Category: Growth

The Thumbsucking Witch

Marta Drew3 Comments

Little Marta Easter 1977

 

Well, hello and happy new year, my dear friend …

 

You probably never did this, but when I was a little girl, I sucked my thumb. Long after other kids had quit, I was still doing it. Losing patience, my mom tried painting my thumbs with some gross-tasting liquid to make me stop. Instead, I sucked my poisoned thumbs and wept with indignation. She put me on incentive programs, offered me prizes, rolled her eyes, issued dire warnings about other kids not wanting to be friends with me, but it was all in vain. I was an only child and prone to tears – I wasn’t about to surrender my only reliable source of comfort for a Barbie doll or some vague threat of social isolation.

 

So my mother told me about the Thumbsucking Witch.

 

The Thumbsucking Witch was supposed to be nice, but every child knows there’s no such thing as a nice witch.  Witches are mean, fairies are nice. Elementary stuff, but Mom insisted the Thumbsucking Witch was good-natured. When she caught me sucking my thumb, she would give me a friendly little pinch and I would remember to stop.

 

A witch who pinched me just at the moment I had achieved a temporary and uneasy peace? This was my mother’s idea of “good-natured” and “friendly?” What, then, qualified as evil? These were the kinds of questions that kept me sucking my thumb.

 

According to my mother, I couldn’t see the Thumbsucking Witch but she could see me. Was she invisible or just hiding in the room somewhere? Could she see me when I was in the bathroom? The closet? Was anywhere safe? Was she ever NOT watching me?

 

I believe both the Cold War and my mother’s fascination with James Bond spy movies provide relevant context for my surveillance paranoia.

 

I believed in the Thumbsucking Witch. I didn’t believe she was nice – I was no Pollyanna—but I believed she existed and followed me everywhere, waiting for me to screw up so she could punish me. This, by the way, is a pretty typical GenX origin story.

 

Anyway, I met her. I met the Thumbsucking Witch late one night when I couldn’t sleep. She poked her head and torso through my window, wearing standard-issue pointy black hat and billowing black robes, though no wand — curious.  Nothing about her was friendly. She stayed for about half an hour, shaming and reprimanding me for my disgusting, babyish habit. Again and again I would bring my thumb to my lips and then force it back down under the covers, delirious with fear and longing.

 

When the witch flew away, having first extracted my trembling promise to quit sucking my thumb and threatening to return if I didn’t, I climbed down from my playhouse bed and ran to my parents’ room. I had been right the whole time; the Thumbsucking Witch was not nice. How dare my mother lie to me about something so fundamental? How dare she?

 

Mom was unimpressed with my hysterics. “Marta, the Thumbsucking Witch isn’t real. I made her up so you would stop sucking your thumb. You must have just had a bad dream.”

 

I would have none of it. “She was in my window, she was MEAN and she scared me.” I can only imagine what this scene must have been like for my mother, who had a Master’s degree in psychology and had just graduated from law school. How to counsel such an irrational client?

 

My mother was not the type to indulge drama and sent me back to bed, bawling I’m sure, afraid to suck my thumb and yet needing it to calm down. I wanted to believe that my mother was telling the truth, that the Thumbsucking Witch was just a character she had made up to get me to quit a bad habit — it made sense — but I had seen the Thumbsucking Witch. I had heard her.  I knew she had visited my room and frightened me. Didn’t I?

 

How is a five-year-old supposed to reconcile the rational truth with her perceived experience? How is a 45-year-old supposed to do that?

 

So odd, the things that cross your mind as you listen to the news.

 

I hope you’re well and happy, ready for whatever comes next. I, for one, am wishing for a dull,  quiet year, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get one. Never mind … we have each other.

