The Gray Line of Child-Choosing

Last night I had a very long and difficult discussion with one of my close friends about what we wanted our future kids to be like. Smart, suave, unique--but as our list went on another parallel list started to form. Namely, what we did not want our kids to be.

Before I go on any further, I just want to clarify. Neither my friend or I am promoting any type of discrimination on certain types of children. We love all genders, races, sexual orientations, and physical and mental abilities. But we did want to talk very openly about how these things affect our child's development and the degree of responsibility that comes with it.

So my friend would love to and plans on adopting children. We agree that it would be amazing to raise children from different cultures while immersing ourselves in their homeland for easy assimilation. Being a very liberal and wordly individual, he's very open towards the diversity of options. But in speaking further, he finally admitted that of all the children he would love to adopt he can't see himself ever choosing a black girl.

His reasoning was that he wants to protect his children from as much societal discrimination as possible. Not only would she have to deal with racism--but she's also have to deal with sexism. He didn't want to spend his life with a shot gun on his knee chasing after every person who hurt his little girl. He didn't know if he had the strength to watch his little angel go through those hardships ascribed to her through society. He wanted the best for his children.

Obviously this thinking can be dangerous. Like gendercide in India with aborting female fetuses (and many other places around the world) it is part protection and good intentions and part buying into social constructs and discrimination. By choosing not to have a black girl, you are believing that the system won't change. That having more women, especially black women in it is just going to be more persecution rather than revolution. That there won't be any new Oprah's, bell hooks', Sojourner Truth's. I know from the bottom of my heart I know that his analysis and decision did not stem from a bitter racism, but it does present a gray line.

Now that we live in a world where it is feasible that we can literally choose the type of child we want, and can conversely prevent children we do not want--where to we draw that line between the personal choice and the ethical responsibility?

I started with his choice because it seemed easier, but I find myself in no less of a gray and controversial area. I, personally above all else, am set on having a healthy baby. This goes for most people--ten fingers, ten toes, its a priority. But I also don't think that I have it in my character to raise a mentally or physically handicapped child (when I say handicapped, I mean more severe things like Down Syndrome or the inability to walk, not something like deafness or aspergers). I say this for several reasons: one, because I feel that I know myself and my strengths and weaknesses. And I'm honest that to a certain degree, this type of child would drastically change some of the selfish life plans that I have. But it also goes to more than that, it goes into the responsibility of having that type of child.

That is a big thing to ask of someone. Not only will you have to take care of that child until the day you die, but you also put that responsibility onto the rest of your family members once you are gone. I have a highly functioning autistic cousin, and his brother knows that when my aunt and uncle die that he will  be the one to carry on and take care of him. That's choosing a lifestyle for not only yourself based on your child, but kind of enforcing that on others. Not that siblings and other relatives wouldn't lovingly take care of them, but it is still a major commitment.

Then there comes to fact of how important it is to be stable financially and socially. Getting fired, getting divorced--these things are blown up times ten when you consider the effect it will have on the child's emotional as well as tangible upbringing. It takes money to selflessly choose to raise a down syndrome baby. Yes, there is help from the government to assist these families. But I also know that we have too many homeless people suffering from mental and physical illnesses to fully trust the current system we have in place. It's a precarious life--one that requires a lot of planning for some of these major life events that could come up and shake your world. These changes are magnified when your child requires additional care and assistance.

So honestly, I'm not sure if I knew beforehand that my child would have a serious illness if I would get an abortion. There is the possibility that would be a choice I'd make, though I hope to God that I don't have to. And like my friend's hesitation about adopting a black girl, it is controversial for sure. It is dangerous when we begin saying who does and does not deserve life--and under whose authority and choice.

Personally, I plan on having a black baby girl. And I will love her more than anything else. And while I don't look forward to the obvious and unmitigated challenges that await her, I am ready to walk through those difficult times with her. On the flip side, my friend has decided that he would be willing to adapt his life to accommodate a mentally or physically impaired child. And people like him who rise to the occasion and are wonderful parents in these circumstances--a thousand blessings to you. They are the true saints.

These are difficult questions we have to ask ourselves, and there's no immediate clear cut universal answer to where this gray line is between ethical responsibility and personal choice and preference. Becoming a parent is such a sacrifice in itself--its hard to tell someone where to channel that love, even when it can be based in underlying discrimination  I would just ask that as we think about and choose to start having kids we need to examine some of these narratives of not only who we want them to be but discovering how these preferences even came to be and what they tell us about ourselves.

