So Long for Now

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:39:05 -0700

My Dear Neighbours:

It's time for me to take a short holiday from blogging. I want to spend a few weeks catching up with everyone in my neighbourhood whose blogs I haven't had time to read in the past few months, as I've been so busy with writing. I feel as though I've lost touch with many of my friends,and am missing very important things in their lives, not only here on VOX, but at home, too. Also, my garden is full of weeds and needs tending. I will be back in August. Before I go I want to thank all my neighbours who tagged me for the "Eight Things You Don't Know About Me" game. I didn't want to respond to only one person, so I decided this would be a good way to leave off, by responding here. Thanks for the tag, everyone, and... here we go:

Eight Things You Don't Know About Me:

• When I was twenty, I took classes to learn how to assemble car transmissions just to impress a boy I was in love with, who was an auto mechanic. I put a C-6 transmission together, all by myself. Now I probably couldn't remember what it looks like.

• I sold my first engagement ring and went on a tour of the European continent with the proceeds. I'm serious- Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Amsterdam and more, all for the price of one sparkler, which the man who gave it to me told me he didn't want back.

• I come from a family of amazingly talented musicians. I, on the other hand, am tone deaf. But God made up for that deficiency by blessing me with the biggest feet you’ve ever seen on a 5’ 2” woman. (Size American 8 Wide – real grape stompers from my Sicilian ancestors.)

• My former business partner and I once took an overnight train from the northern border of Greece back to Athens carrying a satchel stuffed with approximately 4000 USD in cash. (Long story.) The train was filled with derelicts and poor refugees. We were very uncomfortable, to say the least, two women alone, carrying all that money. To top off our discomfort, my business partner got hit on by the station manager. She turned him down, but kept his phone number to show to her husband when we got back home. Bless his heart, I don't know what upset him more - the fact that we could have gotten mugged, or that a strange man had approached his wife. Once we were home safely, the whole experience seemed a big adventure.

• Several of my pupils at a NYC junior high school were gang members, unfortunately. I truly cared about them all, and worked very hard with them, not only on reading and writing, but on their lives. One of them astounded my colleagues when he got up and read an A.E. Housman poem aloud in our classroom. The next day he was arrested on suspicion of murder. I’ve always wondered what he could have become were his circumstances different.

• I love to read to children. Bernard Evslin or Roald Dahl are my first joys, but I’ll read Eric Carle and Dr Seuss gladly, too.

• In my middle-age I have become a ‘gym rat.’ I work out with heavy weights four times a week. Some of my friends are the male body builders I work out with. I never knew men with muscles so big would have hearts to match. I learned a lot about how men really think from working out with them. They are not at all as I’d imagined when I was young. Apart from the body builders, I am lucky to count as my friends people of both sexes, all careers, sexual persuasions, nationalities, and age ranges from 20’s - 80’s. The world is full of intriguing people wherever one looks.

• I can cook pretty darn well, especially Italian and Greek food. My baklava and tiramisu are legendary. I hope I can prove it to you all some day. And when I divorced my Greek husband, he asked me to leave him my shrimp scampi recipe before I left. I did leave it for him, (and didn't even leave out any of the ingredients for spite.)

I'll be seeing you on your blogs. Enjoy July!

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Anahata

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:10:22 -0700

Black tail deer fawn by fuzuoko on Flickr

Sleepy Hollow, Northern California. “What a perfect place for a writer to live,” I thought, when I moved here almost five years ago. And I did get a lot of writing done, when I wasn’t in my garden, that is.

Our house is surrounded by woods and high hills, with a seasonal creek dancing along the right edge of our property, lined by a sentinel of three giant rocks. “We’re butt up against nature here,” is what my husband likes to say.

When I saw it, apart from thinking about the quaint name of the area and of its street names, like “Van Winkle Drive,” and “Ichabod Lane,” I also imagined that I could, at long last, have a garden. Having lived all my life in small flats in a city or by the sea, I’d made do with potted flowers on my windowsills and balconies. Now I had almost a full acre of dirt to plant and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Testing the soil, mapping the sunny and shady areas of the ground, I bought containers and containers of colourful blooms and planted them with enthusiasm and care. I toiled in that garden daily, my nails turning jagged and brown as I dug in eggshells and coffee grinds to fertilize the earth, picked off caterpillars and crinkled dead stems from each plant, watered and weeded carefully and methodically. Week after week, month after month I worked, until my garden was rich and full and I could revel in the vibrancy of it.

Then the deer came. Dozens of them, grown and small, with antlers and without; they came down from the rise of trees behind our house. To someone who’d never seen them up close before, they looked splendid, graceful and gentle. A gift from nature, a blessing, even.

Until I woke up one morning and wandered out into my garden to discover it no longer existed. I could see only the remnants of it left by a savage marauder who thought every blossom, every leaf I’d lovingly attended, was nothing more than dinner salad. The deer had eaten their way through bougainvillea, geraniums, lobelia, impatiens, petunias, pansies, azalea bushes, rose bushes, and when nothing else was left, even ivy vines. I stood in horrified dismay looking down at the concrete and the grass where scattered specks of green, blue, red, pink, purple, and yellow, which had once been my beloved, beautiful flowers, lay strewn and still, as though they’d tried to run and escape from a terrible siege, but had perished in their efforts, anyway.

The deer became my enemy then, and my war with them was on. Armed with powdered blood meal, deer netting, and a foul smelling spray made of garlic and eggs, I attacked. They retreated for a while. Then I woke up one morning again to discover that during the night, the hungry deer had somehow managed to nibbled under the netting. They’d also concluded that both powdered blood meal and rotten egg/garlic spray made delightful salad dressings. My flowers were murdered a second time. Not only did this make me cry, it made me furious.

