Barnmaven

The un-Mother's Day day-after-Mother's-Day Guest Post.

Hi there.

Yes, I remember that I have a blog.  You remember that I have a life?  Yes.  Lots of it, lately, as it turns out.  Its all good and I will think of something pithy to write, soon.

Today, though, the words are not mine.  I want to share with you what my dear friend Julie shared with me about how complicated Mother's Day sentiments can be for many of us.  Her words brought tears to my eyes, and yet ultimately brought a smile and a nod.  I asked if I could share them with you and she graciously agreed.  

In her own words:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t like Mother’s Day. I admit it. Oh, I smile and pretend to be cheerful for the sake of those around me, but inside I cringe. If there is one thing I’m thankful for on Mother’s Day its that I only have to be exposed to it one day a year and then its over for 364 days. Or so I thought. This morning, the day after Mother’s Day, the girl at Starbucks wished me happy Mother’s Day while she was collecting for my Americano. My stomach tightened and I could feel my blood pressure going up. How does she even know if I’m a parent? I smiled and said thank you. Yesterday, I went to the nail salon as I will typically do on a Sunday afternoon every few weeks. Lesson learned….better to tough it out one more week than go on Mother’s Day. The place was full of women who apparently thought that I and everyone else within earshot needed to know what wonderful families they have. An amazing husband and loving children who woke them up with a 5 course gourmet breakfast (and of course they all stood around adoringly gazing at her while she daintily ate with perfect table manners), dozens of flowers, a full spa day, cleaned the house….”anything for the most wonderful mother on the world”. I’m sure they had perfect hair, makeup and breath when they woke up to their loving family paying homage to them on this special day. Yeah. I should have waited.

My feelings about Mother’s Day started at a very young age. My adoptive mother had some very set in concrete ideas about how the day should go down each year. And we never lived up to it. Ever. Each year there would be the tears and arguments because the day did not live up to her expectations. She did not get the right gift, reservations for brunch were made at the wrong restaurant, or not made at all, it was always something. She would verbally lash out at both my adoptive father and myself and when she was done she would go to her room to cry. And, as he typically did, my adoptive father would take out his anger on me, resulting in emotional and physical bruises. Then we would all get dressed up and go out to be on parade as a “loving happy family”. Mother’s Day made her a little crazy….and I dreaded it.

Once I got older and had kids of my own, I thought my feelings would change, but instead I got better at putting on the happy act. My kids would make me little gifts at school and/or daycare and I loved every single one of them. I still have many of them today. But I still had the sense of dread. I would have to call my adoptive mother. And I knew she would not be happy. At least I was living in another state and would not be on the receiving end of anyone’s fist or foot.

I also now had another reason to dread Mother’s Day. As I had children of my own, I began to think more and more about my birthmother. I was adopted as an infant in the early 1960s. It was a closed adoption and I did not know her, her name or anything about her. Mother’s Day (as well as my birthday) reminded me of this. I wondered if she ever thought of me. If she ever wondered where I was and how I was doing. If she would ever try to find me. Years later, I found her. We reunited for a few years, but over time it became clear she was not willing to have any kind of relationship with me. Once a dirty little secret, always a dirty little secret.

And last but certainly not least, I think of my son on Mother’s Day. My beautiful son, who died in 1995 at the age of 6. Honestly, I think of him every day, but days like Mother’s Day are worse. If I had been a better parent, he would probably still be alive today.

Finally, I rebelled. No more would I celebrate Mother’s Day. No more would I smile and act cheerful when there was nothing to be cheerful about. Mother’s Day would cease to exist in my world. Some silly holiday was not going to define how I felt. I would be in control of how I felt. There was a huge weight that lifted from my shoulders. However, there were unintended consequences. I confused my daughters, who didn’t understand why, all of a sudden, Mother’s Day was something to be ignored. They would still make some efforts over the next few years, to which I would explain that I was not celebrating Mother’s Day anymore. Looking back on that now, I realize I was unfair to them. They had no way of understanding why I felt the way I did. They didn’t know my history. Heck, even I didn’t completely understand why Mother’s Day made me sad and angry at the same time. I suspect in some way they felt it had something to do with them, which was absolutely not the case. I love my kids more than they will ever know. The little tokens they gave me on Mother’s Day was their way of doing something nice for me, because they cared. And I denied them that opportunity. In retrospect, it was a very selfish thing to do.

