Parents and Children

When I Was Eight

May 18, 2011 By Patricia V. Davis 12 Comments

When I was eight, in the summertime my mother had to call me in from playing outdoors at least twice before I even acknowledged I’d heard her voice. Then I’d beg her to let me stay outside for a while longer, until she issued dire threats if I didn’t “come in right this minute.” It was only at that point that I would petulantly stomp back into the house.

Once inside, she’d grab onto me and try to hold me still as she “pre-cleaned” me before setting up my bath. She knew if she didn’t, my bathwater would turn muddy within minutes of my being placed in it. That was because when I was eight, I played in dirt ─ sat right down in it, made mud with it, dug up some very fine rocks and wiggling earthworms hiding beneath it. And so, my mother would put my hands and arms in the bathroom sink and attempt to shake off some of that dirt which had caked onto my arms, into the crevices and lines on the palms of my hands, around my cuticles and under my fingernails. After that, she’d lean down and attack the skin on my knees with a washcloth. My knees were literally black with grime, sweat, and tan. In fact, my skin was so dark from my playing out in the sun so long that she could never tell when she’d rubbed hard enough to get down past the dirt and just onto bare flesh, so I’d end up with raw skin from her efforts. I’d never even heard the word “sunscreen” back then, and when I was eight, I wouldn’t have cared if I had.

When I was eight, I wore my hair to my shoulders the same as I do now, except back then I was too busy being a kid to keep it neat. It stuck out and up in the way only coarse, thick hair can, and I was forever pushing my dirty hands through it to keep it out of my eyes. That’s why my mother also had the nightly task of pulling bits of branches out of my hair that I’d picked up from climbing trees or crawling through the woods in the “forts” we made. My hair was so wiry and tangled that once, a brush my mother was trying to force through it snapped right in half at the handle. In frustration, she had my hair cut pixie short. It did not look trendy, but it was convenient, and instead of being traumatized, I loved how my shadow now looked on the cement patio when I moved my head back and forth and wiggled my arms out to my sides ─ sort of like one of the dancing skeletons in my favorite cartoons. I looked like a shadow skeleton somewhat, because even though I ate three healthy meals a day and all the sugary candy I could buy with 25 cents a week, (which was a lot) I was downright skinny from moving so much, using my body so much for the things it was meant to do.

When I was eight, boys were just more people with whom to climb trees and have racing contests or rock-throwing contests. They were sometimes annoying because they were stronger and could beat me more often than not, and of course, I wanted to win. Some of them seemed to like bugs more than I did, too, and most certainly they often smelled bad. So, why would I care if creatures like that thought I was pretty or not? Why, with so much fun to be had, like running and climbing and sticking my hands in dirt, finding baby birds that had fallen out of trees and nursing them back to health, would I care myself, if I were pretty or not?

When I was eight and if for some reason we couldn’t play outside, my sister, cousins, and I made up games like “Spy” or sang songs out loud in the basement so we wouldn’t bother our parents who were upstairs, smoking, drinking coffee, and talking about stupid, boring stuff we had no interest in knowing about whatsoever. We held plays, and sometimes we could get our parents away from their stupid, boring stuff to come downstairs to watch them. My cousins, sister and I were all bossy, and we all argued about who was going to play what part. Our mothers would tell us to behave. We didn’t listen.

We didn’t meekly submit. Not to our mothers, not to our friends, not to anybody else’s idea of what we were worth. In that world it would have been unfathomable to know of another eight-year-old girl who would hold in her tears while her mother put needles filled with poison in her face, just so she could “be beautiful.” In that world it would be unfathomable to want “boob jobs and nose jobs”, because we felt we were perfect the way we were.

We were real. Life was real.

Filed Under: Contests, Divas and Harlots, Food for Thought, Parents and Children, Social Commentary, Telling it Like it Is, Women's Issues, Women's rights Tagged With: Child Services, Eight-Year-Old Botox Girl, Patricia V. Davis. Child Beauty Pageants, The Diva Doctrine

A Boy, a Girl, and a Fountain

July 25, 2010 By Patricia Volonakis Davis 6 Comments

Fontana di Trevi

The spring I turned twenty-two, I was desperately trying to

recover from a ravaging love affair that had changed me from a

girl who was somewhat confident for her age and mostly happy,

to one who was completely demoralized. It was not only the

relationship itself, but the reactions to the demise of the

relationship by friends and family who I thought I knew that

made me lose all trust in my perceptions of people.

And so, I stopped caring about anything at all. I was walking,

eating, breathing, but I wasn’t really living. On I went like that

for a while, truly believing that was how I was going to exist

for the rest of my days. Until that one day, when I opened my

dresser drawer and noticed the engagement ring I’d taken off

blinking out at me. I looked at it for a moment, then picked it up,

put in it my handbag, left the house, took the subway to

Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue Diamond Exchange, and sold that

ring to a jeweler for two thousand dollars. Then I promptly

spent the entire two grand to buy a tour of continental Europe,

the “If-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be Belgium” kind.

My first holiday abroad, and I was going alone.

