My Inner Snail

Donat pressa! my mother urged at the door of our apartment, as I searched everywhere for my chapel veil. We were on our way to Mass, and if we didn’t get there before the Ofertory we wouldn’t fulfill our Sunday obligation.

Corre, corre! the maid Luisa would say as we trudged up the hill to my school. She was as obsessed with punctuality as the German nuns who taught me.

Schnell, schnell! Schwester Maria hissed as I dawdled outside the classroom.

“She’s so slow!” the nuns would lament to my mother. And they were right. In the morning, it took me forever to unbutton my coat, put on my smock (we wore white smocks over our woolen uniforms to protect them from ink stains), find my desk, and get my homework out of my satchel. At lunchtime, I had to reverse the process, and I was always the last one out of the building.

Neither the nuns nor my mother scolded me for my slowness, but I spent my childhood being pressed to get on with it, stop dawdling, pay attention! It felt as if I were mounted on a snail, while everyone else galloped past me on horseback.

It took me ages to learn to tie my shoes. I was ten before I learned to ride a bicycle, twelve before I learned to tell time. I was the last in my class to finish a row of knitting, and in playground chase games I never caught anybody, but was easy prey for my faster classmates.

I lived in a world where people were in a perpetual rush. My father would come home for lunch, fling off his coat, and sit at the table. He would put his watch by his plate and announce, “I have five minutes to eat!” and five minutes later he’d be out the door, violin in hand, on the way to rehearsal. Although my father was the main rusher in the household, my mother, my aunts, and the maid also seemed to live in a whirlwind of activity.

For my part, I dwelt inside a kind of semi-transparent egg, where sights and sounds reached me dimly, and mostly without claiming my attention. While the world spun around me, I peered dreamily at random objects—the s-shaped arm rest in the Tyrolean-style dining room bench, the crusty bread crumbs under the table after a meal, the blue and yellow floor tiles, the raised velvety flowers on the ugly sofa upholstery. I wondered about invisible stuff too, and astounded my mother when, at four years old, I asked her to explain what things were like, before they existed.

But mostly I thought about things that I hoped would happen: that a sudden illness of my maternal grandmother’s would mean that I had to leave school and go with my mother to help out at the farm. And, later on, that my father’s negotiations with the Ecuadorian government would work out so that, again, I could leave school and go with my parents to Ecuador.

In Ecuador my woolgathering habit persisted. Because of the discrepancy between the Spanish and the Ecuadorian systems, at twelve I was put in a class with fifteen-year-old girls, whose obsession with hairstyles, boys, and their “monthly visitor” made me think that they were all insane. I retreated deep inside my egg, and in four years made only one friend, a girl who, as the eldest of twelve children, was accustomed to taking care of slower siblings.

My inwardness was more obvious than I knew. One morning I realized with a start that I was still standing in the silent school courtyard when the rest of my class had filed into the classroom. But I wasn’t alone. Regarding me with her sparkling green eyes, Madre María, the dreaded vice-principal, shook her wimple and said, “I see you’re out of it as usual, Benejam!”

It was only in my teens that I learned to hurry. I hurried to learn English, to clean the house, to play the violin in my father’s orchestra, to finish my term papers, to sterilize my sister’s formula, to put my hair up in rollers at night, to get to Mass in the morning.

With Time’s winged chariot forever at my back, I became a champion hurrier, but at the cost of leaving things half done, of putting the final period on a paper that I knew could be much better, of having to make do with good enough. Newly married, I watched in wonder as my husband dried himself after a shower, from head to toe, including between his toes. I was used to jumping still half-wet into my clothes, never mind drying between my toes.

The older I got, the faster I rushed—mothering, working, cooking, thinking. I did everything at top speed, schnell, schnell! But that was only on the outside. Inside, I was still the same slow me, pondering endless trivia, riding my snail, and wondering if things would ever slow down.

Now that the mothering, the working, and the cooking are mostly over, I still feel that there isn’t enough time in the day for all the things that must be done: clipping the dog’s nails, folding towels, answering emails, inquiring about sick friends, meditating, exercising….My fondest hope is that, sometime in my remaining years, the slow, backward child that still dawdles inside my brain will stop trying to keep up, and be at peace with her snail.

Always on the Moon

I am folding laundry when a quote by William Morris comes wafting out of my subconscious, "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life." Morris was ahead of his time. These days everybody, from mental health  professionals to Buddhist monks, tells you that staying in the present is the key to health and happiness, peace and sanity. Unfortunately, I find staying in the present almost impossible to do.

