The Cringe Factor, Part I

"Benedict Arnold," my best friend called me one day. She called me that a few times afterwards, too.

My best friend had lived in the United States during some of her elementary school years, and I had not. Other than missionaries, who are a different breed, my experience with U.S. citizens had shown that the Ugly American was alive and well. When tourists came from the United States to visit Malaysia, more often than not they expected life to provide what they were used to in their home country: a comfy bed with sheets like they were used to, air conditioning that would make the muggy weather bearable for them, foods that they were more familiar with, and that devilish "the customer is always right" concept that creates monsters out of people.

And I would become deeply embarrassed.

I had no loyalties to my passport country, having not lived here yet. I had three birth certificates--one Thai, one Dutch (because of my father) and one American (because of my mother). I carried both Thai and American passports until I was 11 years old, and knew I could claim the Dutch one if I wanted to. So why should I defend the bad behavior of Americans? And why should I not complain about it when I saw it?

People who said that the United States was better than any other country, mystified me. I'd traveled to a lot of countries, and there were plenty of good ones out there (providing freedom and democracy and all that good stuff), with plenty of good people sprinkled around. What kind of hubris would make Americans boast like they did? European and Australian tourists were far more culturally aware, I noticed, than the Americans.

"The United States is NOT the greatest country," I told Lois.

"You're just a Benedict Arnold," she replied, hotly.

When I was 17 years old the new Chemistry teacher from my boarding school came by our island for a visit. She was 24 and wanted to take a train up through Thailand to Chiangmai in the north. She invited me to join her on the trip. So I packed my backpack, took the ferry over with her to the train station, and we headed north through rice paddies and rain-forested mountains. After touring around Bangkok, my teacher and I went to the bus station to catch an overnight air-conditioned bus up to Chiangmai. The idea was to lean our seats back, sleep while the driver drove, and arrive in the highlands of Thailand ready to sightsee.

The bus broke down somewhere out there on a dark road that night. That meant the frigid air conditioning went out, and we sat. And sat.

Eventually another overnight bus pulled up in front of us and we joined those passengers, along with our stuff. There weren't enough empty seats for the combination of two busloads, so my teacher was left standing in the aisle while I sat on the steps just inside the door. I heard her ask the conductor for a seat. He indicated that they were full. (Duh.) I heard her ask how long it would be until we arrived. It would be something like five hours, he said. I leaned back against something and settled in for a long night.

And then I heard my teacher tell the conductor, quite insistently and with voice raised (the way American tourists do when they think if they speak louder, people will understand better), that she had paid for a seat, and she should have one.

You've GOT to be kidding! I was so embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under a seat. No, I wanted to open the bus door and push her out. Okay, maybe I wanted her to just be quiet. I wanted to not be carrying my American passport next to THAT attitude. Did she even have a clue how lucky we were not to be back there in the broken down bus on the side of the road? It was just more of that "You owe me" attitude I had seen in other American tourists, and I wanted none of a country that behaved with that kind of entitlement and lack of cultural sensitivity.

I grew up with the sense that I was a citizen of the world. ("Third Culture Kids," the research calls us nowadays.) When it was time to go to college, I applied to a college about an hour's train ride outside of London, England, and was accepted. But then some administrators came through Singapore from my father's alma mater, a little college in Washington state. I just happened to ask them, "If I come to your college, can I get my hands on a pipe organ?" (An instrument I desperately wanted to learn to play.) They said sure. In fact, they said, they had...and they stopped to count them...six pipe organs at the college. That did it for me! Certainly I would get a chance at plenty of time on a pipe organ if I went to my dad's college out in the no-wheres.

On the strength of that serendipitous little conversation about pipe organs, my whole life pivoted, and this Benedict Arnold came to study and live in the United States.

(to be continued)

Glance Back

"I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago."
Psalm 77:11 (NIV)

The other evening I noticed a simple and pretty sunset to the west (pictured above). God's artistry in our California skies is always worth stopping and appreciating.

Then I felt an inner urge to turn around, whereupon I saw this:

Looking eastward I saw complexity, beauty, and glowing colors that I would not have suspected were there, because that's not where the action (sunset) was taking place.

Why, just when I am entering a new school term, would I pause to look over my shoulder at the past? Because the view may just give me more courage than if I look forwards.  

