Sometimes I get confused.

All right. Hugo Chavez is a bastard, to say the least. A serious, power-hungry bastard. Obama shook hands with him, okay. It seemed like one of those situations where you have to be polite and diplomatic even when you kind of wish you could run away. But whatever. He did it. But the outrage about it seems weird to me because there have been plenty of times when our leaders interacted with some pretty dastardly dudes. For example:

Bush's family has a long tie to the Saudi Royal family, the perpetrators of atrocious human rights violations, and who tolerate the United States only because we make them richer. If we stopped buying oil from them, they'd hate as bad as or worse than Chavez. And yet...Bush kissed the prince, held his hand, acted altogether chummy. Where's the outrage?

And then there's:
Vladimir Putin, the man whose soul Bush saw, has been linked to extreme totalitarian-style political tactics (including assassination of outspoken opponents).

And don't forget:

Reagan schmoozed with a damned dirty Communist...sure, it was for diplomacy, but when Obama suggests talking to Communist Castro, he's a maniac hell-bent on destroying America. The Gipper was an effing hero for doing it. What gives?

Lastly, let's not forget:
He's not a president, to be sure, but Donald Rumsfeld was sent by Reagan to provide military support to known human-rights violator and genocidal asswipe Saddam Hussein in his fight against Iran. Shook his hand and smiled at him, not terribly unlike Obama's interaction with Chavez. Again, it's not like we didn't know who Hussein was or what he was doing to his own people.

So. My point. I have a point and it is this: Hugo Chavez is an arrogant, evil blowhard with aspirations to totalitarianism, and the U.S. should not support him. However, I really believe it's a pot-and-kettle argument to say that Obama is making a calamitous error in shaking the douchebag's hand. Our leaders have done similar things, and often with (it seems) far more nefarious intentions. So seriously. WTF?

Delayed Reaction

This weekend, my family, and some of my aunt's family, gathered at my grandparents' house. In years past, this would have been a typical Easter activity. We're a close group, and we often got together for the major holidays. This year, however, was not like the old times. Instead of celebrating together, we were looking through my grandparents' belongings, taking what we want before we sell the remaining items and the house.

Since Grandpa passed away in December and Grandma moved into a nursing home, there's no reason to keep the house, and that includes 80+ years of accumulated stuff in the lives of Bill and Cleo. My mom and her sisters already took what they wanted, and now it is my cousins' and my turn. So Saturday afternoon, I found some nice mementos from their house, including an accordion, some china, some games, and other odds and ends.

At the time, it was a little sad, but I kind of just saw it as the thing we were doing. I've known it was coming for several weeks, so Saturday was just the day. We boxed up everything, wrapping the fragile stuff, and loaded it up in the car. Done.

And now I'm back in La Crosse, looking through what I took and thinking of what I'll do with it and where I'll put it all. And I'm bawling my eyes out. It's now hitting me that I took pieces of my grandparents' lives from the place where they lived with them, and left other pieces behind forever. Some of the items that made their house their home are now in my home because Grandpa and Grandma aren't home to enjoy them anymore.

Life is obviously not permanent. I understand the cycle, and I've accepted the fact that my grandparents won't live forever. But before now, the concept of impermanence and separation through death was all too easily seen in sepia tones of long-gone ancestors and the experiences of the older generations. Even after Grandpa died, it seemed distant and unreal. Heck, even on Saturday, it didn't seem entirely real.

But now, with my grandparents' things sitting in boxes and on my table, I am hit with the fullness of what's happened. In full, vivid color I am living with the reality that my family has irrevocably changed. The home I grew up visiting will soon just be another person's house. And the fragmented remains of Bill and Cleo's lives will sit all across the midwest in the lives of their impermanent descendants.

Ms. Nervous

I was at Target a few weeks ago, and I saw a little display of buttons, magnets, and stationary featuring those characters from the Mr. Men children's books. The series featured various anthropomorphic shapes that had personality flaws that were resolved through the narrative.

I had a moment of nostalgia as I looked at the stuff on the Target rack, remembering the one Mr. Man book I had and read regularly. It was Mr. Nervous. Ah, the memor....wait. I had Mr. Nervous. The only one my parents ever bought me was Mr. Nervous.

It occurred to me right there at Target that it was likely no coincidence that they bought me that one. I'm sure it wasn't just a matter of them choosing whichever one was available or cutest. They chose the Mr. Nervous book...because I was such a nervous little kid.

Ah.....

I remember being a high-strung, nervous little kid. I got scared at school, at home, at church, at the store. I'd have tear-filled meltdowns with little notice, driving my parents crazy. I was in 4th grade before I went to school on day one without bawling about it. I cried when I spent the night away from home without them. And so on...

But when I got my Mr. Nervous book, it never once occurred to me that the book was meant to be a lesson in chilling out from my (very likely) exasperated parents.

