Callings

Hugh Jr. and Hugh Sr. outside Gillette Stadium, one of the last photos taken of my dad

 

“You missed your calling.”

Fathers say perplexing things sometimes, and Fathers’ Day seems like as good a day as any to remember them. In a solemn moment, my father offered the above observation several years ago, and it haunts me the way an echo haunts a canyon—mainly because I’d been turning the same notion over and over in my mind for many years before that.

Some people are born lucky and have but one calling that speaks to them loudly and clearly all their lives. When I see these people—and they show up with a refreshing frequency on reality shows such as “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” the latter being one of my absolute favorite television experiences of all time—I feel stirrings of both kinship and envy. I admire their devotion and dedication to their talents and consider the depth of my own past commitments to the written word. At the same time, I am reminded of how often my loyalty to literature has slipped and faltered. There too, echoes from the past resound.

I grew up in an era when “doctor” or “lawyer” were the two top attainable career goals for one’s children. Sure, “president” got mentioned fairly frequently, but I could always detect a catch in my parents’ voices when they said it. There was realism and practicality—common sense, my father frequently extolled—and then there was the dreamer’s realm of fantasy—those “pie in the sky” aspirations that might tempt us for a while but would ultimately bring us up short. As anyone who grew up playing the game of “Life” knew: you drew the largest paychecks from “doctor” and “lawyer,” and “president” wasn’t a viable option on the game board.

Alas, from an early age, I chose another option that wasn’t on the board: the dreamer’s realm of fiction writing.

When I watch the interviews on talent shows, two types of participants often reduce me to tears: contestants whose family members so fully support their goals that they’ll pack up the minivan and drive across the country together for the auditions, and contestants whose families have abandoned them and left them to follow their artistic aspirations alone (and let’s be honest, when that aspiration is something like dance, there’s more than a little homophobia at play in many of the reactions).

“You’ll never make a decent living at that,” my father warned me when I first mentioned my plans to become a fiction writer. “Do you really think someone would want to publish something like that?” he asked after reading one of my short stories. “I’d be ashamed of myself,” he added—his subjective take on the choice of a front-and-center gay narrator, perhaps.

It was the last time I would show him any of my work. Years later, after that story had been published along with several others, he summed up his feelings by unknowingly paraphrasing the final line of a James Wright poem that has haunted many an aspiring writer:

 

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

 (from “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”)

 

My father may have been drunk when he informed me that I had wasted my life; after all, he rarely called me when he was sober. Even so, his feelings were made quite clear when he demanded that I forego my own graduate-school commencement ceremony in order to come home and attend my sister’s graduation from medical school. At the party following that event, my father mentioned matter-of-factly to a friend that I, too, had just graduated from school, the University of Idaho. The only problem with that was that I had just received—in absentia, of course—my MFA degree from the University of Iowa, the premiere writing program in the country.

All water under the bridge, I told myself as I headed back to my hometown a year ago to spend extended periods of time with my father in his final months. During those stays, the inevitable questions arose: “Why didn’t you become a doctor?” “Did you ever think of becoming a lawyer?”

I answered them dutifully and honestly, in order: “I can’t stand the sight of blood,” and “Yes, and I haven’t ruled it out entirely just yet.”

These questions about medicine and law were, in their own way, high compliments. He acknowledged that I had done well enough in school to pursue and excel in either one. By then, however, my father understood that neither career option reflected my true calling. He still wasn’t completely sold on the idea of writing, and I confessed that there were far too many days when I wasn’t, either.

Even so, my father had one request to make. He asked if I would write something exclusively for him: his eulogy.

My father did not ask me to do this because of some deathbed epiphany that his son was, indeed, a writer. He was harking back to his final words in that conversation from years earlier: “You have missed your calling.”

At the time, we had been discussing matters of the soul and spirit, and my father was suddenly filled with the belief that I should have gone into the ministry. “That’s your true calling,” he said. “You should be writing sermons instead of short stories.”

Now, nearly a year after his death, I reply: “Dad, at their best, they are one in the same, just like us.”

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Book Value

When I was young, I borrowed most of the books I read from the local library. My public high school provided dog-eared copies of the classics in my college-prep literature classes. To further satisfy my growing reading appetite, I would ride my bicycle downtown to a local hardware store that kept a few ramshackle shelves of coverless remaindered paperbacks near the front door. For forty cents each (or three for a buck), I could pedal home with a combination of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the not-quite-latest collection of greatest Mad magazine gags (stupid answers to stupid questions, anyone?).

