A Spoon Is Not a Spoon

Spoons
Image credit: Photo by
skinnylaminx on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

As I write this, I have a cup of tea beside me, and I am trying to get myself to drink it.  I'm not hesitating because I don't like tea or because I think it will be unpleasant.  I'm hesitating because I'm trying to drink it out of a Pyrex measuring cup, which feels... Uncomfortable.  Weird.  Challenging.

You see, my mugs were all dirty and I had forgotten to start the dishwasher.  Now sure, I could have hand washed a mug, but why not use the more readily available measuring cup?  It has a handle.  It can hold hot liquids.  It's no heavier or more unwieldy than some of my beloved oversized mugs.  But I recoiled a bit at the thought.  Was it sanitary? I wondered.  Um, yes.  It's been through the same dishwasher as the mugs I usually drink tea from, and I use it to make lots of food that I safely and happily eat.  Would the tea taste ok?  Why wouldn't it; the measuring cup is just glass, and I drink out of glasses all the time.  But still, it just seemed... Wrong.

Of course, my son Austen is very familiar with this sensation.  Austen (as those of you who visit regularly may know) is autistic and has to eat his yogurt with a plastic spoon.  It can't be silverware, because those spoons are heavier and will (if left in the yogurt container) sometimes tip the carton.  Disaster!  But even among plastic spoons, not all spoons are created equal.  Austen's plastic spoons must be clear plastic, and not just any clear plastic; they must be the kind I buy (in bulk) from our local grocery.

This has been frustrating.  I've carried a lingering resentment over it.  After all, I once forgot to pack a spoon in his lunch, and the school called.  Austen completely refused to eat lunch without that damn spoon.  The school has plastic spoons of course, but they are white, not clear.  He insisted on a clear spoon.  So, the teachers looked through their own lunches and his classmates lunches for one to trade, but their clear spoons weren't the same brand as our clear spoons.  Their clear spoons had little swirls on the handles, making them totally different.  And because he couldn't eat his yogurt, he couldn't eat anything.  He was stuck on yogurt and couldn't get past that to the rest of lunch.

So, I ended up driving a package of spoons over to school, muttering to myself the whole time, "A spoon's a spoon, damn it!  Why does it have to be this spoon?  There are a hundred spoons at school.  There are even clear plastic spoons at school.  For crying out loud you don't even need a spoon.  You could drink it.  Or lick it off your fingers!  Why do you have to eat the yogurt with this particular type of spoon?!"

But I know why.  Autistic engineer and author Temple Grandin explained it in her recent interview on NPR when she said, "If I say to you, 'Think about a church steeple,' I only see specific ones and I can tell you exactly where they're at. And I was shocked to find out that most of the people see a generalized sort of vague, generalized, generic steeple. For me there's no generalized one. There's only lots of different specific ones."  There is no Platonic ideal of a spoon in Austen's mind, there are only specific spoons.

And I can say that's crazy and troublesome and that I just don't get why it makes eating yogurt at school impossible some days.  I can say that, that is, until I sit here unable to drink out of a clearly very mug-like object, complete with a handle and an ability to hold hot liquids simply because it doesn't fit my idea of what one ought to drink tea from.

No comments yet

April Is So Not the Cruellest Month Haiku

Haiku FridayStand in steel grey cold,
bleak earth stretching endlessly.
February sucks.

5 comments

Coming Home Again

LotusSunset
Image credit: Photo by
Elizabeth The Queen Of All Things on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

For the past year and a half, I have been a regular contributor at the recovery website The Second Road. I learned today that The Second Road will cease operations this month. The content will remain available but unfortunately the site will not be regularly maintained. I am grateful to The Second Road for introducing me to many wonderful people and allowing me to share my journey more widely than through my blog alone, and tonight I drink a nice sober toast (of sparkling apple cider) to all the folks over there.

While I'm saddened, I'm also excited to spend some time right here, tinkering around behind the scenes, maybe answering some of those (ahem) year-old messages piled up in my inbox and of course, writing.

I had a dream last night that I was in a temple and one wall was a curio cabinet filled with tiny statues. I was in a group of people and as we filed past the cabinet, we were each supposed to choose a figure to serve as our spiritual guide and protector. I choose a figure seated in meditation, carved from purple stone. It sat above a small white label with black type that read: "Ananda." When I left the temple, I found I had forgotten to take the figure with me, and I felt lost, until I remembered that in choosing it, it was with me always. And what do you know? Today turned out to be (like every day) a day of losing and finding, of forgetting and remembering. This old room of mine is still here, open like a flower, and I'm ready for whatever the universe has in store for me next.

5 comments

Different Strokes

Fish
Image credit: Photo by
Darwin Bell on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

My husband Mark, I have to admit it, hates fish. And people fish evangelize him all the time. I used to too, in my pre-vegetarian days, when a trip to the aquarium would make me hungry. The problem, you see, is never that people were different and have different needs and tastes; the problem is that Mark has never had "good" fish. "You've never tried really fresh fish. You haven't tried this fish; it's not a fishy fish. You haven't tasted fish the way I make it. You haven't been eating fish the right way. Try this. You'll like it." But he hasn't. Fish just doesn't work for everybody, but there are lots of other things in the world to eat. In my family, there's no one path to good food.

Read the rest at The Second Road...

No comments yet

Haiku for Mama’s Rare Moment Alone

Haiku FridayAll eyes (except mine) --
yes, even the cat's -- are closed
on my lonely bliss.

