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Through My Eyes... |
These Dear, Ordinary Days
Sep 20, 2011
By Cornelia Spelman
This reflection by Cornelia on "Life in the Archives" was published in the newsletter of the Coordinating Council for Women in History in August, 2011.
I take my favorite place--a chair at the long wooden table that is closest to the tall windows--and wait. Soon a librarian rolls to my table a beige metal cart whose three shelves are loaded with boxes of my archived diaries--spiral-bound notebooks in which I have recorded, daily, much of the past thirty years of my life. I've traveled from my home in Chicago to the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to visit my past.
I need to come more than once a year or I will never catch up, because I'm only up to 1996, and I keep writing them. Keeping a daily diary has long been a necessary habit for me--writing with a fountain pen on lined pages every monring, accompanieed by a cup, saucer, and thermos of tea on a battered tin tray. When I finish a year's worth, I send the notebooks to the library, which, at my request, will not permit them to be read for many years. I offered them, along with my mother's girlhood diaries, because I felt her story and mine matched the library's interest in women's personal papers. I was so pleased that the library wanted them.
This autumn I stay for four days, in a tiny room with shared baths at a guesthouse that is a fifteen-minute walk away across Harvard Yard. My room is just big enough for a single bed and a small desk. I feel cozy in it, like a puppy in its crate, and I, and the other guests--mostly solitary, purposeful-looking women--slip quietly in and out of our rooms, the baths, and the common breakfast area, the same way I slip in and out of the past in my days at the library. I sleep happy, for this while away, to be alone, silent, in my narrow bed by an open window, outside of which is a blazing orange maple, and I wake, stretch, to a day which is just for me, in which I will travel back in my life, to the years when, as a mother, I woke always into others' needs.
In the library, hours pass; the sun fades and clouds move in. In my diaries I see how moods, upsets, and happinesses change, too, and then change again. I find a lot of entries that interest me personally; the few that might interest others, I transcribe into my laptop. Pressed between the pages of my spiral notebooks I find not only--yes, a flower--but also an admonition to myself that I've forgotten: "Keep your mouth shut and remember to think before you speak"; a visit to my son's first, tidy, apartment, where he tells me sunset, when his cat sits and blinks in a single spot of light, is his favorite time of day; a phone call that brought news of the death of a friend in a car accident; a description of two silhouetted ducks at twilight on a mauve and turquoise bay in Wisconsin.
I read about how my daughter, at nine, described a woman as looking "like a mom--friendly but kind of tired out." For that moment, I have my nine-year-old, careless of her hair, wearing her Smurf glasses, again within my arms. My cell phone vibrates and it is a text from that daughter, not nine, but, somehow, thirty-two, and in the time I am texting her back, I step out of my past into the present. When I return to reading, I find my mock obituary: "After a long battle with clutter, Spelman finally passed away in her sleep."
By four o'clock, I've had enough for the day, and joke to the librarian, "Take the baby back to the nursery!" She smiles as she rolls the cart with my boxes of diaries back into the library office. I am remembering the two times a nurse rolled a cart to me with a newborn, wrapped in a flannel blanket, to be breastfed.
I pack up my things and leave the library for that day. I leave my past behind and walk home in my present, a grandmother now, stopping at a campus student center to buy a fruit cup and roll for my dinner, which I will eat, with tea, in the guest house common area, reading the newspaper. I will shower before the other guests return, and retreat to my room to lie in my pajamas, and read, to call my husband, and to listen to DeBussy on my iPhone. I am perfectly happy. Reading my own life has offered me perspective again, the same feeling I get when I walk along Lake Michigan and gaze out at the horizon. Reading about the dear, ordinary days--which Time strings together like beads to form a life--makes me remember to value each present day. Even though, of course, I will, once again, forget.
“The Tree is Crying”—observing empathy in a two-year-old
Jul 13, 2011
By Cornelia Spelman
A Two-Year-Old Demonstrates Empathy
I was touched to hear my visiting two-year-old grandson Leo comforting his stuffed bear as they cuddled together inside the large cardboard box they were playing in -- Leo was calling it his "cozy box." I didn't hear what injury Bear had suffered; only heard Leo say, in a tender tone, to his red flannel bear with cross-stitched eyes, "It's okay, Bear. Don't cry. It's okay." He hugged him. He suggested that I hug him, too.
