I saw someone encourage divorce

Context
As referenced in this previous post, I like to read advice columns. I was reading Slate's version, Dear Prudence today, and a woman wrote in asking if it was acceptable to take a lover in light of her husband's brain hemorrhage, which has left him with the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. Prudie said no, it would probably be best to find him an assisted living facility, divorce him, and start a new life. Full column here, if you don't trust my paraphrasing.

Commentary
My snarky response to this situation is: have we become so enamored of writing our own wedding vows that we just leave out the "for better, for worse" part?

Here's my more well-considered response: I have no idea how I would respond in the advice-seeker's situation. Philosophically, though, I believe that although we may be attracted to a set of attributes, like mental capacity, sense of humor, and physical attractiveness, we don't marry those. We marry a person, and abandoning that person in their time of greatest need seems wrong.

Sometimes when my husband feels like he has disappointed me in some way, I'll remind him that I don't love what he does, I love who he is. I think he is alternately reassured and dismayed by this, but that's what he has to work with.

I suppose one might contend that a person is no longer himself after a dramatic cerebral change, but I'm not sure I buy that, either. My mother had middle-stage Alzheimer's before she died, but I have to say I never felt like she wasn't my mom anymore. She remembered less, and she didn't always know who I was, but she was still the same person. Perhaps this is what a soul is, the essential, unalterable part of ourselves. And aren't we supposed to marry our soulmates?

What did you see today?

I saw my husband groom my dog

Context
My husband and I have a golden retriever named Claudia. She is the first long-haired dog we've ever had, and she requires a great deal of grooming, particularly during the summer. This evening as we walked in the house after my husband picked me up from work, I teased Claudia for looking tatty. It was my intention to groom her after I had completed a couple of coming home tasks, but my husband started on her before I had the chance.

Commentary
Analogs to the situation described above happen in my married life all the time: I call attention to a problem and my husband will fix it. I often feel guilty and lazy and a little overbearing at the time, like I'm willing to criticize a situation, but not stepping up to do anything about it. On the other hand, my husband says that one of things he appreciates about me is that I notice stuff he's oblivious to, so apparently I'm pretty good at this opening my eyes and opening my mouth stuff.

I suppose that means I should consider my power of observation a gift, but there's a fine line between calling attention to something that could be done and ordering people around, and I don't want to be on the wrong side of it. Especially since another one of my gifts (or personality flaws, depending on your perspective) is that I really hate it when people tell me what to do.

Of course, if I'm being called in some circumstances to do the thing that drives me up the wall when other people do it, it will certainly help me learn tolerance, won't it? So that's a gift too, if not necessarily a welcome one.

What did you see today?

I saw a guy checking out a girl

Context
As I was leaving the library for lunch today, a woman came down in the elevator with me and a tweenish girl who appeared to be her daughter. The younger lady was wearing the tiny shorts that are in vogue these days. As we stepped out into the alley behind the library, a gentleman in his twenties or thirties gave the girl a once-over.

Commentary
I thought the gentleman's scrutiny of the young lady was inappropriate for a couple of reasons: she was much younger than him and, as I said, probably walking with her mother. The fact that he was checking out a stranger also came to mind, but realistically, that happens all the time. Driving While Black is the term we use for unwarranted traffic stops based on the color of one's skin; perhaps I'll coin the term Walking While Female to describe the "She's on the street, therefore she's on display for my enjoyment" mentality.

Which brings me to the shorts. Is it the case that someone wearing short shorts is deliberately putting herself on display? Possibly not, because sometimes clothing that happens to be good-looking also happens to be comfortable, functional, and/or mandatory.

On the other hand, it would be silly for me to say ladies young and old don't ever try to attract male attention with their clothing. For myself, I can think of five different things I'm trying/have tried to say by wearing attractive clothing, "attractive" here being defined as smart, stylish, sexy, or some combination of those.

1) "I'm single and looking. If you're a sufficiently attractive, interesting and well-mannered guy, you're welcome to make a romantic or sexual pitch in my direction."

2) "I feel ugly (or some other kind of 'bad') today. You're welcome to pay some attention to me, as it may raise my self-esteem, but I'm not interesting in starting anything."

3) "I feel pretty (or some other kind of 'good') today. If you want to look at me and share in my general positive mood, yay! Anything beyond a look and a smile will be presumptuous, though."

4) "I'm with my husband and I'm dressed this way so he won't be embarrassed to be seen with me. You're welcome to appreciate his impeccable taste in women."

5) "I'm dressed this way FOR my husband. You're not welcome to participate at all."

Unfortunately, my actual clothing doesn't explicitly convey any of these messages, and it's probably not fair to expect guys to be able to discern the correct explanation in the amount of time it takes me to walk by them. However, I would state that it's equally unfair for a guy to assume any one of them, and refuse to give up that assumption when I make my intentions clear. I'm willing to count a little scrutiny as human nature. More than that without encouragement is just plain rude.

What did you see today?

I heard a child yelling

Context
My house is adjacent to a city park, and as such I get to hear a lot of what goes on out there. Today I heard a child yelling in the park, and as often happens, I couldn't tell if he/she was in distress and if so, whether that distress required my attention. I let it slide and continued on my way to the dry cleaners.

