Nerducation Part II: Nerd Formation

The Bureaucrat's Top Secret, Surefire, Extra Diabolical Seven Point Plan to Deter Attractive, Socially-Adjusted Teenage Boys From Approaching the Teenage Dictator:

1. Teach the Dictator to play chess

This step was originally  motivated soley by the Bureaucrat's desire to play chess with someone..anyone. Several years back he had attempted to teach me and had failed utterly. Chess involves both patience and strategy, neither of which I possess in any quantity. The seven-year-old Dictator, however, picked up on the game instantly, as she is both obsessive and strategic...and probably a whole lot smarter than her dear old mother.*

The Dictator deeply enthralled in a game of chess. I'm not gonna lie. I prefer a rousing game of "Candy Land" or "Connect Four." 

*While the Dictator is quite smart and picked up on the rules of chess in practically no time, she is not quite so smart as the Bureaucrat, who was letting her win regularly, had led her to believe. The first time she played chess with someone other than a family member (a friend of ours, whom we shall dub The Adorable Robot) she was devastated by how quickly she was "defeated" and enthralled by how well he played. Needless to say, the Dictator has a crush on The Adorable Robot who, to her father's great relief, is her type: tall, quiet, kind, unassuming, and smarter than she is.

2. Introduce the Dictator to the intense and all-consuming world of Magic The Gathering

          This is certainly the step to which I most object. I hadn't even heard of Magic until the
          Bureaucrat  and his friends decided to revive the hobby they had once enjoyed in middle/high
          school. Oh boy. If you're not familiar, Magic the Gathering (or MTG, to those in the
          know...you know, the cool kids) is a strategic card game involving fairies, mermaids, elves,
          enchanted trees and pegasae (which I have decided is the obvious plural of "pegasus" because
          "pegasuses" might be the worst thing in the world to try to say. Try it. You'll probably choke on
           your own tongue and die).

Grown men play this game, in which they obsessively collect cards, create decks (which they then christen with adorable names), and "do battle" with one another in tournament rooms that smell (I am told) of horrific body odor and loneliness. Everyone I know who plays this game is obsessively consumed--neglecting girlfriends, families and personal grooming in the quest for the perfect deck, the best strategy, and something called "mana" which is really just more cards and not miraculous food-rain.**

I think you know where this is going. This step was like a freebie for the Bureaucrat. All he had to do was play a few games in the Dictator's presence. She heard the word "fairy" and saw collections of things and the kid was hooked. "Daddy, when can I get my own 60 card deck? If I attach this sorcery to my Pegasae Stampede of Imminent Doom, will I be able to do three points of damage to your Malicious Death Knell Phantom? Mommy! Mommy! Guess what?! I spent all my allowance money on new pink card sleeves! Isn't that the best news EVER?! And guess WHAT!? My Pandora's Demon Bunny has unDYING! Isn't that the greatest thing EVER!?"

You can see how popular she's going to be with the other children at school. Score one for the Bureaucrat.

 **"Mana" is always being "tapped," which really is really just turning the card sideways, although I have a sneaking suspicion that the etymology of this term has its origins in sexually-frustrated innuendo.

The Dictator taps Wench of Glory in an attempt to "deal three points of damage..." or somesuch.

3. Force Coax the Dictator into entering the school district's gifted program

This is an extremely touchy subject for the Dictator, but I am completely with the Bureaucrat on pushing this one point of his plan. Our Dictator is scary-smart and eccentric as all get out. She also likes to yammer on and on about the minute details of her varying, painfully specialized niche hobbies. If I hear one more fact about the size of the solar system, I might go loony. (Get it? Loony/lunar? It was a space joke. I'm hilarious. Laugh, dammit!). No one wants to play with her at her own school because I gather they don't understand 2/3 of what she's talking about, so why not put her in an environment full of kids equally willing to engage so passionately in such obscure stuff? At least she wouldn't be alone and might have a shot at actual friendship. For the Bureaucrat, there's the bonus that if she does in fact make real friends, chances are they'll be nerdy.***

***I have to be careful here. I have a lot of friends who were enrolled in the Talented and Gifted Program and most some of them aren't nerds. In fact, many of them are confident, socially well-adjusted, successful, lovely human beings who shower and everything. 