It was in Rome, the third city on the tour, that it happened, just

as we’ve all seen it happen in the vintage black and white films

starring Audrey Hepburn. I was already recovering myself,

brave enough to book the trip, brave enough to travel by myself,

braver still to venture out of my hotel room sans tour guide and

group to see the sights. I’d only walked a block when a young

man drove by in a convertible and looked over at me. He had

everything ─ the good looks, the fancy car, and the sense of

romantic adventure that sanctioned his cutting off a taxi and

driving up onto the sidewalk next to me with the finesse and

casualness I now know is an inherent trait passed down only to

Italian motorists. But as this was my first visit to Italy, I watched

dumbfounded as he got out of his car, leaving the door wide

open, and strode over. Then he just stood in front of me and

stared.

After a few moments of that, he said, “Signorina, my name is

‘Paolo.’ You are so beautiful. Will you please, please, please

go out with me tonight?”

I should have said no. That would have been wisest, but he was

looking at me with such enchantment and hope that I heard

myself agree to spend an evening in an unfamiliar city with a

stranger who, depending on how you viewed it, was either a

very bad or a very good driver.

When he picked me up at my hotel later as promised, he’d

brought his car, and sitting in it was another young man who

introduced himself as “Giorgio, Paolo’s friend”. Apparently,

Paolo, who didn’t speak English, had noticed my poor Italian

and recognized that there would be a language impediment. So

he’d brought along a translator. Giorgio did speak English very

well, and seemed quite happy to serve as liaison for his friend

and his friend’s foreign date.

It never occurred to me for one moment that I was at risk.

Despite my recent disillusionments, I was still ridiculously

naïve, and they seemed like perfectly nice young men with

nothing more on their minds than spending an evening with a girl

who, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, they both found

intriguing.

Here’s the point: I was exactly correct. After we left the hotel,

the first thing we did was zig zag through narrow, stone-paved

streets to get to an out-of the way trattoria where we shared a

pizza that tasted as though it has been made for the gods. After

which, they took me to the Tivoli Gardens, where Paolo

bubbled explanations for what we were seeing, and Giorgio

translated whatever I couldn’t catch. Our last stop for the

evening was the Fontana di Trevi, the famous fountain in which

one throws a coin in wish and promise to return to Rome.

Typically tourist, I held up my camera and asked if I could take

a photo of them in front of it, but Giorgio insisted that the photo

be of Paolo and me. Just as the flash went off, Paolo leaned

over and kissed me, just one simple, boyish kiss on my cheek,

caught in that photo, for me to remember forever.

“So, nothing happened?” is what I was asked dubiously by my

seat mates the next morning, as our coach sped off to Venice,

the next city on our route.

‘Yes, something happened,’ is what I wanted to say, ‘my faith in

human nature and in men has been restored.’ All in one evening,

and at the glorious fountain I will always believe is as magic as

it’s purported to be.

I recount this factual but somewhat sappy ‘woman’s magazine

story’ if you will, for one reason only, and that reason is: Joran

van der Sloot

Joran van der Sloot, with the gleeful assistance of every major

newspaper and television station has horrified young women

and their mothers into believing that every stranger ─ indeed,

every foreigner ─ who has a penis can and will use it as a

weapon against females. As the mother of five sons, and as the

(formerly) young girl whose disillusioned spirit was cared for

so tenderly that time in Rome so long ago, I resent that

depiction so much I want to spit.

Just once, I’d like to see Larry King or Nancy Grace interview a

‘Paolo’ and ask him about his dealings with women, like this,

“Tell us, Paolo ─ you had a vulnerable girl who stupidly put

herself at your mercy ─ why didn’t you take advantage of that by

drugging her, raping her, beating her to death, and then throwing

her in the Tiber? No one would have known – you could have

gotten away with it – so why didn’t you do it? Why don’t you

share the foreign man’s purported image of American women as

‘sluts’? What were the ideals and morals you were raised with

by your parents that have made you like and respect females so

much? Tell us. And most significantly, tell us about your

relationship with your mother. She must be quite an

extraordinary woman.”

The mother. Yes. The mother in this sordid tale who’s being

most blogged about, most talked about, is Beth Holloway ─ in

vague, but insinuating enough terms that she was feckless in

allowing her daughter Natalee to go on a high school graduation

trip to Aruba.

Parents of teens, please help me out here ─ can you not just

picture how that conversation went?

Beth: Jug, honey, do you think we should let Natalee go on that

trip?

Twitty: Yes. No. I don’t know. Whatever you think, hon.

Beth: She’s such a good girl, graduated with honors, member of

the National Honor Society, and now going to attend the

University of Alabama on a full scholarship. I hate to be the

only parent to say ‘no.’ She’d never forgive me.

And she’d be right about that, wouldn’t she, parents who have

teens and young adult children? Our sons are all in their early to

late 20’s by now, yet they still gripe about stuff we didn’t allow

them to do in high school that other kids got to do. And you

know what? – They’ll keep right on griping…until they have

kids of their own.