Commentary
For various reasons, not the least because I used to be a Girl Scout and I have my Emergency Preparedness pin, I'm usually quite willing to jump into emergency situations. Car wreck? I'm calling 911, directing traffic, and holding the victim's hand (not at the same time). Turtle crossing the road? I'm jumping out of my car and carrying him across. Hey, you define "emergency" your way; I'll define it mine.

On the other hand, over time I've become much more cautious about getting involved in volatile interpersonal interactions, which are usually what's going on if I hear one person yelling in the park. If someone falls off the slide, I'll usually hear several people yelling, so I know to run out there. But one voice gives me pause.

As I said, this has happened over time. I used to interpose myself in personal conflicts with great glee, confident that I knew exactly what to do. This has changed for several reasons:

1) I'm a religious pacifist now. At one time I was perfectly willing to counter a violent act with one of my own, or at least threaten to. That tool is no longer in my repertoire.

2) I'm very unwilling to give unsolicited advice these days. Partially this is because I hate when people offer it to me, but it's also because I often don't believe it's effective. When someone is having a screaming match with their spouse, I'm don't think they're in a place where they can hear me say they're behaving badly.

3) I'm no longer as convinced of my own righteousness. When someone's drowning, you throw them a rope, of course. But when a mother is smacking her child, and I've experienced this, she has just as much right to tell me I have no idea what her life and her child are like as I do to tell her that corporal punishment is wrong. Neither of us is wrong.

So I stay out of a lot more situations, but I don't like that solution, either. It seems cowardly and apathetic. Lately I've been trying standing near people who are in conflict and watching silently, in hopes of giving a "I'm here, I see, I'm part of what you need to consider" vibe. So I'm opening my eyes but not, unless asked, my mouth. Is that enough?

What did you hear today?

I saw myself get angry

Context
My husband and I are traveling back from a vacation in Richmond on the Amtrak Crescent. A little before 4:00, the hostess from the dining car came around to inform us that dinner would be served at 4:30. We thought this was silly for a couple of reasons, including the fact that the train was running late. We tried to express this to her, but she appeared to be "on script" and not interested in what we were saying. I got angry, and after she left I told my husband I didn't want dinner because I didn't want to have to deal with her. She apparently heard me, because she came back to our bedroom to try to explain the situation again, but I blew her off. After some discussion with my husband, I went to the dining car (at 4:30!) and apologized to her for complaining behind her back.

Commentary
Really? The context wasn't painful enough, you want commentary? OK, here are some random thoughts:

I really do love train travel, but this particular trip has had its hiccups.

My husband is my conscience a great deal of the time.

I've had several obvious "message from God" dreams lately and at first I interpreted them as pertaining to hospitality. The more I consider them, however, the more I realize they're about anger and they come with a bright neon message: anger throws up a barrier between me and my basic beliefs about what's important, like hospitality and building relationships through good communication.

What did you see today?

I saw a billboard

Context
Lee Michaels, a Louisiana-based chain of jewelry stores has several billboards in Shreveport. The one I passed today said, "If a woman says she doesn't want anything, she's lying."

Commentary
The general marketing technique of jewelry stores, particularly during the holidays, is to say that the way to a woman's heart is through expensive baubles. Perhaps I shouldn't take advertising so seriously, but I don't get this idea at all.

Don't get me wrong; I like pretty shiny things and I have a diamond engagement ring. But about the time it started being "our money," I realized that putting a huge chunk of it into personal decoration was actually a contrary indicator of how well I would be taken care of in the future. On the other hand, I understand that other women may have differing opinions about both money and relationships.

But now Lee Michaels has libeled me personally. I, in fact, frequently tell my husband and others that I don't want anything for Christmas or other occasions. It's not that I don't appreciate gifts and the affection behind them, but frankly I'm at a financial place in my life where if I want something, I buy it for myself. Of course, I may be in this place because I don't indulge in a lot of expensive jewelry, but I digress.

The point is, I'm not lying. I really don't want anything and won't be the slightest bit offended if you don't get me a Christmas gift. Even if I get you something, because I only do that if I want to, not because I'm setting up some kind of winter solstice-specific swap meet.

So quit telling lies about me, Lee Michaels. And if you'd like to discontinue your general practice of implying that women in general are sneaky gold-diggers who can't afford their own jewelry, that would be peachy too.

What did you see today?

I saw an article about a crime

Context
I read an article from yesterday's Shreveport Times today. It may be at this link, or it may not, depending on how long they archive the material. The article concerned the murder of a local woman, Ashley Scott, by her husband in Tennessee. Here is a direct quote from this article:

"Stephens said there were signs of domestic violence -- Ashley would wear heavy makeup or high collars to hide bruises -- and concerns by faculty. But when he talked to Ashley, offering Employee Assistance Program help, she said, 'Everything will be OK.'

Said Stephens: 'I don't think anybody realized how bad it was, how bad it was getting.'

It was, Stephens now realizes in hindsight, 'this perfect facade of a relationship.'"