4. Allow Dictator to dress herself for school.

This isn't really fair of me, I suppose. The Dictator actually has a decent sense of style for a seven-year-old, but the fact of the matter is, she's still a seven-year-old and hasn't read enough Teen Vogue yet to really be up on all the fashion do's and don't's. Like, never ever tuck your skirt into your tights, for example. Or, a short tunic top and see-through pink glitter tights over Smurfette underpants does not a complete outfit make. Or, brush your hair. You know, the subtle nuances of fashion. 

5. Do not require Dictator to groom self.

We covered not requiring the Dictator to brush her hair, thereby creating monstrous rats' nests at the base of her lovely neck. Most people do not find this look attractive, so if the Dictator keeps this up, she is unlikely to attract the future teenage boys that so terrify her father. Often, she "forgets" to brush her teeth. Yellow grime is also a turn off to most folks, so the Bureaucrat is in luck here, as well. In addition to these lovely non-grooming habits, the Dictator has a tendency to allow snot to run out of her nose unchecked. Green crust on the upper lip is decidedly icky. If the Bureaucrat can continue to be sole child-groomer in the family (while I'm busy being a bad barista), he may just succeed in cultivating lifelong habits that will make the Dictator gross enough to repel the boys that currently find her quite appealing (it turns out that all seven-year-olds share the same low standards of personal hygiene).

6. Encourage Dictator to use big, incomprehensible words, like "incomprehensible"

After one of her very first elementary school play dates, the friend's mother commented that her daughter kept coming up to her and asking for definitions of all the words that the Dictator was using as they played. We're word people, so I don't know which words the Dictator uses that are considered "too big" by her peers and their parents (because they all seem perfectly normal to me), but I do know that friends' parent has avoided play dates with the Dictator ever since. Now, I just use a regular quasi-articulate-person vocabulary around my kids and they tend to pick it up by immersion, but the Bureaucrat takes it a step further and actually spends time defining the words for the children. And when they were little, he would deliberately teach them big words and encourage them to use them in sentences (in public...loudly) so they would sound extra precocious. It turns out that, while some people are impressed by this, most are intimidated by large words (more than four syllables=scary, I guess?). Hurray! More social isolation! 

7. Raise Dictator in the Morton family

The inescapable fact here is that regardless of all the Bureaucrat's plans and my attempts to counter them, the Dictator is growing up as a member of our little Morton family, and she's destined to attain at least some level of nerdification by default. How can you not when your parents negotiate a deal in which Mom will play one game of Magic the Gathering with Dad if, and only if, he is willing to watch at least two episodes of Doctor Who with her? If every other well-laid step in the Bureaucrat's grand scheme fails, the Dictator is still headed safely towards nerdiness, or at least geekiness...and yes, there's a difference. The Bureaucrat and I have had this discussion...in front of the Dictator...so I guess I'm helping solidify her destiny. 

But here's the scary thing. The Dictator may still grow up and be the center of teenage male attention. After all, she's pretty and sweet and smart. And she'll pretty much be the absolute dream girlfriend for dozens of Magic-playing, big words-knowing boys. At least some of whom will be socially functioning and well-groomed. And if they're not, they'll probably be totally cool with the rats' nests in the Dictator's hair. And she'll be too busy playing her "Oblivion Ring" on their "Insectile Aberrations" to notice the smell of horrific body odor and loneliness emanating from theirs. Queen of the nerds. Oh boy.

