ten minutes to myself

could have been worse

When I was a child in the 1980's, one of the things making the world a scary place was the television series Little House on the Prairie.  For all of it's touted wholesomeness, I don't remember much about plotlines featuring the Ingalls sisters frolicking in the countryside or down by creek. I don't even remember a single reason why Laura Ingalls and Nellie Oleson went at each other's throats over and over again. No, I remember the scary tragic things, like Mary and Adam's baby perishing in a fire at the School for the Blind and the really bizarre episode arc about rapist in a mime costume lurking in the woods. And the one that creeps me out the most: the episode where Caroline very nearly almost amputates her own leg when her husband is out of town and there is no one around to take care of her.

Whenever Chris is traveling for business (which he does often),  I think of tv-series Caroline Ingalls and her infected leg wound, pondering her shiny knife. Because I so do not want to have to deal with any sort of medical emergency while I've been abandoned in a geographical location that does not currently have much more to offer by way of emergency medical services than Walnut Grove did in the 1800's.

So, as I was sprawled on the floor of the bottom level of my house on Wednesday night last week (the very same day that Chris flew out to Hanoi for meeting), having missed the last step on the stairs on my way down to see who on earth had rang our doorbell at 6 pm at night, I thought of poor, home-alone Caroline Ingalls.  And I hoped that the only price I'd have to pay for my carelessness was a sprained ankle. I could deal with sprained ankles, right?

I came home from the medical clinic the next day with an x-ray to forever comemmorate my small ankle fracture and a cast that stops just shy of my left knee. The nurse-practitioner called it a "walking cast" but I am not really sure how it would differ from a non-walking cast because there is nothing special about it as far as I can see. It's slippery on the polished stone floors in this house. It's really inconvenient here, too, because my kids' schools have stairs instead of elevators (or ramps, to be honest), and there is no such thing as handicapped parking near the entrance. I haven't been leaving my home much; I'm walking like Frankenstein's monster, and frankly this city is just too dirty to walk around in without a shoe on both of my feet and the ability to thoroughly wash both my feet. (And now I am very aware of how everyone stares at me as I lurch around).

I'm not used to being forced to slow down, but this first full week with the cast has gone by faster than I expected. It turns out that orders from a doctor to keep my foot elevated is a good incentive to crack open my new book on Adobe Lightroom and start editing all of our photos from last year. There's just a few more months to process, and I have another week in the cast. I think it will be enough time, on both counts.

actually

Back in December while we were on our Christmas holiday, one of my friends on Facebook linked to "One Teacher's Approach to Preventing Gender Bullying in the Classroom", and I quickly scanned it, liked it, and bookmarked it to get back to later, when I was back home. It took me about six weeks to get back to it. I shouldn't have ignored it for so long, though - it's really thoughtful and the best thing I've read about children and the gender spectrum. I'm not sure that anyone was paying much attention to this stuff when I was the same age as the kids in the article. 

I was thinking out the article again, the next day as I was drying our dinner dished, and all of a sudden, I remembered Anita.

Anita's grandfather lived next door to my grandparents (who always called him "The Dutchman", which I never understood and always felt a little uncomfortable about; they were all friendly and had a shared interest in vegetable gardening). Sometimes, when I'd be spending a Saturday afternoon at my grandparents' house, Anita would be doing the same thing, and we'd play together. 

Anita and I made mudpies and played on the aluminum swingset in my grandparents' backyard. We raced up the sidewalk in front of the houses, me on an ancient green tricycle and Anita on a Big Wheel (which I secretly coveted). And Anita would always say to me, "I'm actually a boy, you know. Even if I have a girl's name."

Anita wasn't like the girls that I played with at school, at all. I remember Anita showing off some impressive climbing skills by reaching the top of the posts supporting the awning over the concrete patio.

I was six years old and didn't think that girls were supposed to climb that high (or pedal a Big Wheel that fast), but I would still argue with Anita, babbling things like, "Of course you're a girl, Anita. Why do you say that you're not?" I was six years old and confused, so I echoed what the adults in my life told me about my friend. And I remember the calmness about Anita, repeating "I'm actually a boy, you know" with certainty like it was something that had been practiced a lot.

It's thirty years later, and after reading that article, I remembered my old friend, and I wonder if Anita is still saying "I"m actually a boy, you know."

training for this for half my life

I ventured into downtown Saigon today, on a mission to find a couple of nice birthday gifts to send back to Thailand. There is a decently-stocked (by Vietnam standards - it's no Toys R Us) toy store in this shopping plaza that's called "The Tax Centre". It's full of high-end cosmetics, wristwatches, and Renault automobiles on the ground floor, but it's more like loose stalls on the upper levels. 

As I circled the second and third floors on the way to the escalators to the top floor, my eyes focused only on my destination and not on anyone who might be staring at me in curiosity, it occured to me that I don't even notice anymore that I may be the only one who looks different in that place, the only foreigner. It makes me invisible, in an ironic way.

When I was a teenager and full of angst and largely repressed rage, I never thought about the future any deeper than twelve months out. I never thought that learning to navigate whatever crap I was given to deal with alone would ever be something that would serve me well, or be something that I might feel a few tinges of pride over, give or take twenty years. My status as an outcast and loner was very much forced upon me, and man, it sucked when I was fifteen.

But now, I think that I can cope with being different it now because I coped with it then. Not only that, I'm doing better this time around. I can walk around an overcrowded shopping plaza full of people that I can't even communicate with in a culture that I don't understand the unspoken rules of, and I don't care that I am different at all.