My husband could not understand my perspective. Growing up on a farm and living in rural areas all his life, he’d shared space with various wild animals since he’d been born. To him, the presence of deer in our garden had the same feeling about it you get when you shrug on an old coat. It wasn’t necessarily attractive, but it felt familiar and comfortable. But in just the way I splashed delightedly into the sea in Greece while he stood there shivering and thinking of sharks; or slid easily between passengers on a New York City subway while he thought of pickpockets, the deer were as alien to me as those experiences were to him. Somehow, he'd missed that.

“Why not just plant things they won’t eat?” he asked pragmatically, not even trying to hide his impatience with me.

“What, you mean lavender?” I replied, sardonically, not even trying to hide my annoyance with him.

To me, just having purple buds in the garden looked dull. Judging by the preponderance of lavender and oleander in the area, everyone else had surrendered to the deer. But I wouldn’t. I didn’t even like oleander, although the fact that it was poisonous and that the deer just might get hungry enough to eat it, was an entertaining thought by that time.

My focus on the deer and their activities in our garden became a bone of contention between my husband and me. Now I’d graduated to running outdoors whenever I saw one, to clap my hands at it and “shoo” it away, spraying them with the hose when I was out watering in my garden, hovering by the windows whenever I heard any suspicious rustling outside, and even throwing small pebbles at their feet so they’d flee. But though they’d scramble away, they’d only come back again when they knew I wasn’t looking. Those devils.

And when I’d complain that they’d managed to foil me again, my husband would say, “It’s not personal, dammit. Stop planting deer food and they won’t come.”

I despised the deer for not being discouraged by my efforts to thwart them, and I was hurt and irritated with my husband for not knowing what was at stake for me.

Then, two years ago, on Father’s Day, I was out in my garden and heard a strange bleating sound, just up the hill behind the house on the other side of the creek. As I began to walk across our lawn towards the creek to investigate, a doe stepped out from behind a tree on the hill where she’d been hiding, and looked down at me in a way I’d never seen a deer look. Her ears and head were actually bent foward in an aggressive position and she was staring directly at me. A head-on stare was an unusual pose for a deer, as they ordinarily looked out at me from the sides of their eyes. Not only that, but she was making a peculiar, snorting sound I’d never heard a deer make, either. It was as though she were growling a warning. I stopped still and looked up at her as the bleating continued, much closer this time. That’s when I realised: She was guarding her fawn. The cry I was hearing was the sound of her newborn. I stepped back and nodded. A mother looking out for her baby. Fair enough. I wasn’t about to chase them, that was for sure.

But as I stepped back, the doe did an odd thing. She began to sway on her feet. Then, in the most ungraceful way I’d ever seen a deer move, she seemed to stagger across the hill, directly across from where I stood on the lawn, and away from her baby. She stumbled dizzily, and then ---God help me--- her knees gave way and she collapsed. I gasped in shock as she began sliding down the hill towards me, unable to stop her fall. I knew any moment she would come tumbling over the retaining wall and onto the lawn where I stood.

It was a pile of logs gathered at the base of the fence that prevented her complete tumble over the wall. Now, as I watched in horror, she was lying on her side, thrashing, her legs tangled up in logs, desperately trying, but unable to get her footing back on the hill. After a few moments, she sank down and gave up. Laying her head back on the dirt she twisted around, and from her lying position, feebly but determinedly, she lifted her back head up and looked at me.

She wore that startled look one always sees on a deer. The look of prey that knows they are prey. You might think she was fearing for herself in her look, afraid of me, because she knew I’d always chased her kind away.

No. ... There was something else… I felt something else in that look. It was the look of one mother to another. It went straight through my heart as surely as if she’d spoken to me. And, as though I were reading that mother’s look from my spirit instead of my brain, I looked back at her, too, directly into her eyes, and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll find your baby. I promise. And I promise she won’t be harmed.”

She held my look as though she were listening and understanding my words, my English words, which I’d said out loud to an animal, a wild creature that couldn’t speak. Then with one weak nod, she lay her head back one final time, looked up at the sky and... I saw her die. Hoping I was wrong in everything I was witnessing, I stayed to see if she might move. But as I stayed and watched her, those brown doe eyes slowly filmed over white. For sure, she was gone.

I turned and ran into the house, calling for my husband. He was on the phone with Tim, one of our sons, who’d called to wish him a “Happy Father’s Day.” He asked Tim to hold on a moment as he listened to my agitated words. Then he said into the phone, “Tim, I’ll have to let you go. We’ve got another deer emergency.”

And with that smart aleck remark, my husband followed me as I pointed out to where the doe lay, and then to where I knew I’d heard her fawn.

That remark to our son about ‘another’ deer emergency hadn’t done it, but what he said next did. “She’s not dead. She’s probably just resting. And I’m fairly certain there is no fawn.”

I turned on him. “I may not have been raised on a farm, but I’m not an idiot, “I snapped. “That deer is as dead as you can get, and her fawn is over there, on the other side of our creek.”

He could tell I meant business then, so with sigh, he climbed up over the retaining wall and gingerly approached that poor doe. Peering at her, he confirmed what I knew. “Yeah. She’s gone, alright.” Then standing he turned to me and asked, “Where did you hear the fawn?” When I pointed in the direction again, he said, “We’ll have to approach very quietly, or we might scare it.”

I followed him across the creek. I couldn’t see anything, but a moment later, he lifted his arm and whispered, “there.”

Sure enough, sitting comfortably in a bed of leaves, her front legs crossed, looking directly at us, with curiosity and no fear whatsoever, was the tiniest fawn I’d ever seen.

My husband’s tone was very different now. “Listen, if that doe died after giving birth, she probably was too old or too sick to survive it. That might mean she wasn’t able to feed this little thing, either. And that’s not good. If Animal Services can’t get any milk into her, she won’t make it.”