To this day, I continue to haunt second-hand bookshops, yard sales, and the remainder bins at big-box stores in search of bargains. At the end of the semiannual book sale at our local library, I came home with two brown paper shopping bags full of wonderful finds, including the collected poems of Stanley Kunitz, Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, Chang-Rae Lee’s The Surrendered, Tab Hunter’s Confidential, and a couple of titles by Bill O’Reilly (stupid answers to stupid questions, anyone?). I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the bookcases in which those books now reside cost substantially more than the books themselves.

In each one of the instances noted above, my reading experience provided absolutely no compensation to the authors of the books themselves.

This is why I wince a little every time fellow lovers of literature rhapsodize about the beauty and allure of used bookshops. I cringe a bit when poets, novelists, and journalists extol the value and necessity of public libraries. I wince and cringe with the heart of a co-conspirator, for I, too, value and support these institutions. And yet by patronizing both of them, readers rob the arts to a greater extent than purchases made at the Amazons and Barnes & Nobles of the world. Access to free, remaindered, or used books may boost readership, but each one deprives writers of compensation for their work. Seen another way, they literally lower the value of the written word.

I learned at an early age that writers should expect little, if anything, in the way of recognition or remuneration for their efforts. Mostly one should expect rejection—either in the form of “thank you, but not for us” letters from potential publishers or “nice try, but not for me” comments from readers. Many literary writers still subscribe to the somewhat romantic “starving artist” archetype, envisioning themselves in tiny, unheated lofts subsisting entirely on grilled cheese sandwiches, flat soda, and watered-down tomato soup as they churn out page after page of unappreciated brilliance.

One might expect that things would have improved over the past few decades, but they haven’t, at least not in the publishing industry. In fact, the situation has become even more psychologically unhealthy. These days, many magazines and journals require hopeful writers to pay a “reading fee” for the opportunity to be considered for publication. In a number of instances, specious contests have replaced the normal submission process. The literary world has become more like a lottery in more ways than one. What was once called the “table of contents” in some books and journals might now be better referred to as a “list of winners.”

Editors and publishers will tell you that reading fees and contest are necessary evils in order to meet their financial demands. After all, there are bills to pay: editorial staff, office assistants, designers, printers, distributors, and so on. On top of that, one must pay for electricity, water, heat, telephone, and so on.

Now consider that for many literary journals, the person who provides the actual content, the writer, is often paid very little, if at all. Despite having potentially invested in college tuition, workshop or residency costs, and all those reading/entry fees, publication rarely means “hitting the jackpot.” A poem that took fifteen to twenty hours to write might net ten dollars. A historical piece that required months of research, writing, and revising might reward you with three or four copies of the obscure journal that accepted it.

With that in mind, you might wonder why anyone in his or her right mind would pursue a literary career in the first place. Perhaps this explains why so many writers place their full and earnest faith in the metaphorical value of writing. In this scenario, writers are akin to mystics who channel universal truths onto the page. This probably explains why some writers’ conferences can seem like cults to non-bookish outsiders—and why some attendees can come across as desperate martyrs. I’m reminded of a lighthearted quip a fellow writer once told me on sharing his latest piece: “I suffer for my art; now you can suffer, too.”

I worry that this kind of attitude—this self-indulgent elevation of “literature”—further devalues the entire creative enterprise. It fosters a disconnect between the writer on high and the lowly reader, which in turn leads to dwindling book sales and meager showings at readings. Many of us who remain committed to the written word nonetheless felt a twinge of recognition and understanding when someone posted on Facebook: “April is National Poetry Month, that time of year when we should all force ourselves to attend dozens of readings and pretend to be enjoying ourselves.”