Sometimes the very things that we're glad to have left in the past, take on a gorgeous hue under God's paintbrush. God is coloring the grey beautiful, painting the storm clouds with pink-orange linings, bringing out a new third dimension in situations that we only saw in two dimensions. If we didn't take some time to look back over our shoulders at the right time, we would miss the reflections of His glory.

"Sweet light," as my photographer friend, Gary Hamburgh, refers to this time on the borders of darkness and light, day and night. Sweet light. The view over your shoulder may well be more beautiful than the view ahead of you, where you think the light is. Ellen White, an early writer in my church, described this same sentiment.

In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of our advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history. (Ellen G. White. Life Sketches, 196.)

Glance back. If you do so with a heart for clear vision, you may arrive at the same conclusion I have:

We have nothing to fear.

Tribal Markings

I've pondered this week's Comeback Bloggers' prompt to write about tribal markings--how we "all choose to do body decorations (or not) in a way that is like tribal marking. We modify hair, we modify our ears, we modify our bodies. We wear certain clothing because it marks us as belonging to some group."

And I've thought: If I write about this, people are going to think my tribe is nuts.

Okay, so be it. We all live in quirky families, if we'll just admit it.

So, I grew up in a church where we did not wear jewelry of certain types. The idea was that we were following the Bible verse literally, which says,

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. (1 Timothy 2:9-10, KJV)

This was our adornment guide when I was growing up. It is still the guide for my fellow denominational members in most parts of the country and the world. While some might read the guidance from Paul to mean that we should give more emphasis to our inner character than to external decoration because character takes our attention and effort (ahem; that would be my understanding of what he's saying), in my church it got interpreted to mean (ahem; shallowly, in my opinion) no wearing of necklaces, earrings, rings or bracelets.

As is the case in most churches who tend toward the literalist reading of the Word, this resulted in inconsistencies. No one seemed to pay any attention to the issue of braided hair; that one was fine. And no one went around asking whether your church suit was from Nordstrom or JC Penney or a thrift store. The "tribal marking" really was focused on certain types of jewelry that would make another church member's hair stand on end, and would mark you as being outside the boundaries of righteousness.

Ironically and predictably, women who love beautiful things found other ways to adorn themselves acceptably within the confines of the way our church culture interpreted 1 Timothy 2:9. My mom wore beautiful brooches, some with gold and precious stones in them. Another missionary woman doctor who worked near the opal mines in New Guinea gave my mom a massive, breathtakingly beautiful green-blue opal (one I hope to inherit someday) set in a gold brooch. My mom wore that brooch, or a cameo brooch, or a brooch with pearls in it, or a scarf clip that was decorative and lovely. And there were other inconsistencies: someone of means who would not be comfortable with his wife wearing a pearl necklace might wear a Rolex watch. Or a woman could get away with a watch that had jewelry-ish decorations on it because it was functional. I once heard someone say, with significant sass, that if the jewelry touched your skin it was not okay, but if it only touched the fabric of your clothes, you were good to go. And others joked that when we get to heaven everyone else will know us by the watches in our crowns--making the gold circlet okay because it is also functional.

And I shake my head in disbelief.

Since I'm in a denomination that is worldwide, and different regions don't talk to one another enough to get everyone on the same page, and thus there are lifestyle differences. And since I travel quite a lot, I get to see a variety of interpretations of the verses from 1 Timothy. I was surprised when I took a year off college to work at a school in Finland, to find that necklaces and rings were perfectly acceptable, but the school staff had long discussions in faculty meeting about girls who were wearing earrings. I asked, "How is it that other jewelry is okay, but earrings are not?" No teacher had an answer for me, but later in the day when I dropped by the music teacher's apartment for something, she said to me, "I've been thinking about your question. The problem with earrings is that you have to mutilate your body in order to wear them." Oh. I see.

And I walked away from there shaking my head in disbelief.

One outcome of not being able to wear rings was that people in the church of my childhood simply did not wear wedding rings. Pastors would tell new converts that the wedding rings had to come off before they could be baptized. (See? I told you that readers would think my tribe was nuts.) For Marguerite, my parents' neighbor across the street, that was the last straw. She would not take her wedding ring off and just kept coming to church with it on, but didn't become a member.

Frankly, the whole "no-rings" thing really irritated me. I was a single young adult working in an environment where there were quite a few nice men who were part of my church, and I couldn't tell if they were just married men being friendly, or if they were actually single and showing some interest. "If men would just do us the courtesy of wearing wedding rings," I stormed to my single friends, "we wouldn't have to play a guessing game as to their availability."