Nerducation: Part I, History of a Future Nerd

When the Dictator was not yet two, she would spend hours obsessively, meticulously, methodically, and absolutely symmetrically lining up her Dora Memory Cards into perfect patterns on her bedroom floor while anxiously sucking on her "yummy" (pacifier). If interrupted, she would grunt irritably and panic if the interruption persisted. This endeavor was followed by nearly an hour of story time, in which the Bureaucrat or I would read story after story, and the toddler Dictator would become hysterical if we missed or changed a word in any of them...even the ones she had heard only once before.Yeah...she memorized them...within one reading. Then, back to the cards, just to make sure they were still perfect. This routine was what we, in the Morton house, called "Bedtime."

The Dictator reads to the Anarchist amidst a pile of books.
Nerds love piles of books.

Those were our nights. Our days were filled with carefully crafting replicas of toddler TV stars out of  Play-Doh. I would model tiny, perfect hands and feet for the Wiggles characters to shrieks of, "NO, MAMA!  The shirt collar is POINTIER than that! His belt doesn't have enough holes! It's WRONG! It's all WRONG!!!" We still have Dictator-commissioned bathtub crayon likenesses of each member of Yo Gabba Gabba indelibly etched on our shower wall (with "FOUR eyelashes, Mama! Not FIVE!!"). This insanely observant (obsessive) attention to detail, her excellent memory, and her complete lack of emotional responsiveness (to anything other than imperfection, of course) caused us to consider that the Dictator might be a savant. We asked her pediatrician about autism. He assured us that she was being perfectly normal for a toddler with a tone that implied that he thought we were most certainly making most of this up. By the time she was three (and reading like an eight year old), we conceded that she might not be autistic as much as obsessive-compulsive...or at least nerdy-smart.

The Dictator, with some of the Play-Doh characters that she
commissioned. This time it was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
You can tell from her face that she was less than pleased
with the results of my efforts. I swear that my Wiggles replicas
were better.

The Bureaucrat was delighted. If his daughter was both smart and obsessive, she would grow up into the perfect nerd. She might not even wash herself or pay attention to her appearance. Then we wouldn't have to lock her in the closet when she became a teenager because there would simply be no boys to worry about. Take it from one who knows: nerdy teenage girls aren't exactly tripping over attractive male suitors (and the nerdy boys who may actually go for the nerdy girls aren't there to be tripped on...they're stalking--and mouth-breathing--from a distance in a totally socially inept way).


The problem is that recently the Dictator has become somewhat pretty and is behaving much more...um..normally. While not wildly popular (she doesn't bother ingratiating herself to people because then she couldn't control them properly), she is at least well-liked by her classmates. She is polite and pretends not to know certain things that she does know...just to fit in.* She wears clothing from the elementary-mean-girl-approved store, Justice. She insists on looking "beautiful." While she "adores" the solar system, she loves dance class more...and she doesn't give a hoot about spelling or handwriting.

This current state of affairs has made protective daddy Bureaucrat nervous. He has begun talking about locking people in attics again. And he has launched a more immediate plan of action: the utter nerdification of our lovely Dictator. The plan involves, for the Dictator, complete and utter immersion in nerd culture. I find this completely terrifying. Let's just say that the phrases "D&D" (as in Dungeons and Dragons) and "chess club" have come up. I'll elaborate in my next post. Suffice it to say that, while I think a certain level of geekiness is fantastic, I think lines are being crossed left and right. And I'm scared. I'm so scared. Because I want grandbabies (never thought I'd say that until I was at least 50)...lots of grandbabies. And not the kind of grandbabies that are actually just cats that my daughter has forced to wear sweaters. Real grandbabies...the kind that weren't conceived at Comic-Con. More next time. Right now, I'm off to Justice to buy some pretty mean-girl clothes for my future (fingers crossed) non-nerd. Wish me luck! And may the Force be with you. (Oh my goodness, the Bureaucrat has managed to infiltrate even my mind with the nerdiness. See how completely insidious his plans are! Help!!!)