I was beside myself at those words. I’d made a promise and I was already trying to figure out, if my husband’s verdict were true, how I, a woman who’d spent the last three years chasing deer from her garden, was going to save this one.

Animal Services estimation was not so bleak, however. It took two of their vans to our home --- one for the live animal and one for the dead --- but they determined that the fawn would survive. She’d been fed one last time by her mother, and in fact still had a belly full of milk. She’d be cared for, then released when she was able to survive on her own. She’d probably live to eat my flowers another day.

As for her mother, I watched the man from Animal Services gently close her eyes. Then he and my husband wrapped her in a sheet and carried her down the hill into the back of the second waiting transport van. I watched as it drove away.

I am not a Hindu. But, the Anahata is the fourth primary chakra according to Hindi Yogic and Tantric traditions. It symbolises the consciousness of love, empathy, selflessness and devotion. On the psychic level, this centre of force inspires the human being to love, be compassionate, altruistic, devoted and to accept the things that happen in a divine way.

And wouldn’t you know it? The animal it is represented by is the deer.

I am not a Hindu, I'll say again. But I know what I felt and I know what I experienced. That mother doe and I communicated that day. And by our bond of motherhood, we became more than two different species on opposites sides of an issue. We became more than predator and prey. With her dying breath, she looked at me, her enemy, and saw something in me that was like her. She knew she could ask me for help with the one thing left for her here to take care of, her one last, most precious thing.

I didn’t let her down.

My garden is very different now. I keep one giant pot of red geraniums up high on a porch where no animals can reach, as a reminder that beauty can never excuse arrogance. Now my yard is flooded with lavender.

And you know, it smells wonderful. What’s even more wonderful is seeing the deer there. We’re at peace with each other now.

I wish it were that easy to make peace within our species.

3chakrahexagon_btn

banner of Three Goddesses by Thalia Took

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Love is Mortifying the Second Time Around

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:23:57 -0700

Three of Our Beloved Sons Playing Golf Together

My husband Pete and I will be celebrating our anniversary in just a few more days. It’s not the first marriage for either of us. And when people asked me what it was like to fall in love again after a twenty-year marriage and painful divorce, I had a one-word answer, “Humiliating.”

Why? Well, when twenty-year olds stare into each other’s eyes, it’s romantic. When eighty-year olds do it, it’s poignant, and even inspiring. But when almost fifty year-olds do it, it just looks silly. Sort of like dressing in too youthful a fashion - you can get away with that when you’re twenty or eighty, too. But when a fifty-year-old woman tries to wear pink leggings, people just shake their heads in pity. “Don’t you know how ridiculous you look?” is what they’re thinking.

At least, that’s what I felt people were thinking whenever I held hands in public with my new (oh, Lord, here it goes) ‘boyfriend.’ Even using that term embarrassed me.

My friends and acquaintances shared my opinion. I’d say, “I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Pete,” and they’d laugh as though I‘d told a joke, even as they shook hands with him.

Part of the reason for that was that they remembered me when I was like Atlas, carrying the burden of my hopeless marriage on my back. They couldn’t reconcile that woman with the glowing woman I was now. When they looked at Pete, they saw every other middle-aged man of their acquaintance; their own husbands, in fact; not the dazzling answer to the question that had haunted me all my life.

Nevertheless, my true friends were loyal.

“He’s sweet,” said one.

“What lovely eyes,” said another.

But other acqaintances' laughing response was their obvious smirking scepticism towards Pete and me, as we smiled at each other like giddy thieves who’d stumbled across an unforeseen bag of loot. Their sniggering meant they didn’t like thinking about the temerity we’d shown by seeking each other out and squeezing in one last chance at happiness.

Whether their provocation to chuckle when they met Pete was well-meant or otherwise, people's reactions embarrassed me, so I tried to downplay my enchantment. Yet, I couldn’t demean what we felt by introducing Pete as, “my friend.” And though it would have been the more grown-up choice, saying he was “my lover” was most certainly out of the question, too.

The reason for that was because between us, Pete and I had five sons, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and ‘lover’ was not the term we wanted to bandy about in front of five teenage boys. Just the implication of what that word means raises their already way-too-high testosterone levels. You just don’t want them thinking that you’re doing what you hope they’re not doing.

The first time Pete invited me for an overnight stay when his sons would be in residence, I countered immediately with, “Where will I sleep?”

He looked at me as though I’d shot him. “I’d assumed with me, of course.”

Of course. We were (oh, Lord, here it goes) having sex. All the time, in fact. And as wonderful as that was, once again, ‘at our age,’ that also made me feel self-conscious.

After we were done, lying there, breathless and grinning, two things were going through my head:

1) Wow. I can’t believe I’m feeling this…after all these years.

and

2) The kids would be totally revolted if they knew what we were doing in here.

I knew I wasn’t alone in feeling that first one, but Pete hadn’t really given much thought to the other, I could tell. I needed to enlighten him.

“We can’t sleep together with the boys in the house. We’re not married.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Ah. Though we were in love, we had a difference of opinion. He wanted to plunge in for a second go. I, still battle-sore, needed more time. So I prevaricated. “The boys hardly know me. We’d be setting a bad example if we sleep together while they’re here.”

Years of a lonely marriage and years of living alone afterwards, Pete was keen to win this point. “They know how I feel about you. You’re my fiancée.”

That wasn’t a completely accurate term, either. We’d talked about marriage and I knew we would probably get married…eventually. But I was still scared. I hadn’t been very astute in my choices before and each time, I’d been so sure. There was a lot more at stake now. Our sons had already been through one divorce. We had to consider that and we also had to consider the way we’d met.

