Against the Rules (or: Do Dads Always Suck?)

I just finished the book Both Can Be True by Jules Machias (Quill Tree Books, 2021). Machias presents two central characters whose first-person perspectives alternate every other chapter. Ash and Daniel are middle-school students navigating the painful and flustering intricacies of childhood, puberty, friendship, honesty, and sexuality. Both do not conform to society's expectations--especially middle school society's expectations. Ash does not conform to gender typing. (She also has synesthesia, which adds a beautiful hue to the narrative.) Daniel does not conform to expectations about how males express emotions. These facets are brought into sharp relief by Daniel's comical and heart-warming attempt to rescue a geriatric Pomeranian (named Chewbarka) from euthanasia.

The story is intriguing, heart-wrenching, funny, on-point, and ultimately redemptive. Mathias keeps the plot moving both by the two-step of a double-first-person narrative and by the sequence of Ash's and Daniel's fraught middle-school choices. Even as a reader who would prefer to avoid meditating on my own middle school experience, I found myself quickly invested in the characters and wanting good for them even as they made (to my adult self) decisions worthy of eye-rolling. Thus Mathias adeptly drew me into a place of sympathy and compassion.

Though many of the difficulties of puberty and middle school play throughout the book, clearly nonconforming gender and sexuality are the main foci. The book's main strength is its ability to draw the reader in, bit by bit, to the confusing complexities of experiencing feelings that do not obey standard historical categories of sexuality and gender. Mathias paints a world in which that confusion affects everyone--not just Ash and Daniel--to some degree. When heart, mind, and hormones work against "the rules," then everyone has a rough time.

The power of the narrative is interrupted only a few times, when post-pubescent experience peeks through the curtain. The character of Sam--the Yoda-figure in this book--seems a little too clear for a middle-schooler. And the occasional phrasing of wisdom surfaces on the lips of Ash or Daniel that seems too tried-and-tested, as if an oracle had spoken through them for the sake of the reader.

The sharpest pang for this reader was the status of men and Dads. The fathers of both Ash and Daniel, the silent-if-present teacher who leads Rainbow Alliance, and the shadowy nemesis veterinarian constitute the entire male adult cast, and all are failures or foils. This feature jumped out at me probably because--full disclosure--I am a Dad, and the father of a middle-schooler to boot. All of the characters around Ash and Daniel--both mothers, Daniel's twin brother, two dog-rescuers (one ill-fated and the other wise and seasoned, both women), a female photography teacher, and even an angry Insta-hater--show signs of development and redemption. While they all struggle with Ash and Daniel, they are drawn into the growing experience of love. Not so the Dads. The closest we come is a psychoanalyzing session between Ash and their mom near the end of the book, in which Ash's dad (who is not present) is explained away in terms of his upbringing.

All other characters have the opportunity to explain themselves, own their mistakes, confess the effects of complexity and confusion on themselves, and make a commitment to greater compassion and love. But the Dads don't. I wonder if this categorizing and sidelining of the Dads (as clueless, absent, and possibly irredeemable) is an unavoidable result of connecting gender categories with patriarchy: To reform the system, the historically dominant gender has to get a time-out. I'll admit that possibility. But I also sense some irony--given the book's successful drive to allow Daniel his full spectrum of emotions--that the Moms are depicted as emotionally sensitive and adept and the Dads are stoic and rigid. As this beautifully wrought novel attempts to shape reality into a place of greater compassion, does it also set Dads, and maybe all adult men, outside the bounds of that compassion?

I find this question especially poignant since my teenage daughter invited me to read it so that we could talk about it. And even before I finished it, the book has served as a great conversation-starter. Mathias' raw descriptions of pubescent experience allows for deep conversational dives into my and my daughter's analysis of the world. The book as inspired talks about gender, social media, and the power of honesty and deception.

As with all good fiction, Both Can Be True causes me to look at reality through a new lens. Machias' portrait feels so real and deep that I am moved to greater compassion for those struggling with issues of gender, sexuality, and belonging--especially for those in the season of life in which those struggles attack without notice and in the midst of so many other questions. But if by being a Dad (and a committed male) I am an intrinsic part of the problem, then what am I to do? Do Dads always suck?

~ emrys

History Check

Sometimes, even in the midst of a crisis (like the current viral pandemic) it's wise to take a deep breath and step back for a big-picture view. Here are some colors with which to paint the landscape in which we presently find ourselves:

Duration (so far) of Covid-19 pandemic: 2 years, 1 month (began Dec 2019)

Duration of H1N1 flu pandemic (misnamed "Spanish flu"): 2 years, 1 month (Mar 1918-Apr 1920)

Death toll (so far) of Covid-19 pandemic: 5,582,136

Death toll of H1N1 flu 1918-20: approximately 50,000,000

Percentage (so far) of Covid-19 cases proving lethal: 1.64%

Percentage of H1N1 flu cases proving lethal: approximately 10%

Time to identify structure of Covid-19: 3 months

Time to identify structure of H1N1 flu: 21 years (1940)

Biological processes are complex and unpredictable. And any comparison between cases like viral pandemics comes with a large number of caveats and asterisks. But looking with broad brush-strokes (as we must), it seems to me that the current pandemic need not be viewed as apocalyptic. In fact, the advances in science and medicine over the last 100 years seem to have put us in relatively good stead against this contagion. We must not, of course, diminish the pain and suffering caused by any pandemic; but we must also keep our experience in a greater context and, whenever possible, cultivate gratitude for the gap between what might have been and what is.