So you see, in some ways I’m still a terrible supporter of the arts. I read the latest articles about the financial struggles in the publishing world and can’t escape the sinking feeling that, in some ways, we brought this on ourselves. For decades, writers have accepted disproportionate compensation for their work without much complaint. As readers, we became more and more accustomed to paying little—if anything—for the works we’ve consumed. And in a bizarre twist of hypocrisy, we voiced our strongest support for those institutions that hurt writers the most. With that in mind, the crumbling nature of the publishing world today shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Still, I hold onto a shred of optimism about the future. Here are a few final thoughts and suggestions, and I welcome others:

• Don’t be deluded—and I mean that literally, not figuratively. Stop buying into harmful myths like the “starving artist” I mentioned earlier. Demand that writers be paid for their work, and if it has to be a small amount, at least ensure that it’s not an insulting or demeaning amount. If a magazine or journal can come up with a business plan that covers the costs of printing and production, it should also account for the value of the content itself—the author’s compensation.
• Do what you can to help publishers meet these increased financial challenges by subscribing to those magazines and journals whose work you respect and admire. (I know, I know: Once again, it’s up to the writers to cough up more money in the hopes of supporting their own potential paychecks. Maybe you can get friends and family members to subscribe as well, or convince some rich benefactor to bequeath millions to the journal in question.)
• Support your local library not only by checking out books but by getting out your checkbook. That way they can purchase more books and journal subscriptions.
•  Realize that free public readings aren’t really “free” and support both the presenter and the host bookstore by purchasing book(s).
•  Enjoy your bargain book from the remainder bin, but support the writer with a full-price purchase of another title if you liked his or her work.
•  Most of all, value what you do, whether you read or write. If literature does indeed have worth, then we should all be ready and willing to pay for it.

Stronger

Preface

No, this piece is not about Kelly Clarkson’s current Top 40 hit, “Stronger,” though I’m gladdened by its success, especially because of Clarkson’s popularity among gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth. This essay is about my father and me, how our relationship changed over time, and about the prevailing power of love.

But if that all sounds rather sugary and sweet, then maybe we should go back to that Kelly Clarkson song for a moment and track down the source of its anthemic chorus, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Kids and pop culture connoisseurs of America, welcome to the world of Friederich Nietzsche. Yes, the German philosopher who introduced us to the dark concept of “nihilism” provided the original inspiration for Clarkson’s current hit with this quotation: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Before Nietzsche went insane toward the end of his life, he penned some of the most revolutionary remarks in modern philosophy, including this one: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

I’ve been meditating on those two statements after reading Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s astonishing “School of Hate: One Town’s War on Gay Teens” in Rolling Stone Issue 1150 (Feb. 16, 2012; link below), continuing to think about the Rutgers suicide (referenced in my last blog), and struggling to come to terms with the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I was also inspired by New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s op-ed recognition of the founding of ACT UP by Larry Kramer 25 years ago this month (“The Living after the Dying;” link below). During the rewriting of this piece, another of Bruni’s columns, “Rethinking His Religion,” likewise moved me deeply, as did Maureen Dowd’s piece on fathers and sons, “How Oedipus Wrecks.” (Links to both are also posted below.)

I mention these sources to provide context in advance of sharing something that is quite deeply personal. Only a handful of people have heard some of these stories, and I continue to wrestle with their influence and consequences today. I withheld some details while my parents were alive but find that now, in grieving for them, pathways to the past that were once blocked off are now open for travel once again.

Suicide, murder, death by disease: How do we confront and survive such horrors in the world, especially those that are motivated and/or perpetuated by forces that are sometimes close to home, such as racism and homophobia? For me, the answer has always been clear. One at a time, we share our stories and experiences, both real and imagined. We listen, and then we respond. Together, we learn about lives different from our own—through fiction, poetry, music, painting, and every other creative endeavor. In developing our senses of empathy and understanding, we do what we can to make the world a better place.

This, then, is my personal response to many of the tragedies we have heard about in the news recently. It is a true story of survival and redemption, an exploration of how one person (me) found the strength to endure in such difficult and often dangerous times.

"Encounter/Exposure" — Multiple-exposure self-portrait taken back in the day.

 What Didn’t Kill Me

“They should all be rounded up, taken into a field, and shot.”

That was my father back in the late 70’s, responding to a news story about Dade County, Florida, and the ordinance it had passed prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Citrus Queen Anita Bryant was no doubt on the television stirring up homophobic sentiment among the growing crowds who had come to hear her rally against the ordinance under the guise of the innocent-sounding group “Save Our Children.” The homosexuals, Bryant shouted into her microphone, must be stopped. My father obviously agreed.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what homosexuality was, even though I had some inkling that it was manifesting itself within me. “Fag,” “gay,” and “queer” were insults regularly hurled at me in school, not because I displayed any overt sexual interest in men, but because I was younger, weaker, and smarter than most of my peers.  “Fag,” “gay,” and “queer” were also insults regularly sneered by Archie Bunker on the classic sitcom “All in the Family.” Archie was something of a hero for my father, and to this day, I doubt that he fully understood that the character was intended as a parody, his prejudices a cause for ridicule. When I would come home crying after occasional fights and beatings, my father would sternly advise me to “fight back like a real man.” It was clear to me that, in his eyes at least, I was at risk for becoming something “other” than a man.