I’ve never mentioned this before but...um…Pete and I met (oh Lord, here it goes) online. The fact that two antiques like us would engage in such modern behavior as online dating, made the younger and older generations in both our families very wary of us. So, though I wanted to legitimatize our relationship, more for their sakes than ours, I wasn’t ready to make our union legal…yet.

That’s why ‘fiancée’ and ‘fiancé’ were what we now called ourselves. Those seemed more…socially acceptable, somehow. Though Pete wasn’t bothered by other people’s opinions, to me, ‘fiancé’ was much less blatant than ‘lover,’ much less juvenile than ‘boyfriend,’ and much less permanent than ‘husband.’

Now, however, the focus then was on sleeping arrangements for my first visit. I had to make Pete understand. “I just want the boys to get to know me a little better, not be fixated on the detail that I’m sleeping with their father.”

That time, Pete’s fatherly instincts overcame his amorous ones. But once we did declare to all that we were living together, without being married for the time being, there was no getting around the fact that our boys would see us sleeping in the same bed.And this meant more embarrassment for me.

I’d once overheard a friend of my twelve-year-old son’s make this statement: "The thought of any two forty-year-olds having sex is gross, but my parents? Double gross.”

If forty-year-olds having sex was "gross," then, since Pete and I were nearing fifty, our collective sons might assume sex that would impossible for us. Little did they know that we weren’t even nearing the Viagra stage yet, or that I could still maybe even get pregnant. What would their reactions be, I wonder, if we presented them with a new sibling as proof of our shenanigans?

So, I was now stuck with having to have “the talk” with my biological son. Not about his love life - about his mother’s.

Reluctantly, I sat him down and asked these questions: Did he know that Pete and I loved each other very much? Did he understand that there were the lives of seven people involved and that because there were, Pete and I weren’t going to rush into marriage; that we were going to live together for a while first? How did he feel about all that?

My son looked at me smugly, “Let me get this straight, Mom - are you asking me for permission to have sex?”

At that, I just stared at him, miserably. He was right, the little git. But he surprised me next by smiling and putting his arm around me. “Listen, Mom, you don’t have to be worried about me. People fall in love - even at your age. I’m happy for you, really. Pete’s a great guy.”

Oh, how sweet and wise of him. And condescending, too. But at least I was over that hurdle.

Ha. As mortifying (and irritating) as that conversation had been, I should have known it was still too easy. Because the reality was that Pete’s and my sex life, or lack thereof, never entered any of our assorted sons’ minds. Even after we got married. I know this, because on three separate occasions, three out of five of them almost walked in on my new husband and me when we were… in flagrantly delectable negotiations. Even though, each time, we were in our own bedroom, with the door closed.

(*Note: in the following sections, I’ve changed the names of said three sons to protect everyone’s sensibilities.)

The first time it happened, we’d just finished indulging in a little afternoon delight and lying on our bed, relaxed and replete. Suddenly, Pete sat up straight, “I think I just heard the door downstairs open.”

Before he’d even finished the sentence, ‘Mo’ came bounding up the stairs, home two hours earlier than expected. And judging from the pounding footsteps we heard behind his, he’d brought friends.

“Hey, you guys!” he shouted, “Are you in there?” That voice was coming from right behind our closed bedroom door.

“Oh, my God!” I whispered, but Pete was way ahead of me. Having retained much of his college athletic ability, he’d leapt from the bed before I’d even had time to scramble under the covers. He got to the door and pressed his palm against it, just as ‘Mo’ turned the door knob.

“One second, slugger,”Pete managed to get out. Unluckily, ‘Mo’ was not only dense, but apparently hard of hearing. (Which is why I won’t reveal which of us is the biologically-responsible party for this particular child.)

“What’s wrong with the door?” shouted ‘Mo’ through it, “Is it stuck?” I clasped my hands over my mouth as he pushed against it from the other side, his friends right behind him, talking in the hall.

If he manages to get it open, I thought, it’ll be all over his high school. We’ll have to move, for sure.

Pete, bless his heart, used all his naked might to keep the door firmly shut as “Mo’ leaned heavily against it and kept pushing. I finally gathered my horrified wits enough to call out, “‘Mo!’ - I’m getting dressed. Give me a minute, will ya?”

‘Mo’ just said, “Oh.” Then he let off the door and walked away, his friends behind him.

Pete sagged against it. “Whew! That was a close one,” he whispered. Then he winked at me, “We have to get a lock for this thing.”

But a new lock doesn’t prevent teenage boys from coming in and out, without warning, all hours of the day and night. Nor prevent them from expecting you - so near your dotage - to be in sweat pants, slumped in front of the TV at any given time that they decide to show up. And it didn’t prevent our other son, ‘Larry,’ from pounding on the bedroom door one evening, either. Same dialogue, too. “You guys in there?”

No, the only thing it did prevent was Pete having to spring out of bed (no pun intended) when, getting no response, “Larry’ also tried turning the door knob.

By the time the third one attempted to walk through a locked door a few weeks after that, saying, “Hey, you guys, open up, it’s me,” Pete and I were used to it. As ‘Curly’ rattled the door knob, we couldn’t help ourselves. We actually started to giggle.

And ‘Curly’ heard us. There was a silence as he digested what this signified. “Oh, Jeez,” he mumbled, disgusted and stomped away.

Are you middle-aged and thinking of getting married again? Got friends? Teenagers in the house? Well, then, you’d better develop a very thick skin.

This is dedicated to my husband, Pete. Happy Anniversary, babe.

Our Sons Play Golf, Two

---------------------
*FYI- Patricia and Pete's other two sons are ‘Groucho’ and ‘Chico.’

