. I didn't think so, but they were quite sure. Have a reward every day if she has no accident, and build to a bigger reward. They even gave me a lovely jar of iridescent jewels to use as the daily rewards. CG was excited by the prospect of a jewel, and she decided that a big cookie from Neighborhood Bakery would be the treat for a week of jewels. But the jewel alone just isn't working. She's happy to get one, but the bigger reaction is sadness when she doesn't. The idea behind the teachers' suggestion was to simply say "I know you can stay dry all day. This is the expectation. You can do it," and just stand back and let her take responsibility for it. So I don't use my timer to remind her (b/c then it's my responsibility). We urge her to listen to her body. I'm all about setting good clear expectations, but I didn't really think this plan would work. CG has never been motivated by the promise of later rewards--all our learning-to-eat rewards were pretty immediate. The ones we tried where she could bank points to earn a bigger prize later were just not motivating. But I said I'd try it.

The result: days when she simply doesn't use the toilet at all. Yesterday, she peed three times--twice in one outfit! I would think that would be very uncomfortable, to be wet, but she clearly doesn't seem to mind. At 4:00 today, I pointed out that I had gone to the bathroom three times since we'd been home, and she had gone none at all, and she assured me she was listening to her body and didn't have to go. Later, I told her to wash her hands before she could help me cook dinner. "Do I have to go to the bathroom?" she asked. I said she should go if she had to, that it was up to her to listen to her body. She didn't go. Some days, she mournfully says, "I'm never going to get my cookie." I always say, "I know you can do it." But when?

I am full of all kinds of emotions about this: partly, I"m wondering what I'm doing wrong when we're hanging around that is making her not want to go to the bathroom. Partly, I"m irritated at the stinky laundry this generates. Partly, I'm angry at the way she tells me she's checked her panties and they're dry, when they're not. Partly, I'm thinking I should just ignore it all. Partly, I think we need to find a child psychologist. Partly, I'm feeling good about how well I know my kid that I predicted that the jewel thing wouldn't work. Parly, I'm feeling like a lousy mother because I can't figure out what will motivate my kid to use the bathroom (thank you all for those kind comments on the last post, which I re-read this evening to help counter the lousy mother feelings). Partly, I think I should just set my timer and start telling her to try potty. She doesn't seem to hurt when she goes, or mind going, and she generally takes herself to the bathroom at school.

So I've been googling the subject, and have a call into a child pychologist friend to get her take on what I should do next, and I'll probably call our pediatrician in the morning. In the meantime, I thought I'd ask my blogging universe: what the heck should I do next?

Her Strengths

This post was inspired Magpie's post in response to the call from Parent Bloggers Network and Jenifer Fox for stories about children's strenghts.

Two nights ago, Curious Girl threw a fit in the middle of our (very short) violin practice. She started crying and just couldn't stop. Suddenly, she walked away from me, clearly looking for something. "I can't find it, Mama! My Feeling Box is gone and I can't find it!" She walked around in agitation. I spotted it on the other side of the room, and she ran to it, picked it up, and dumped all the little pieces of paper out. "I"m mad, Mama!"

The Feeling Box is a shoe box, covered with CG- drawn stickers of mad, angry, and sometimes happy faces. It has some crayons in it, and it used to have small pieces of paper for drawing on it. When CG gets angry, she'll get her box--or I'll get it for her--and she'll scribble a drawing to show her feelings. She likes to keep the pictures in the box, although two fits ago, she decided to rip them all up and scatter the pieces on the floor. So now it just has tiny papers in it, suitable for throwing. I love that she has created a box that helps her deal with feelings, and that she's turning to it on her own to process hard situations.

I love that CG can be so in touch with her feelings, that she's experimenting with being wildly out of control and self-regulating all at once. I love that she talks to me about her feelings, wanting me to know just how mad or happy she is. I love that she uses words in a tantrum, and I love that she's experimenting with nonverbal ways to express and process feelings, too.

I love that CG thinks about complicated things--we're bringing dinner to Tante Mississippi and Curly Haired Cousin on Sunday. "Why are we doing that?" she wondered. I said it would help them feel better. "Tante Mississippi is still sad sometimes. I am, too. I miss Uncle Quiet. Do you feel a litle sad still." "Just a little," she said. "I'm thinking about other things, because it's more happier. But that's good that we're going to visit them." I could keep adding to my last post indefinitely, it seems: she continues to talk about her wonderful uncle in ways that make me want to laugh and cry all at once.

I love this feeling of connection I have with her, and I love watching her learn to be more independent of that connection. She does, seemingly naturally, what I've spent hours in therapy to learn to do. Maybe I could do this too, when I was five. I don't know. But she can, and it's pretty darn amazing to watch.

Curious Girl has some hard things in her life to think about. Lately, she's been saying that she wishes she still lived with her birth parents. She's starting to realize that being adopted meant that she wasn't cared for by her first parents, that someone wasn't able to keep her. I don't think she's quite put it all together, but it's coming. One night she said, "Whoever gets to keep me is the luckiest." I'm careful here-I know that she will make her own way through these issues, and I never want her to feel the need to protect me or Politica from her feelings about adoption and family. So I say things like, "I wish you knew them better," or "You are an amazing girl with a very loving heart." I want to keep the conversation going, hard though it may be some day. It's hard for me, juggling all the paradoxes of adoption. I wish CG didn't have to deal with the grief and hurt from her past. I wish CG's parents didn't have the burdens they must have had not to be able to parent. Yet life without CG...hard to imagine at this point. It's mind-boggling, the complications. And she knows that, on some level, and she's making sense of it all at her own pace. She's thinking, she's reaching for words, and she has a box full of little papers to help her with the hard stuff. And tonight, that's worth bragging on.