 

In love and solidarity,
Marta

Early-Mid-Life Inventory

Marta Drew6 Comments

 

Marta b&w apple orchard 2006

 

Early-Mid-Life Inventory for Marta Drew in her 43rd Year
(Wait … 44th year? If I’m 43, aren’t I in my 44th? I don’t know—shut up)

 

Math competency compared to first year of junior high:
unchanged

 

Amount of life spent living in hometown:
approximately half

 

Current social status in said hometown:
Unapologetic Teardown Asshole

 

Garrison Keillor sightings within the last ten days:
one

 

Garrison Keillor sightings within the last ten years:
one

 

Number of Meyers-Briggs personality type indicator tests I have taken since my early 20s, legitimate and otherwise:
countless

 

Meyers-Briggs personality type on every single one:
(I)ntroverted, i(N)tuitive, (F)eeling, (J)udging

 

Current self-improvement goal:
complete fundamental transformation into woman who remains gracious and benevolent even when absolutely everyone is being a dick

 

Progress towards this goal:
anywhere from 4-14 %, depending on how much sleep and ice cream I’ve had

 

Respect for 30-and-40-something women who really really want their children to be Cool Kids:
Zero

 

Favorite novel of all time, no matter what, after reading it at least seven times:
The Shipping News

 

Foods I will not eat, not ever ever, no matter how awkward it gets to refuse them:
tripe/liver/headcheese/haggis etc, bugs of any kind, anything slippery, tartare (raw beef with a raw egg? What kind of misanthrope dreamed THAT up?)

 

Primary vices:
judginess, hyper-sensitivity, meddling

 

Secondary vices:
excessive lecturing, negative thinking, intensity

 

Current investments:
local orthodontist’s office, summer camp, mittens, Legos

 

Number of cookbooks on my shelves devoted exclusively to the topic of baking bread:
at least 9

 

Last time I baked bread:
about a year ago

 

Primary sources of worry:
adolescent child’s fraught relationship with schoolwork, 2016 election circus, fate of Jon Snow

 

Careers I believe would be easier than being a Writer:
Supreme Court Judge, molecular biologist, NASA engineer, Governor of California

 

People I wish I were related to:
Chef Thomas Keller, Meryl Streep, Paul Simon, Mary Oliver, Annie Proulx

 

Temperature below which I feel forced to wear a winter coat:
20 degrees

 

Number of words written on Facebook between 2007 and 2015:
150,000

 

Feelings about that number:
complex

 

Preferred breakfast:
mocha and a morning bun from Honey & Rye or birthday cake (anyone’s)

 

Exit plan if Donald Trump should be elected to American Presidency:
maybe London, maybe Montreal, maybe a remote town in Iceland

 

Number of seizures middle child has had since her surgery seven years ago:
zero

 

Likelihood that she will have another one, according to experts at Mayo Clinic:
close to zero

 

Fear that every one of those experts is wrong:
less than five years ago, but still present in everyday life

 

Family member whose phone number has stayed the same for my entire life:
GramBea

 

Most common astrological signs among my friends:
Pisces, Taurus, Scorpio

 

Fictional characters to whom I am overly and inappropriately attached:
Daenerys Targaryen, Elizabeth Bennet, Severus Snape, Lady Brienne of Tarth, Bridget Jones, Peggy Hill, Tyrion Lannister, Diane Chambers, Mr. Darcy

 

Willingness to participate in any school carnival for any reason ever:
zero

 

Percentage of my children crying as we left the last one we attended:
100

 

Most firm beliefs:
God is real. Camp is good for kids even if they hate it. The worst mistake a woman can make is to dissolve into her family so completely that she forgets who she’s been trying to be all her life

 

Level of interest I have in anything the Kardashians do:
2-5%

 

Pantry items I tend to overstock:
canned tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, honey, olive oil, vanilla beans, flour

 

Number of remaining grandparents:
1 (out of 4)

 

Number of remaining parents:
1 (out of 4)

 

Three things I love about my dad:
his devotion, his soulfulness, his willingness to consider any topic, no matter how esoteric

 

Three things I miss about my mom:
her musical voice, her gift for developing systems, her dauntlessness

 

Most efficient way to show me I matter to you:
remember

 