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20deaths%20was,occurring%20in%20the%20United%20States.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/novel-coronavirus-structure-reveals-targets-vaccines-treatments

~ emrys

Playing the Odds

 Well, I finally lost the Covid-19 lottery this week. After avoiding exposure for two and a half years, getting both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and getting a Pfizer booster shot, I tested positive this morning. I have had cold-like symptoms for a long time--so long, in fact, that I have tested negative for Covid-19 twice in the past two months. A change in symptoms (fever) led me to get tested again this morning.

I am reminded again that health, health care, and right now especially vaccinations are not a matter of achieving certainty. When we worked in the camping industry, in which we invited youth to participate in physical activities that involved some level (or multiple levels) or risk, we reminded ourselves that nothing in the world is "safe." While we put every reasonable safety measure in place, we could never call an activity "safe," either semantically or legally. Even if we put kids in bubbles and told them to read all week, there would be a risk of asphyxiation.

I remember getting mono(nucleosis) when I was younger. And then I remember getting it again. It was supposedly impossible to get it a second time. But wait--actually what's been determined is that it is extremely unlikely that one can get mono twice. Unlikely, but possible. Having had mono once doesn't make one safe from the disease. It's still a crap-shoot.

I have colleagues who cast aspersions on the medical field--and even more so on government entities like the CDC and NIH--because we now see a good number of vaccinated people being hospitalized with Covid-19. They say, "You see? Vaccinations don't work!" The statement rests on the assumption, gleefully assumed, that vaccinations claim perfect safety from infection. They don't, of course. They significantly reduce the odds of infection and, if infection occurs, reduce the odds of severe symptoms. These colleagues of mine don't ask the question, "How high would the rate of hospitalization be if this many people were not vaccinated?"

So, yes, as in many other realms of life we who are vaccinated are playing the odds. That's a double-edged game. It's very disappointing to contract a disease that one has been vaccinated against. But I'd still recommend vaccination to anyone. I would have to, if I'm being reasonable about the numbers. I prefer not to be a betting man, but if forced into it I will bet where the probabilities dictate.

By the way, my symptoms are very mild. I am blessed by the hard work of scientists and medical professionals and the folks in charge of government allocations for their work. Though I have contracted "the bug," I will probably suffer much less than I might.

~ emrys

Being in Place

 Continuing my cultivated admiration for the work of Wendell Berry, I just completed Nathan Coulter, one of his earlier novels (1960, reprinted 1985). The book opens a window into the world of Port William, the agrarian community in northern Kentucky that mirrors Berry's home and culture. Its narrative style, elegant without being sparse, keeps my attention because it paints so well the mundane details of life. I suspect that many novels keep us rapt with a cavalcade of the improbable and the fantastic. To me, so used to my culture's parade of the shocking, the story of a life stripped down to essentials carries its own fascination.

Berry's plot gives very little quarter to the thoughts of his characters, and his characters give very little quarter to chatter or diatribe. Our attraction to them and their way of life emerges from participation in the basic chores of life--eating, planting, fishing, harvesting, listening to the rain--and witnessing unassuming expressions of love--cooking, working, laughing, teaching. In a brief 180 pages we come to own Nathan Coulter as a friend not because of his exceptionalism but because he unselfconsciously reflects to us the essence of what it means to be human, to be tied to family and land, and to recognize the power of belonging.

Nathan's simple humanity allows Berry, at last, to let the seeds of observation grow into a flower of wisdom. Nathan observes, after family conflict drives his brother away to begin his own life:

"Brother was gone, and he wouldn't be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves." (pg 158)

In spite of my culture's ambition always to be changing for the better, believing that our natures can change through self-help and therapy and meditation, Nathan's assessment of the human condition does not occasion despair. From the story we glean that there is wisdom in accepting the world, the land, and one's condition as it is. Nathan's experience stands in humble criticism of the neurotic addictions of our age.

Clear vision sees so far as to observe the worldly end of all humanity. Nathan's voice again:

"I thought of the spring running there all that time . . . . still running while Grandpa's grandfather and his father got old and died. And running while Grandpa drank its water and waited his turn. When I thought of it that way I knew I was waiting my turn too. . . . In a way the spring was like him, a part of his land; I couldn't divide the spring from the notch it had cut in the hill. Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew the spring . . . We wouldn't recognize the country when he was dead." (pg 179-180)

Nathan Coulter at last reckons with the fullness of human life: the destiny of our bodies to sink again into the soil. Even if the world and its cycles do not change, we belong to it, like the spring and the rock through which it cuts simply by following the pull of gravity.

Nathan Coulter leaves off while Nathan still lives with his parents. Berry's most recent book (The Art of Loading Brush) tells an end of sorts to the story of Nathan Coulter. I know from that story that Nathan is different from the generations past. His acceptance of death and the way things are births in him a compassion that is equally a critique of and a gift from his family. What never changes is that growth and wisdom must follow the pace and patterns of the land. Rushing toward an imagined goal yields a spindly and hollow harvest. To discover what could be we must attend to what is.

Thanks to Warren Muller, who found Nathan Coulter in his book-sifting and sent it to me as a gift.