Autonomy @ MindSay 
My son has taken after me in this regard. He loves wearing sweatpants. (He calls them "soft pants.") He'll wear them to preschool, which is fine as he does a lot of running around. There are times when they're not appropriate, such as at synagogue -- and we'll ask him to wear nice pants, which aren't his first choice but he'll do anyway. And we're trying to ease him into jeans. Nice jeans, not ones with holes in the knees. Something a bit more presentable that he can wear and get used to when he starts kindergarten in the fall.
Yesterday we spent the afternoon at his new school for a "family fun day." They had a magician, a moon bounce, arts and crafts activities and more. It was a fun experience for all of us: we ran into friends from the community who were around. We shmoozed with some of the other parents who will have kids in the same kindergarten class. In fact, one of my housemates from college is sending her youngest son to kindergarten there next year. They're excited that they'll know one another. How the teachers will cope with these two adorable, yet hyper little monsters in the same class? Only time will tell... But anyway -- it was a jeans day. We got him dressed, and socKs helped him with the clasp of his jeans. Simple as that. He doesn't wear them too often, and we needed to get going. He did mention a concern that if he had to go to the bathroom he might need help re-snapping them, but we let it go.
After a successful afternoon at the school and picking up merchandise we found on Craigslist, we went home. He wanted to watch the Disney/Pixar "Cars" move for the hundredth time. So, while he went for a bathroom break, I got the DVD set up, fed the cat, and waited for him to finish.
He came out of the bathroom looking like he was about to burst into tears.
"I can't snap my jeans back up! I can't I can't I can't!"
And there he was -- trying to get the job done, just the way that Mommy had done for him. It dawned on me that we never had him snap the clasp of his jeans on his own -- he simply hadn't worn them that often. He's fine with his dress pants; he can navigate the button through the buttonhole just fine. But he didn't quite have the dexterity and experience to align the metal button to the fastener and apply the precise amount of pressure. The problem wasn't (as sometimes is the case with his dad) that the waist of the jeans was too small. there was plenty of room. It was just the way the button worked.
I wondered what I should do. Should I let it slide and tell him to put on different pants? The kid was getting really stressed out. Should I button the pants for him? Should I give him a tutorial by getting out of my sweats, putting my jeans back on, and showing him how it's done? Should I let him watch Cars unbuttoned?
I didn't have to decide. He made it very clear through the tears what he wanted. He wanted to do this himself. I offered my assistance and my advice to him ("Try zipping them up first." "Maybe if you stand by the mirror?") but he was having none of that. All the while, through sniffles and almost tears, there he was -- trying to snap his jeans.
The words coming out of his mouth struck a chord with me. "I'm no good at this! I'm never going to be able to button my jeans!" Wow. We consider ourselves to be proponents of positive parenting. We've gone out of our way to prevent ourselves from telling our kid that he can't do something (unless it's against the rules). I tried to spin this positively. "Maybe you feel like you can't do it, but that's because you're still new to it. Once you do it once, you'll get better at it. And then the next time? Even better than that."
I even told him that he would feel awesome when he actually got it to work. And I formed a cheering squad made up of his bear, his dog and his giraffe. I was steps away from spray painting my son's names on their chests and getting them football-stands inebriated.
He kept at it -- he still didn't want any help. He didn't want any encouragement from me. He wanted me to be quiet and just let him work at this.
Where did this seem so familiar?
My Dad loves his kids (and now -- his grandchildren) beyond anything else in the world. He and I had a tumultuous relationship when I was growing up because -- well, he was my Dad. He would do anything for me. He would find ways to offer help whether I wanted it or not. And sometimes I just wanted him to leave me the hell alone. And just figure it out by myself.
And that's what my own son wanted me to do.
Eight minutes later I heard that "click" of metal snapping into metal. He looked down. And then up. And then grinned. And then a bigger smile with that almost-sound of laughing. And when his animals started saying "Yay!" It was all out laughter. I gave him a big hug and we watched the movie.