Later that morning, in the park, we observed a tree that had been brutally broken in a recent storm; its bark ripped off, its top jagged, its sawed-off limbs rendering it shockingly un-tree like. "What happened?" he asked his step-grandfather and me. "There was a big storm, and the wind broke the tree," we told him. He proceeded to dig with his blue shovel, but a few minutes later, pointing to the tree, he asked again, "What happened?" Again we told him, "There was a big storm, and the wind broke the tree." As he explored the slide, the swing, the little bridge in the park, he would return to his thoughts about the tree and ask, again, "What happened to the tree?" We took him over to it to look at how it was broken, and to smell the pleasant odor of the wood inside the bark. He observed the odor, the appearance, of the tree; the branches that had been piled up nearby. Then he said, "The tree is crying."
When, long before his birth, I wrote a picture book for children entitled "When I Care About Others," I wished to help young children learn how we all--children and adults-- need to care for others and to be cared for by them. I hoped that many children, and many of their parents and caregivers, might benefit from the simple but reassuring messages in the book about the comfort we can find in each other. So many of us were not as fortunate as the child who already knows, at two. So many of us did not have parents who, like his, have amply demonstrated to him what it means to feel for others and to receive comfort. Neither I nor his step-grandfather were so fortunate, nor even his own father, my son, who at two was being raised by me, his single mother. But through their love and care, and with the support and love of a large group of friends and family, my son and daughter-in-law have built a "cozy box" for their little boy and have provided him with living lessons on empathy so that he is able to offer it to his bear, and even to a tree.
The Burden of Today’s Mean-Spirited Children’s Book
Nov 17, 2010
By Cornelia Spelman
An article Cornelia wrote which was published by the CHICAGO TRIBUNE in December, 1997, is now online and worth reading for those of us who want to advocate for children
“I was with God, and I was with the Devil” Mario Selpulveda, rescued Chilean miner
Oct 13, 2010
By Cornelia Spelman
Let's "look and look" until we find those who need rescue.
Mario's statement, "I was with God, and I was with the Devil" seems especially apt on this day when our fellow human beings demonstrate the powers of Good--those hundreds of people working together to rescue the miners; the heroism of people willing to risk their own lives for the sake of others, like the first medic, Manuel Gonzalez, who descended into the mine to prepare the miners for their ascent--and then the power of the Devil, whose evil is evident across our world, in particular this day with the news of the severed head of a Mexican detective delivered in a suitcase.
What turns some of us to Good, some of us to Evil?
As a former clinical social worker, I could venture my professional opinion about a child who is loved and cared for and respected growing into an adult who continues to love, care for, and respect others--and a child who is abused, injured physically or emotionally, who continues to abuse others. (There are abused children who do not continue to abuse, because someone showed them another way was possible.)
This is not meant as an excuse, only as an attempt to understand, so that we see how crucial it is for each of us to try to be a rescuer of those lost "miners" we encounter in our own lives. The Chilean president said, to the 14th rescued miner, "We would never let you go -- we would look and look until we found you." Amen. Images: Manuel Gonzalez, first rescuer to descend into the mine, and the last person to leave the mine, upon his return; Manuel, bowing to the camera in the mine before he begins his final ascent; Manuel, awaiting the capsule which will return him to the earth's surface.
This is, like, a Poem?
Oct 01, 2010
By Cornelia Spelman
My, like, Poem?
This is like, my poem? A poem is like, about language? Language is, like, about, like, language is like... Language? like, words? Like, words meaning something? or, whatever.
Helpful Thinking About Extremists
Sep 14, 2010
By Cornelia Spelman
There is a lot of talk about the anger afoot in our country and the rise of extremist views. I'm reading a very helpful book that, along with my own professional experience as a therapist, and my personal experiences in life, is clarifying for me what is behind much of the extremist attitudes and behavior that I first observed in a town hall meeting about health care last summer, and which I wrote about in a Through My Eyes commentary on this website.
In 1941, Erich Fromm, a German psychoanalyst who had to flee after Hitler's rise to power, wrote Escape From Freedom. It is not a book about his own escape from Nazi Germany TO freedom; rather, as the unusual title indicates, it is about the reasons why people are drawn to escape FROM freedom. Fromm wrote "there is no greater mistake and no graver danger than not to see that in our own society we are faced with the same phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere: the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual." Though it seems counter-intuitive, some people do not want the freedom to think, to inform themselves, and to try to make difficult decisions about complex issues. They would rather be told what to believe, what to do, and gain a feeling of belonging to a special group, usually headed by an authoritarian figure.
I will continue this discussion in a later commentary.