But 25 years later, I'm finally onto them. I see their game! Too bad for them I'm still a high-strung nervous adult. Mr. Nervous wasn't enough to cure me.

Home vs. home

I was lucky enough to spend my spring break away from home. I went Home. I didn't need a fancy beach vacation. I like going Home.

I've always been very close to my family, and I consider myself exceedingly lucky to have these people in my life. But every blessing has some twinge of a curse. It's the dualistic nature of the universe to pair opposites: yin and yang, black and white, etc. The curse of having so many wonderful people in my life is that I'm perpetually Homesick. No matter how settled I am into my adult home, I still always long for Home. Home with my family. Home where I belong to people. Home where I am a daughter and a sister, not just a single woman, a professor, and a friend.

I joked with my students before spring break that I was jealous of those who were going somewhere exciting, that I didn't think it was fair. But the truth was, I was just as excited to go Home as they were to go to Florida, South Padre, or the Caribbean.

And I left my parents' house this morning, and their company later in the afternoon, with that familiar sense of dread. That feeling of going to a strange familiar place I call home in my everyday life, but that can't compare to Home. Even if I have a family of my own someday, I don't think it will compare to the Home I've known my whole life. I'll always want to leave home for Home.

Some compassion after all...

A Catholic church official has spoken out against the ex-communication of the Brazilian mother who chose to terminate her 9-year-old daughter's pregnancy after the girl had been raped by her stepfather. Just wanted to point it out to show there's complexity of thought even within the church's relatively straightforward views.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQjAIPlGEFkMsL4LzVbOmz8Q1UfgD96UKG600

Kudos to this dude, IMO.

Confidence

I hate people who are vain, and who focus too much on their appearance. I hate people who judge others solely on their looks, and who value themselves for their physical traits at the expense of their personality and basic human decency.

And yet.

I recently got a new hair cut, complete with brow waxing and all that. And I have to say that my confidence has taken a noticeable bump. I find myself smiling at people more, being bouncier, being happier. Feeling more like approaching people and chatting them up. Add to that the new glasses that I'm trying to grow accustomed to, and I feel like a new, cooler person.

I'm struggling with it, though, because I love the feeling. I love feeling good about myself when I walk out the door, and I love chatting people up and feeling like a fun person. But I also feel kinda lousy that it took a physical alteration to make that happen, and I fear I'm using my appearance as an artificial boost. What happens when I get used to the changes and they become the normal me? Will I take a dive again? And is it really healthy to base your confidence on your looks? Shouldn't I worry more about being happy inside and less on looks?

I worry about the balance. Where's the balance between these two elements of our total selves?

And I worry that I'm worrying too much about all of this. And then I worry because I worry too much about worrying about things to worry about.

The trouble with black and white thinking

I'm shocked by the following article...every possible aspect of it is terrifying.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-wovati0812527514mar08,0,5869588.story

The issue of abortion is frightfully complex, and I'm not willing to dip my toe too far into it on a silly little blog like this, but the fact that the Vatican calls abortion a worse crime than the rape and impregnation of a 9-year-old girl by her stepfather is giving me the absolute jitters. Here are some reasons why:

A. If you've seen what happens to a woman's body when she's carrying multiples, you can imagine what it would do to a tiny 9-year-old body. This girl's life would be at very serious risk if she carried them to term, which (BTW) simultaneously puts the fetuses' lives at serious risk.

B. This is not an issue of birth control. If you want to argue that abortion as b.c. is a moral crime, I'll listen to the argument, but I'm not willing to listen to any claim that this case is anywhere near the same issue. This girl had no control over any aspect of what happened to her. She did not choose any of this. So I can't in good conscience tell her that she has to further put herself at risk and live with more personal physical trauma than she already has.

C. The Vatican basically is arguing that this girl's life and well being are less significant than the fetuses' lives, which is one of the issues that bothers me more broadly about the abortion debate. Once children are born into the world by parents who don't want them or can't afford them, then it seems like society is supposed to care less about their welfare. Programs that help children living in poverty, or in abusive homes, are too often derided for being entitlement programs. Sure, the parents suck sometimes, but it is no more the kids' fault than the 9-year-old girl's fault for being raped. So why do we care more about the fetuses than we do about the people already living in the world, including (but not limited to) this girl and her personal tragedy? How can you rank one as more important than the other when your basic argument is that all are equally important in God's eyes? It's a circular argument, I realize, but that's why I also think the following.

D. The idea that abortion is a black/white issue, a right/wrong issue, a simple issue, etc. does not work, and this case is absolute proof that we will never resolve it by trying to oversimplify it the way the Vatican just tried to do. That might make me a wishy-washy liberal, but I guess I'm just fine with that. I'm siding with the little girl's family on this one. If I were them, I'd tell the Catholic church to stick their little pointy hats up their butts and find a new religion.