I see those patterns between my relationship with my kid and my dad's relationship with his. I'll probably have a lot to which I can look forward: my kid lying to me about finishing his homework, not cleaning his room, and, in a fit of anger, kicking a hole in the wall of our house. Or plenty of other things to expect.
But at least now there's more of a chance he'll be doing it wearing jeans.
Proust had it right. One small act or sensory impression leads to a panoply of remembrances , appreciations, sadness and joy. For him it was that bite of the Madeleine. For me last night it was bubbles in the tub. I know one isn’t suppose to use bubbles in a Jacuzzi. It gums up the works and shortens it’s life but what is the point if you can’t be engulfed with the scent of something you love. And being a confessed addict of hot baths I enjoy a long soak and hydro massage every night. It was a ritual enjoyed by my mother and inherited by me. For her it was being surrounding with the scent or arpege perfume followed by clouds of dusting powder. For me it is kneipp in several scents, last night was juniper. And as I lay in the tub, the bubbles rising faster than I had ever seen I wondered if I would be totally immersed in the bubbles before the Jacuzzi timer stopped the attack. It was a delicious dare, all I had to do to stop the war was to stand up but I wanted to see how long it would take for the bubbles to surround me and maybe even overtake me completely before accepting defeat. As they neared my chin I had to blow them from my mouth and this only attenuated the north woods scent blowing up from the steaming water. And of course I thought of my mother. And an early memory where I had jumped from the bath, ran naked and maybe damp into her room to plop on the bed waiting for the dusting powder she swept across my little body. And occasionally the naked escape afterwards to run naked around the house with three year old glee. Two other early memories are sitting on the floor between her and Hilda’s knees and using a low coffee table to hoist myself up to standing. It was a glorious moment , to rise up on my own power and see the world before me. And then there is an even earlier one , still crawling – moving to my grandmothers treadle sewing machine to push the platform back and forth. Sewing and powder and autonomy all converging more than half a century later to help me write this nonsense little blog. But the memories didn’t stop with my mother. They roamed over to my dad, the biggest love of my life until Jim and then to NYC and Picasso and trains and new haven and paper white narcissus in march. But that’s another entry. A love affair with NYC begun early and completely entangled with the men in my life and babies and freedom and emotional incarceration and how once NYC enters your blood it never, thankfully leaves. All this from a bath? No wonder I love them so.
Lennie at 21
When he wasn't around, his sisters called him The Prince but his parents named him Leonard. To his colleagues and friends he was Len. The red haired Irish woman who married him always called him Lennie. And to his daughter he was, and always would be, Daddy.
He was born into money and even after the family lost much of it in the crash of '29, he moved through life like the heir to a vast fortune. He had the nose for a deal and long after his family left the old neighborhood and moved uptown, he spent Sunday mornings bargaining in broken Yiddish with the clothing vendors on Orchard Street. He could spot a bound buttonhole from twenty paces. Few men his age could tell the quality of a jacket from the feel of the interfacing as well as Lennie. He demanded impeccable tailoring and he flirted his way into the graces of the elderly men who spent their lives making the tiny alterations that suited his self image.
He had never learned to cook, but he could iron a shirt so that it looked newly purchased. He had never washed a dish in his life, but he could replace a button with a tailor's stitch that would make a seamstress proud. The guilty pleasure of towering over a man who slapped and whipped his shoes into a high sheen never failed to lift his spirits.
As the first born son of recent immigrants from Russia, the world was his playground. Boats and cards and good food. He saw little point in self sacrifice. Coming first into his family, he learned the role well and expected everyone else to assent. It seemed so little to ask. His pleasure in having things his way was so evident, most people deferred to Lennie.
His wife, whom he always called Babe, would say, "Lennie would flirt with a cat if he thought it would get him something he wanted. " And people flirted back. To Lennie, the laughter and the compliments felt as good to give as to get. Being surrounded by beautiful things, interesting people, and ample time to enjoy them was Lennie's goal in life. It made sense.
Lennie drew the redheaded Irish woman to him like iron to a magnet the summer of 1940. It was his dancing that converted her, first to liking him, then loving him. He waltzed her through her entrance into Jewish life. They tangoed at their wedding. They moved in such awesome unison to a melody of their own making that other dancers often paused to watch.