"Stephens" is the principal at the school where Mrs. Scott taught.

Commentary
I understand that Mr. Stephens is under an extraordinary amount of pressure, but I feel compelled to point out that although his first statement is likely factual, the second one is mistaken at best and the third one is an outright lie. If you see a woman dressing to cover the signs of spousal abuse, you know exactly how bad it is, and she and her husband are not maintaining anything resembling a perfect facade of a relationship.

So why say it? I think it's likely that Stephens has heard, possibly more than once, or maybe just in the privacy of his own head, this accusation: "if you knew what was going on, why didn't you stop it?" So he backs off, pretends he didn't know what was going on. It's a more palatable answer than what seems to be the truth, "she wouldn't let me."

I blame the afterschool specials. The media has done such a good job of convincing us that domestic violence is a simple situation involving one monster and one victim that we think curing the problem should be equally simple. Just walk away. Accept the help an outsider offers you.

But real life isn't like that. Abuse is only part of a relationship. It may be a constant part or an intermittent one, but it's still only one element. And the person who's being abused may not see it as important enough to outweigh all the other elements.

My father used to hit my mother. Not regularly, but certainly more than once. I know I just wrote that in a universally accessible blog, but up until this moment I have kept that information relatively close to the chest. My close friends know; I've told church groups I was close to, but I've never made a big announcement or been all crusady about it.

I think one of the reasons I'm reluctant to talk about it is because I'm wary of the oversimplifications. The stereotypes I'm accustomed to don't fit the situation. My mother was neither too stupid to know what was going on nor too helpless to walk away. She was a woman who weighed her alternatives and made her decisions. And forgive me for straying off the P.C. ranch, but she wasn't always particularly nice to my dad either.

The conditions did not match Ashley Scott's. My father never cut my mother off from her friend and relatives and her life was never in danger. But if I'm really, really honest, I have to admit that the two people I'm ashamed to have never discussed this with are my mother and my father. Would it have helped? Can a daughter actually say to her parents, "your relationship is really screwed up and I think you both could make better decisions"? They're both gone now so I'll never know.

And now Ashley Scott is gone as well and we're all left feeling like there's something more we could have done . . .

What did you see today?

I saw the hedge around my alma mater.

Context
I’m in Houston today, so I visited the Rice University campus, which is right across the street from the Texas Medical Center. Rice has a wholly contiguous campus that is surrounded by a hedge. The hedge is not physically imposing enough to prevent anyone or anything from coming on campus, but it does clearly delineate the borders.

I graduated from Rice twenty years ago, so of course I see changes whenever I go back and visit. For example, sometime after my departure the Texas Medical Center built a really ugly building just beyond the Rice hedge.

Commentary
I was planning to go to church this morning, but instead I was moved to visit Rice. As I was walking around trying to figure out what drew me there, I saw this much-taller-than-everything-around-it, windowless building and was somewhat afraid that it might be on the campus itself. But no, as I got closer I realized that my beloved hedge was standing guard, keeping me from having to think that some of my alumni giving might have contributed to this monstrosity. As I sat on a bench facing away from both the ugly Med Center building and the hedge I started thinking about the protective aspects of communities.

Rice is an interesting place to go to school. It's an academically challenging but close-knit community. For four years Rice gathers people together and tells them that inside the hedges, it’s safe to be smart and obsessive and all-around different from the norm. In spite of the fact that the hedge is a puny little thing, I still felt shielded there.

It’s not just a shield, though. During those four years (or five or six or whatever) Rice tries to prepare you to go out in the world and accomplish something, not only by making you smarter, but by giving you the emotional tools to answer some of the crap the world throws at you. Four years of being told it’s great to be a nerd makes you likely to continue to believe it even twenty, thirty and forty years later.

I am blessed that I continue to have two communities that work the same way for me even today. My marriage is one. People get and stay married for any of number of reasons, but both my husband and I have come to treasure the refuge aspect of our relationship. We feel like we really can go out and do battle with all the problems of this world because we know someone will love us at the end of the day. Or sometimes in the middle, when we really want to scream! At its best, our marriage is not a hiding place, but a place where we can both rest and be reassured that we are capable of facing the next challenge to come.

My Quaker meeting is another such community. We're a pretty heterogeneous group in terms of religious beliefs and values, but we hold sacred the idea that everyone should be safe at the meeting. Not unchallenged, not coddled, but safe. It's a place where a person may hear a hundred times, "that's different from my experience," but will never hear, "you're wrong to think that way." So we get to examine the Spirit of God within us in an atmosphere that celebrates that Spirit and inspires us to go share it with the rest of the world.

I think everyone would benefit from belonging to these types of communities and I'd like to give you some advice about finding and/or building your own. Unfortunately, I can't. As far as I can tell, I came to both of these communities by the grace of God. So instead I'll pray that God provides you with the gift of a supportive community as well. I'll also invite you to come to our Quaker meeting at 10:00 a.m. Saturday mornings at Charlie Cook's Art Studio, 3500 Texas Blvd., Texarkana, TX. My marriage is not accepting any new members at this time.

What did you see today?