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We're Not Powerless

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:03:11 -0700

Ethan Ableman Children's Chorus of Washington by Scott Ableman

In 2002, the man I love lost his 19-year-old son to a car crash. Six months later, I had to face the growing evidence that yet another beloved family member was suffering from a mental condition which was causing him and those who loved him a great deal of emotional pain, but for which he was adamantly not going to seek treatment. Two minutes after that, I had still another falling out with my parents; regarding their obsessive control issues that dogged me right up to my mother’s death. A few months later, my 14-year-old son began his rebellion stage with a vengeance. Not to mention that throughout all this turmoil, I was making the slow and unbelievable discovery that a woman who I thought had been my friend for the past twenty years was simply…not. And then, of course, there was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some people might wonder how I could possibly include that last sentence in my list of personal woes. But I do, because since I’ve been in my early twenties, I’ve had what some call the annoying propensity to read the newspapers and use my God-given strategic thinking skills to analyse the information therein. And I don’t just read American newspapers. There are all kinds of news reports one can find online, many in English, but if not, I find that if I use a dictionary, I can read the newspapers in a few different languages. And being able to do that gives me a bit of an edge, because world reports are markedly and sometimes, scarily different than American reports.

The reason I go to all this trouble to read whatever I can and think about all of it is simple - I want to know when policy-makers are lying to me. I don’t care what party they belong to, nor what country they’re heading. I don’t join teams and stick with them doggedly to the bitter end, no matter what ‘my’ team does or says, when it comes to politics. In fact, after the dirty play I witnessed by the Italian team during the last World Cup, a team I’ve been cheering for since I was a little girl watching European football with my uncles, I don’t even do it with sports any more. Because I know that whenever anyone who’s been put in power opens his mouth, whether in sports or politics, sh*t happens. And that sh*t usually gets dumped with a heavy hand on the littlest guy.

But reading the newspapers and analysing the news led me to having to face the final personal trauma of the many personal traumas between the years 2002 and 2003, which was that my country was going to attack another country for a reason that I knew to be an absolute LIE.

Five years and countless deaths (of humans and civil liberties) later, I’m proven right. Oddly enough, that doesn’t make me feel one bit better about it.

But I digress.

Regarding every harrowing incident I lived through between 2002 and 2003, well-meaning supporters said, “There’s nothing you can do.”

It was true that there was nothing I could do to prevent the series of events that led to my stepson’s death. Nor could I stop the deluge of grief that followed and that will trickle forever. I couldn’t force my family member to seek counselling, nor my parents to be anything other than what they were. And, like everything else my son does, he did his rebelling so well, that nothing I, his father and his stepfather managed to come up with, would alter his course until he was damn good and ready to alter it himself. As far as my long-held acquaintanceship…well, I thought about it long and hard, and at the end of the day, I saw I was pretty much powerless there, too.

Powerlessness is terrible. It leads to hopelessness. Even though I coped as best I could with these events, I admit to feeling hopeless more than once during them.

But when the President of the United States starting talking about invading Iraq, I heard, “There’s nothing you can do,” once too often. I wasn’t powerless in this situation. I could at least have my voice heard. And so I began writing, writing, writing. I wrote essays, articles and satires. I wrote emails and letters to Congress.

What difference can the voice of one woman make? Maybe not much, but add it to another voice and now you have harmony. Add ten more and it’s a chorus.

There are a growing number of us who are less and less afraid of singing against the norm. We are tired of the different factions sniping at each other and pointing fingers. It doesn’t matter who was playing the fiddle when Rome started burning, it's time for us all to step up and begin to put the fire out.

I haven’t written about the presidential campaign because I am disgusted by it. I am sickened that this past week alone there was devastation in China and Myramar and none of the candidates - one of whom is to be the future leader of the free world - could stop his or her own personal crusade for self-aggrandisement long enough to bring these up in any real context. If I thought that any of the three could sincerely care about anything other than, “I want to be the next president of the United States,” just for a single moment, that in itself just might give that person the one precious vote that is still mine to give.

When I lived in Greece, there was a devastating earthquake in nearby Turkey that rivalled the one China has just suffered. Greek television is not like the television here in the United States. Reality TV in Greece is not who gets picked by the bachelor, reality TV is seeing your Turkish neighbour clawing through the rubble of his village, screaming in agony because he hears his family crying beneath the stone, and he has no tools save his bare hands to free them. When you see the tears and the blood of your neighbour, does it matter then if he is Muslim or Christian, friend or enemy? It shouldn’t and it didn’t to the Greeks. Long time foes of the Turks, with centuries of ill-will between them, the Greeks were the first outsiders to step on Turkish soil to help.

I remember being in my little bookshop in Athens, crying with relief as my business partner and I watched on our telly downstairs, Greek police, Greek firemen, Greek doctors, Greek nurses, Greek university students, all doing their damnedest to help their sworn enemies save their children, their spouses, their parents and whatever was left of their homes. And when just the following month, Greece had its own earthquake, the Turks were there in a show of solidarity that should make every self-proclaimed follower of God or any kind of spirituality here in my country hang his head in shame.

When I asked one Greek why he was able to help so wholeheartedly a people who have been at war off and on again with Greece practically since the beginning of time, his answer made me think. He said, “It’s not the Turkish people we Greeks dislike. It’s their government.”

We are all citizens of the same country here and yet we don’t show the respect for each other that those centuries-sworn enemies did. And don’t think for one moment just because you assume you are on the ‘correct’ side of the “Republican/Democrat, Christian/Non” debate, that it gives you the right to slander anyone else, or feel smug and superior to anyone else.

First off, it’s not helping. What it does is keep us occupied while all politicians- all - screw us. All. We are all in this crappy economy together, we are all in this war together, we are all suffering under the same antiquated health care system, school system, and electoral system. We may all have different opinions on how it should be changed, but the point is we all agree it should be different and the only ones who are benefiting from it as it stands are the ones who set us squabbling about it in the first place.-the politicians.

