The Fascination: "One Never Knows, Do One?"

For the past two weeks the media have been fascinated by Anna Nicole Smith's life and death. A couple of days ago Larry King interviewed Barbara Walters about her Oscar special on Sunday, the 25th. Barbara, with her usual elitist tone, haughtily said to Larry that The View would not spend any time on the subject, implying that the subject was not worthy of coverage (plus she was likely also miffed by thirty minutes of Larry's show being devoted to the latest developments in the Anna Nicole custody fight over her body). Later, however, Barbara admitted to covering the Britney Spears' story but justified it by essentially saying Britney was talented and Anna Nicole was not. Larry asked Barbara what the fascination was regarding these stories? No one seemed to have an answer.

I would like to weigh in, along with other journalists the next day or so, on the question: Why are we so fascinated by Anna's story? Perhaps musician Fats Connor gave the only true answer though when he said, "One never knows, do one?" We have already heard from psychologists a plethora of reasons including America's obsession with celebrity, weariness from watching the coverage of the Iraqi War, even more exhaustion from hearing about the spats between presidential contenders some two years before the election, and escape--induced from all the disaster specials (the latest was John Stossel's two hour coverage on 20/20 of fearful, hypothetical happenings in the future).

My thought about the fascination is that Anna was all of us. She was the mother who could shower us with love or withhold her blessings upon her whim; she was the ideal woman of beauty and figure (even with her weight gain, she endeared herself to us even more, representing a woman other than the slinky anorectic model; she must have been a terrific lover as evidenced from the loud weeping of her attorney/lover Howard K. Stern and her photographer lover Larry Birkhead; she overcame a background of poverty and lack of education to become a household word; she evidently treated her assistants well (Big Moe, the bodyguard, and Kim, the personal assistant) have defended her honor repeatedly; she was someone we knew from her reality show, full of foible yet very vulnerable and in obvious need of protection and intervention. In short, we liked her, just as we liked Marilyn Monroe in the past for all the same reasons. I am not sure we feel the same way about Britney, Nicole, Paris, and Lindsay.

Was Anna Nicole's life like a Shakespearean tragedy as the Florida judge suggested this week? I would conclude that the answer is yes. It could allegedly be a revenge tragedy where there is a death or murder that must be solved by the next of kin (Daniel's and now Anna's), at least one ghost (Daniel and now Anna), and a mad person (perhaps Anna or someone still to be revealed). Let us hope that the answers to the mysteries will come together in the next few weeks and that our fascination with Anna can be put to rest, as she is.

Slouching Towards Disaster

I was trying to get a break from all the disastrous news on television yesterday when I read an article in the new AARP magazine about Joan Didion. I was introduced to her work back in the early 1980's when I took a course in graduate school with John Clellon Holmes, a comrade of Ginsberg and Kerouac. At that time, the new rage in writing was beginning to be called "creative non-fiction." Didion's book Slouching Towards Bethlehem went on to become a modern day classic with its theme that the world is falling apart and that, basically, the center of it cannot hold any longer. Yet here we are, a number of years later, still predicting the same dire fate for us as a world community.

Just last night CNN on the Anderson Cooper show featured a short spot called "The Edge of Disaster." Instead of the usual question mark that all the cable news channels use these days, the title appeared to be simply a statement of fact. The viewer was treated to several possible hypothetical situations: perhaps a flood along the California coast, an explosion in Boston's harbor which would release poisonous gasses throughout the city, or even another gas attack on thousands of people in Philadelphia as they watched a Sunday afternoon ballgame. Has the world gone mad with its nightmarish suggestions?

I have been puzzled for a number of years on why educated people want to panic over what could possibly happen in the future. It was 1999 when I first started observing this phenomenon. Garlan and I had spent the fall in Alaska while I was on sabbatical from the small liberal arts university where I taught. As we began to sail south to Seattle on a weekend ferry, we began to hear more and more people talk about the computer Y2K meltdown ahead. We had done nothing to prepare our computers at home for such a disaster. Also, we noticed, and this was especially noticeable among our conservative Christian friends, that they were stashing away water and food for a six month period for the impending event. I am doubly perplexed by this behavior since both my friends (and, yes, even some of our close relatives) were prepared in this way. Do we not all believe that our lives are ordered by God? After all, we love the spiritual laws booklet in our faith that reminds us "God has a plan for your life" every time we open it.