Average quality of close friends:
extraordinary

 

Belief that despite the shit, life is still mostly beautiful, hopeful, meaningful, magical:
strong, strong, strong

 

Rules

Marta DrewLeave a comment
Woods at CLH
© 2015 Marta C Drew

Habitual rule-breakers always stressed me out — the sign says “Do Not Trespass,” so don’t trespass, right?  What did they think they were going to find in there, an entrance to the Ministry of Magic? A golden ticket?  What was the point? Disobedience for its own sake never made any more sense to me than blind submission. Either way, you aren’t thinking. Rules, for better or worse, define the borders between our delicate civilization and the wilderness surrounding us, between our tenuous self-control and the wilderness within us.

 

I am the only child of a fifth-grade-teacher-turned-attorney and a high school principal. I grew up with a lot of rules. My parents were divorced and their philosophies of discipline diametrically opposed, but the message was essentially the same: “I am paying attention. I care about your safety, your friends, your education, your decisions. I care about what kind of person you are.” My mother’s rules had a practical angle –she favored job charts, natural consequences, and behavior contracts. My dad was more interested in my spiritual development, so a lot of his discipline centered around showing up for God. It didn’t matter that they were different … both methods translated into love, so following their rules made sense, like accepting love makes sense. Why wouldn’t I?

 

Of course I didn’t. I went home after school like I was supposed to, but then I left my backpack by the door — sometimes outside– and turned on the stereo and/or the TV and/or the oven. Maybe I mixed ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. Then I grabbed a wooden spatula or a whisk, put in my Terence Trent D’Arby tape, stood on the back of the couch in the living room, and sang “Wishing Well” a couple of times. Then I called three different friends, talking to each one for at least 20 minutes and stretching the telephone cord down the hall and up the stairs. After that: cookies and a nap in front of the  T.V.  Around 5:00, I ordered a pizza that I paid for with quarters from my step-dad’s change jar. By 6:15, my mom came home from work and asked how homework was going (it wasn’t), whether I had practiced my clarinet (I hadn’t), and what sounded good for dinner (nothing — I was already full of pizza and cookies). I never tried smoking, I didn’t ever drink, I didn’t cheat on tests or get in fights, but I also didn’t follow the rules.

 

To become a whole, self-aware human being, I had to break some rules.

 

Would my life have been better if I had? I guess it might have been smoother during adolescence. Following all the rules would have earned me more consistent grades and approval from my parents. But following all the rules would also have kept me from taking risks, which is how I really got to know myself. It was my parents’ job to introduce the limits when I was little, but my job to define them as I grew. Ultimately, only I could decide how far I was willing to go, what I was willing to risk, and what (or who) was worth it. To become a whole, self-aware human being, I had to break some rules. I had to crack open and examine the standards I was given and decide what to keep, reject, or fix.  Until then, neither rebellion nor obedience could have purpose.

 

A few years ago, while I was sitting by the window in my family room, a doe left the path her family usually took across the back of our property. She picked her way across the lawn, littered with my children’s bubble wands and hula hoops, and stepped right up to my window, where she stood watching me from about three feet away. I concentrated on sitting still so she would stay. She had risked something to be so close to me and I knew my job was to make that safe for her. She had broken the rules for some unfathomable reason and now here we were: two girls, two deer, two animals crossing the border between civilization and wilderness. I was the wilderness for her and she was the wilderness for me.

 

I still follow more rules than I break. I wait my turn, I read recipes, I leave private property alone. Yet the world needs rebels too. We need the border-crossers. Because if we must crack open each life for the sake of our own humanity, then certainly the world needs the same treatment for the sake of our collective humanity. We need the rules, yes, the civilization and the self control, however fragile. But more than that, we need the wilderness –all around us, within us, so we remember how little stands between us.

 

Growing Older

Marta Drew18 Comments

 

 

Pamela Park October 30
©2015 Marta C Drew

 

When I think of childhood, I remember sitting on the jungle gym in my dad’s back yard with Betsy Burritt, poking straws into whole oranges to suck out the juice and pitching the rest over the fence until my dad caught us.