Here are three thoughts for both liberals and conservatives both in and out of the United States:

1) How is political protest “anti-American” when it was what the country was founded on? There would be no United States of America without someone - or once again, that small chorus of people, who said, “This isn’t working. Time to start over. Let’s start by having a tea party.”

2) Did it ever occur to anyone who criticises those who believed George Bush unequivocally, that they should have been able to believe him? George W. Bush is like my mechanic. He’s hired to fix my car. If my mechanic tells me my transmission is out of whack, how can I argue, unless I take a course in car repair? I have to trust him. And I do. I hired him to do a job. How can a person who believes in the office of the president be criticised for that same trust? It’s this president who violated that trust. It’s this president who should be blamed, not every Republican. Are you telling me there are no lying Democrats?

3) And lastly, there are three hundred million people who live in the US. Can we all be alike? Do we all have the same levels of exposure to the outside world or the same education? I just met a man recently, a good man, who believes fervently that we need to “stop the terrorists.” He is a stone mason, he is out of work, and my guess is he has no clue that the reason he is out of work goes back to Alan Greenspan’s incompetent, partisan fiscal policies and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. How could he know if he never had an economics class, maybe never even graduated from high school?

Granted, not everyone who is ‘pro-invasion’ is this man. And many people on both sides of this equation are just not nice people who have their own agenda, their own desire for personal gain. And then there are those who simply see things differently.

I see things differently than most people. I believe that we should all be able to learn from each other and that the differences amongst us should not be a threat to any of us, but an opportunity to grow and learn as a species. I want to know how the people in India came to believe in a God with an elephant face, and the ones in Italy believe in a God who was born again as Himself. I’m not alarmed by either of these beliefs, nor do I mock them. I’m intrigued by them. How did they start, and what can I learn from them? Most importantly, what do I believe myself, as an individual, when I gather these facts? Am I strong enough to stand alone if I have to, when my beliefs are different than those around me? Can I also use what I learn to help build a better world?

That is the purpose of my life. To learn and to teach. To help leave the planet just a little bit better than it was before I got here. It will most likely make only a small difference, really, one woman’s voice. But if I can add a chorus to it, well…you never know.

And that’s how I’ll introduce you today to my new online magazine and podcast, Harlots’ Sauce Radio. It still only has a small voice, but the sound is unique and beautiful to me, because the chorus is comprised of people from all different parts of the world, coming from all different perspectives. Yes, we can do that without snarling at each other.

I’ve sent this post as an invitation to everyone in my VOX neighbourhood and in my VOX groups today. Not only do I invite you to read Harlots’ Sauce Radio and listen to our podcast interviews of many extraordinary people who make up this planet, I urge you to add YOUR own voice. There is a wealth of talent here on VOX - writers, humorists, musicians, poets, photographers, and deep thinkers. Please go to the submissions guidelines page and offer up your talents. Then, enjoy the talents of your fellow human beings who have already been published there. If nothing else, we make a pleasant change from Yahoo’s home page daily reports on who got thrown off American Idol.

I hope you will take me up on this invitation. If we sing loudly enough, sooner or later, our song will be heard.

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Defining Days of My Life

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:41:28 -0700

The Champs Singing 'Tequila'

Age Two-

I wanted to go to my uncle’s wedding. My parents left me with my grandmother on my father’s side. I didn’t know her as well as I knew my other grannie, so I cried and cried. When my mother phoned to check on me and heard me crying, my parents decided to come get me and bring me back to the wedding with them. The wedding was just as much fun as I knew it would be. They played ‘Tequila’ by The Champs and it became my favourite song.

That day, as I danced at that wedding, I thought I could get everything I wanted in life.

Age Five-

Was how old I was the first time my mother slapped me. She hit me right across the face for sassing her. To this day, I remember exactly how that slap felt and the shock of it.

That was the day I learned my world was not the wonderland I’d believed it was. And that I might not always get all I wanted in life.

Age Six -

I was in first grade and wanted to play with the other girls in my class at recess. A girl named ‘Janie’ seemed to be in charge. Janie said I “was allowed” to play, but there was another little girl who “wasn’t allowed.” Even though I didn’t like the sad expression on that excluded little girl’s face, I said nothing in her defence, because Janie made the rules, I wanted to play and she said I could. I played while that little girl watched sadly, but I didn’t enjoy the game as much as I’d hoped.

That was the day I realised that there were times that I was going to truly hate myself. Years later, when I looked back at a class photo, I saw that the girl who hadn’t been allowed to play was either Hispanic or black.

Age Ten-

By fifth grade I was considered popular by my classmates. I was like Janie had been back in kindergarten, only without the meanness, I hope. Along came another girl who was also considered popular, but she was even meaner than Janie had been. She decided there wasn’t enough room in one fifth grade class for two popular girls, so she started a campaign against me. I never told my parents, but my classroom teacher knew and ignored it totally. The bullying was creative and inescapable, involving every classmate, all of whom somehow felt compelled to take sides, and either be my friend or hers, but not both. There were a few holdouts for a while, and always a few whose opinion didn’t count either way, but eventually she was the reigning queen of that fifth grade class. Once possessing that crown, she wielded her power mercilessly, doing everything she could to make my life at school hell. This included commandeering boys to step on my feet at ‘line-up time,’ or dumping my books out of my schoolbag and getting girls to pour orange juice down my back at lunchtime, plus more. After months of daily bullying, I’d finally had more than I could take, and one day, in the girl’s locker room of the school gym, though I’d never been in a fight before, I beat the snot out of Queenie. She ended up crying and telling the gym teacher, who unbeknownst to me, had also been aware of what had been going on. The only thing the gym teacher said about the incident was directed to me, “about time you stood up for yourself.” And then she walked away. Queenie’s ladies-in-waiting were appalled by the teacher and by my actions. They were solicitously sympathetic to her, but none of them ever hassled me again. I felt sick to my stomach after that fight, astonished at the teacher’s words and amazed at my ability to defend myself.

