Author Archives: Lela Brown

Child A and Child B

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Child A is raised with love and fun, empathy and humor, and that’s the view of life he learns automatically. Bad things happen, there are trials and ordeals, can even be tragedy, but deep down he will always have the expectation that things will turn out for the best, that goodness will prevail, that somewhere above him an authority of virtue and reason, learning and fulfillment, is in charge and will lead him to ultimate good. He will learn, so deeply that it’s part of him, an ethic of being good to others, of fairness and kindness and empathy. Even studying history and philosophy and science will not really tarnish this underlying belief. Cynicism and corruption encountered later in life, no matter how much they disturb him and even for a time disillusion him, cannot completely destroy his underlying faith in the good.

Child B doesn’t get the love and fun and empathy and humor. His infancy and childhood are instead full of uncertainty, need, often dread and disappointment. Even if he is cared for physically, an element of trust is missing. Whether he is ignored or blamed, he grows up with his own understanding of how things are. His attitude will be one of wariness, anger, and the conviction that he’d better grab whatever he can.

Both will grow up amid varying experiences, and both will continue to be influenced by what happens to them and also by how they react. They will in effect teach others how to treat them. Later, they will raise their own children in accordance with how their lives have been so far, depending on what events and associations have tempered that childhood beginning. But the two opposing beginnings remain.

How, Child A grows up to say, can we not feed the hungry, shelter everyone, legislate kindness? Who can begrudge sharing abundance with those who have nothing? But Child B grows up to say no, that’s foolish and deluded and naive. Both sides believe that they are right and that the other side is missing the point somehow. Each side makes caricatures of the other as they oppose each other in politics and life.

Learning is random. Birth environment is luck. All of us are taught how to be, by what happens to us and what we observe. All of us have an effect on those around us. As adults, Child A can make the world a better place and Child B can wreck it. Both are making new and far-reaching scientific discoveries, spreading ever-faster and wider influence.

Are we, moving toward something, or is this the way things will always be?

Reclamation~Advice to Ourselves

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RECLAMATION (the reclaiming of desert, marshy, or submerged areas or other wasteland for cultivation or other use.) (Dictionary.com)

There is a special wisdom in very old age, and it’s too easy to discount it when what it really is is a rare privilege. Don’t let other people’s attitudes negate it for you. You can have epiphanies at any age, you can have a new life at any age. Don’t let a false resignation keep you from using what you are learning. Don’t let assumptions (yours or other people’s) keep you from incorporating new beliefs, new habits, new ideas, and new ways into your life; it can be just as exciting now as when you were young, though in a different way. A braver way. A more seasoned way.

Of course the end can come at any time to cut off your progress, dash your hopes, but on the other hand you may have years still ahead, and in any case you will have had this bonus. Making it work with your old-age disabilities and losses is part of the challenge.

Matching your energy to your necessities is part of it. I’m trying to remember all the common sense things I already know. Eat right (whatever that means to you). Sleep when you need to. Love the things that make you cheerful, and never feel like you don’t deserve them.

Realize that everything you read and watch and hear isn’t necessarily true. Very likely your experience and wisdom are more reliable on many subjects than what you’re reading anyway.

Run things by your own personal worthiness index before you spend time on them. You can make deliberate, drastic new changes in what you expect of yourself if it enables you to renew your life and allow for what you know is important to you.

Don’t surrender too easily to the sweeping competence of the young. Weigh the value of their youth and savvy against your longer experience and comprehension and figure out what you believe and respect.

And enjoy your own company. We cherish the help and companionship we can find; we need it. But we can also take an independent kind of pride in navigating an age we thought we might never get to.

A Visit From Maria

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I just had my house cleaned by a professional house-cleaner named Maria. This was a gift from two of my daughters, a gift I had chosen when they asked what I would like most. Maria brought a crew of two helpers with her and required that I disappear until they finished. I trusted her because she already works regularly for one of the daughters, who swears by her.

When I returned home a few hours later I found a transformation: my home was in perfect order, with shining surfaces, no dust visible anywhere, and best of all, an immaculate range and gleaming oven.

That was five days ago. I’m still basking in the glory of what looks like good housekeeping, but is really a Christmas present, a temporary masquerade. I know I won’t keep it this way. I can’t. I’ve known it ever since I was a young housewife in my first neighborhood with my first child, though it took me years, decades, to admit it.

For one thing, I don’t see my surroundings the way a good housekeeper does. Some people notice things visually, others’ minds are elsewhere. With me, plants can die, objects can sit out of place for weeks, and it seldom occurs to me to change my home decor because I’m not paying attention to it. I maintain normal standards of health and hygiene, but I tend to ignore clutter and, all too often, dust.

And I’m lazy; I admit it. A kinder way to put it is that some people are born to be physically active and others just don’t have the metabolism for it. I can’t think while I’m moving around, and mental activity is a lot more important to me than the physical kind. My mind is athletic; my body is not. And my athletic mind hates tedium. The boredom of housecleaning is crazy-making. Unlike some women, I can’t think about two things at once, so my inner thoughts have to go on hold while I do the chore, whatever it is.

Plus I have no talent for the job. And good housekeeping is a talent. I admire and envy and am amazed by the good housekeepers I know—their competence and dexterity, their energy and discipline, their creativity and vision for their homes. For years I tried to be one of them but it became a joke. I was and am inept.

I’m good at several other things, and I have always told myself that housecleaning isn’t necessarily supposed to be a woman’s default preoccupation. But all the evidence I’ve seen in my long life tells me that it kind of is. However, now I’m old and have numerous physical reasons for not measuring up. I just needed one thing to mark my transition to acceptance of my true nature.

Hence my request for the gift of Maria.

Hypochondria

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When I was a young woman, I was a pushover for all the scary warnings about diseases. Every magazine had its frightening story of someone stricken by a fatal illness, or its list of warning signs not to be ignored. I lived in fear that I was harboring something sinister in my body that would turn me into one of those tragic stories and cut my life short before I’d had a chance to live. Continue reading →

Expectations

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When I married at 18, my image of what a husband was like was based on my father. Strong, gentle, humorous, courtly toward women, tender toward his wife and affectionate to his children: that’s what a grown-up man was like. Continue reading →