So Beth Holloway bet on the very good odds that Natalee would

run into a Paolo and Giorgio instead of a Joran, Deepak, and

Satish. She lost that bet. And being blonde, white, rich,

attractive, intelligent, and ramrod persistent, television,

magazines, radio stations and newspapers will make her pay

for losing by subtly painting her as unsympathetically as

possible ─ her divorce from Natalee’s father, her plastic

surgeries, her rumored affair with John Ramsey ─ because,

let’s face it, television, magazines, radio stations and

newspapers only like to ‘buddy up’ to blondes when said

blondes are Anna Nicole Smith, or on the other end of that

spectrum, Ann Coulter.

Yet from my perspective, the mom who seems to have gotten a

‘free pass’ from the media regarding even a consideration of

maternal incompetence is Anita van der Sloot, who insisted in

an email to her son’s ex-girlfriend that he “was being set up.”

Then again, also from my perspective, the only way she could

not be deemed incompetent at this point is if she took a gun and

shot the creature that sprang from her womb. And while she’s at

it, I’d love to see her blow away every single sensationalist

news outlet that has paid and keeps paying her monster of a son

for interviews; interviews in which he lies over and over again,

interviews that have been so lucrative for him that he has lived

off of them for the past five years since Natalee Holloway’s

murder, enough to go gambling in Peru where he was able to

murder yet again.

I am sickened by all of this, but most of all I am sickened by a

media that we have allowed to morph into our ‘dysfunctional

parent’ ─ a xenophobic, ethnocentric, small-minded parent with

a self-serving agenda, to whom we have given our full consent

to emotionally blackmail us into believing that all foreigners

are terrorists, all American women are despised by said

foreigners and therefore in danger whenever they travel abroad,

(so best to stay home, provincial and pregnant); psychopaths

‘deserve’ to be heard, and a bright, promising 18-year-old girl,

with the assistance of a mother who loves her, somehow

colluded in her own brutalization by accepting a date with a

handsome stranger.

Natalie Holloway

Please note: The glitches on this page are worse than ever. I’m really sorry I have so much trouble posting here. If you would like to say hello, or respond to this post, it also appears in Harlots Sauce Radio June Issue and at my WordPress blog

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Filed Under: Parents and Children, Women's rights Tagged With: audrey hepburn, beth holloway, fontana di trevi, gregory peck, harlot’s sauce, joran van der sloot, larry king, natalie holloway, patricia v. davis, roman holiday, rome, tivoli gardens

Just One More Thing to Worry About

March 9, 2010 By Patricia Volonakis Davis Leave a Comment

Gwen Conliffe and Lon Chaney Jr.

“What are you thinking?”

Men say they cringe when women ask that question, because very often they’re thinking “nothing.”

What they probably don’t understand is that most women can’t imagine what it’s like to be thinking ‘nothing’. Much to our chagrin, we’re always thinking ‘something’, and more often than not, that ‘something’ has a worry attached to it.

I thought I’d grow out of my penchant for worry, but I finally have to come to terms with the fact that that will just never happen. My knack for worrying hasn’t diminished one whit; it’s only adjusted itself for my age bracket. Instead of staring in the mirror at my outfit, worrying whether or not it’s ‘trendy’, which if it weren’t, would invite social ostracism, I now stare in the mirror at my back, to see whether or not its ‘curvy’, which if it were, would indicate osteoporosis. Instead of worrying about whether or not I’m ‘making a good impression’, I now worry about whether or not I’m making a good enough living. And instead of worrying about whether or not I’m going to survive a group of idiot politicians putting us through a nuclear war, I now worry about whether or not my children will survive a group of idiot politicians putting us through a nuclear war.

At least, I can contain my worry a little bit better than I used to when I was younger, but it’s sort of like restraining myself from eating too much. As with that hard-earned discipline, every once in a while, I succumb to my old habit of worry; just like every once in a while, I succumb to that nachos-with- guacamole-and-two-margaritas urge. And then, I’m in big trouble. Because if I lapse back into worry, it can, if I let it, obliterate all else that is wonderful in my life, just like that extra weight that seems to show up on the scale immediately after the nachos.

For example, I don’t know what triggered it ─ maybe it was a hormone imbalance, maybe it was those margaritas ─ but Thursday of last week was my “Worry Day.” I woke up absolutely ballooned with worry, a bloat which lasted for no more than 24 hours, until it just as inexplicably dissipated. But over the course of those hours, my worries ranged from the tiny to the colossal:

I worried about the fact that I still hadn’t replied to my sister-in-law’s email. Would she think I was snubbing her? When did she send that email, anyway? Actually, now I was thinking of it, there were a lot of personal emails to which I still hadn’t responded. How could I be so selfish, so self-absorbed, so busy with work, that I hadn’t responded to my friends and my family in a timely fashion?

In fact, I’d been neglecting my husband, too. Hadn’t I? I’d had such a busy week, and I’d been so exhausted at night, that I just fell straight to sleep. Oh migosh ─ when was the last time we’d made love? Had it been three days already? He must feel so unwanted, so dismissed and lonely. The poor man. What a lousy wife. What if he gets fed up and leaves me? I’d miss him so much if that were to happen. How could I be so inattentive, when he is so important to me?