That was the day I recognised that people could be disgusting when they were part of a crowd, and that being ‘popular’ was worthless. And that sometimes, like it or not, I’d have to defend myself, even if it made me feel ill.

Age Twelve -

My best friend and I were on the playground again. This time, the person being taunted wasn’t me, but a mentally-retarded girl who was also challenged by the condition known as albinism. Her parents had decided to ‘mainstream’ her. But, considered “too white” and “too stupid,” by many of her schoolmates, the things she was subjected at school made my trials the year before seem tame. That day, a group of sixth grade girls and boys locked hands in a loop around her. They wouldn’t let her out as they circled and taunted her. But whether age or experience had changed me, this time, I didn’t pretend not to see or care. I marched right up to that band of cohorts, my best friend right behind me, and we pulled that poor girl out of there. She was nearly hysterical. We brought her back to her ‘special ed’ class,’ then went straight to our guidance counselor to tell the story. The counselor told us there was nothing she could do, the girl’s parents insisted on her staying in that school.

That day, I felt good about what I had done and about myself, but learned that grown-ups don’t always have all the answers, don’t always do what’s right, and that sometimes, as much as you wish that you weren’t, you are powerless to make any changes.

In only five days, I learned so much that defined much of me going forward:

1) Some days you achieve all you want, and it truly seems that the world revolves around you. Those are the days you have to seize when you get them, and dance like mad to “Tequila.”

2) However, the world really doesn’t revolve around you, and your parents can never be the gods we imagined or wished they were.

3) Popularity is worth less than a pile of dog droppings if, in order to achieve it, you have to give up your integrity.

4) Popularity can also change in a heartbeat. It’s far better to stand alone and, if necessary, stand for yourself.

5) Just because people are older, or our parents, or our teachers, or our counselors, or our priests, or anyone in authority, we shouldn’t automatically assume they’re smarter than we are, or can handle things better than we can.

6) Be for what’s right and fair always, even if the rest of the world isn’t. It might not give you the power to change anything, but you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror and sleep a lot better at night.

So...what are your defining moments? Ever think about them?

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Dr. Davis’ Dictionary of the Surreal

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:30:11 -0700

When I was in sixth grade, none of these words/phrases existed. Now, every sixth-grader with access to a television or laptop knows their meanings. In case you’re still confused - don’t worry - I’m here to help. Using the expertise afforded me by my self-proclaimed Ph.D Degree in Patrochism, I’ve painstakingly compiled these definitions to get you up to speed. Words (in alphabetical order, of course) are in bold text, with their definitions beneath them:

Blog
What you are currently reading. Duh.

Chambers Dictionary

Bushism
There was an oil man from Texas
Who needed more fuel for his Lexus
He started a war
tried explaining what for, but
on what he meant to say, we’re still taking guesses!

Celebrity Rehab
The attempt of washed-up actors, singers and musicians to rehabilitate their careers by generating the sympathy and voracity of the tabloids.

Cyber-bullying
A method of intimidation applied by parents to their teenage children in order to get them to switch off their computers.

Docutainment
Half facts, half entertainment, sort of like the 2008 United States Presidential Campaign.

Egg Harvesting
A scientific system of producing greater quantities of chicken eggs developed by the Easter Bunny, that will probably get him in deep shit with PETA.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
This term is a bit confusing to some, because it sounds a lot harsher than it actually is. You see, ‘interrogation’ is just another way of saying ‘interview’ and ‘enhance’ means ‘to make improved, or more attractive.’ So ‘enhanced interrogation techniques' are not as bad as the relentless questions your mother asks you about stuff that’s none of her business, but more like a give-and-take dialogue, a 'conference,' if you will, at which they serve extra-special tea and biscuits.

Gay Marriage
‘gay’ is synonym for ‘happy,’ so ‘gay marriage’ means ‘happy marriage.’ Because 'happy marriage’ is an oxymoron for many people, ‘gay marriage’ is still deemed implausible in most states.

Global Warming
Global warming is a wonderful happenstance. Due to internet blogging (see definition above) people from all over the world can communicate much more easily. As a result, we’re getting friendlier with each other, we can even say ‘warming up’ to each other. As a result, the globe is a chummier, ’warmer’ place to live than it used to be.

Googled
Past-tense of the verb 'to google,' which means 'to get very familiar with,' as in, “I googled him last night for over an hour.”

Homophobia
Fear of homeless people sleeping on subways. But in today’s economy, a secondary meaning is ‘fear of becoming a homeless person.’

Oprahesque
An adjective that describes anything that is showy, warm and generous. Synonym (UK)- DameEdnaesque, Antonym (International) - Cheneyesque

Reality TV
The difference in level of entertainment between watching Lucy and Ethel stuff chocolates in their mouths and a scowling Brit with bad hair insulting stars-in-their-eyes wannabes.

Reproductive Rights
The Xerox Corporation’s ongoing civil rights struggle to overcome the English-speaking world’s discrimination that “xerox” should be used as a synonym for “photocopy.”

Social Media
In this instance, ‘social’ is a synonym for ‘sociable,’ meaning we see emerging from our television nightly newscasts, our newspapers and our internet web hosts a happier, more upbeat and positive reporting of current events. This is accomplished by leaving out of the headlines anything ‘disturbing’ and filling our pretty little heads with fluffy pieces of drivel, instead.

Speed Dating
An unusual, serendipic circumstance whereby a female gets on a bus to go to work and on jumps a very handsome policeman, who tells her there's a hidden bomb onboard which he has to find and detonate while she drives the bus. After this is accomplished, they go out together for a coffee. ‘Speed dating’ occurs so rarely that when it does, a film is made about it.