I certainly do not want to be a "do nothing" person either and slouch my way, unconcerned, towards disaster. But then--I remember Dale Carnegie's book that is very dated now but still has some applicable advice it seems. He spoke these words: "Ninety percent of the things we tend to worry about we have no control over, ... It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep." It seems to me that the answer to the dilemma is to be alert, to be prepared, and to trust. The rest is in His hands.

To Caitlyn With Love

With actor Ryan O'Neal's latest scuffle with his son Redman and his girlfriend, I have been thinking again of his famous line from the movie Love Story. Who can forget the weepy film starring O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, whose character is dying from leukemia? The line, "love means never having to say you're sorry" is repeated twice, once by MacGraw in the middle of the film and once by O'Neal as the last line. From 1970 on, the line has received a lot of ridicule, parody, and spoof with perhaps the most famous from John Lennon who said, "Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes." Today I'd like to revisit that line and argue that perhaps it does have true meaning.

I say this because of a recent babysitting adventure with our granddaughter Caitlyn and her brother Charlie. Caitlyn is eight years old, and Charlie is three. Pop B and I arrived at the house promptly at five so that the children's parents could go out to a nice restaurant and later to a play downtown in order to celebrate Valentine's Day. All went very well until bedtime at nine o'clock. Up until that time, Caitlyn and I had spent three hours playing Native Americans living in the nineteenth century in a tee pee. She was Speaking Rain, a little girl who was blinded when her parents were killed in a fire. I was Speaking Rain's adoptive mother. We stayed in character even as we ate two heart-shaped pizzas for dinner; Caitlyn called them bear meat and deer meat respectively. After playing, the children managed to get baths and hair shampoos, and later Caitlyn and I studied four lessons in her science book for an upcoming test the next day.

The trouble began, however, when I told Catilyn I needed to go upstairs to put her brother to bed. She began "pitching a fit" as we say in the South accompanied by a hard shove to her little brother's chest. For the next hour, she cried, screamed, jumped on her bed, and ran around the downstairs area. As she was finally wearing out around ten, I told her that if she wanted to say she was sorry the next day she could call me. I also told her about my first experience at saying I was sorry (at least without prompting by my mother).

I was also eight years old at the time. Mother typically sent Judy and me to Tutwiler in the Mississippi Delta for spring break so that she could get a spring break herself. One lovely warm afternoon, I remember sassing my grandmother Mam for some unexplained reason. Later, I began to feel guilty for the first time in my life. I remember distinctly going outside and seeing Mam hanging up clothes on the line outside the house. I stood beside her for a long time, saying nothing, until finally I finally did it; I said, "I'm sorry" in a tiny little whisper. She forgave me instantly, of course. But the reality of the situation is that I knew I was greatly loved by my grandmother and that nothing I could ever do or say could change that love; she loved me unconditionally. Therefore, doesn't true love really mean "never having to say you're sorry"?

Another possibility perhaps for the true meaning of the line is that, if one passionately loves another, as the O'Neal and MacGraw characters did, does he or she ever regret that decision to love in spite of illness, impending death, or whatever threat might be lurking?

All of this musing has led me to wonder when the awakening of a soul takes place? Theologians are adamant that it is early and, therefore, it is essential to train children early to be aware of God's spirit speaking within them. I tend to agree, though it has been two days, and Caitlyn still hasn't called.

The Happiness Scale

My daughter and I have always had this question to ask one another every time we get together. It is the "Where are you now on the happiness scale?" The answer must always be between 1 and 10 with 10 being the highest possible. I surprised her recently by telling her I was an eight: I called even to let her know that my number had recently risen. She has been a nine for the past few years; that relates, I believe, to becoming a mother two years ago, having a fulfilling career that she loves, and being in a solid love relationship for the past twelve years.