The Wrong Way: Distortion, Disruption, Division and Derision
Oct 09, 2009
By Cornelia Spelman
Those who are using the un-helpful methods I'm calling "The Four D's" (Distortion, Disruption, Division, and Derision) to obstruct the passage of good health care policies are letting themselves be Mis-Lead by their Mis-Leaders and this sign reminded me of it. The right way: Civility, Listening to the Facts, Respectful Disagreement and Forging Consensus.
Actually, there isn't "the right way"--any way that ensures civility and respect can work.
Health Care Town Meetings and “The Four D’s”
Sep 03, 2009
By Cornelia Spelman
Distortion, Disruption, Divison, and Derision
My sign read "Civility & Llstening to the Facts" and some TV station filmed the sign, as 1200 of us waited to enter Niles West High School for a recent Health Care Town Meeting sponsored by Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. But we all had to surrender our signs before entering, so I couldn't communicate that message during the many episodes of uncivil behavior exhibited by some of my fellow-citizens (I am not sure they were even constituents.)
The message of civility and attention to facts would've been lost, anyway, on those members of the audience whose only objective was to Distort, Disrupt, Divide, and Deride. I quickly realized it was not a matter of civility, but of deliberate intent NOT to help, solve, unite, or advance our common good. The Four D's are being encouraged, and celebrated, as if they were especially democratic rights, by "Mis-Leaders" like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and others.
People who are angry and are encouraged to stay angry, and who have not learned how to constructively direct their anger or work with others to solve problems are not able to hear a message about civility and facts. Facts have nothing to do with their anger. Those angry people who crowd town halls across the country, who distort, disrupt, divide and deride, may have many individual reasons for anger, but what they share is the destructive desire to scapegoat and hate someone or something. This reservoir of anger and hostility is purposely ignited by Mis-Leaders. Igniting anger which results in destructive behavior is dangerous. The majority of us at the town hall meeting, believing in free speech but civil discourse, were alarmed by the shouted insults, interruptions, and bizarre, accusatory rants of the angry people. We should be alarmed.
A Parent’s New Year’s Resolution
Jan 04, 2009
By Cornelia Spelman
It may seem alien to make a New Year's resolution that doesn't require us to strive for something, but, instead, to relax into what we already have.
In this New Year, that opportunity lies before us. Each day we have the opportunity to "be" instead of to "strive." From those who have been bereaved, we have the opportunity to learn that it is not possessions, money, places, or exotic experiences that children need to be happy, but that moment when the beloved comes home.
We have the most extraordinary power to bestow upon those we love, especially our children, that very treasure lost to others forever--our presence and attention. Regardless of what we don't have, or what we think we need to get, or what we believe we deserve--what we actually have, now--being together--is the most precious and irreplaceable thing of all.
And yet--in our eagerness to improve ourselves and to better our children's lives, we may not even be aware of all that we have, of all that is right in front of us. What adjustments might we need to make to bring about this awareness and appreciation? In order it live in the present, it can help to imagine a distant future. In five years, where will your children be, and how will you have spent that time? In ten years? Childhood, one learns after one's children have grown up, turns out to have been a very short time. Do we want to spend it being over-busy, overtired, or elsewhere? Or do we want to, right now, go find our children, put our arms around them, read them a story, listen to them, look at them? We can, today and every day of the New Year, give them the most important thing they could ever have--our time, our attention, our simple presence.
On SARAH PALIN
Sep 05, 2008
By Cornelia Spelman
(This was written after Palin's introductory, first speech during the 2008 campaign. It is worth thinking about today.
With the steady nerves of a surgeon, Sarah Palin, wielding her scalpel of derogatory remarks, sliced open the wounds of division and hostility which have characterized the Bush/Cheney years and turned Americans against Americans.
She values aggression. She is proud that, as she put it, lipstick is the only difference between her, as a hockey mom, and a pit bull.
The audience loved her hostile remarks about “liberals,” the “elite media,” the “Washington elite,” and the “permanent political establishment.” They loved it best when she ridiculed community organizers--they don’t, she said, with a curl of her lip, have “actual responsibilities.”
Palin claims, for herself and those who share her viewpoint, Americanism. She is, she says, from a small town, where people “do some of the hardest work in America…grow our food…run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” She is, as an RNC attendee told a TV interviewer the next day, “one of the normal Americans like us.”
“Like us.”
It is this division of Americans into “us” and “them” that politicians and talk show hosts who engage in hostility and derision actively work to maintain.