I worked on developing a tough outer shell during my school years, mostly by immersing myself in music and shutting out the rest of the world. A quick look at my cassette mixes of the period reveals an obsession with punk rock and goth music. The glittering gaiety of disco held no interest or sway with me. I wanted rhythms and melodies that were darker and more complex, more in keeping with my shaded heart. I favored love songs in which the pronouns and protagonists were gender-neutral.

In my blue-collar hometown, there were no “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered , and questioning youth” clubs or alliances in school. (N.B.: I’ll be shortening that list of identifiers to the commonly used “GLBTQ” throughout this entry, with apologies to those who question the arrangement of those letters.) There was no “welcoming congregation” in any of the local churches. I knew only one openly gay person, a disco-obsessed coworker with crude mannerisms who often showed up at work either drunk or stoned. There was no Web or Internet to provide any additional information about homosexuality or to engage in any social networking. There was mostly the television, with its occasional news story about gay-bashing and raids on “deviant sex clubs,” and my father’s vocal support of killing all the queers that the cops rounded up. Though I suspected that she disagreed, my mother remained silent.

I would often retreat to the basement or my bedroom, playing strange and obscure albums I had heard and read about during my job at a local music store. These would become the soundtrack to my adolescent dialogues with God, the ones in which I prayed for a change in my character while simultaneously praying for the cute guy in calculus class to notice me, the ones in which I would ask God why He had made me the way I was if my existence supposedly offended Him. If, as my mother had taught me, God was the source and sum of all human love, why was my love not a valid part of that equation?

One night, during my senior year, I concluded that there was no possible reconciliation between who I was and who I should be. Despite all the high grades in school and my teachers’ reports of exemplary conduct, I was more evil than good. I was a blot in God’s perfect world, an aberration, a mistake. Maybe, I thought, my father was right. Maybe people like me were better off dead.

And so, on a sudden impulse, I reached for the nearest weapon I could find—in this case, a dagger hanging on my bedroom wall. To be honest, it was a decorative dagger, purchased during a school-sponsored trip to Spain a year earlier. Even so, it was metal and its point was sharp. It would certainly do the trick. Without any second thoughts, I closed my eyes, held the dagger out with both hands, and plunged it toward my heart.

The heels of my hands punched into my chest. There was pain, but not the deep stab I’d expected. It felt more like a tiny bite, a bee-sting.

I looked down to see the blade bent flat and harmless against my chest. The tip had drawn blood, but left little more than a nick in the skin.

Inside, I heard a voice: “No, not this. Not you.” God was speaking directly to me. In that instant, I had found a faith deeper and truer than any I had previously known. My beliefs no longer relied on old-world hand-me-downs from parents and priests. I had just witnessed an actual miracle, a real-life experience imbued with divine grace and meaning. (Some years later, a college physician would explain the “miracle” in more clinical terms: I have an unusual bone spur located directly beneath my sternum, an abnormality that had been either absent or at least undetected throughout my entire life. Make of that what you will.)

To this day, I don’t know who or what had prevented my suicide—and yes, let’s be honest; that’s the word for what I had attempted. Even so, whatever happened that day left me with a renewed awe and reverence for this extraordinary gift of life.

In other words, it made me stronger.

Getting Stronger

Fast-forward to the University of Montana in the early 90s. A lesbian couple and I had been invited into a sociology classroom to discuss whether GLBTQ people should be allowed to adopt children. At the time, I was a graduate student in the English department, an “out” gay man to most of my friends and colleagues yet not to the students in the composition classes I taught.

A woman near the back raised her hand. “I don’t have any problem with you all being gay and what not,” she said. “But I just don’t think it’s fair to do that to the kids.” She paused, perhaps waiting for a murmur of support from her classmates. “I mean, the other kids would just tease them and make fun of them. It just wouldn’t be fair to the children.”