 

When I think of childhood, I picture the bubble lights on my dad’s Christmas tree, the bright pink, tart applesauce GramBea used to make with crabapples, the Anne Murray album my mom played while we dusted and changed the sheets on my sofa bed, and summers at Camp Lake Hubert.

 

And when I think of childhood, I think of a spot on the playground at Highlands Elementary School in 1981, where I faced two bright, charismatic, mean-spirited girls in my class:

 

“Does your mom have a boyfriend?” one of them asked, looking at the other and scrunching up her nose.

 

“Yes. Steve.” Voice steady, no tears, voice steady, no tears, voice steady, no tears. I chanted this in my head as I spoke, never doubting their right to an answer. I couldn’t walk away — I wasn’t allowed. Their power was absolute.

 

“I bet they’re humping right now.” Delighted with their audacity, secure in their unbroken, conventional families, they shrieked and giggled while I waited for the bell to ring and end this. Their mothers were at home, doing whatever their kind of mother did. Mine was downtown in her law office, probably humping her boyfriend. Because that was what divorced, working mothers did according to everyone in 1981.

 

And there it was: my child’s perception of the difference between kid and adult: I was at the mercy of my circumstances and she was fully in charge of hers.

 

Furious, wanting to punish her for my humiliation at school, I confronted my mom in our little one-bedroom apartment that night. “Do you and Steve Do It?” I asked her, narrowing my eyes, spitting out the words, waiting for hot tears of shame to slide down her cheeks. As they should.

 

But my mother was a self-actualized modern woman, not about to let her nine-year-old daughter degrade her. “Do you mean do we make love? Yes, we do,” she said, completely, horribly, unbearably at peace with her choices.

 

And there it was: my child’s perception of the difference between kid and adult: I was at the mercy of my circumstances and she was fully in charge of hers.

 

I think about that, now that I am ostensibly a grownup myself. I am not fully in charge of anything. The life choices I have so carefully made come with all kinds of circumstances that bring me to my knees. I am neither self-actualized nor modern by anyone’s standards and I am certainly not a grownup, because nobody should be. “Grownup” implies that the period of development is over, but growth is possible right up until the moment our souls leave the earth. We talk about childhood in terms of growing and adulthood in terms of aging, but aging is just change on the world’s terms. Growth is change on ours. Any child, under the wrong conditions, can age and any adult, under the right ones, can grow.

 

There were at least two more years after that scene on the playground of chasing the mean girls, begging for their friendship, trying to buy their favor with gifts and loyalty they hadn’t earned, inviting them to parties without getting invited back, selling out my true friends, before I finally began to grow out of that. Until then, I was only aging.

 

Even now, having just turned 43, I catch myself getting intimidated sometimes by the mean kids. I still have a hard time in the company of certain people, keeping my voice steady and my tears in check. But then I remember I don’t have to answer to those who want to hurt me for sport. I remember that I am allowed to walk away. I am not a grownup, but I’m growing.

 

When I was little, I watched the adults around me and pieced together an idea of life as a full-grown person: I would stay up late eating M&Ms and watching T.V. like my dad; I would work in an office and attend orchestra concerts every weekend like my mom; I would play tennis down at the park like Grandma and Grandpa Thacher and host big, wonderfully loud Christmas dinners; I would sit quietly in my den at night like Grandma and Grandpa Skluzacek and pare an apple,  the peel falling in one long, whole, vivid spiral from their sure hands. That was my idea of how to be a grownup.

 

I am not a grownup, but I am not a child, either. I still carry the weight of my circumstances, but I carry it better. I carry it smarter.

 

Of course my perception changed as I grew. The benefits of adulthood evolved in my mind from eating M&Ms and playing tennis to living in my own space and choosing the people in it. Growing older stopped being about perks and started being about power. Year by year, I claimed  more of a say in how I spent my time and with whom. I dropped clarinet and started singing. I let go of friends who consistently hurt me, even if it meant being alone. I stopped begging for love from boys or men who didn’t freely offer it. There is still meanness to confront, both in myself and in others. People will die, blessings will come and go, mistakes will be made, but as long as I am growing, none of it can degrade me.