If we’re not Palin’s—or Limbaugh's, or Beck's, or other "MisLeaders" idea of "us"-- if we differ-- we’re “them.
I call on Palin's "better angel" to study this line from her speech, “No one expects us all to agree on everything, but we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill…”
When a Child’s Parent Dies
Mar 31, 2008
By Cornelia Spelman
"Tulip Grief"
When a child's parent dies, we feel helpless, but we can actually help a lot. We can help by allowing a child to feel the deep sadness that such a death brings, by sitting close, by holding hands or embracing, by crying together. This sharing of pain makes it bearable.
Of course, we wish we could protect children from this pain, so we might try to deny it. However, we need to resist the impulse to divert attention from a loss, to minimize, or to give false reassurance. Usually when we try to cheer someone up, it is because we can't tolerate the feelings aroused in us by someone else's sadness. Yet, just accepting what another feels, without trying to change it, can be immensely comforting.
Close listening is important because it will reveal a child's misconceptions and fears about death. These are ideas that might not occur to adults but can torment a child, such as that if she falls asleep, she too will die; or that he somehow caused the death by being "bad." Children need to know that despite the loss of a parent, there are still family members or friends who love and will continue to care for them.
Perhaps most importantly, a child needs to feel hope. While the precious person who died will always be missed, the child will not always feel such an enveloping sadness. Time will bring new adventures, new satisfactions, new people to love. A child most needs to know that happiness will continue to be possible, and was not buried with the dead.
October: Knowing What We Feel
Oct 01, 2007
By Cornelia Spelman
Growing up as the youngest in a large family, I listened to and watched other people a lot. This made me curious about why people behave as they do. One of the ways I satisfied that curiosity was by returning to school in mid-life to study human behavior and to become a clinical social worker.
Clinical social workers learn about human development and behavior and are trained to help people solve problems through assessment, counseling and psychotherapy, advocacy, and referral and linkage to community resources. We also promote social justice and social change with and on behalf of our clients.
My education and training as a clinical social worker, my subsequent years of professional experience with children and families, and my own life experiences taught me that our emotions -- even those that are unpleasant or frightening -- give us valuable information about ourselves, others, and our circumstances.
Like the gauges on a car, they alert us to what we need to know in order to be effective drivers. Yet many of us did not learn how to recognize, manage, and learn from our emotions. Instead, we may have learned to ignore, bury, or run away from them. This blindness to our own "gauges" can cause confusion in our decision-making and difficulties in our relationships with others.
For better and for worse, we all learned from our parents, and our children learn from us. While we may not have learned from our parents how to acknowledge and take care of our emotions, we can improve upon our parenting by taking advantage of all the information and help available to us and using it with our own children.
Each of my picture books, though addressing different subjects, tries to teach young children and their parents, teachers, or caregivers how to recognize, learn from, and manage emotion. They also emphasize that comfort comes from being connected to other people, from sharing emotions, and from being understood and listened to. I believe this kind of emotional education is deeply important.
For instance, When I Feel Angry was written to educate children and their adults about one of the most difficult feelings to experience and manage. Learning to resolve conflict in ways that do not hurt others seems more important than ever. It is the one sure thing that each of us can do about violence, and the one sure way in which we can contribute to a more peaceful world.
Next month: Accepting Children's Feelings
The Death of Barbaro
Jan 30, 2007
By Cornelia Spelman
Why I Cry for a Horse
The death of Barbaro occurred on a day ( like any) when the news of the world was full of horrible stories of human deaths. Some people have said that those of us who cry for Barbaro ought to be crying for our fellow man (and woman and child) but--can't we cry for all of them?
Isn't the admonition to only honor and mourn the death of someone of a certain religion, or political view, or ethnicity, or country, or gender, or age--or species-- simply a way to dishonor anyone who isn't "like me"?
Surely there is room in our hearts for love, for tears, or, at the very least, for compassion--for the death of any living being. This room underlies our opposition to capital punishment, or our repugnance when there is delight in the misery and suffering of anyone, even one's enemies. It is what makes one turn one's face away from the spectacle of hangings. Of course those who injure or kill others must accept responsibility, must lose their freedom--but many of us believe it is wrong to murder them.
Barbaro's life, and his death, undoubtedly have unique meanings to each of the thousands of us who saw his triumph in the Kentucky Derby; watched his horrifying injury in the Preakness, and have subsequently followed his progress. For me, it was thrilling to see such a beautiful, healthy, magnificent, gifted creature, and sickening to realize how all of those qualities could be altered, in an instant. This is what can happen in life. We all know it, but we manage not to think about it all the time. Barbaro's accident provided us with an unavoidable and painful reminder.