Ah yes; the children. Recollections of Anita Bryant sparked a prickly heat in my chest, but I tried to remain cool and calm on the outside. In the most even tone I could muster, I asked the woman, “Would that be your kids doing the teasing? Because I fail to see how someone else’s bad parenting skills should suddenly become my problem and prevent me from raising my own children with the decent values I intend to teach them.”

The woman squirmed in her seat. I could imagine her offense at my remarks: This class was supposed to be about queer people and their homosexuality, not straight people and their homophobia. Inasmuch as I was tired of straight people talking like experts about homosexuality, I was also tired of being a homosexual asked to talk about homophobia. Why did the task of dealing with gay-bashing—and other examples of bias-based violence, to some extent—always seem to get shoved back onto the backs of the targets of such violence? Hadn’t we been burdened with enough in our lives?

Yes, we had. But then, as I witnessed time after time among a number of GLBTQ friends and allies, we were that much stronger because of it. Through mutual support and sheer determination, we had weathered multiple storms and faced the next ones head-on. We had the courage of our convictions and the strength of our beliefs—convictions and beliefs that had been tested repeatedly, with all of that resulting in a hard-won faith in our God-given characters and abilities.

I recalled that sociology-class encounter as I read a Rolling Stone article about a recent string of teen suicides in the Annoka-Hennepin school district in Minnesota. The story received national attention primarily because of the district’s representative, former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, and her Bryant-like crusade against homosexuality. She and her cohorts had promoted policies within the school district that prohibited any mention or discussion of homosexuality, even when it was crucial to addressing any instances of bullying or harassment. Sensitive GLBTQ students understood the underlying message: homosexuality was a sin, an evil in society, a sickness so despicable that it should not even be discussed, in public or in private. In a twisted logic reminiscent of rape cases in which the victims are blamed for provoking the attack, these students were advised to tone down their own behaviors and just be more careful around bullies. One victim noted that while teachers reprimanded students who used racial slurs, homophobic insults went unchallenged.

Recent protests around both the Annoka-Hennepin suicides, the Trayvon Martin murder, and other tragedies show that many people in society—perhaps even the majority, at long last—are sick of suffering such losses in silence. In calling for an end to toxic mindsets like homophobia and racism, justice-seeking people are now standing their ground and demanding that the law protect them from real threats such as armed vigilantes and over-zealous politicians. Community organizers and activists continue to work to create a safer, saner, and more supportive world for the next generation—not one in which ignorance masquerades as authority in order to diminish or extinguish the lives of others.

For years after coming out as a gay man, I had been working to achieve similar peaceful goals. In addition to organizing support groups for GLBTQ youth, I worked with the leaders of church congregations to make them more welcoming places. I wrote articles and edited a statewide GLBT newspaper. (“Q” wasn’t in the masthead at the time, and the arrangement of the other terms was always a hot-button topic.)

As a balance to activism, I engaged in some subversion as well. Together with a group of gay and lesbian cohorts, I infiltrated a local chapter meeting of noted homophobe Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. At the end of that event, the chairperson came by to thank us for attending. “Your presence here tonight has really opened my eyes,” she said. I noted that all of us had recited the Pledge of Allegiance together at the start of the meeting, and that I for one proudly believed each and every word. “Liberty and justice for all,” I repeated, placing extra emphasis on “for all.” She nodded; she understood. Despite our initial fears of one another, we could connect after all.

In the weeks leading up to my father’s death last June, I told him many of these stories that I am telling you now. (I did not, however, tell him about the suicide attempt, nor about how his own behavior had played a major role in that.) I had been spending as much time with him as I could, trying my best to tolerate his constant cigarette smoking even as cancer, heart disease, and numerous other ailments waged war within his body.

It came as no surprise to me that in addition to football and baseball, some of his favorite television programs were courtroom reality shows: “Judge Judy, “ Judge Joe Brown,” “Judge Jeanine Pirro.” Every so often, a gay or lesbian plaintiff or defendant would take the stand. Their appearances on the show seemed quite normal and never elicited comment, positive or negative, from my father.

But then, just days before his death, my father delivered one final judgment.

We had just spent hours talking about love, sharing stories about the people who had mattered most to us in our lives while a Red Sox rebroadcast droned on in the background. After confessing our secret boyhood crushes, he glanced at the clock. “My God,” he said. “It’s way past midnight!”