*A recent class project in which the students listed each other's positive  attributes might detract a bit from this argument. The pictures her class drew of the Dictator mostly feature pictures of her doing math with phrases such as "Math Superstar," "Smartist Studnt" and "Math Wizz" scrawled beneath them in crayon. It must also be pointed out, however, that more than one picture described the Dictator as "Fancy," "Fashunabul," and as having "Good Stile." Yikes. 

Bitty Eschatology

The Anarchist thinks deep thoughts about
the afterlife...and flatulence. 

About a week ago, my silly, noisy, irreverent Anarchist started doing something really creepy. A few times a day she would walk up to me, plant herself dead in front of me, look gravely into my eyes and, with the voice of a kid straight out of a horror movie, announce, "You're going to die soon." And then she'd skip off to play "farting kitties" or whatever variation of potty-humor-related domestic animal game she was into at the moment. This is also the kid that wakes up from dreams with this ghostly look in her eyes and asks if her kindergarten teacher has broken her leg yet because "she's going to," or asks if the neighbor's house has burnt down yet or if "that happened in the dream first and is not going to happen quite yet in real life." Anarchist, darling, you're freaking Mommy out. Seriously. I'm half expecting the moss-laden demon nymph thing from that Mama movie to come leaping through my window in the middle of the night as the Anarchist stands there whispering "Mama!" in her creepiest voice.

Two days ago, the Anarchist came home and immediately started asking deep, imploring questions over her dinner of McNuggets and chocolate milk. Keeping with her recent "creepy" motif, she started asking about death. "Where do we go when we die? Do I get a new body? Will the world break to pieces?" And perhaps more ominously, "Mama, when you die really soon will Grandma be my new mom?"

We had a big long discussion about the varying eschatologies of the world's religious/cultural groups. The Dictator and I discussed moments of transcendence as evidence of "something more." The Anarchist stated her preference for either resurrection into a body like she had when she was a baby "only smarter, though" OR reincarnation, "but not as a ladybug." I put forth a thesis on why I was really quite unlikely to die soon. I convinced no one. I carefully explained that while I wasn't completely sure what it was like to be dead, I had several experiences in life that caused me to believe that there was something more and that it was good. I partially convinced some people (the Fat Assassin had that knowing look in her green glowing eyes that told me that she, at least, found my argument viable). The Dictator expressed her discomfort with this line of conversation and asked to change the subject. The Anarchist promptly changed the subject to Farts. Theology and bodily functions. The divine and the body. The Anarchist can make anything sound profound, dramatic and far-reaching...even farts.

And then yesterday the Anarchist came to me with a terrified look on her tiny face (and she can really contort her face into some pretty dramatic expressions...she's been practicing in front of the mirror for years). "Mommy, I'm really scared of all the devins! They are going to take me when I die and they are going to kill me and hurt me to death!" After a few guesses, I realized that she was talking about "devils" (plural devils, I guess...maybe with pitchforks and pointy tails and red pajamas). Apparently, her schoolmates at her newly assigned table had spent a great deal of time discussing demons and had scared the everliving daylights out of the Anarchist. Sounds like someone is reading Dante's Inferno as a bedtime story. Nice. I decided NOT to discuss the medieval concepts of hell with my kindergartener. I also decided against arguing that, rationally speaking, since she would already be dead, the "devins" would not be able to kill her again. I figured this line of reasoning would probably not be as comforting as just holding her and telling her that the kids in her class were "full of it" and that she should never, ever listen to other five-year-olds because five-year-olds tend to say/do creepy things...like talk ominously about death using their creepiest creepy voices...mostly just for dramatic effect...I hope.

I really hope. Because I swear to you, if I find that maternal demon nymph thing from the Mama movie climbing around my kitchen while the Anarchist uses her whispery voice to whisper freaky things at me, I will seriously die of fright. And I am in no mood to deal with all those pitchfork-wielding devins in the afterlife.

Museum Kids!: A Victorious Sequel

My TWO museum kids. Even the Dictator is shocked.

