Parenting as Sand Mandala<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the ways I survive the interminable meetings that make up Annual Conference each year is to walk the Corpus Christi coastline.\u00a0 I was mentally sorting through this blog post when I read a sign: Earth without Art is just \u201cEh.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Clevah.\u00a0 While watching the jumping fish (yes, really) I thought also about something that Felix Salmon said on a Slate podcast regarding money and art: \u00a0<\/strong>\u201cExpensive art tends to be quite big . . . Expensive art often tends to be red . . . Remember we are talking about multi-millionaire men here with big egos . . . and there are certain types of art that multi-millionaire men with big egos like . . . art with naked women in it tends to go for more money.\u201d\u00a0 Big, red, naked-woman art costs more, because men with ego issues like big, red, naked women . . . I doubt that expensive art does much to make the earth less \u201ceh.\u201d<\/p>\n But, regarding men, and egos, and art, men who are responsible for children have to learn the art of trifling<\/em> \u2013 the art of doing things that might feel totally unproductive and even be<\/em> totally unproductive, because children require a kind of attention that is more like working on a small sand mandala than on an expensive, red, naked-woman painting.\u00a0 Life with children requires fighting for our right to little tea parties, and learning to boogie to Abba\u2019s \u201cDancing Queen\u201d like no one is watching.<\/p>\n Forgive me, but I simply must now tell a story in which I am the hero.\u00a0 (This is an obnoxious kind of story to tell, but, it is too on-point to leave out.)\u00a0 Rachel was about 3, and she and I were boarding the plane to go to the AAR together, when another, senior scholar looked at Rachel, smiled, and wondered a bit at the fact that I was bringing her with me.\u00a0 \u201cYou know,\u201d he said, \u201cI have never been able to communicate with children.\u201d\u00a0 Huh, I thought, that is strange.\u00a0 The man had two grown children, and a school-age daughter from his recent, second marriage.\u00a0 It hit me that, either he was being too modest, or else he had never needed to get one of his children to eat, or to dress, or to sleep.\u00a0 To get through a normal day as a dad, you have to learn somehow to be silly \u2013 to learn artistically to trifle and to set far aside what usually counts as diligence.<\/p>\n Beastie Boys and Girls<\/strong><\/p>\n I meant to write a shout-out to Yuach right after his passing, but I was busy boogying and doing dishes.\u00a0 So consider this my holler of thanks, as a teacher as well as a mom, because their \u201cFight for your Right\u201d has long been a mainstay of my lecture on masculinity and work.\u00a0 This may seem a strange theme song for me to encourage in my male students.\u00a0 (Yes, the lyrics mention smoking and porn.)\u00a0 But, for a while now, one goal in my teaching about manhood has been to encourage more teenage boys to recognize what one kid did at the Duke Youth Academy years ago.\u00a0 (I am not<\/em> the hero of this story.)\u00a0 I was lecturing on embodiment and baptism and getting off the rat-track of success, and we got to the point about teenage pregnancy.\u00a0 I gave my usual spiel against shame, and a young woman rightly balked; boys who become fathers can remain safely hidden.\u00a0 At this point, one young man said, with all earnestness, \u201cBut, if what she said about baptism is true, then I am already a dad.\u00a0 The kids in the church are already mine.\u201d \u00a0Wow.<\/em><\/p>\n The Mothers\u2019 Day cover of the New Yorker<\/em> caught me off guard this year.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t figure out the joke at first, because it wasn\u2019t marked as a holiday issue.\u00a0 The image of all those men (even male birds, ha!) hanging out with kids didn\u2019t strike me as noteworthy.\u00a0 Truth be told, I thought the one woman in the mix must be thinking it was her randomly lucky day at the park!\u00a0 But, as Michael Chabon writes in his commentary on fatherhood<\/a>,\u00a0men who take time to trifle with kiddos are still a rarity.\u00a0 Being a \u201cfather\u201d of the faith still sounds more like a call to speak from a pulpit, or to serve on the church finance committee, than a summons to sit on your ass in a sandbox.\u00a0 That youngster at the Duke Youth Academy got it, a sneak preview of life for men who daily live with children.\u00a0 To paraphrase one of my favorite scenes ever<\/a> (love John Cusack), much of fatherhood isn\u2019t about selling anything, buying anything, or processing anything. \u00a0It isn\u2019t about selling anything bought or processed, or buying anything sold or processed, or processing anything sold, bought, or processed, or repairing anything sold, bought, or processed . . . Lloyd Dobler just might make a great dad.<\/p>\n The messaging about real manhood toggles wildly today between the work-your-butt-off model and the have-a-huge-barf-your-head-off-party model.\u00a0 The partying for which men are apparently to fight has lots to do with hiring hookers and hurling and less to do with singing \u201cRocky Top, Tennessee\u201d for the infiniteenth time with a second-grader.\u00a0 Adam Yuach put this well in an interview<\/a> about his own worldly success and search for faith: \u201cIn a sense, what Western society teaches us is that if you get enough money, power and beautiful people to have sex with, that’s going to bring you happiness. That’s what every commercial, every magazine, music, movie teaches us. That’s a fallacy.