And then, to add insult to injury, some high-up committee decided that wedding rings were okay. How they decided it, I don't know. Perhaps they were just capitulating to the fact that those liberal California church members were already doing it. But at that point, quite simply, Marguerite said "Okay," and joined the church with no grudges held.

And I shake my head in disbelief.

So now I'm living in that liberal land of California again. It's nice here. No one has a thing against wearing jewelry, even in the church context. I wear my pieces of jewelry when I'm away from work. My work does not have an anti-jewelry policy, but because my church culture at large is still in a state of flux, and because my area of the university serves a large population of denominational teachers--some of whom live and work in conservative areas of the western U.S.--, and because I don't see any point in offending or distracting the more conservative teachers, I don't wear jewelry to work except for my engagement and wedding rings. It takes summoning up all the maturity I might have to do it (you know those verses in the New Testament about doing something for the sake of the weaker brother?). But I think it's probably the better part of wisdom, if I want to be heard and respected by all, and to keep my place at the table of national-level influencers in denominational education.

And at those last two sentences, I shake my head in disbelief.

That big gorgeous green-blue opal brooch, though? I intend to wear that to work or even a national-level denominational committee, someday.

Wounded

My brother and me in Rome, early 1975

Every kid, I suppose, has an "injury story" of some sort, the kind that puts little tendrils into one's life tale and contributes to one's identity. My husband tells one about the time he shot himself in the head with an arrow. (It's a good story.) One of my best friends spent weeks in a hospital as a two-year old, surviving burns from being scalded by hot water in a bathtub when her mom's attention had turned elsewhere at the wrong moment. Another best friend walks with a cane to this day because her hip is malformed, the outcome of an infection resulting from a childhood immunization administered in India with a dirty needle.

I have written about my "defining injury" here, but having a somewhat impulsive personality, I have collected some other memorable injuries, as well.

Torrential downpours are typical in the hot afternoons of the rainy season on my home island of Penang, Malaysia. The water has to go somewhere, and thus the city developed a system of drains, most of them open, along the sides of houses and streets. The drains by our house were little shallow ones that caught the runoff from the roofs and channeled it away to the larger drains. Every now and then I'd see a shrew scuttle down the open drain and dodge into a pipe leading to a downspout. (Nasty little guys, those shrews.) And every now and then one of the hospital gardeners would come along with a long-handled stiff brush, walking along and scrubbing the drains so that the black-and-green greepsch wouldn't build up into a thick slime.

People weren't safety-obsessed back in those days, so the drains remained open, easy to unplug and easy to clean. As we ran around playing we knew when to hop across the drain. If you tripped and fell by a drain near the house, you were just a klutz who wasn't looking where they were going. Pay attention next time, kid.

But down by the main road in front of the mission hospital there were deeper open drains. I remember them being about 2 feet deep or more, built that way so as to carry away all the accumulated water from our little shallow drains that emptied into them. Alongside the deeper drain was a paved pathway for pedestrians. We didn't happen to go down there very often, so while we were aware the drain was there, we weren't altogether familiar with the margins we needed to keep when walking along it. And the open drain was perhaps too wide to jump, so it didn't offer the same ease of the ones by our houses.

Being kids and liking to goof off, we were horsing around one day by the big drain when I was in 7th grade. We'd gotten big enough to hop across if we put some energy into the jump, and the risk made it fun for the lads to try. I tried it, too, but I'm not as good a jumper. On the way down--short of my goal--my shin caught the cement edge of the drain, leaving a big gash that dug down to my leg bone. I walked into the hospital crying, shin bleeding enthusiastically, and got cleaned up by one of the nurses. There was no talk of stitches, just a nice fat pad of sterile gauze over the wound and taped down.

I probably wouldn't remember my injury so well except that we were due to leave shortly to Europe and the United States for furlough. Had we stayed home in Malaysia I would have left the wound open to the air and it would have healed quickly. But it was winter in the northern climes, and I had to wear panty hose plus wool pants (where do you buy wool pants in Malaysia?) to stay warm enough as we dropped into Italy to get a look at the Vatican on our way "back" to the U.S.

Rome fascinated me. Since my dad was not along on this trip, my mom signed us up for guided tours. That's when I learned the value of a professional tour guide--so much history and culture to be learned. It was absolutely marvelous, and I soaked it up!