Video Beatings
Described by cynics and bleeding hearts alike, as 'the pitiful cry of some teens who, in today’s uncaring, harsh society, are desperate to display their sociopathic, self-absorbed, shallow tendencies, in order to get help against such.' Described by realists as 'parents reaping what they sow.'

Truthiness
Pretty much everything you’ve read here.

I know my dictionary is not complete. I welcome assistance in making it so. Anyone who contributes a word and definition could be eligible for an honourary BS degree in Patrochism.

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You, the Guilty One

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:28:41 -0700

Guilt

This post is dedicated to you. You know who you are, though not many others do. You trust very few with your secret, the terrible, shameful secret that your mother, your father, maybe even your brothers and sisters, are not talking to you, or you've stopped talking to them.

Or perhaps that's not quite the truth, perhaps you do still talk to them, but wish like hell you could find the nerve to sever ties. Because every time you see them, you leave feeling sick and humiliated. They twist your guts up every time, but you keep going back, because you think- hope- it will be different this time. This time, you’ll do or say the one right thing, the one clever thing, that will make them love you or be proud of you, or, at the very least, respect you. Or maybe the reason you go back each time is because you had it drilled into your head long ago that you have to accept any bad behaviour from them because they are "your family." Possibly your priest told you that, or your rabbi, or even your best friend, who just happens to have a family who treats him/her in a similar way.

But more likely, it was your parents themselves. Starting from when you were quite young, after they tormented you in some physical or mental way, they told you that you were to blame, you forced them to treat you in an unbearable way, because you were an unbearable child.

And when you got to too old for them to mentally or physically persecute you, (but only because you moved away,) they continued their campaign against you by “gathering armies.” They told your brothers and sisters how reprehensible you are and that it was acceptable, preferable even, for them to dislike you, even hate you. They passed this sentiment on to aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, anyone they could martial to listen to and sympathise with their complaints about you. Some were happy to join their crusade. Others were skeptical, though nonetheless, they never defended you.

So for a long time, as you grew to adulthood, you believed them, all of them, that you were ‘argumentative,’ or ‘ungrateful,’ or ‘disrespectful,’ or ‘selfish,’ or ‘crazy’ or coldhearted, or ‘too big for your britches,’ or ‘difficult to handle,’ or whatever. Whatever the reason that they reviled you, you knew it was your fault and you tried to 'fix' it .

But, you never could, could you? No matter what you attempted, be it reason or tears, no matter how you begged for acceptance, wanted so much to explain who you were, and how much you loved them, they wouldn’t hear you and you couldn’t earn their love.

So you struggled hard to close yourself off from the pain of it. You swallowed all their contempt, pretending that you didn’t even sense it. You chastised yourself every time you weren’t stoic enough, numb enough, to convince them and yourself that their barbs, their accusations, didn't hit their mark.

You may have even gone out and found others who treated you the same way your family did. Your wife, your husband, a new friend, even a coworker, picked up the signal from you that it was okay to treat you despicably, because your own family had taught you that you deserved to be despised. You provided a great outlet for these people, because you would never react. And that was because you wanted to be too tough to care.

Sometime in your late twenties or early thirties, it all gets to be a little too much, however, when someone steps over even that meagre line of self-respect you’ve allowed yourself. It might be that you get turned down once too often for that promotion you richly deserve, or that your husband’s verbal assaults become physical. Maybe you have child and one day, when you look at her, you see the child you once were. So you decide to create a better world for your child and you. You seek “help,” another thing your family ridicules you for, as more proof that you’re the problem. They see you need to go ‘get right in the head,' while of course, they don’t.

For a hefty fee, your therapist is sympathetic and points out the obvious - you didn’t deserve to be brutalised because you couldn’t have been all that intolerable when you were in middle school. So, it’s not you, after all. You wasted almost three decades to anxieties and unmerited hurt, but now you can feel better. Now you can say, “it’s not me,” with some conviction, because your therapist told you so. And will keep telling you so, as long as you keep going back and paying to hear it.

Eventually you stop having to go back and hear it, either because you do finally truly believe it, or because your health insurance runs out. You feel much better about yourself. You learn to have productive relationships. You learn to assert yourself, even like yourself. You meet others who like you, too and whom you can like right back.

And yet, there’s always that hole of lingering hurt. You try to fill it. Maybe with food, maybe with exercise, maybe with sex or achievements. But deep down, you know you weren’t really hungry and all your accomplishments still don’t give you what you want - that primal approval from the ones who mattered first, though not necessarily most, and the complete release from the little guilt devil who still remains tethered to you. He’s much less significant now, but he’s still there. He’ll never completely go away. And do you know why?

It’s because you really are guilty.

You are guilty of possessing that one rogue gene from the putrid family pool that gave you a luminous soul and a heart full of compassion.

You are guilty of making the rest of your pitiful family feel envy and resentment that not only were you the only crab who crawled out of their barrel, but you offered others a hand up, too and they didn’t want to take it.

You are guilty of overcoming hardships and rejoicing in your triumphs, while your relatives only see that you have “good” luck, whilst theirs is “bad.”

And though you may always feel slightly sad that your “good luck” did not extend to who your family is and how they will always see you, that experience helped shape you into the empathetic, productive person you are.

And so, you are guilty, my friend, of being capable of embracing life, drawing others to you with your lure of joy, while your relatives only want to wallow in misery and wait to die. It was a choice they made long ago, that separates you from them and always will. If you can’t fully get over it, sigh deeply, and get used to it.

Then, surround yourself with people like yourself and celebrate the miracle of you, the guilty, wondrous, miracle of you.

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