Even as a child--and children are supposed to have a special talent for being "in the now"--I couldn't do it. "Es lenta," (she's slow) the nuns at my school used to complain to my mother. But that was because it took me a while to come back from the edge of the universe to whatever I was supposed to be doing. 

One example: I am marching single file with my class after recess when suddenly I perceive a strange silence around me. I return to earth to find my classmates gone and the yard deserted except for a single nun. Her hands hidden inside the sleeves of her long white habit, she is watching me and shaking her head: "Benejam--siempre en la luna" (always on the moon).

More than half a century has passed since that day, however, during which I have read a lot of books by Buddhist monks and psychiatrists and logged quite a few hours on my meditation cushion, so I should be able to be present and genuinely interested in folding the laundry, right here, right now. 

I pick up one of my husband's undershirts. Feel the cotton, I tell myself. Feel its softness. Notice the Fruit of the Loom tag, and how it has curled. Look at the color of the shirt--it is slightly yellow. It is not terribly yellow, but it would be less yellow if I didn't do my laundry in cold water. But it's the least I can do, in this era when the environment is going to hell in a hand basket, to save a bit of energy. There really should be a law against washing clothes in hot water...And I'm off to the moon again, or rather to the halls of Congress, lobbying for environmental legislation.

When I land back in the present, the underwear is in its drawer. 

Next, I attempt to take a genuine interest in the socks, of which there are many. Some are brown, some black, others navy blue. Some are thick, some are thin--who cares? 

Why am I having so much trouble with this?

It's not that I can never focus on what I'm doing. There are a couple of things that force me to pay attention--one is writing, and the other is playing the recorder (and even during the latter sometimes my mind wanders in the easy passages). But with almost all the other "details of daily life"--taking Bisou for a walk, brushing my teeth, cleaning Telemann's litter box--I am, as that long-ago nun used to say, always on the moon.

Sorting socks, I fantasize what it would be like to be in the moment all day, every day, taking a genuine interest in whatever was in front of my nose. I would probably be a more relaxed person, a nicer one for sure. Maybe if I were more like William Morris I would be able to draw like him... How unfortunate that I've been cursed with this drive to inhabit the moon.

My mind grinds on laboriously, ruminating on what-ifs and might-have-beens, until I realize with a jolt that time has passed and all the socks have been united with their mates, like the beasts in Noah's ark. Not only that, but I have written this entire blog post in my head.

Mother Bear

The ancient Greeks believed that bear cubs were born as formless blobs, and it was their mothers who, by diligent and careful use of their tongues, licked them into proper bear shape. As soon as the midwife put me in her arms, my mother got down to her version of the bear’s task: to shape me into the best possible specimen of humanity.

Like a bear cub with its mother, I was seldom out of her sight, or out of her arms. Even after I could sit up by myself and would normally have begun to crawl she held me, because setting me down on the floor even for a moment would have been dangerous and unhygienic, something that only “gypsies and peasant women” did. Inevitably, however, there came a day when my increasing weight and my desperation to get free of those loving arms became too much for my mother. But instead of putting me down and letting me figure things out on my own, she decided to teach me to walk. Bending over at the waist to support my hands and keep me upright, she matched her steps to mine as I tottered up and down the hallway of the apartment. Fueled by months of pent-up energy, I clamored to walk whenever I wasn’t sleeping, and after hours of “walking lessons” my mother’s back hurt almost as much as her cracked nipples had when I was first born (see preceding post).

Years later, when my sister was a toddler and my mother was in her forties, I would come home from high school to find my mother on the sofa, a hot water bottle under her sacrum. “I’m exhausted,” she would say. “I had to spend the whole afternoon teaching Nuria to walk. You can’t imagine what this does to my back!” From my sixteen-year-old vantage point, I wondered why she was always so tired, and whether caring for an infant need be such an all-consuming task. But my mother’s intensive approach to childrearing had more to do with the needs of her temperament than on the real needs of the child.

Her thirst for adventure and her impatience with the ordinary, combined with her parents’ progressive views, had given my mother an education very different from that of her peers, who were expected to learn little more than fancy embroidery and perhaps the piano. At a time when girls were kept close to their mother’s skirts until they married, my mother went away to school in Valencia, Pamplona and Barcelona, places that in the early 1930s seemed as strange and far away from her village as Tibet. She studied law, and then Greek and Latin. She was attending university in Barcelona when, on a whim, she decided to learn to play the violin and met my father, who was her teacher. And when they married, the consensus of an entire culture about the role of women, the advice of the two families, and her own unconquerable dread of examinations led my mother to give up her studies.