\u201d\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 The big dudes who dictate the supposed value of art may want giant, blood red titties on their wall, but true beauty is smaller, and, as I submitted a long time ago in this article<\/a>, more fun.<\/p>\n Learning to Care<\/strong><\/p>\n I love Maurice Sendak.\u00a0 I love his drawings of fussy old hen in A Kiss for Little Bear<\/em> (an all time favorite) and I love love love the way the grown-up alligators are \u201cforever fooling\u201d on each page of Alligators All Around<\/em>.\u00a0 And, of course, I love Where the Wild Things Are<\/em>, in which the monsters are modeled after Sendak\u2019s overwhelming extended family.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My own dad did not read Sendak books to me.\u00a0 He made up \u201cMortimer stories\u201d \u2013 stories about a boy named Mortimer and, when I protested, about his sister Mortimeria.\u00a0 And, along the way, he also told me stories about whose I was.\u00a0 I learned that faith is not something solid, not a block of clear TRUTH that I was given to then carry about with me like a weapon or fix-it-all salve.\u00a0 Faith is something more elusive, and even whimsical, more received unaware than grasped.\u00a0 And, here, I can\u2019t help but tie in Sendak\u2019s Pierre<\/em>, wherein a little boy learns to care after he is eaten by a lion.\u00a0 The story revolves around a defiantly apathetic boy named Pierre.\u00a0 He DOES NOT CARE.\u00a0 That is the refrain.\u00a0 His parents coax, but he is immovably taciturn.\u00a0 Then, left alone, he does-not-care<\/em> himself right into a lion\u2019s belly.\u00a0 Presumably due to Pierre\u2019s sourness, the lion gets a tummy ache and, after a bit more silliness, Pierre emerges and, HE CARES!\u00a0\u00a0 The story is ridiculousness with a singsong rhyme; Pierre<\/em> is about as nonsensically cruel as original sin and as beautifully foolish as salvation.<\/p>\n This entry ought to end with a story about my dad as a hero, don\u2019t you think?\u00a0 When he taught my confirmation class, I asked interminable questions and, at the end of the course, I was still uncertain.\u00a0 I just wasn\u2019t sure I believed all that we were supposed to stand up and say we now believed.\u00a0 He told me I didn\u2019t have to be confirmed yet.\u00a0 He told me that he also still struggled to understand what he believed.\u00a0 And he asked me to consider that maybe standing up in confirmation meant promising, for the rest of my life, to keep trying to know God through Christian faith, and to know that I am known by God.<\/p>\n This Fathers\u2019 Day, I am more certain than ever that life is as nonsensical as not-caring for no good reason and as miraculous as receiving the capacity to love after being barfed up by a hungry lion with big teeth.\u00a0 But I also, most days, know whose I am.\u00a0 And for that, I have a different parent to thank, the only parent who is perfect, if also utterly baffling.\u00a0 I would encourage all the fathers out there reading to lean on that Father, and to risk the public spectacle of trifling each day.\u00a0 Pray for it when you pray for your daily bread.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS:<\/p>\n More on Maurice Sendak and the terrors of childhood:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/culture\/2012\/05\/art-spiegelman-discusses-maurice-sendak.html<\/a><\/p>\n And, just because I love her, Carole King singing Pierre<\/em> and Alligators All Around<\/em> (the illustrations for the latter sadly lack the grown up alligators, but the tune is fun).<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=70U47cNi7sA&feature=fvwp&NR=1<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/BeastieBoys2.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a>My college boyfriend loved the Beastie Boys, so I tried to like them, and, with practice, I came to enjoy them.\u00a0 The guys at the local bike shop were impressed when 4 year old Emily could identify one of their more raucous songs on the radio. \u00a0It was a proud moment. \u00a0I was not sure how to feel when I found out, during commentary about Adam Yuach<\/a>, that they had apologized for some of their sexist lyrics. \u00a0I am also not sure how to feel about the fact that I did not immediately know how to feel. \u00a0But I do know that their music makes me set aside all pretense of being serious, or morally righteous.\u00a0 I just want to dance.\u00a0 When I put on their music in the car, my girls have to remind me that, in the words of Wanda Sykes, \u201cwhite people are <\/a>looking at you.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Alligators--300x219.jpg\" "\\"Alligators\\"")
<\/a>In this interview with Bill Moyers<\/a>, I found a dozen new reasons to love Sendak, including this fabulous quote about Emily Dickinson:\u00a0 \u201cShe is so brave; she is so strong; she is such a sexy, passionate little woman.\u201d\u00a0 Art was a kind of \u201csalvation\u201d for Sendak, and he often read Emily\u2019s poems to inspire him when courage faltered.\u00a0 His fragile but tenacious courage allowed him not only to fly up into the stratosphere of the night kitchen, but also to dig into the dirt of, well . . . dirt.\u00a0 According to Sendak, books for children must deal with mortality, with the dust to dust terrors of life, because children are already very aware that their little existence is both delightful and dangerously expendable.\u00a0 Maurice Sendak was not a \u201cfather\u201d per se.\u00a0 Perhaps he never had to coax a kid to drink her milk or brush her teeth, but he sure did learn how to communicate with children.<\/p>\n