About two years ago, I had posted about my darling children's trip to the Cranbrook Science Institute and the Dictator's utter aversion to museums (she also doesn't like zoos). I had concluded, somewhat prematurely, that most families are granted at least one "museum kid" and one non-"museum kid," and that our Dictator was doomed to eternal hatred of all things museum-y, probably due to the fact that there is little in any given museum over which she has been given all-encompassing control...and she really likes all-encompassing control. We had resigned ourselves to a future of museum-avoidance or, if we were very brave, museum induced whining. Because we're pessimistic fatalists like that.

So it was with great trepidation that we ventured out to the DIA this weekend with both the Dictator and the Anarchist in tow. The Dictator had already adamantly stated her preference for attending the newly reopened  Michigan Science Center, as she "just adores the solar system" and is "really really into planets" (the way most girls her age are "really really into Justin Beiber.") And when the Dictator's preferences aren't met, things get ugly fast. But we're working on making the Dictator into not-a-brat, so we decided to make her go to the DIA anyway (the Anarchist's selection...the Anarchist likes contemporary art because it reminds her of anarchy). Each Morton child carried with her a notebook and multi-colored pen for sketching, in the hopes that having a specific project would render the children more pleasant, and thusly way less annoying. Each child also carried a small FurReal kitten, because what is an art museum without small, battery operated animals?

We spent about two hours within the walls of that venerable institution of the arts, and emerged a new family, an impossible family, a family with--gasp!--two museum kids.

Aren't we fantastic? Am I not the world's
best, most sophisticated parent?

Seriously. I felt like one of those obnoxious artsy parents that looks all superior and parades their super-artsy children around museums. Their children make irritatingly precocious commentary on mid-century modernism, or Mayan bloodletting bowls or whatever, and those parents kind of glance over at you like, "Did you catch that? Did you hear my brilliant offspring? Aren't we fantastic? Am I not the world's best, most sophisticated parent?" And then in the next instant (when you accidentally make eye contact), they look at you as if to say, "What? Don't all children do this? It's no big deal. If you think it's a big deal, you're clearly not cultured enough." And then you punch them in their smug, artsy faces, right in front of a display of medieval reliquaries. Yup. I was one of those. It was awesome.

The Dictator attempted to look as sophisticated as possible as she sketched at least one work of art from every gallery. It was obsessive, it was difficult for certain impatient members of my family (me) to endure, and it was delightfully obnoxious. Little old ladies oohed and aahed over her serious demeanor as she sketched nudes without the least bit of modesty. The guide in the Diego Rivera Room assumed she cared and spent 10 minutes explaining a mural to her (a gesture which the Dictator did not appreciate). And when the Dictator said she liked the "Alpha Grandma" (Alpha Gamma) painting because of the colors and "because it's abstract" the middle-aged museum goers around us didn't know whether to laugh or be amazed (I glared at them until they made the correct choice and put their amazed faces on).

The Dictator sketches "Alpha Grandma"

The finished "Alpha Grandma" sketch on the right. 

Not to be outdone, the Anarchist pronounced the room of realist paintings "really real looking," read a variety of plaques (thanks, ridiculous curriculum requirements...you may make my child into a stressed-out robot, but at least she's an impressive, highly-literate, stressed-out robot), and declared herself a "famous artist already" who was going to "go home right now and make art to hang in this museum."

Both of my children loved the food court the best of all, but we won't talk about that because that will immediately lower our sophistication level...and I've just discovered how nice it is to feel sophisticated. Please don't make me part with that yet.

So let's focus on what's important here. Aren't my children brilliant? Isn't it wonderful that I now am the proud owner of two museum children? Aren't you impressed that both of my children sketched nudes without being even remotely phased by the experience? Gloat, gloat, gloat. Although, honestly, if you think it's that big of a deal, you're clearly not cultured enough. And here's the very best part:. this is the internet, and you can't reach me, so you totally can't punch my smug face in front of the medieval reliquary exhibit.