I must be the only wife who’s woken her husband out of sound sleep to make love. Clearly he didn’t mind, but look at the motivation – it wasn’t that I was overcome by lust or love, but worry.

Certainly not the best aphrodisiac. (Not that he seemed to notice.)

And, after we were done, and my husband fell back to sleep, I couldn’t. I lay there, and continue to worry.

I worried about the fact that we hadn’t heard anything recently from our son about his upcoming wedding. Was something wrong? Was the bride getting cold feet? He’d be devastated if she called things off. Was everything okay? Why hadn’t he phoned?

While I was on ‘sons’, I started thinking about the other three. One was just laid off and not happy about it at all. One was in a job he liked, but living in an area he wasn’t keen on; one was still in school, but conflicted about his course of study. Were they depressed about these things? Would they be alright? What could I do to help? Should I ring them and ask, or would they resent that, as they’re all grown men? Maybe it was better if I didn’t phone, and let them sort it out themselves. On the other hand, if I didn’t phone, maybe they’d think I no longer cared about them. What should I do?

My anxious thoughts suddenly switched tracks from the personal to the professional. Which offers to speak should I accept? Or should I accept them all? I probably should. But… realistically, I couldn’t accept them all…could I? Alright then ─ which ones, and what would I say to those I had to turn down? And then, there was my new book – was that first chapter the ‘grabber’ I thought it was? I should look at it again. Should I look at it again, or wait until the entire draft was completed? Maybe I should wait. But, maybe I’d miss something important if I waited. Then there was the magazine. Some of my writers were over deadline. Should I send them an email, or leave them be? They all had their own lives, too, after all. But…wouldn’t they feel left out if their work wasn’t in the upcoming issue? I know ─ I could send a friendly, light-hearted email, so as not to make them feel pressured. Then again, it’s hard to read tone in an email, isn’t it?

Professional segued to political. Congress was making me sick. I hate Congress. Congress was keeping me awake. Do those emails we all sign have any effect at all? Was Obama going to restore habeus corpus, and do all the other things he’d promised, or had he duped us? I wouldn’t be surprised if he duped us. He’s a politician, after all. I sure hope he didn’t dupe us.

On from political to global. How terrible for those people in Haiti. Just terrible. What if I lived in Haiti? Do those donations we make ever really get to those poor people? It’s just terrible. I shouldn’t ever complain about my life, really. I have it so much better than the people in Haiti right now, I really do. And those in Chile. I mustn’t forget about them.

Eventually I switched back to personal again. I needed a haircut. But Maria, the girl who did my hair, was away, and she’d be very hurt if I made an appointment with someone else. But I really needed a haircut. Should I go to another salon, and just not say anything next time I saw her? She’d notice…wouldn’t she? Don’t hairstylists recognize their own work? Yes, she’d know. What if I just told her the truth? Then again, I could just not say anything, and wait to see if she brought it up.

All this worry, all in one day.

Elizabeth Berg has a great collection of short stories, titled, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation. My collection could be titled, “The Day I Worried over Whatever I Wanted: And Other Giant Acts of Self- Flagellation.” For the reason that worrying like this, as we all know, does nothing for the worrier or those around her, other than to cause sleeplessness. And possibly pimples.

My husband, who’s been through interludes like this with me before, knew I was having a particularly bad one, when in the middle of that night, the lurching and pitching from my side of the bed woke him up.

He: What’s wrong, hon?

Me: I can’t sleep.

He: That’s obvious. Why not?

Me: I’m worried about Maria.

He thought about that for a minute or two.

Finally, he said, “Hon – you come from a big Italian family, and a lot of your friends are Greek. Not to mention that we live in California, where there’s a large Mexican community. That means we know a lot of ‘Marias’. And it’s two o’clock in the morning, so you’ll have to help me out ─ was there a specific Maria you were worried about, or is it all of them, in general?”

And so, for the men who are reading this, I hope this has helped decode what’s going on in a woman’s head when she asks, “What are you thinking?”

Note: VOX has messed up on the software on this page, which is why the comments are switched off. (Sorry.) Please feel free to remark on this post (or just say “hello”) at http://patriciasopinion.com Thank you!

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Filed Under: Divas and Harlots, Parents and Children, Telling it Like it Is Tagged With: anxiety, email, Gwen Conliffe, harlot’s sauce, Lon Chaney, love, lovemaking, patricia volonakis davis, sister-in-law, sleeplessness, sons, the wolfman, worry, writing

Why Do You Have So Many Kids?