Instead of wrapping up the conversation and saying our goodnights, my father raised his hand to hold my attention. “One more thing,” he said. He looked down at the floor, then back up at me. “You know, you’re a lot stronger than I ever gave you credit for. Don’t you ever let anyone take that away from you.”

His words came as a shock. I had never expected them. In fact, I had long ago convinced myself that I did not need them. Because of that, he and I had often kept our distance—both figuratively and literally. And yet, at long last, my father had looked deep inside me and approved of what was there.

This growing approval had been evident over many visits made by my husband and me. Together, the three of us had shared all sorts of stories, from my dad’s wartime adventures in the Phillipines to our relatively bucolic tales of life in Vermont. His happiness for us was genuine, especially when he heard that our friends and neighbors had fully accepted us into their small-town community.

No doubt, my father had feared it would be otherwise. He knew firsthand how strong a force prejudice and homophobia could be in the world. And yet now, at last, he knew another truth: a person could be stronger than that. The fact that I could be such a strong person is, I now realize—despite its tough and tortured origins—my father’s legacy to me.

Epilogue: “It Gets Better”

In response to the numbers of GLBTQ youth who are harassed and bullied in schools around the country, the writer Dan Savage recently utilized the power of YouTube to create inspirational videos in which speakers tell stories focused on the theme “It Gets Better.”

Though the story I have told above might sound like something you’d find there, I have to express my reservations about the project. I don’t mean to say that the thousands of stories told on the site aren’t helpful or valuable. They are, and I applaud each and every person who has added his or her positive voice to the site.

Even so, the phrase “It gets better” sounds so, well, weak to me. As a teenager, I was savvy to simplistic platitudes like that. They sounded like so much wishful thinking, Hallmark cards for the marginalized. What is the pronoun “it” referring to, anyway? And what kind of action verb is “get”?

I know, I know…the writer/editor in me shouldn’t be so fussy when lives are at stake.

But here’s the deal: Sometimes it doesn’t get better. Sometimes the boy doesn’t get the boy, the girls don’t get the adoption approval, or the operation doesn’t turn out the way someone had hoped. Hearing the words “it gets better” just makes it sound like we should all wait patiently and ride out the storm. It’s a passive construction, and, as the stories above should illustrate, I’ve had it with passive. In crisis situations, I crave more control of my life, not less.

So, in addition to (but not in place of) “It Gets Better,” I offer these words of support: “You Grow Stronger.” And if you don’t believe me, just listen to that Kelly Clarkson song again. Or read Friederich Nietzsche.

Better yet, I am proud to report, you can take my father’s word for it.

UPDATE:

Since the publication of the original article in Rolling Stone, the Anoka-Hennepin School District finally developed a better (though not perfect) policy in order to “promote a respectful learning environment” in its schools. You can read about the new policy here in their newsletter:

http://www.anoka.k12.mn.us/education/components/whatsnew/default.php?sectiondetailid=233410&itemID=45742

 

LINKS

“School of Hate” in Rolling Stone link:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202

Frank Bruni links:

“The Living After the Dying”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/bruni-the-aids-warriors-legacy.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=frank%20bruni%20ACT%20UP&st=cse

“Rethinking His Religion:”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/bruni-a-catholic-classmate-rethinks-his-religion.html?_r=1&hp

Maureen Dowd: “How Oedipus Wrecks” link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/dowd-how-oedipus-wrecks.html?ref=opinion

“It Gets Better” link:

http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

Saying Goodbye to Santa Claus

Spoiler Alert: Santa’s “Big Secret” revealed in this blog entry.

Exhibit One: Me with Santa Claus at home in the 1960s, proof positive that he exists.

Now that Santa has flown in, tucked gifts under trees both hither and yon, and headed back to the North Pole for some well-deserved R&R, I feel it’s time to take a look at one of America’s biggest myths and think about how it may have affected us as a nation…or not.

But first, in the spirit of the holiday season, I offer a nostalgic visit to my hometown in Massachusetts circa 1970. Picture plastic candles in each street-facing window and a lacquered pinecone wreath adorned with a festive red felt bow on the front door. If you peer in through the spray-on snow frosting the windows, you can see me carefully filling a plastic garbage bag with dozens of gifts. My parents watch, slightly puzzled but mostly silent, as I pull on my snow boots and mittens, then leave the house, bag slung over my shoulder.