But there was my wounded leg to distract me in Rome. I didn't have fresh bandages along, so my hose continually scraped across my wound as we walked the cobblestones and marble floors of the old historic spots. One of my forever-etched memories of Rome, besides the Sistine chapel, the Parthenon, and the Coliseum, is that of undressing in the hotel room every night and trying to peel my hose out of the pus-encrusted scab on my leg.

There's probably some deeper metaphor in that, but I don't know what it would be. Maybe that when you leave a wound open rather than covering it up, it's going to heal a little better? Some of my readers have more expertise in these things than I.

Old Age: An Evening with My Parents

My parents on their 56th anniversary in June

Last night I walked into the TV room in the Memory Care section of the assisted living where my parents reside. There they were, just the two of them watching a movie. I'd been out of town for the long weekend, and I'd missed them.

My dad sat beside my mom, their chairs about two feet apart, their walkers parked in front of them as if they needed to be ready to rev up and go at any moment. His head was bowed, his hands folded with fingers intertwined in front of his chest, and he was snoozing.

My mother looked up, and as she watched me walk in there wasn't a glint of recognition in her eyes. Just her mouth open as she looked at me and tried to place me. I drew up a chair beside her and took her hand.

"How's my mama?" Usually that would bring a smile to her face.

She paused a moment and then replied tentatively, still not recognizing me. "She's fine."

My heart sank as I drew closer to her and smiled. "Well, you're my mama and I'm very glad to see you," I said. She was still looking at me in wonderment...as in, "wonder"-ment. Still trying to place me. "What are you watching?" I asked, seeing the biblical characters on the screen. Some lady was dying and disciples were gathered around her.

Mama didn't respond.

"Do you know what the story is?" I asked again.

She still didn't respond.

"Well, it looks like a Bible story," I said, letting her off the hook. We sat for a minute, me holding her hand, both of us watching.

Valerie the Caregiver beckoned to me from the hallway, and I rose to go talk with her.

"She's not had her evening Xanax," Valerie said. "She wouldn't take her blood pressure medication either."

"Has she been difficult?" I asked.

"No. She just sat right here on her walker seat this afternoon and slept, but she wouldn't eat and she wouldn't go anywhere else. And when it was time for her supper this evening she wouldn't eat."

"Do you want me to get her to take her meds?" I asked.

"Well, maybe her blood pressure medication," Valerie said. "Do you think she should take her Xanax?"

She was asking me? I don't know. They know more about giving meds than I do. Xanax is PRN, though. "If she's not being obstinate," I said, "She probably doesn't need it."

"No," said Valerie.

"Well, maybe bring me her blood pressure pill, and I'll get her to take it," I said, and went back to sit with my parents while Valerie headed down the hall to the meds room.

I moved my chair to the other side of my mom, between her and my dad, and gave my dad a kiss on the cheek. "Hi, Daddy," I said, putting an arm across the back of his shoulders.

He came to. "Oh, hello," he said. "Aren't you back early from your vacation?"

"I just came back. My grandkids got picked up by their parents, and then I came straight over to see you."

"Oh, and did you have a nice time?"

"Yes, I did. Looks like Mama didn't have a great day though?" I asked. I glanced over at Mama. She didn't show any interest in what we were talking about as she continued watching the TV.

"She's been worse most of the time since you left," Daddy said. "She doesn't talk much, and she yells at the caregivers to 'Get out!' But I guess they are specialists in dealing with people like that."

"Yes," I said. "They don't let it bother them." Both my dad and I have had a hard time with the embarrassment that comes when my mom does things that are socially unacceptable and rude. "That's her Alzheimer's talking," I keep saying by way of reminder to my dad and myself. But we apologize to the caregivers anyhow.

"This morning she wouldn't leave the breakfast table," said my dad quietly. "She wouldn't move, and they needed to set up the tablecloths for lunch. I couldn't help. I've been having more pain." He pointed out that this was new pain--ulnar pain that burned in the outside edge of his palms right down to his fingertips. When you have your own pain, you can't tend another person's pain.

"Oh dear," I said. Valerie came into the TV room with the blood pressure pill in a little paper cup, and a plastic clear cup of water. She handed them to me.

"Mama," I said. "Here's a blood pressure pill for you." My mom looked suspiciously at it and clamped her lips together. "You need to take this to keep your blood pressure in a healthy spot," I added. "You've had much better blood pressure since you started taking these little guys. Come on, can I help you?"