September 15, 2008 By Patricia V. Davis 127 Comments

Sons 1

Uber-Liberals can be just as off-putting as uber-Conservatives. I’m not talking about the type of Liberals who look at you with disappointment as you discreetly try to eat your cheeseburger, while they’ve ordered the veggie platter. I’m talking about the kind of uber-Liberals who, after you’ve invited them to dinner, respecting their beliefs enough to serve them up ‘Tofu Surprise,’ they still look at you as though you’ve handed them nuclear waste to consume because you heated their food in a ─ gasp! ─ ‘energy-bleeding, cancer-causing’ microwave.
I’m talking about the kind of Liberal who wanted to hang Michael Vick publicly by his…well, rhymes with ‘Vick’, and cut out his bowels, because of his mistreatment of dogs, but yet picketed San Quentin State Prison in order to save Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams from execution. Not because they were at San Quentin protesting every execution of every inmate on death row, opposing the death penalty in general. That I can respect. However, Clarence Allen’s execution went virtually unnoticed in comparison to Stanley’s, because Stanley, who was the co-founder of The Crips ─ a Los

Sons 2

Angeles street gang that still exists today ─ had written some children’s books while he was incarcerated, books against street gang violence. Oh, and he also apologized for his brutal murder of a family of Chinese immigrants who were running a motel that Stanley robbed, and additionally for the shots at point blank range he put into the back of a 26-year old convenience store clerk during another robbery.

Yeah, you see, even though Stan refused to aid police investigations with any information against his gang, and was implicated in attacks on guards and other inmates, as well as in multiple escape plots, he and his supporters still maintained he’d had a change of heart, albeit too late for the people he slaughtered. Nonetheless, a battalion of lawyers was utilized, and piles of state tax money were spent on stay after stay of execution for Tookie. Tookie’s death sentence was protested because he was a celebrity in his own right. But Clarence Allen, a 76-year-old heart patient and diabetic when he was executed at the same prison, went pretty much unnoticed by the press and any uber-Liberals.
So, this is the sort of Liberal I’m talking about.

In fact, I’m pretty sure my husband and I came across a husband and wife team of this precise type of person the other night. And the husband part of the set, with the wife nodding along her agreement, asked us this in exactly these words:

“How come you have so many kids? Doesn’t it bother you the impact they have on the environment, and the adding to the problem of overpopulation?”

Now, my husband, bless his heart, took that as a genuine question, and not as the two-part accusation framed as a question that it actually was. That’s why he proceeded to answer it genuinely,too, explaining at length how much we love kids, etc. Heck, he practically whipped out his bank book to assure this fellow that, not to worry, we can indeed afford these offspring. In fact, we pay handsomely, to the tune of forty-percent of our hard-earned income in taxes, to offset any harmful consequence our children have had on our planet, based solely on their existence.

But, while he was doing that, I was looking at this couple who were looking at my husband while he was explaining himself, thinking, “Would you have posed that pseudo-question to us if we were covered in black skin instead of white?”

Probably not, would be the answer, because that would be an uber-Liberal “no-no” for so many reasons. But it’s okay to say it to us, because not only are we white, my husband is really, really white. My background is Italian, but my husband has roots that go back as far as the next boat after The Mayflower. And, between us we had five children, all sons.

Yow ─ five white males. Not good. It almost sounds like we’ve birthed a clan of neo-Nazis, doesn’t it? But we are a blended family, so only four of our sons are just as WASP-y as their father, while my one biological offspring ‘sprang’ from the loins of a Greek.
Now that I’m thinking about it, that particular son doesn’t even look all that white. He’s got very dark eyes and his hair, in long dredlocks now, is also dark. In addition, as far as his politics go, in the few short years he’s been old enough to vote, I’m fairly certain he’s voted Democrat every time. He’s also a musician and film major at university, two other aspects about him I’d imagine uber-Liberals would embrace.

So, do we get a ‘pass’ on him? I think we should, from a Liberal’s standpoint, anyway. The other four are likely more problematic, though, given their background and occupations.

Let’s start with the twins. One of them is a long-haul trucker, trekking people’s furnishings back and forth across the U.S. as they are forced to move because banks are repossessing their homes.

Ick, a long-haul trailer truck ─ that’s a huge carbon footprint. That son might have to go.

On the other hand, if there were no long-haul trucks, there’d be no way for people to move their possessions which are made from various materials, including, probably, plastics. What would happen if we forced everyone to abandon their possessions along with their homes? They’d have to get new stuff wherever they moved. That would cause twice as many non-recyclables per repossessed family to be present on the planet, causing that much more pollution.

Therefore, on second thought, that son is probably a necessary evil. So, I think we should get to keep him, too.

(Sigh) I wish I could come up with a reason to keep the second twin, but unfortunately, I can’t. The second twin builds houses for a living, and that occupation is naively optimistic, given that the housing market has gone to hell in a hand basket, and is not going to get better any time soon. So really, he’s just wasting trees. Also, even though he bought my husband and me both Al Franken and Barack Obama books for Christmas, I know he’s voted Republican now and again. And, I must confess, he owns guns. You can see there’s just no good reason he should be on the planet, despite the fact that he’s really rather sweet, has never been out of work, pays all his taxes, and even has a very liberal Poli-Sci degree.We’d be sorry to see him go, but he was part of a two-for-one, so I suppose it’s okay, as no one had really planned on him originally, anyway.
Oh wait ─ I know! ─ we can offer him up as an exchange. We lost his younger brother in a car accident several years back. Now that son wasn’t even 19 when he left us. He didn’t have much of chance to “add to overpopulation,” and unless you count playing some really badass baseball as having a “negative impact on the environment,” he didn’t get a chance to do much damage in that way, either.