Even though I usually have a somewhat optimistic personality, I have found myself in recent years falling to about a five or a six due to circumstances. These circumstances have included having a husband down-sized after twenty-six years of hard work, losing several friends and relatives who died too young, struggling financially to make ends meet, and dealing often with petty work jealousies. These losses have often kept me tenser and unhappier than I needed to be.

Sunday as I was driving into church, I was listening to National Public Radio when I heard someone say, "The closer you get to death, the more you enjoy life." I really do not know if my happiness jump is related to thinking about death more or just not having to work any longer. After forty-one years in the work force, I love the enjoyment of getting out of bed whenever I choose, not when the alarm clock comes on. I love taking an early morning walk and hearing the birds sing even on a cool February day as the people in my neighborhood one by one start their engines and roar off to their jobs. I love the freedom to light a fire in the living room, to burn a vanilla-scented candle, and to lie on the sofa with a good book like Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I don't live by a clock any longer.

I have to say it is ironic that the circumstances of the past seem to hover ever so much quieter in the background of my life. Enjoyment of life is accompanied now by a focus on the senses: the smell of chocolate cupcakes baking in the oven, the instantaneous touch of a three year-old who grabs your hand as you cross a parking lot and go into a movie, and the taste of snow cones on a hot summer's day in the South with your grandchildren.

As I think about it, I might even surpass my daughter's happiness scale as I continue to move toward death--enjoying every moment of life.

Re-deux: To be or not to be

Once more the age old question of suicide has been on my mind for the past couple of days. Shakespeare raised the dilemma most famously in his play Hamlet with an indecisive protagonist who did not know how to best avenge the death of his father. Even then the question was hardly a new one since the Greeks and Romans believed survival at whatever cost was preferable to taking one's own life. Who can forget the sad character in Homer, Ajax, who roams around Hades unable to ever speak again because of his decision to end his life after a jealous feud with Odysseus? Or who can forget the tragic story of Dido who set fire to herself after she learned her lover Aeneas was planning to leave her? Again, perhaps as part of eternity's punishment for her choice, she had to turn away sadly, without speech, when asked by Aeneas if he was the cause of her death.

Over the past two days the media have bombarded us once again with endless speculation around the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith, a tragic want-to-be starlet often compared to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield of the 1960's. Would the autopsy indicate an overdose? If so, would the public ever know if it were intentional or accidental? Anna had a lot to live for: her new five month old daughter, evidently a relatively new relationship with her companion and former lawyer, and the possibility of inheriting a half a billion dollars? She also had a lot to die for: the recent death of her only son, the endless lawsuits filed against her, and a looming paternity suit as to the identity of the biological father of her daughter. We will probably never know her true intention: to be or not to be.

The question of suicide was also raised for me again with the viewing of Clint Eastwood's film Letters from Iwo Jima. As Americans, we realize, of course, that perhaps the Japanese did not have the same restrictions and religious objections to suicide as those in Western Culture. We have grown up hearing about the suicide pilots of Japan during World War II as well as the injunction to commit suicide to even the regularly enlisted men in order to preserve the country's honor. Today it is the jihadists who see themselves immediately transported into Paradise and into the arms of virgins when the cause is perceived as right by them. Eastwood, since his film Unforgiven, has refused to present anything but both sides of an issue in his latest offering. In the Japanese film, two of the characters, however, are torn between the expectations of the culture in warfare and the call of the heart for survival. One lives, and the other, not by his own hand, dies.

In our family the question to my knowledge has arisen with just one person, my mother. While living with my stepfather in Seattle, she took an overdose and went to bed. Three days later she realized she was going to live and got up to live many more years. She said to us that our stepfather was so used to her being in bed so much because of her depression that he was not alarmed. I would like to say that, after this experience, her life was much more meaningful. I am not sure I could say that, however, in all honesty. Like Addie in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, she simply existed until her actual death.

Thankfully, my sister Judy and I seemed to have inherited the more optimistic spirit of our grandmother rather than the pessimism of our mother. Though I cannot speak with certainty of the future, I believe life is always the better choice. The Bible is clear in the command of the Old Testament: choose life, not death. While God gives us the free will to choose death, he commands us to do otherwise.