Eve: a novel

So I came up with the idea for this novel last summer with my friend Kayla as we were trying to fall asleep one night at my house. While I'd rather just write the novel than divulge all of the complexities of the plotline, the story I feel is particularly interesting in lieu of recent attacks against women in the world. The plotline can be summarized (very very briefly) as this: a girl is gang raped her freshman year in college completely transforming her life and after ten years has passed, she ends up unintentionally and unknowingly falling in love with one of her reformed original attackers. Its a type of love-that-cannot-be/showing the gray reality of life and our relationships that I think will come out nicely. Started actually writing for it during NaNoWriMo last November, but have been slowing down lately. Hope to do some more this summer with editing/revising/and writing more. This is an excerpt (from the first chapter I suppose):

___________________________________

Eve
by Sydney Odell

They never said it would hurt. It’s like childbirth—everyone goes on and on about how the big football hands or petit ballerina toes, but no one tells you about the pushing. No one tells you about the hours right before where all you want to do is die. That moment when you finally realize your body’s built-in mutiny. That these pounds of flesh as far from being your own, but merely an empty vessel—a perpetual giver. When each contractual prayer uttered through clenched teeth and tear ridden eyes lessens your faith in a creator’s mercy. How each staggered breath weighs down not only on your lungs but down to your very soul. And then when it’s over, they are all too eager to deflect reality and mimic the socially constructed birth scene. “It wasn’t that bad” they say, and that’s the end. Everyone gets so caught up in the love, and I envy them. But I can’t forget the dissonance, it hurts. It wasn’t my choice.

            My older sister Lucy was the first. Like many adolescent girls, she had built up so much romantic anticipation of her first time that it seemed almost impossible that any earthly being could fulfill that illusion of love. There would be candles and classical music, he would be gentle and she would be generous. It would be near a beach, and they would go walking off into the sunset and live happily ever after. So when she finally decided at sixteen that Tommy Erickson, all 5’8” of lanky acne ridden pre-pubescent manhood, was the one-- there was no one there to stop her. But like those mothers who were so quick to forget, she too pounced on the opportunity to reframe her experience to fit her dreamy expectations.  

“I know why they call it making love” she said, her eyelids weighing heavy as she curled up next to me in bed, her mouth dripping sweet sensual omnipotence. “The way he held me, it’s just…oh I can’t explain it to you Sarah, you wouldn’t understand. You’ll know when it happens.” That was back when they called me Sarah, Princess. Back before I realized my sister had mastered the art of storytelling—of lying. That was then, back before my God died.

            As much as she tried to forget, there weren’t candles and it wasn’t near a beach. Actually, our hometown in Kansas was about as far away from a beach as you can get, and I don’t think Sarah had been to the beach before her senior trip to New Orleans. Our parents weren’t very adventurous, and most of our childhood traveling was done through pictures. Lucy had the hardest time, being an avid traveler from a young page. All throughout her teenage years Lucy hung a giant poster of a hula girl smiling proudly in front of a Hawaiian beach (no doubt a promotional tool) on the wall behind her bed. The poster was a gift from her best friend Charlotte who went for a family vacation, a luxury neither of us had ever dreamed of in our humble surroundings.  Lucy loved that picture more than anything else growing up, and she was determined to get out and see the ocean. I think to her it symbolized freedom—freedom from our over-protective parents and the suffocating Midwest County we had been raised in. If some people’s grass was greener, Lucy’s was bluer. She was determined. The beach was her way to rebellion and rebirth, a heavily focused vantage (vanquishing) point that would one day be within her grasp.

I never had the sense of rebellion my sister did, and certainly lacked her connection to the ocean. Sometimes when I lie awake at night, staring out my window at the twinkling lights of the big city, I almost think that sense of purpose might have saved me--might have given me a sense of independence, of strength. In the end, there’s no use entertaining these drifting fantasies any further. I don’t dare allow myself.

I remember my first time seeing the ocean when I was 15 with my father on one of his business trips to Texas. He never liked to bring us girls because my mother always said too much freedom would go to our heads. Our mother was a devout Presbyterian Christian, dragging us into Sunday school week after week to become educated in the highest caliber of morals. She would always scold us, preaching that “God does not forgive those whom he doesn’t know,” an excuse she would give for denying us unsupervised independent pursuits. Some people are like that, you know.

Going to Texas was the first time I had been out of Kansas, and really the first time I had been allowed to spend the day to my own devices while my father attended various meetings. I remember sitting on the pier, long gone now from the hurricane and watching the waves wash back and forth just thinking about Lucy and her dream. I tried to imagine what her first time would have been like here, with the grayish-brown expanse pulsating to the rhythm of her ecstasy. How he might have pulled her in closer as their bodies melted into one, gazing lovingly into her eyes, a telepathic message of his enduring devotion. And as I sat on the beach that afternoon, meandering through our love stories, I wondered for this first time if that’s all they’d ever be--stories. Maybe love was never supposed to be as real as our dreams. Maybe we weren’t ready.