So, the way I see it, is we have four surviving sons, who came originally from two sets of parents. That’s four for four, so doesn’t that make us even?

I also think there’s no way anyone would want us to get rid of the only one I haven’t mentioned, because he’s an accountant. With trillions of dollars in federal debt, trillions more being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, and trillions additionally that the banks loaned out so capriciously, and which we are now having to give back to said banks with even more of our tax dollars, the country needs as many accountants as it can get to keep track of all that money as it slips through all our fingers.

You know, after careful consideration of all the combined factors, I think people should lay off us and our sons. So, the next time someone asks us how come we have so many kids, I know exactly what I’m going to say:

“My husband used to sell birth control pills. These boys are customer complaints.”

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Filed Under: Family, Marriage, Parents and Children, Social Satire Tagged With: boys will be boys, harlots sauce radio, patricia v. davis, patricia volonakis davis, tookie williams, uber-conservative, uber-liberal

In Danger From the Outside World* Part II

January 28, 2008 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

In Memory of Gregory Randall Davis

May 9, 1983 – January 29, 2002

Greg

What does it mean to go from being boy to man?

As a former high school teacher and a mother of five sons and stepsons combined, I’ve witnessed many boys struggle with that question. Some figure it out, others never do and remain in a limbo – an ‘adult boy,’ stuck in a time warp of adolescence, where ethically, spiritually and intellectually, the centre of his universe will remain forever anthropocentric; where he will never figure out how to look beyond himself, what his role in society is and how he can make the world a better place just by his existence in it.

In The United States of America, where I live, society is not geared to guide our boys through this effort. At its best, it relegates this important life passage to a period labelled “teen,” which has become a synonym to adults for a time period in a human being’s life that’s met with condescension, irritation, derision or treated as though it’s a sickness that will eventually pass. And at its worst, the media here paints a vivid picture for a boy that to be a man means to lie your way into money or power (“thank you,” Enron executives, “thank you,” George Bush), wear flashy clothing and behave with the opposite sex as though they are tasty pieces of barbecued chicken (“thank you,” hip-hop and gangsta rap), and/or pick up a rifle and blow yourself or somebody else up (“thank you,” John Rambo).

In American society, a boy who is eighteen years old, can vote for the next leader of the free world or go fight a war that leader designates. But he cannot order a beer to enjoy with his pizza. That’s a privilege the law reserves for when he’s twenty-one. Is this the only Rite of Passage we offer our young men, then? Go to a bar and get pissed, legally – it proves you’re a man, at last?

Since there are no formal rites of passage and few mentors offered by society to help navigate the path to manhood, boys band together to create their own. Sometimes this has disastrous results that parents, even devoted, loving ones, can be helpless to prevent.

How do I know?

Today is January 28. It marks the sixth year anniversary of the evening my stepson, Greg, along with 25 other boys, set out on his own rite of passage, devised by other, older boys, the heads of the fraternity ATO, for which Greg was “pledging.” He never returned to us. On January 29, in the afternoon here in California, we got a phone call from a police officer who was standing in Greg’s mother’s kitchen in Colorado, that Gregory was dead. I was the one who took the call. I was the one who had to tell my husband that he would never see his son again.

How did it happen?

Despite rules that forbade any initiation rituals to include automobile trips or travel off school grounds, the president and vice-president of the ATO fraternity at Occidental College in California, sent twenty-five freshmen ‘pledges’ on a road trip to Las Vegas. They were to return to the college with “proof” that they’d made the trip. Though the act of putting twenty-five boys into five cars for a road trip of that duration and then to specify a length of time within which they had to return, was a recipe for disaster and though this particular fraternity were already on probation with the college due to infractions against pledging rules, the alumni of the fraternity, grown men over forty years old, who were aware of the planned trip, turned a blind eye to it.

“We did this sort of thing all the time when we kids and nothing ever happened,” was what one said.

The other cars made the trip to Las Vegas and returned safely. The car with my stepson in it did not. They left the university at nine o’clock that evening, after baseball practice, for more than eight hours of driving at a reasonable speed to Las Vegas and back, with intentions of arriving back at school in time for an eight a.m. class. The lunacy of the plan was intensified by the fact that they did not switch off drivers and the driver hadn’t slept for more than thirty hours previously before they began their trip. He was drinking Red Bull, a drink that contains caffeine and sugar and is sold as a combat to mental and physical fatigue.

And that’s the irony. When the boys were found, no alcohol or drugs were in any of their systems, but the driver had been chugging an energy drink to stay awake while he sped back towards school. The Red Bull didn’t work as he’d hoped. The other four boys had already fallen asleep, (though they’d promised him they’d stay awake) and the dark, long stretch of Interstate Fifteen lulled him to sleep, too, at the wheel.