The Dictator sketches a nude without batting an eyelash.
Her comfort with topless ladies is obviously because she's super cultured.
(And not because sometimes her mom is just too darned lazy to get fully dressed)

The Anarchist's sketches. Note the adorable puppy.
Also note her lady with prominent boobies (top right).

I'm going to let you think that this is art-inspired interpretive dancing,
and not dancing that they learned from an episode of Littlest Pet Shop.

In Which I Expound Melodramatically on Esoteric Things and End Up Sounding Vaguely Like the Movie "Pay It Forward"

So...thankfulness. I promised to write about thankfulness.* Or rather, I'm going to write about how I failed at thankfulness. Because as a general rule, I really prefer to focus on my failures.

A while back, I had written a series of posts "in honor of" the Anarchist's fourth birthday. The Anarchist had been a preemie (a very premature preemie, at that), and I had written to commemorate her miraculous birth. It was all very tragic and lovely, I'm sure. You laughed, you cried. I mostly just cried blubbered. I had finished by writing about the effects of the experience on various members of my family, but had failed to properly finish the series and expound on how the Anarchist and I were doing as a result of her somewhat traumatic birth experience. I never finished writing, because at the exact moment I finished writing the last post about the Anarchist, I was done. Done writing. Forever. I had said everything I needed to say. All the neurotic turmoil inside of me...all the crazy churning beneath the shallow/sarcastic surface...all of it just stopped. I had "processed things" and achieved "closure," Oprah-style. Or so I thought/wanted to think.

I didn't need to write about myself or the Anarchist, because everything was fine. (I never told you how her birth affected me, but I think you can guess. I think you can piece together the bits of hypochondriac ranting, angry-for-no-reason tirades, guilt-laced self-loathing, and survivor's guilt and figure out that I was not okay). But now I had let it all out and I was fine. Great. I had my beautiful, living child running around barking like a puppy and trying to strangle the cat with affection, and I was glad. I was relieved. I was happy. It was nice. Just those easy, flat emotions. Glad. It doesn't even sound as much like an emotional state as it does a garbage bag, does it? But I wasn't sad, traumatized, terrorized, desolate, or any of those other painful things I had been before (that I had no right to be before because my child was fine, wasn't she?), and so everything was good and I could just move on. And I did. My kids went to school, my husband changed careers. I got a job. It was awful. I got a new job. It was good. All was well.

But for all that, I was never really thankful. I never experienced any sort of gratitude that my child was alive and well. Gratitude felt wrong. It felt selfish and awful. I would wake up in the night from nightmares in which I experienced the pain of the loss of other mothers whose children hadn't survived, who had suffered alone, who had not received care and support. And I couldn't be thankful. And I remembered a conversation I had in the hospital with Calm Doctor, and he said it must be terrible for me, and I told him that I was so glad to be cared for and safe and that I was traumatized more by the thought of all the people who didn't get to be cared for the way I did. And I remember that my prayer after that was always "God, whatever happens to us, please let something good come from this. Let someone's life be changed. Make beauty from this darkness," instead of the usual," God, whatever you do, just save my baby." Gratitude was never something I could feel without feeling guilt. So I felt "fine" and "glad" instead.

And then a few weeks ago, several things happened that got the significance junkie inside of me all worked up (and if a Literature/Religions major isn't the epitome of a significance junkie, I don't know who is). After attending church at one of our local mega-churches (yeah, we're still going there), I stopped by the bookstore with the Anarchist and the Dictator. The Dictator was sashaying around the store selecting novels while the Anarchist was playing with the toy train in the children's section and making noises akin to those made by a mating chimpanzee. And I heard a very calm "Hi!" I looked up and was startled to see Calm Doctor, the doctor who had delivered the Anarchist, standing in front of me.