 

I am not a grownup, but I am not a child, either. I still carry the weight of my circumstances, but I carry it better. I carry it smarter. I know what friendship is supposed to feel like and I know how to make decisions I can live with, even if I’m never really at peace with my choices and even if I’m never fully in charge.

 

An adult, according to most definitions, is someone fully grown and developed. If that is true, then let me become one only when my life is over. Until then, let me grow older. Let me keep the oranges and bubble lights, the applesauce, music, and summers at camp. Let me cast off the weight of powerlessness. Let me not age but keep growing, find peace with my choices, until my life is done and falls in one long, whole, vivid spiral from my sure hands.

 

Rules for Turning 40

Marta Drew3 Comments
Gypsy Hausfrau portrait small edited

 

1. Don’t get cynical –especially about love. Stay romantic. Stay idealistic –for as long as you can.

 

2. Don’t mistake fear for intuition.  When you have a gut feeling that everything is about to go to shit, try to remember that it could be because there have been a lot of times in the last 10 years when it has. If it’s going to go to shit, then you can’t stop it anyway. Keep a good supply of Cap’n Crunch around just in case and discipline yourself to enjoy the easier times.

 

3. Don’t keep punishing yourself for your mistakes. Really,  a lot of them are understandable and all of them are forgivable. Chronic trauma makes selfish nightmares of all of us …it’s okay. You tried really hard.

 

Don’t mistake fear for intuition. 

 

4.  Stop being so grateful to people who only offer the bare minimum. You don’t have to be angry with them, but they don’t need all of your gorgeous love and attention, either. You’d insist on better treatment for your closest people, so start insisting on better treatment for yourself.

 

5.  Extend your hand in all directions –in love, in friendship, in understanding, in rescue, in peace, in humble gratitude. Build people up when they need it (this is where you can trust your intuition) …it costs you nothing.

 

6. Keep returning to your essential self. Read, knit, sing, watch the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice, write, cook, bake, take care of your home and anyone who enters it. That’s who you are.

 

7. You don’t have to die on every hill –be creative. There are brick walls in every life, every relationship, every heart. It’s okay …let them be there. You don’t have to climb them or blast through them, you can just move around them; they may be tall, but they’re not necessarily wide.

 

Keep taking risks –big ones. Take social risks, fashion risks, emotional and creative risks.

 

8. Stop saying “I’m sorry” when what you really mean is “fuck you.” A lot of us women do that. Let’s stop it.

 

9.  Keep laughing about as much as you can.

 

10. Let people take pictures of you. No, you’re not seventeen anymore. No, you’re not 22 or even 32.  You’re soft in the middle and your knees make weird crackly noises every time you go upstairs. You often have dark circles under your eyes and it won’t be long until your nipples start tickling the tops of your feet. But you’re still pretty and it’s important that you allow people to record your presence in their lives if that matters to them. Assume it matters to your children (it does) and assume that everyone sees beauty in you that you can’t see yourself.

 

11. Keep taking risks –big ones. Take social risks, fashion risks, emotional and creative risks. When they work out, great –that’s how you gain confidence. When they fail spectacularly, even better –that’s how you gain empathy and understanding.

 

12. Continue to let people know how much they mean to you …you would want to know.

 

13.  Stay connected to God. Sometimes you feel like He couldn’t possibly be paying attention to you, but He is. He is writing this beautiful engaging story about you as you live it, filled with entertaining hypocrites to challenge you and tender heroes to inspire you. He is everywhere in your life, spinning you around the dance floor, working His magic. You’re important to Him, so make sure He knows He’s important to you. Listen. He is telling you your connections are strong, your family is whole, your shredded heart is healing. You are 40. That is wonderful.