After her marriage, despite the five flights of stairs that she had to manage daily on her way to and from the stores, the need to watch every peseta, and the Spartan conditions of the apartment, my mother’s life became less demanding.  My father adored her, and expected little more than that she have lunch ready when he dashed home between rehearsals. And she had a maid to scrub the tile floors and do the dishes and wash clothes by hand in the little laundry room next to the kitchen.

While my father careened—by metro and streetcar but mostly on foot--from rehearsals to performances all over the city, she read books, prepared my layette, went to lectures and art openings with her sisters. But the days seemed long, and she was afflicted with an inner demon that gave her no rest. There had to be more to life, more meaning, more urgency, more work. She had dreamed of becoming a trial lawyer, defending the innocent from barbarous injustice, and now here she was, ironing pillowcases....

I was born a year after the wedding, and at my first cry the demon was banished: my mother now had a project, a life-or-death task at which she had the chance to excel, a job more exalted than any career in the courts, and one requiring utmost vigilance, willpower and self-sacrifice. Here in her hands, in the guise of a baby to lick into perfect shape, was the challenge she had waited for. And she rushed to meet it with all the force of her young body and her restless mind. (To be continued)

Good-Enough Parenting--Her Story

As a baby, I never crawled.  I was held in someone's arms--my mother's, my grandmother's, my various aunts'--from birth until the day when I struggled out of that constant embrace and tottered across the room.

Our apartment in  Barcelona was large, which meant that I could gallop top-speed down the hallway that ran from one end to the other.  That was the only place where I could run.  Outdoors, on the street, I was always holding somebody's hand.  It was a big city, after all.  I could have run out into traffic, or gotten lost in the crowds.  I can still feel my mother's convulsive grip whenever we stepped off the curb.

While my five-year-old future husband was in the kitchen making pancakes for his lunch (see http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2013/05/good-enough-parenting-his-story.html ), I hardly ever entered our kitchen.  There was always water boiling, or hot oil spattering, not to mention the bottle of lye lurking under the sink.  And I don't think I ever helped myself to a piece of food until I was a teenager and living in the U.S.  Food was handed to me at regular intervals by a responsible adult, like Communion, and I ate it obediently, whether or not I was hungry.

I was never out of sight of an adult.  Although I had my own bedroom in the apartment, I did not sleep there until I was in second grade.  Before that, I slept next to my parents' bed.  (This may be why it took them sixteen years to have another child.)

I spent my early years going places with my mother.  On Sundays I would walk with her to Mass, where I entertained myself by looking at the statues of the Virgin Mary and, as a last resort, at the Stations of the Cross.  Then we would take the metro to hear my father's orchestra play their weekly concert.  I sat as quietly as I could through endless Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler.  I stared at the extravagant Art Nouveau decorations of the hall, and tried to catch a glimpse of the only woman in the orchestra, the harpist, who was always stuck way in the back. 

On weekdays I went to the fish market with my mother, or out on the wide avenues to look at the windows of fancy shops that sold exquisite leather purses and silk scarves, or to dusty fabric stores that I hated almost as much as the Mahler symphonies.  All too often we would go to visit people, usually frail elderly ones who had to be kissed and who expected me to sit quietly for the whole endless afternoon.

My bodily safety was of great concern to the adults around me.  I was told when to put on a sweater, button my coat, take off my gloves.  I was advised to breathe through my nose and not run too fast lest I should fall.  When we moved to Ecuador our house was on a two-way street, and my mother would send the maid to take me across to meet the school bus, much to my embarrassment.  I was twelve years old.

The only physically adventurous thing that happened to me as a child took place one summer on my grandparents' farm.  My uncle, who was barely out of his teens, was leading the cart horse back to the barn and he let me ride, warning me to hold on to the collar.  He was walking alongside, singing Oh, Susanna! (Con mi banjo y mi caballo, a Alabama me marche!), forgot himself and slapped the horse on the rump.  The horse broke into a trot and I let go of the collar and for a delicious moment flew through the air until my uncle caught me.  He made me swear not to tell anybody, and in September I returned to my life of buttoned sweaters, symphony concerts, and apartment life.

Thanks to an accident of fate--I was the only child of an intense mother in a close-knit family--I didn't just have a pair of helicopter parents but two full sets of grandparents, a great-aunt and -uncle, four single aunts and a young uncle rotating above my head at all times, offering cautions and advice.

And yet, I made it.  I did not grow into a recluse or an idiot or a particularly fragile flower.  My pancake-making husband and I could hardly been brought up more differently from each other. But we were both, in our parents' respectively quirky ways, truly loved.  And it appears that, with that as a given, kids will prosper no matter what.