While I knew that Lucy could never go back and have another first time, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she would have been different if it had happened on a beach like she had planned. Maybe she wouldn’t have run so far away from us, blamed us for her dream’s lack of fruition, harrowing so much hate and resentment for the life she never had. Lucy had been at Louisiana State for almost two years now, and Tommy Erickson was nothing but a distant memory, but I knew how important it had been. I hoped she was having better luck on the beaches in Louisiana. There was a beach there, and maybe the next boy who loved her would love her properly. Looking back now, Galveston isn’t much of a beach, but it was all that I had. I wonder if Lucy ever feels that way thinking about Tommy. I wish I had that luxury.

My own sexual fantasies were far from my sister’s coveted beach scene, and much more traditional in nature. If my sister’s fantasy revolved around sunshine, mine was snow. When she dreamed of fluidity I found shelter in a dry consistency. She sought freedom while I sought enclosure. I needed stability, routine was my salvation. The first time would be with my husband on my wedding night, somewhere cold and foreboding like the Western Rockies I had once seen pictures of in my history textbook. We would be snowed into our little log cabin of love and commitment and stay up all night kissing and laughing while sipping hot cocoa and watching old westerns, the twinkling Christmas lights illuminating the scene of our lovemaking. While I could never particularly put a face to this feeling, I knew what his hands would feel like folded within mine. How his head would feel resting against my head. How his toes would warm my own chilly extremities.

After it happened, there was a time when I thought this numbing cold would strip away all the pain. My mother, who had been my sole confidante and guidance throughout my sheltered teenage years knew this most intimate anesthetic of mine and soon after they released me from the hospital took me to Colorado for a few weeks in one of my Uncle’s cabins. It was my second time out West, but this time it held an entirely new meaning. Everything was different, and a part of me feared that this sweet comforting fantasy would too be taken from me as my sister’s dream had been taken from her those many years ago.

The doctors said I needed rest. They said that I needed to be surrounded by friends and loved ones. Buy her favorite things; cook her favorite meals they suggested. Take her to her favorite places. But their words were hollow, full of a distracted pity as they raced from room to room—already mentally setting a chronological hierarchy of whom next needed their attention, rarely physically and emotionally conjoined. Their recommendations only made me feel even guiltier about my situation. That I was just another patient who had resigned to die at the hands of their own stubborn will, taking up time and bed space. Rather, they refused to see me as the broken doll I had become, trying to piece back together the silky white porcelain of my previous innocence.

On our second day at the cabin, there was a huge snowstorm that kept us locked inside for the rest of the weekend. And while my mother was horrified, I felt a sense of relief at being forced to be still. To be silent.

My mother, however, thought otherwise.

“Sarah, princess” she whined, a slight southern lilt in her voice. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

She rocked back and forth trying to keep warm, looking rather like a penguin cooped up in her winter warmth. I imagined that in another time she was, and that by the time Spring came and the ice melted I would have peeked out beneath her bushy folds, a newborn babe adjusting its eyes to the light and taking its first brave steps into the icy tundra. Even with the hard snow climbing halfway up our window, I still felt open—vulnerable. I could still feel the hollow space of my womb, conscious of my body’s new nightmare. Thinking about myself as an animal always made it go away, helped me to once again feel the security of our wintery tomb. It helped me to transcend.

“Do you want to play a game?”

“No.”

My mother huffed audibly to let me know that she was upset and waddled back to her John Grisham novel on the kitchen table in as dignified of an air as possible. In religious arenas, my mother feigned to love the romances of Agatha Christie and Jane Austen though from the few times I was invited to their monthly book club meetings she never seemed particularly animated about the novels. Ironically, for as much as my mother chastised indecent graphic exposure in her Christian circles she dearly loved reading about issues of violence that so permeated Grisham’s novels. Deep down, I always wondered if there wasn’t something about my mother’s past that resonated deep within that I would never quite know in the quiet recesses of our one-sided confidence. And though she would always hide her collection from us “impressionable” young ladies she could regularly be found sitting at the dining room table in our small suburban home with a gory thriller in hand, sometimes staying up late into the night as she waited for my father to return home from one of his long business trips. My mother has always been a curious paradoxical anomaly to me.

Without looking up from her book, my mother shot out another question that rang loudly off of our surrounding wooden fortress.