A week or so earlier, I had learned a shocking truth that rocked my little world—a secret that had been kept by nearly every adult I had ever met. They had lied to me, these adults. People whom I had trusted entirely, including the local minister and my own parents, had taken part in an international conspiracy and perpetrated a myth, a fantasy, a fiction. The story included a conveniently distant setting, a saintly protagonist (whom I had met in person on several occasions), and a desirable plotline that evoked grand themes of peace, good will, and generosity. To cover their tracks, my parents had even planted evidence: sleigh bells jangled as sound effects in the wee hours of Christmas morning; cookie crumbs and half-drunk tumblers of milk left on the metal TV table set up alongside the chimney.

All of this was an elaborate scheme that blurred the lines between fiction and nonfiction, between fantasy and reality. Young and gullible, I was easily duped. Of course there was a Santa. Of course reindeer flew. Why even question the physics of how, in one single night, a rather rotund man could pilot a craft to every single household around the world and leave presents for all the good boys and girls—and still have time to toss back some cookies and sip some milk in each abode?

In asking me to believe in such fantastic things, my parents taught me an important lesson that would be vital to my budding literary ambitions: how to suspend disbelief. In doing so, however, they taught a corollary lesson: how to suspend belief. In other words, in order to suspend my disbelief in Santa Claus, I also had to suspend my belief in many of the lessons learned in grade school (science, geography, math, etc.).

In some ways, then, the revelation that Santa Claus was a fabrication probably came as something of a relief to me. The dissonance between fantasy and fact, between what I was being told to believe and what I was learning to be true, lessened. That psychological summary may be a bit too deep to ascribe to an eight-year-old’s consciousness, so let me state it another way: Santa or no, the presents were still there on Christmas morning, and so all was well with the world.

Luckily for me, my parents didn’t serve up the revelation about Santa Claus with a simple “Sorry, kid, but that’s just the way it is.” They discussed the importance of symbolism and how this extended to the Santa myth, claiming that while Santa himself may not be real, the spirit of giving that he represents lives on in the hearts and souls of all those who have heard his story. Any fan of the famous “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” newspaper editorial might have accused my parents of plagiarism, but I could tell they were sincere.

Still: Such power in a fictional tale! Suddenly, my dreams of becoming a fiction writer one day became a vastly more important, almost religious endeavor. See how the power of a story, even a fictional story like Santa Claus, could have such great positive effect on the real human world!

And so I headed off into the night with my makeshift Santa sack. Inside I had placed carefully wrapped toys and books for the kids, and on the second and third winters’ visits, some ribbon candy for the adults in each household. I carried on the tradition until, one year, something unexpected happened. Some families had wrapped and readied gifts and treats for me. Somewhat embarrassed by their assumption that I expected something in return, I ended the Christmas Eve tradition that same year.

For years, I forgot about this bit of personal history. I was recently reminded of it by an article about a Vermont teacher accused of being unprofessional and irresponsible for spilling the beans about Santa in a fifth-grade classroom. The teacher had asked students to list names of famous people in American history. In order to keep the lesson focused on facts, the teacher felt compelled to leave figures such as Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, and Santa Claus off the list. (I could not tell from the article if she allowed the also-mentioned Jeff Foxworthy and Justin Bieber to remain on the list, but that’s another discussion for another time.)

(The full article is here:

http://www.reformer.com/ci_19576402?IADID=Search-www.reformer.com-www.reformer.com)

The mother who raised the “unprofessional” and “irresponsible” charges against the teacher went on to say that teaching about Santa Claus was like teaching about religion: the topic is best set aside with recommendations to ask one’s parents about such things. That seems fair enough…until I thought about the goals of education in general.

Since a good part of my day job (writing and editing educational materials) relies on the various state standards developed by school boards (many of them quite conservative) around the country, I know that “learning to distinguish between fantasy and reality” is a pretty important benchmark in the lower grades. (Keep in mind that the instance noted above took place in a fifth-grade classroom.) In other words, children are required to differentiate between nonfiction and fiction (fairy tales, myths, legends, and the like). Teachers are required to provide students with the skills and strategies to do this. By fifth grade, then, your average American student should have the reasoning skills to figure out the Santa thing on her/his own. Any parent who disagrees risks spotlighting their children as slow learners—perhaps along with themselves.