Mama resisted, and looked mad. I brought the paper cup with the pill up toward her lips and said, "Ahh pahk!" They're the Thai words my mom used to say to me when I was a toddler and she was feeding me. "Ahh pahk." Open your mouth. It worked like a charm. Her mouth opened, I popped the pill in and handed her the cup of water. She slowly raised the cup, s-l-o-w-l-y, tipping it as she lifted it so the water was in danger of spilling down her dress. I caught her hand and helped her raise the cup to her lips. She drank and then made a bitter, bitter face.

"Taste nasty?" I asked, grinning. She screwed up her face worse. "Here, drink more water," I said, helping her lift the cup again. She drank until it was gone. "It's good for you to stay hydrated, Mama," I said. She smiled a little, seeming to warm to my interest in her well-being. And she went back to watching TV.

I turned to my dad. "I'm sorry, Daddy," I said. "It must be hard for you to watch her go downhill."

He didn't respond to that, but started telling me about how he tried to explain to her that the workers mean well and that she should treat them a little more nicely. With my dad life is all reason and system. As my parents both falter he copes with her disease by trying to explain to her logically how to deal with life. These are his tools, and he has no other ones. He has never once acknowledged that it's painful to see his wife forget who he is, to see her personality change; to watch her slowly lose her mind, her ability to swallow at times, her ability to take care of herself, her ability to control her bodily functions. Never once.

The movie had ended. "Full of Grace," it was called, about the mother of Jesus. My dad pointed out that the caregivers haven't figured out that Catholic movies don't connect with them, but also generously added that the movies are interesting. The Netflix movie selection screen glowed, frozen, in the dimness of the room as we talked.

We got up and made our way down the hall to my mom's room. My dad's room is right across the hall from her; they let him live in Memory Care so that my parents can continue to be together, at least until Memory Care fills up and they need his room. I think it will be awhile.

Instead of calling on Valerie the Caregiver, I got my mom bathroomed, nightgowned and into bed as my act of love for her. As she tried to lie back in bed and her left leg muscle spasmed, and she howled in pain. She's always been sensitive, but it's gotten worse with her Alzheimer's. I waited a bit for it to pass, and we tried again, this time successfully although she was still groaning. I kissed her on the cheek and told her she is a good mom. She just looked at me.

I turned to tell my dad, who was sitting on the couch next to my mom's bed and snoozing again, "You can come kiss her goodnight." I knew it would start his evening good-night ritual. He raised his head, grinned and told me that last night he kissed her goodnight three times--twice when she got in bed, and then he'd come back in the middle of the night to give her another kiss. "But I don't think she remembered, today," he said.

"Well, the important thing is that she's happy when you do it," I told him.

He pushed himself slowly up from the couch and wobbled over to kiss Mama in her single bed where she has slept for the last year, separate from him because of the discomfort caused by her incontinence. She's been lonely, but it had gotten to be too much for him, waking up in a wet bed several times a week. He was hyper-aware at first of how people would judge them, sleeping in separate beds, but he seems to not worry about that anymore; his own mind is starting to slip, and with it his social concerns.

My dad leaned down and kissed his wife goodnight.

She was already asleep.

~~~

My dad wanted to walk me to the door. We made our way slowly out of Memory Care (he has the code to the door) and down the hall toward the entry doors, locked earlier in the evening.

"I don't think I'll sleep very well tonight," he told me. "I never do. I can fall asleep sitting up, but I can't sleep lying down." My dad has always had a significant sleep disorder, no doubt exacerbated by his boyhood in Holland under the Nazi occupation as well as violent trauma experienced when he was in the navy. The nights are long, and he has always spent them restless.

"Well," I said lightly, unwilling to take on a counselor role when I was so tired, myself, "maybe you should sit up on the couch all night and sleep well." 

He smiled. It's how we banter.

I hugged him goodnight at the door and planted a kiss on his cheek. "I love you, Daddy." And I headed out the door to the car where it was parked in front of the dining room.

As I sat in the car and texted my husband that I was headed home, I glanced up through the windows and saw my dad making his way slowly with his walker back past the open door of the dining room. He paused, peered out toward where the car was parked, no doubt saw his own bent-over reflection, and then proceeded on and out of sight.

And I felt prickles behind my eyes and a huge lump in my throat.