“What if we run out of food?” she propositioned, her lips perched ready for a cutting retort.

The most annoying aspect of spending large amounts of time with my mother was that whenever my mother felt like she was being ignored, she would always go into a fit of passive aggressive rage. While she would never quite say what was on her mind, she would make damn certain that you knew that you were not appreciated. A sick kind of therapeutic catharsis, she would dance around your apathy until you exploded through her prodding annoyance, laughing at her vindictive success. It was the way my father had always been with my mother in the early years of their marriage, a tactic she had only picked up second hand though she had learned the art of perfecting his craft. Watching them fight was like re-enacting the Cold War. It was a neiztchean battle of wills, missiles pointed in powerful intimidation.

Even before the “incident” I was no match for my mother’s cunning manipulations, and in lieu of my fragile circumstances I was far from having the stubborn will to test her gloomy resolve. Pushing myself outside of my blanket cocoon, I opened my eyes timidly to the soft evening glow that filtered in through our iridescent window. Caught in the dialectic of obligation and personal preference I conceded to respond for the sake of keeping her quiet, whispering softly into my pillow.

“We die.”

I spent most of those three weeks pondering death, welcoming it as an old friend. Insisting on an almost constant state of melancholy that even my mother’s passive aggressive tactics could not tempt, I struggled to find any solace in the therapeutic exercises I had been taught back at psychiatric. Since art had always been a passion of mine, I thought that perhaps it was this medium that would once again resurrect my spiritual yearning for life.

By day I would read poems from other artist’s about the sweet tantalizing fruit of self-destruction and in some ways felt a renewed sense of strength and courage through our camaraderie. It was a temporary fix, one where I would occasionally indulge my mother in short outings to the local grocery store for some type of outside interaction. But then the night would fall and I would lie paralyzed in fear, feeling the wintery wind blow unwelcome kisses on the back of my neck and remembering the foreign hands reaching out to me in the dark. Filled with the emotional vulnerability reading their poetic pieces inspired in me, I would often fall asleep to my own deep panting as I tried to silently calm my hyperventilating panic attacks. By the end of those three weeks, I had become to associate art with pain. The two were interchangeable, and as a consequence I found my new path towards any type of temporal reconciliation in subconscious revelations.

When I did sleep, my dreams were often confusing. Littered with disembodied joints—elbows, ankles, wrists—never a face though occasionally an ear or an oddly shaped nose. Occasionally, I would peal these back and sift through the sinews of scarlet coated veins searching for the hidden disease. With each layer slowly folding back to unveil even more folds of pink mortality, I felt a calm reassurance that if only in the distracted search I could find peace for this curse. Finding this center always helped to slow my breathing, to drift farther into a subconscious state that I could trust. And as long as I never saw a face, I was fine. Without a face, the disembodied parts could not assemble into my ultimate fear. Without a face, it was not a human. Even now today working long night shifts in the hospital, I have a hard time associating a face with a disease. Many tell me this natural dehumanization is a blessing, but I would give anything for it to be as foreign to my mind as the memory of that night.

It’s funny how our dreams of death and birth are near the same. We struggle through our gestation, this preparatory state for something in hopes of a greater reward—deceiving ourselves into thinking that our hope is well grounded. But for me? I can’t forget the agony and complete lack of faith in salvation which is how in that log cabin that I finally found the courage to make that prayer all women forget about in those final throes of birth. The one God we all secretly pray to in our anguish. But in the end there was no ultimate reward. There was no rebirth, no enlightenment. All that was left to me instead was a portable coffin of frigid numbness and excruciating awareness of humankind’s own inadequacy.

Starting a blog post at 1:30 in the morning is never a good idea

I feel like that could be the new Panic at the Disco single.

But I digress.

So lately I've been spending a lot of time writing "profound" observations and putting them on the internet without actually cataloging many of my specific life experiences. This, as you can imagine, is a problem for someone like me who will very likely one day slip into a deep state of alteizmers. And despite my introverted anti-social ways sometimes, I do live a life. And it's story is sometimes worth sharing.

Life is great for the most part. I don't get to go hiking as much as I'd like, and despite hours lying in the backyard tanning you'd still think I'm an albino, but all in all I feel as though I'm progressing in my humanhood.

Tonight, in particular, was one of those nights where I really had to step back and just admire what a unique situation I find myself in. Going to an extremely diverse and international school is amazing--the fact that I can hear 5 different languages spoken in my home at any one time is fascinating enough as it is, not to mention the 10-15 other languages I hear floating around as I walk from class to class. There's so much potential to learn more here outside of the class than ever in it.