Suffer: The Little Children

The question of suffering children is one that has been discussed for many centuries. Do we blame God, or do we blame men and women for this travesty? Yesterday the problem assaulted me all over again. First, in book club, there was writer John Updike on the video screen speaking of Dostoevesky's handling of the subject. The passage he referred to spoke of the character Ivan in The Brothers Karamotzov who was having a discussion with his brother Alyosha. After presenting numerous examples of the abuse of children by adults, Ivan concludes that, even if God offered him a free ticket into heaven, he could not accept it because of the suffering that children endure. The exact quote from Chapter 35 reads as follows: "And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

The second reminder of the injustices in our world that children endure every day arose when I saw the movie Volver in the afternoon. This impressive Almodovar film starring Penelope Cruz in her best role to date featured a character who bears her father's child.

The final assault upon me was perhaps the worst of all. One of the lead stories on Little Rock's CBS television affiliate told of a twenty-one month old baby boy whose eyes had been glued shut by super glue. The adult (evidently a boyfriend of the boy's mother) then used acetone, causing severe burns on the boy's face, to try to clear it up. He then took the baby to another house while he and the mother went out to dinner.

The question of the suffering of children at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect them is not a new one for me. As a victim myself of sexual abuse when I was three by a distant relative and when I was twelve by a middle-aged neighbor, I am used to wrestling with the idea of justice. Is it really God's fault because He allowed it, or must we simply blame the adults who actually do it?

My conclusion, after careful thought through the years, is the latter. After all, God gave humans free will to make their own decisions. Could we expect angelic beings after the fall in Eden? And I definitely see the fall as a descent, not an ascent as some would have us believe. I fail to see how the knowledge of evil can ever bring about good consequences. If humans inherited, as many theologians and believers testify, a sin nature, how can the world not be filled with evildoers?

Even after perhaps accepting the premise of my argument, what can we do to eliminate the suffering of the children? Very little I fear. Our only hope is for justice in eternity by a righteous God who Himself states in Mark 9: 42,"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck (NIV). Until then the little children will continue to suffer.

"This is a baby; this is a blessing from God."

My attention was caught last week by seeing a short spot on CNN in which the Vice President's daughter, Mary Cheney, was speaking of the controversy caused by her (and her partner's) decision to have a child together. "This is a baby; this is a blessing from God," she said somewhat nervously into the microphone. The statistics in the news have been rather fascinating to me lately regarding the fact that 51% of America's women are not married. More and more women are making the decision to have a child, whether married or not, either because they have not met their ideal future spouse or because the biological clocks for motherhood are simply arriving. Many of these mothers, like Mary and her partner, are in their late 30's or even early 40's. Do we need to worry, as many conservatives among us tell us, about these children turning out badly? Do we need to worry that our traditional families are breaking down?

It seems to me that the stand for life on the conservative side, led forcefully by James Dobson, faces a dilemma. If we say (and I count myself in this group) that we value children, how can we also condemn the birth of them in any way? After all, the children are not responsible for whatever decisions are made by their parents. When I was coming of age, of course, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, before abortion was even legal in the United States, we simply sent our underage girls away for a few months, expelled them from school upon learning of a pregnancy, had a quickly arranged "shotgun" wedding, or closed our eyes to the fact that illegal abortions were perhaps taking place even within our own community. I loved what my friend from Springdale, Jim, used to say about premature babies: "No, my dear, the baby was not premature; the parents were."

I guess I am considering this issue more thoughtfully today because my second grandson was born almost two years ago to my daughter and her partner. Being in their mid-thirties and mid-forties, they were certainly old enough to examine all the potential issues before the baby was born. The conservative argument is that children do better in homes consisting of a mother and a father who are married. My daughter, especially after learning that the child would be a boy, asked a couple of good friends, men, to be godparents, thus assuring her son of positive role models. The baby would also be born into an upper middle class background and likely be assured of the finest of private schools available. Would he fulfill one of the most dire statistics conservatives say will likely happen to him? Will he go to jail early; will he take drugs; will he be lost in society's cracks? Is it definite that he will become a juvenile delinquent like the prognosticators tell us?