I will spare you the catalogue of injuries, except to say that Greg was the only one killed and though the driver suffered the least physical damage (a broken arm) the harm to him was as lifelong as was the physical damage to some of others who survived, because he and others will always remember he was the one who drove.

And was he to blame for this accident? He was nineteen at the time. Or maybe it was the driver’s mother’s fault, as she herself believed? It took my husband and me months of communication with her afterward, desperate emails and letters that she sent, begging for conviction against, or vindication of, her mothering skills to convince her we did not hold her or her son responsible.

What about Red Bull? Should Red Bull be held responsible for its zippy adverts that promise one drink will help you grow wings on your feet, the same way Popeye’s can of spinach helped him beat Bluto?

What about the fraternity itself? The alumni? Or Occidental College, that knew the fraternity had previous infractions, had placed the fraternity on warning for them, but had not let the parents of the pledging freshmen or the freshmen themselves, know that the fraternity was on probation? There was certainly some blame there. But when Greg’s mother and several of the other parents sued them, (mostly as a warning to other parents and as way to defer some of the astronomical medical bills incurred by three of the survivors,) they were told that the school has ‘immunity’ and that the insurance the fraternity retains for accidents has an exclusion for any accidents which occur during initiation rituals.

I was there when the lawyers told Greg’s parents that. I was also there when one of the same lawyers asked Greg’s mother, “The jury will wonder if you were at fault. Why didn’t you know where your son was going that night?”

And I wanted to hit that lawyer then. I wanted to hug my husband’s ex-wife – how’s that for another irony? – and tell her, “I know you were a good mother to Greg. All your sons are bright, enthusiastic, loving and respectful. They didn’t get that only from their father. You helped with that. I know that with my whole heart, just as I know you will always think about the question this lawyer just asked you. But what eighteen-year-old boy worth his salt would tell his mother that he was embarking on a dangerous quest? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose?”

But, I could say nothing. Just like I could say nothing during Greg’s memorial service, when his father and brothers did their utmost to choke back their tears. Just like I say nothing every January 29 since, when I sit home next to my husband and we both think back, wondering if it could have been prevented, wondering if we should call our other sons or if they will call us. Wondering if they will watch the Super Bowl together, without Greg, just as they did for the first time, six years ago.

And wondering what Greg would be doing now. He was extraordinary probably only in that he was ours. But he was a good student, hardworking and he was sensible. Believe it or not, he was very sensible. He had a terrific sense of humour like his dad and he loved his brothers,even if he did sass them too much now and then. He loved his parents and he was a devoted friend. He was a top-notch pitcher and that’s not wishful thinking. The baseball team at Occidental will never know what they missed when he didn’t make it to play with them that year.

He is missed by everyone who knew him. He will always be missed.

Greg Pitching for Pine Creek High

*The title comes from Robert Bly’s poem by the same name.

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Filed Under: Parents and Children, Social Commentary Tagged With: adolescence, ato fraternity, drinking age, occidental college, pine creek high school, rites of passage

In Danger From the Outside World*

January 14, 2008 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

Part I

of Three Parts on

Boys and Men

Our sons. When they’re born, we hold them in our arms, stroke them, soothe them and take them to our breasts. It’s the only time in their entire lives that they are permitted to be openly content in their helplessness, universally approved of in their total reliance on another human being and a female, at that.

By the time they’re two, they’ve heard it at least once, even if it’s not their parents who say it:

“Boys don’t cry.”

GI Joe 1964

Little soldier by thats_verynice on Flickr

Little soldiers

If they haven’t absorbed that message by the time they’re seven, even the most nurturing, liberated parent begins to worry: “Other boys his age seem so much ‘tougher.’ What if there’s something ‘wrong’ with my son?”

By the age of nine, for sure, he’s got it down – the adults say fighting is not good, but they can handle that so much better than if they see him cry, any day. He’s also learned that in order to be a boy, he can’t just be. No, there are things at which he should excel, and other things he must deny, in order to prove he is what he is: a male. Throwing a ball hard is good, being afraid of bugs is bad. He can always hide the fact that he’s afraid of bugs, but the boy who can throw the ball fastest, will always be the better boy…every time.

By the time he‘s thirteen, society’s expectations have completely rent his psyche in two. He’s understood for years he’s not allowed to cry, but now he also knows, not only from his parents and teachers, but from his friends and even the girls who have become a big part of his life, that he’s not allowed to show when he’s sad, worried, or scared. By any means possible, he must never show he’s scared. Far better to be alone in fear and heartbreak, than be taunted for displaying these same.

Somali Islamic Militia

Soldiers

He longs for affection, but that’s another outlet of sentiment he’s denied. His mother doesn’t holds him anymore, hasn’t since he was a young child. Not because he doesn’t want her to, but because he mustn’t let anyone see that he still needs her touch. And now, just the smell of the young woman sitting next to him in school, stirs longings. Of buried memories, long-ago contentment and new desires he’s only just beginning to recognize run deep inside him. But he has to suppress those, too.