One of my favorite foreign languages, as you probably know, is French. I've been partial to it since I first started taking classes my freshman year in high school and have stuck with it through University. As part of my schooling here I'm required to go to my french tutor 1.5 hours a week for one-on-one sessions. Most of the time we just end up chatting about our lives, tests, families, and events. But sometimes we get to go a little bit further and really exchange culture--which for someone like me whose degree is in International Cultural Studies--is fantastic.

In our lesson this evening my tutor shared with me some the oral traditions and customs of his home country in Togo, West Africa. While he was telling me about the generations old gathering around the firepit, passing on such a rich and important oral history I couldn't help but feel like my story was slowly being adopted into his narrative. That this was something I needed to pay attention to and appreciate and learn from. Something I might not have been able to experience in any other way than through stories.

                                Nowah trying to explain the tradition of storytelling in Togo

And then later tonight I had further opportunities to expand my horizon. As I came into the front room at around midnight I saw my Japanese housemate hanging out watching a movie with the most beautiful Serbian you ever saw. Casually, we started discussing the plot of the movie (Oceans 11) and swapping the typical introductory information. An hour later we found ourselves enmeshed in our own stories of traveling and learning about life in alternative ways. Never in my life would I have thought I'd be sharing stories and culture at 1 a.m with a Serbian and a Japanese as my Taiwanese, Samoan, Korean, and American housemates bustled about upstairs.

So many stories under one roof. So many different ways of experiencing one life, of giving meaning to the ways in which we interact and narrate ourselves into existence. This past weekend I had the opportunity to go and learn about the power of storytelling by one of my favorite professors here at BYUH (whose own story is closely tied with that of the Marshallese). In it, he said that storytelling had the opportunity to both create and destroy. Now I've seen my fair share of destructive stories, but I must also be conscious of the fact that I am constantly living in one continuous process of creation. One in which I can intermix my story with so many others in such coming to understand the possibilities and limitations of intercultural exchanges.

And while I may complain that I'm not where I want to be money/school/relationship wise--this I know. That I am incredibly blessed. And even if it is 1:30 in the morning and you're tired and feeling a little blue, that people can still come into your lives without you even looking for it and help you to have faith that your story has a place in the tapestry of existence..

Existential Crisis Anonymous

I've realized more and more lately just how elaborate of a charade we put on believing that we know what we want. People going about their classes, their jobs, their relationships like its a play and a role they were born to play while covertly trying to retrace their steps and remember when they even took that first audition. Trying to pinpoint that moment when the curtain rose and we were welcomed without any type of applause onto the stage of our own life story. Trying to remember when it stopped being enough.

While I know its nothing particularly exclusive to my generation, we are certainly lost. So. Incredibly. Lost.

Recently I've gotten a lot of friends who have come to me just wishing that they knew what they were meant to do. Earlier today, I had a talk with one of my housemates about some troubles she is having at this juncture in her life.  In trying to weigh the demands of family, school, boyfriend, and job she was breaking down. She is near the end of graduating, a truly personable, smart, talented, and beautiful girl who could easily go places. A parents dream. But instead of feeling stuck and hopeless about the future, she was instead overwhelmed with the possibilities in front of her. As we talked more about the plethora of avenues open to her, it became apparent that she just wanted someone to sit her down and choose for her. To make her responsible for a certain life path.

I've had similar existential crisis talks with friends back in Washington who are having a hard time sticking with school. Chalk full of extracurricular ambitions, they set their sights on traveling or changing majors or finally settling down with a significant other just hoping that their movement will ring synonymous with progress. And over the years we have become sound boards for one another while having the luxury of lounging in transitional identities with University, bouncing ideas off of one another like balls on the blacktop of our childhood while refusing to really sit down and follow any one of them. To accept the responsibility of adulthood. To commit to a future. To decide. Because we didn't have to yet.

But now we do.

First world problems, eh? Having too much freedom, being pulled into too many directions for the different parts of ourselves that we want to develop. And yet it's real.  The greater the options, the harder the choice. And for many of my peers: we've staved off that choice long enough.  And maybe we need to accept that's really what we've been doing this entire time: avoiding that commitment. Maybe that's what we'll always be doing: over-thinking things and feeling drowned in the illusion of ultimate freedom where we live a thousand different lives for each individual passing hobby.

Maybe we need a group, something like: Existential Crisis Anonymous where we can collectively have the space to truly explore what we want out of our lives and the support to make it happen.

Maybe.

Or maybe just communism.
At least they'd tell us what to do.

#karlmarx2016