I tend to say, along with Borat, "not so much." Children who are raised by a single mother in poverty (as my sister and I were) with an alcoholic absentee father can still become successful middle-class Americans. Children from upper middle-class families can still become killers within an all-American high school. Sociologists are examining families closely and still have no answer as to what truly makes one child go on to live a fully productive life while another falls into a well with no one to pull him or her out.

As always, I have no answers; I raise the questions only. I agree with Mary Cheney, however, in my fence riding between conservative and more progressive ideas, "Children (all of them) are a blessing from God." We must simply wait for this new generation of babies to grow up and then determine how they fared.

Sorrow of the Heart

I have never quite understood the meaning of one of the verses in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In fact, many times it is often misquoted to say, "Blessed are the poor, / For theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Actually (just as it is not money that is the root of all evil, but the love of money) the verse in Matthew 5 actually says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The promise seems to be antithetical to all logic. Why would it not say the kingdom of heaven belongs instead to the rich in spirit?

The idea has recently surfaced again in my mind through one of our recent discussions in book club. One of our members, Mary Ellen, who is a veteran teacher in Little Rock, says she has never understood why those in economic poverty are often accompanied by spiritual poverty as well. Many of us in the group agreed that education was certainly one of the major panaceas for economic poverty and for access to the American dream. Why is it then that some young people struggle to make the choices that would no doubt enable them to lead a better life? Of course, the question is complex as most social problems are, but perhaps part of the answer can be found in another verse in Proverbs 15.

The second part of verse 13 says, ". . . by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." What are some of the aspects of a child's life that might cause him or her to experience this sorrow, leading to a broken spirit? The causes might be multiple within the family; poverty, divorce, addictions, and abuses of all kinds are just a few of the possibilities..

If a child's spirit is broken by what she has witnessed and experienced by the time she reaches first grade, is it possible to restore it? Mary Ellen also said in our discussion yesterday that, if a teacher can reach a child's soul, a positive change might still be achievable.

I think I am one who can testify that positive teachers and role models can indeed provide the beginning steps to repairing the crushing weight of family circumstances. I give my sister Judy credit for this as well as my grandmother Mam. In addition, I think of some wonderful parents of my best friend in junior high, Beverly. Mr. Phillips was a car salesman (and manager I believe) of a car dealership in Sumner, Mississippi, when Beverly and I met in the eighth grade. Soon I was a regular overnight visitor to their house. I loved the sense of normalcy I got there.
I did not have to think about an alcoholic father and a clincally depressed mother. I didn't have to think about the affair with a married man my mother was having at the time. Mrs. Phillips was a homemaker, as we say today, who probably never even thought of having a career herself or working outside the home in the late 1950's. I loved going into the warm kitchen in the morning only to be asked by Mrs. Phillips what I wanted for breakfast. She then prepared it with care. I felt like a princess, instead of the broken child I was.

When I re-entered the teaching profession when I was 27, after the birth of two children, I wanted to incorporate the same traits I had seen in my role models: primarily to be real and to be generous to those with a broken spirit. In my first year of teaching at Southwest Junior High I was assigned all of the C, D., and F students. The other ninth grade teacher taught the A and B students since the school system we were in still "tracked" students by their academic promise. It was extremely hard to break out of the label one was given. My class after the lunch break was an especially difficult challenge since they not only included students who struggled academically but also those who had some behavioral problems. I struggled for a semester, I am afraid unsuccessfully, until I discovered some Scholastic books that focused on the interests of teenagers like riding motorcycles, buying cars, and so on. The students began to devour them in their short reading time during the class. The books were written at a fourth grade level, but they were able to instill confidence and a love of reading within the students. They moved up to other high interest books, but at a higher reading level, as they progressed. Before I left the school for another teaching position, one of my students came back one day in his Army uniform to update me on his new life in the service and to thank me for the turnaround in his life.

Changing students' lives is not such a cliche I think. Could the answer to the spiritual poverty question come in the form of filling those sorrowful hearts and restoring spirits one child at a time?