By the time he’s seventeen, what it is to “be a man” is so set in him, he no longer thinks about it. He has completely accepted his only two choices: to be impenetrable, or just pretend, with all his might, to be. He also thinks about war. What it means, and whether or not he should, or will be forced to, fight in one.

And by the time he’s thirty, when the woman by his side, his love, asks him, “What do you feel for me?” He so much wants to tell her, but he can’t, because he’s never learned how.

Or maybe he no longer knows.

Young soldiers asleep

Robin Williams by Sam Taylor-Wood

*** ****

* The title, “In Danger From The Outer World” is taken from the poem of the same name by Robert Bly.

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Filed Under: Parents and Children, Social Commentary Tagged With: adolescence, ato fraternity, drinking age, occidental college, pine creek high school, rites of passage

September 30, 1987

September 30, 2007 By Patricia V. Davis Leave a Comment

Nick 1989

I used to be one who hated the change from summer to fall. The cool in the air always reminding me of how’d I felt as a child. Summer fun over; no more playing in the garden or climbing trees. September meant back to getting up too early, in what would quickly become too cold weather, to eat a too-hurried breakfast, just to sit in a stifling classroom for too many hours out of too many days.

That changed forever twenty years ago. Now every year when the last days of August roll around, I get a zing! of anticipation, because autumn brings back to me that momentous September when my first child, my son, was born.

I remember every detail. September 12^th was the ‘target date,’ the doctors had said, but we had everything ready long before then. We already knew we were having a boy and that he’d be named after his grandfather. So our tiny dining room in our first flat had been converted to a nursery, complete with white armoire, dresser and crib with blue trim, blue coverlet with a white rocking horse design and blue curtain with white polka dots on the window. On the door, in ceramic letters, we’d put up his name, “Nicholas.” All his tiny clothes were ready, his ‘onesies,’ washed and folded neatly in the drawers, stuffed animals on top of the armoire, ready to welcome him. Every day, I’d go in and look around, just to make sure everything was clean and perfect. I’d smooth my hands over the comforter and my belly and think, Soon, very soon, I’ll finally get to meet you, son.

But he was in no hurry. September 15^th came and went with nothing more than what I recognised by now as his usual stirrings. By September 20th, I was getting anxious. “What if they’re wrong?” I asked my friend, Sylvia. “What if I’m having a little girl? She’ll feel like she was ‘second choice’ if she has to sleep in a boy’s nursery.”

Sylvia smiled a patient smile. She’d had to live this pregnancy along with me, as we were working together. The sudden shift in moods, the descriptions of nausea and insecurity and the too-sensitive nose that had us eating lunch at an inconvenient new place, because the glassware in our regular place “smelled horribly of garlic.”

“So, if it’s a girl, I’ll take the curtain down while you’re in hospital, take it back to Fortunoff’s and exchange it for a pink one. We’ll make a new name for the door, too. No biggie.”

Actually it was “a biggie.” The baby, that is. Almost nine pounds and twenty-three inches when he was born, at long last, on September 30^th, after three days of labour and a c-section. Throughout which the obstetrician grunted, “What is it with you tiny girls marrying such big, tall men? This is like trying to deliver a full grown Great Dane through a cocker spaniel.”

Thanks a lot, doc, for the visual and…uh…sorry to put you through so much trouble.

But now my son was sleeping peacefully in my arms. I was finally holding him, looking at him. Three days of labour and a caesarean hadn’t been kind to either of us, I saw. He was a bit grey, one of his eyes was slightly swollen, making it appear larger than the other and his nose seemed a bit squashed flat and sideways. Apart from his complexion, he looked like Sammy Davis Jr. on a bad day. In other words, perfect. And wonderful and mine.

Twenty years later, the only physical trace on my body of that birth is a thin, white scar across my lower belly. But mentally, the effects are immeasurable. On September 30, 1987, I gave my son life, but he gave life right back to me. A better life than the one I’d had, a better “me” than the “me” I’d been.

Nick 2002

Just by holding him, I understood that there’d better be more to my existence than my perceived shortcomings and inabilities. Those had no place in my life anymore. From then on, I had to be purposeful and confident, because someone else besides myself needed me to be. And because he did, I grew to be courageous and that courage made such a brilliant change for me. I became more compassionate, global and determined. I learned to see more than my insular world, I developed an unbreakable bond with all mothers and all children everywhere. I endeavoured to be everything I knew deep down I was capable of being. Before this, I hadn’t been able to, though I’d so much tried. But now I felt more strongly than ever that I mustn‘t fail, because to fail didn’t mean failing myself only any more, but him, my son. In short, what I’ve been able to achieve and the person I’ve strived to become over the last twenty years, has been because I had a remarkable incentive. I was no longer a girl, a woman, a wife, a teacher or a writer. I was now also someone’s mother. And to me that meant joy, but also accountability. No room for excuses and no room for fear.

So thanks a lot, son, for helping me live my very best life. It started out being for you and then it became your gift to me. I know that someday soon you’ll find your own impetus, whether it’s a child or something else, to be everything you already are inside. It’s just waiting in there, for you to bring it forth. Happy Birthday.