According to research done by psychiatrists at Ithaca College and Cornell University in the 1990s, the average American child learns the truth about Santa at age 7 1/2. However, after interviewing 500 elementary-school children, they discovered that “Many children kept up the charade after they knew the truth…because they did not want to disappoint their parents.”

Parents, take a moment to reflect one the meaning of that last clause (no pun intended). Your kids may be duping you into believing that they still believe in Santa. I think back on my own behavior as a pseudo-Santa and wonder if that was, in some warped way, an effort to turn the lies my parents had told me into truths…ergo, my parents had not lied to me after all.

Further, Dr. John Condry, one of the authors of the Ithaca/Cornell study, reported, “Not a single child told us they were unhappy or upset by their parents having lied about Santa Claus. The most common response to finding out the truth was that they felt older and more mature. They now knew something that the younger kids didn’t.”

(You can read more about the study here:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/21/garden/parent-child.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm)

This finding surprised me. “Not a single child”? Parents, take another moment to think about telling your child that he or she cannot have a toy or candy bar that he or she has already selected while you were shopping at the grocery store. When you took the item away, was your child calm and well-mannered about it? Or was the response similar to those submitted for a recent Jimmy Kimmel spot in which the talk show host asked parents to tell their children, “Hey, sorry, I ate all your Halloween candy.” (Permissions permitting, the videotaped results of this rather non-academic study are here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/jimmy-kimmels-ate-halloween-candy-challenge_n_1074334.html)

In a 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, Jaqueline Woolley wrote, “Children do a great job of scientifically evaluating Santa. And adults do a great job of duping them. As we gradually withdraw our support for the myth, and children piece together the truth, their view of Santa aligns with ours. Perhaps it is this kinship with the adult world that prevents children from feeling anger over having been misled.” What is this “kinship with the adult world” of which Woolley writes? Is it the tacit understanding that adults lie, and that it is OK for them to lie (or “support a myth”) on a grand scale?

(The link to the Woolley article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/opinion/23woolley.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

Surely someone sees this Santa thing differently. For balance, I turned to a group whose opposition to myths and distortions is part and parcel of their identity: the objectivists. This group is huge these days with Republicans and the Tea Party, both of which have renewed a fervent interest in the writings of Ayn Rand, particularly as it applies to self-determination and self-interest. Surely, the somewhat socialist “give liberally to the poor children of the world” Santa myth (I base that description on the story’s historical roots in relation to Saint Nicholas, who, by the way, was also the patron saint of pawnbrokers) would be anathema to such a group. And it is.

According to Andrew Bernstein, a senior writer of the Ayn Rand Institute, “”Santa Claus is, in literal terms, the anti-Christ. He is about joy, justice, and material gain, not suffering, forgiveness, and denial.” Another quote from the article: “The commercialism of Christmas, its emphasis on ingenuity, pleasure, and gift buying, is the holiday’s best aspect—because it is a celebration, the achievement of life.”

(You can read the full piece, a celebration of the commercialism of Christmas, here:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?news_iv_ctrl=1263&page=NewsArticle&id=7632)

All of this leaves me as puzzled about Santa Claus as I was when I learned the dark secret of his nonexistence. To this day, I give presents that have “From Santa” scrawled on the tag, and I try to mask my own handwriting despite the fact that the recipients know they’re from me. Likewise, I love surprise presents: gifts that appear out of the blue from anonymous sources, those random acts of kindness that rekindle our faith in human generosity. (Special kudos to Ben and Jerry’s for a coupon they once published that granted a free ice cream cone to the person in line behind you at one of their scoop shops. Brilliant.)

The spirit of Santa lives on and is no lie. It survives despite the increases in greed and entitlement—both running rampant through our society today, malignant cancers that question and threaten human compassion and generosity. I’d even argue that the spirit of Santa, despite its secularization over the decades, also maintains its ties to the spirits of nearly every religion, even those that claim independence from mythology or dogma.

In the years ahead, perhaps we can pull that spirit back from fiction and establish it fully as year-round fact. After all, nearly every child longs for Santa to be more than a seasonal fantasy. Maybe it is up to the child within us adults to make it so.

Postscript: I dedicate this blog entry to my father (pictured above as Santa) who passed away in 2011 and was very dearly missed this Christmas season. His many gifts to me continue to resonate throughout my life.