For me, the accident happened at the same time that a close family member was dangerously ill (luckily, my loved one recovered ). My own personal emotional reaction, therefore, to Barbaro's injury was immediate and intense: NO! Not another reminder (as if we all didn't have plenty, every day) of life's fragility, of the passage--sometimes gradual, sometimes immediate--into disability and decline.
Also, watching Barbaro run was just plain fun. Sunshine; fancy hats; the excited faces of so many spectators. (Yes, I know there is another side, too--why run these beautiful creatures so fast, risking such terrible injuries, for money?) But wasn't there something, out of these days of grief for our dead and maimed soldiers and their families, for the Iraquis who have been killed and injured, for all the terrible havoc and damage brought about by our reckless administration and the dangerous spirits they've sent into the world--couldn't one forget all that, for a few moments, and just be happy to watch that beautiful horse run?
I'm not ashamed to cry for Barbaro, as well as for people I don't even know. It's all just a sickening waste of beauty, health, and talent. Sometimes, it can't be helped--and sometimes, it could have been.
First Amendment Kids!
Sep 05, 2005
By Cornelia Spelman
Students from Nursery Road Elementary School Educate State Legislators About Liberty
At the Seattle Convention Center in August, students from Nursery Road Elementary School in Columbia, South Carolina , under the leadership of Principal Mary Kennerly, presented a program to an audience of state legislators from all over the country about how their school practices First Amendment rights and responsibilities. Five children spoke of registering voters at the high school, writing a constitution, and honoring others' rights. They illustrated their mnemonic device, "R.A.P.P.S" --for Religion, Assembly, Petition, Press, and Speech-- read from a book they wrote about the (fictional)day "the President lost the First Amendment" and needed to have a South Carolina schoolchild rush to Washington to tell him about it. They ended their presentation with a song about the Constitution.
I was among those thrilled spectators who rose to give a standing ovation to these articulate, dynamic young people. Their poise and dignity and their easy command of First Amendment rights--and responsibilities-- was inspiring.
During this time in our country when one cannot rely on candor from Washington, when a New York Times reporter is jailed, when demonstrators are kept fenced and blocks away from the President, the fresh, enthusiastic, and straightforward example of the importance of the First Amendment rights from these Nursery Road Elementary School students was revitalizing.
Nursery Road is one of several dozen schools, public and private, participating in the First Amendment Schools project, a national school reform initiative sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and the First Amendment Center. The program aims to support schools that model and apply First Amendment principles throughout their communities.
"While all of us are born with certain inalienable rights," said First Amendment Schools coordinator, Sam Chaltain, "none of us is born with the wisdom to exercise those rights. It takes practice. And where else but in our nation's schools will our next generation of Americans acquire that practice?"
Sam Chaltain introduces the Nursery Road students
Quoting Justice Learned Hand, Chaltain said, "Liberty resides in the hearts of men and women, and when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no court, can save it." Then, introducing the five Nursery Road Elementary students, he added, "It is my honor to introduce to you five future leaders, in whose hearts liberty surely resides."
The presentation can be viewed at http://www.tvw.org/MediaPlayer/Archived/WME.cfm?EVNum=2005080077C&TYPE=V (Fast forward to about 11:44 on the timer to the beginning of the presentation)
First Amendment Schools can be found at http://www.firstamendmentschools.org Click Project School Profiles to learn more about Nursery Road school.
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Sep 04, 2005
By Cornelia Spelman
It is abundantly clear to anyone who has been watching and listening to the situation in New Orleans that our government failed to respond adequately.
We don't need experts to tell us this--the faces of the anguished people begging for help have made it perfectly clear that no matter what President Bush says about it, this human catastrophe could have been prevented or hugely lessened. Too late, for all those who died, for the leader of our country to say it is the fault of Nature, or of local and state government. And it is offensive to me to hear some people call this "the blame game." It is no game.
William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense, said on CNN today that there ought to be no distinction between acts of nature and acts of terrorism--the government needs to be able to respond to either in the same way. The questions to ask of the government: What did they know? When did they know it? What did they do about it?
The answers to the first two questions have been widely discussed this week--they've known FOR YEARS that New Orleans was in danger.
The bodies floating in New Orleans indicate that the answer to the last question is: not enough.