And photographs captured it all. Dressing like gangsters on New Year's Eve. A slender black haired man gliding the woman in dark taffeta over the oak plank floor of Roseland. Lennie and Babe clicking cocktails at The Stork Club. Dinner at 21. The sepia images captured not only what the eyes saw, but also the laughter and the voices of the young lovers. And if one looked well enough, the photographs conveyed the music that echoed through the time: Glenn Miller, the Dorsey brothers, and Paul Whiteman. The images hummed with the romance of early married life in New York City.
When their first daughter arrived ten months later, Lennie danced the nurses down the hospital hall. And while the settings of the pictures changed to bathtubs, beaches, and naps on the chenille covered couch, the love that spilled into the photographs was barely containable. Lennie must have carried that camera everywhere: into the bathrooms, cafes, train stations, and synagogues that comprised family life. Each photo held the record of Lennie and Babe, and then their baby, dancing with their delight in the gurgles bubbling out of this product of their love.
So when their baby's throat swelled with that furious infection, it was no surprise to anyone that the photographing stopped. The laughter lost its sound. All that took their place was the stillness of a funeral walk in the full heat of July. Maybe he wanted to stomp out a dance over her grave. But the crying eyes that watched him bury his daughter the summer she turned two held him back .
In years to come, Lennie and Babe would get up to dance again, at a wedding, at a nephew's Bar Mitzvah, in the solitude of their living room. Maybe they swayed together the night their next daughter precariously entered the world. But one kind of music stopped for them that summer and they never danced to that song again.
Copyright dku July 1 2000
Provincial laws governing the fair division of assets when marriages fail do not apply on reserves and the federal Indian Act, which governs most aspects of reserve life, does not address the subject.
[Native Women's Association of Canada] president Beverley Jacobs said the absence of matrimonial property laws has created great hardship for aboriginal women, usually forcing them and their children to leave their reserves or move in with family members.
[Assembly of First Nations] National Chief Phil Fontaine said he expects real dialogue on the issue and emphasized that he's not prepared to accept pre-determined outcomes to the consultations.
Fontaine said whatever legal solutions are proposed "must respect our jurisdiction" and have the support of the aboriginal community.
This is a perfect example of the difficulties of being an Anthropology student or practioner in a modern Western nation such as the US or Canada. My American values of libertyy and equality tell me that the aborginal women deserve equality under the law, end of discussion. Anything less than total equality is just blatant discrimination. However, the anthropologist jumps to the defense of the cultural sovereignty of the First Nations.
The US and Canada have a history of shame in their dealings with the First Nations. Let's be blunt, we couldn't have been more effective in erradicating their culture if we tried (yeah, I know that some of you will say that we did, in fact try, but that's a discussion for another day). So now, in order to protect women (which is obviously a noble pursuit) we risk further erosion of the culture and sovereignty of the First Nations if Ottawa is too heavy handed in their negotitations.
The intersection of cultural autonomy and human rights is the place where the wars and conflicts of the next century will be fought. Although I have an infinitely higher regard for the First Nations of Canada than for some of the peoples of the Middle East, the intellectual parallels are there. The wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are about the intersection of cultural autonomy and human rights.
I don't have any easy answers, but maybe we can work this out if we are actually honest about the source of the conflict.
banned McDonald’s and other fast-food chains to preserve the uniqueness and small-town charm of the city’s commercial areas. Mr. Rivera wants to restrict them for another reason: to fight chronic obesity, particularly in poor neighborhoods. About 1 in 5 New Yorkers is obese, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Behold our Brave New World: Junk food and overconsumption are the new vices from which the American people must be protected. Are parental consent laws on the horizon? Will little Jimmy need to be accompanied by an adult to get that Big Mac or Happy Meal?
On a side ntoe, this story is a great illustration of the differences between Downstate and Upstate New York. No municipality in Upstate New York (except maybe Ithaca, but that's a whole other story) would ever take a proposal like this seriously. Don't mess with our junk food if you know what's good for you.