3 comments

Slogans

Words
Image credit: Photo by
Darwin Bell on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

A friend called me last night. She's in the midst of some very messy office politics at work. She thinks her coworkers are being difficult. They think she's being unreasonable. Her boss thinks they're all wrong and they all think the boss is wrong. "Do you think I'm being unreasonable? Am I crazy or are they?" she asked. And I paused, because I've seen a whole lot of crazy at this point in my life and I've gotten a pretty secure grip on two things: the first is what I think is and isn't crazy, and the second (and more important) is that it totally doesn't matter...

Read the rest at The Second Road...

No comments yet

That’s Not My Experience

RoaringLion
Image credit: Photo by
Martin_Heigan on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

Years ago, I met a woman who, when she was disagreeing with her partner, would tell him, "That's not my reality."  She had a way of saying it that implied there was a real Reality (hers) and some alternate Crazytown Reality (his).  You had only to hear those few words and know that he was totally batshit and she not only had a PhD in Reality, she was the president and CEO of Reality.  In recovery, I've found myself clinging to similar mantras — most often "that's not my experience" or "that's not my truth" — and often (admittedly) with that same snarky undertone of superiority for protection.  It's been hard to let go of feeling threatened when other people see things differently, but I find I do feel better when I am able to simply state where I am, let other people be where they are and not tag on, in a whisper, "P.S. I'm right."

Read the rest at The Second Road...

3 comments

Diagnosing Sex Addiction (Or Not)

BrainDoctor
Image credit: Photo by
deadstar 2.0 on Flickr
Licensed under Creative Commons

This morning, Alix at The Second Road forwarded me a link to an article about sex addiction by psychologist Michael Bader.  When I saw the title ("Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking"), I almost didn't click through (the whole "excuse" thing is so tiresome) but I couldn't resist some good blog fodder, so I did anyway.  To my surprise, Mr. Bader wasn't talking about sex addiction being an excuse for acting badly in addiction.  However, not to my surprise, the article did focus on the same old semantic argument: "Sexual compulsions are real and they harm the person in their grip as well as others. But they shouldn’t be called addictions."

Read the rest at The Second Road
...

No comments yet

Sleepy Haikus for My Baby Girl

Haiku Friday"Mama, I can't sleep.
Can you breathe me to sleep, please?"
"Ok, close your eyes..."

"Breathe in sleep, out cares.
Breathe in soft starlight, out sun.
Float on breath to dreams."

"Each breath is a gift,
a wave lapping slumber's shore,
gently lulling you."

Dark lashes lie still,
small hands unfold like petals,
and sleep takes you.

3 comments

How to Change Anyone!

ChangeI was browsing around Target the other day, when I came across the most fabulous book I have seen in a long, long time: How to Change Someone You Love: Four Steps to Help You Help Them.  I laughed the kind of laugh that ought to have sent flocks of birds scattering in alarm.  Instead just startled me, and I quickly ducked behind the shelves in embarrassment as I grabbed the book.

I wavered a little over whether it was more morally wrong to skim the book in the store without buying it (is that the literary equivalent of downloading music without paying?) or to actually buy the book, in essence rewarding the author for his cheesy charlatanism (however entertaining).  After a quick look at the first chapter, I decided it would definitely be more wrong to buy the book.

Like many books of the self-help genre, the first few chapters contain don't actually contain any helpful information, but are instead dedicated to telling you (aaaatttt gggrrreeeaaattt lllleeennngggttthhhh) how much helpful information you will find later in this book if you just keep reading.

This is to discourage people like me from doing what I was doing.  Most people just break down buy the book after skimming the introductory marketing material.  Only the persistent skimmer will stick through those self-promotional first few chapters about how Al-Anon is wrong and you are not powerless and you totally can change people if only you follow the four easy steps laid out in this book, which, trust me, are coming, right after a few more of these chapters about how this book is right on the money.  (And speaking of money...  But I bravely pressed on, both because I was eager to see where I had gone wrong on the whole fixing-my-husband's-sex-addiction thing and because knew this was totally blog fodder.

It turns out that the right thing to do is to gather together people who love the addict and stage an intervention.  You are all, unlike what those suckers in 12 Step tell you, to use lots of "I" language to communicate your message.  (Oh, "I" language is a fundamental part of 12 Step? Well, ok, moving on...) The message you are supposed to communicate is that you really love and are concerned about the addict, so much so that you want this person to enter recovery, which includes 12 Step meetings (in spite of the fact that powerlessness is for suckers).

At this point, by the way, your loved one is supposed say yes, you're supposed to set some very non-12 Step boundaries (damn, that's 12 Step too?), your loved one is supposed to enter rehab and — with continued loving detachment (oh, wait, loving detachment is a 12 Step concept too?) — is fixed forever.  Ta da!  You've effected change!  See how awesome you are!

Of course, there's this little, tiny section, buried somewhere deep in the book about what to do in the (really, very highly unlikely event) that the addict refuses to admit to having a problem and says "no" to recovery or storms out or tells you you're crazy.  (But really, don't worry too much about that, because addicts almost never do that kind of thing.  That's why this section is one 200th of the entire book.  The chances are that small.  But you know, just in case.)  The answer?  Keep trying.  Eventually, one day, if you keep at it, your addict will enter recovery.  Because you are powerful, and you can change people.  Don't give up!  If it's not working, you're probably just not doing it right and should study the book harder.

It's as simple as that.

Or is it? It's probably not entirely fair for me to mock this book for repackaging powerlessness as powerfulness and selling it. After all, it does trick people into reading about some concepts that they might not otherwise be willing to explore. Maybe it's the codependent version of putting a free beer sign on the door of an AA meeting. It's false advertising, but it still gets them through the door.


This post originally published at The Second Road...

2 comments