Now, I had run into Calm Doctor a couple of times before and had deliberately avoided eye contact, because the mere sight of the man made me tremble and go weak with the flood of memories/emotions that his presence would trigger. This time, though, I managed to look at him, smile and respond. And it turned out, much to my utter shock, that he remembered us. Not names, or anything, but he remembered us. "Is everything going okay?" he asked, calmly, as is his way. Maybe he was inspired to ask by the screeching monkey noises coming from the Anarchist. She was not doing her best impression of a not-brain-damaged person. "Everything's great," I assured him. I'm certain that he didn't believe me. The Anarchist is not known for displaying her actual level of mental functioning. Although, I would have answered that way even if she had  been profoundly brain-damaged because there was air in her lungs and a smile on her face, and that's good enough for me. We chatted briefly. I remembered that, shortly after the Anarchist had been born, he and his family had gone to Kenya as missionaries, and had worked in the hospitals there, delivering the babies of women who would otherwise have not been cared for and safe. And he introduced me to their third child, a little boy adopted from Africa. And there was something beautiful there, in the direction his life had gone. I hadn't caused it or anything (despite what my prayers had been), but my life had been allowed to touch it, to intersect with it for a second or two, and I got to see the beauty in it, and he got to see the light in my Anarchist's eyes when she smiled and said "hello" before resuming her feral animal-like state. Somehow, that connection was beautiful, and it mattered.

Within the same week, a coworker and I had discovered that our paths had crossed years before. He had played a concert at the Bureaucrat's church, and it turned out that we owned not one, but two copies of his CD. Out of my usual insatiable curiosity, I unearthed the CD and listened once, just to see if I remembered it at all. As I listened, I was flooded with the memory of bed rest, sleepless nights and terrified nightmares, and I realized that not only had I listened to this CD before, but I had listened to it more recently, while pregnant with the Anarchist, during one of the single scariest periods of my life. I had been staying at my parents' house between long bouts at the hospital, waiting to see if the Anarchist would reach viability. Night after night, I was overcome by terror and never slept. The only thing that helped was listening to music on a little portable CD player (I am so dating myself!). The only CDs I had were those I had left at my parents' house after getting married (mostly duplicates of the ones the Bureaucrat already owned). And my coworker's CD was one of them. I had listened to it, repeatedly, because it was calm, and simple, and comforting. Beautiful (strange) connection.

And both of these coincidences had happened within the same week. And the thing I thought was over and done with, the thing that was closed and fine and great and good, the thing about which I was glad, was opened up and thrown in my face all over again. And finally, I was thankful. Because here's the thing, whether God or coincidence, all the answers to my prayers for beauty and redemption are there. All our desires to do good things that touch each other's lives are fulfilled. The beauty that we are and that we bring to the world exists, as does the meaning and the connectedness...whether we see it or not. Even if my child had not survived, even if, God forbid, there was no Anarchist in my house to eat the sunscreen, make the poop jokes, and strangle the cat, even then there would have been grace. People that I had met/would meet/would meet again would do/go on doing/continue to do beautiful things and those things would inspire other things and even in our darkest moments we would see them, and maybe forget them, and remember them again and they would change us, change the world. We affect each other. We're light for each other, and most of the time we don't even know it.

And while I'm prone to focus on all of my failures, on all the minute ways every little thing I do could harm someone, I'm forced to entertain the idea that maybe we can encounter beauty in each other, too. That maybe, without even meaning to, some little thing I say or do might actually help someone rather than irritate or bother them (just now and then...I'm a realist). And this is a scary and difficult thought for someone who feels as utterly flawed as I do. But it's possible. These things do happen. And they happen in the most imperceptible and lovely ways. And we're all better for it. And for that, I am thankful.

* Important Warning: There is absolutely NOTHING funny about this post. This post is the rough equivalent of that crappy poetry we all wrote during our dark existentialist phase in middle school (that wasn't just me, right?) that we just knew was earth-shatteringly profound, but when we found it 10 years later it made us want to commit suicide and not just because it was oh-so-profoundly about suicide.