Over the years I’ve learned just because I don’t like Mother’s Day is no reason for others to not enjoy it. I think that, at the end of the day, its more about the people who are doing the giving rather than the people who are receiving. So I go through the motions. On Saturday I bought a nice card for my daughter from her 3 year old son, along with some chocolate strawberries. On Sunday morning, I quietly woke him up and helped him “sign” the card. Then with my coaching, he quietly knocked on her door and went into her room, card and strawberries in hand. I was proud to see that he did say “Happy Mother’s Day Mommie” (we rehearsed beforehand), and she was thrilled. It was not a 5 course gourmet breakfast and I’m sure he was gazing more adoringly at the chocolate covered strawberries than at her, but she seemed to be pleased nonetheless. There was a small piece of me, that for a second, longed to be in her place. Then, I quietly closed the door and went back downstairs. It was their moment as mother and son. And so, with this simple act, I instilled a tradition within my grandson and helped to increase their bond. May they enjoy many more Mother’s Days together.

~~~~~~~~~~

Julie, what you shared is to me a perfect illustration of the concept of the twofold yes:  Acknowledging the pain of what is hurtful and and accepting that life can contain both pain and peace at the same time.  Thank you so much for letting me share this.

The one where I'm supposed to have the answers

Life is an endlessly-evolving narrative, one with twists and turns and moments of suspense.   Sometimes I think my son's  life purpose is to make sure the twists and the suspenseful moments are the norm rather than the exception.

We had a fun incident with his transportation a few weeks ago, and by fun I mean the kind where you want to bang your forehead on your desk repeatedly.  The kind of fun that makes you wonder if there is a school administrator anywhere who actually knows what their legal requirements are when an IEP is in place.  The kind of fun any parent of a special needs child gets to experience on a regular basis.  Which is why most of us lean toward rampant alcoholism.

There are important factors to note in regards to public school transportation services and special needs children.  If a child's behavior is an adjunct of that child's disability and that behavior does not constitute a danger to the child or to others, the school is required to provide the service.   However, on the day that my son decided to make a big noisy stink because he thought maybe doing so would bring his mother home faster, the school prinicipal decided to remove him from his bus despite the fact that neither his driver nor the aide on the bus thought that his behavior was a danger. The school called me to come get him.  Immediately.  Except I am at work, which they fully well know is an hour's drive away.  SG is at work as well, a 45 minute drive.  My mother was on that day the closest adult who could get him and she would need a half hour to get to the school to collect him.  The principal insisted he be picked up immediately.

What am I supposed to do?

"What would you like me to do?" I ask, a shrill tone creeping into my voice.  

"Well,  if I had a child with your son's behavioral issues I would have a better backup plan," she informs me.

After I curtly advised her that my mother would arrive as soon as possible, I hung up the phone and started picking chunks of my brain off the walls and floor of my office.  

I've since spoken with the district assistant superintendent twice, the director of transportation twice, and this morning we had a followup IEP meeting.  At various points throughout these conversations I have raised my voice at least four times and managed to limit my use of the phrase "call my fucking lawyer" to just once, though I'd be prouder of myself if I hadn't said that at all.

I just hate this shit.  I hate the feelings of helpless anger and shame when I have to deal with the district's inability to understand either my son as an individual or their own legal responsibilities in regards to his educational services.  I hate feeling judged by someone who doesn't have a son like mine, who has never a day in her life had to try to have three or four different backup plans in case things spiral south for her child.  I hate feeling like I have to defend our family and the fact that we do have backup plans - about four or five of them - but that sometimes circumstances dictate that none of them are workable at the moment.  I hate losing my temper and my composure when I'm talking to people to whom my child's well-being isn't as high a priority as I think it ought to be.  And as silly as it may sound, I hate the thought that people somehow think my son's autism is some kind of failure on the part of this family.

I hate that they don't get him.  That it seems to me they see only his behavior and his diagnoses and not the person.  That they don't see his sense of humor -- or when they do notice it, all they can do is say "but he's so morbid" and act horrified.

I want the best for my son, but I often feel I don't know how to provide that or even to find out exactly what it might entail.  I envision a future where instead of the world insisting that my son find a way to conform himself to the needs of the system, the system find a way to understand what my son wants and needs and the best way to help him be his own best person.  

His teachers and his support team at school don't have an easy job, I realize that.  I don't expect saints and martyrs.  And for the most part I believe that his teacher and the people who are supposed to be helping him really do care about his best interests.   I just wish it were easier for us to know what those best interests are.

 

 

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Our real lives

Not doing what I can't

Only a guy would think of this

I'm driving to work this morning admiring the big black pickup in front of me.  I'm a truck girl, what can I say?  I like trucks.

Suddenly something a little odd caught my eye.  Something pink, hanging down below the hitch.

See it? Or rather, them?

Truck balls? Is this a thing and I didn't know about it?

A few minutes later I pass the truck and I notice the driver is a woman.

Now I'm really full of questions.

Does she worry about her balls getting wet when she's driving in the rain?  Or about them getting shriveled when she's driving in the snow?  

What does she do with them when she's offroading?  Is she worried they'll get bruised if she drives over a speed bump?  

Does she keep them in her purse when she's not driving her truck?

Do they come in bigger or smaller sizes than this?  Are they made of hard plastic or are they squishy?  

But the biggest question of all, really:  Why?

 

 

 

Those were the days

Last year after I had that horrible infection and my IUD removed, I went on the pill for a while.  Everything was normal, then SG's vasectomy was declared a success and I stopped taking the pill.  That was November, I think.  I had a normal December cycle, then January was kind of weird because I had two cycles.  Then nothing in February.  I freaked out a little bit, swore under my breath at SG's urologist and peed on a First Response test.  Negative, thankfully.  

March commenced much like February.  Then I started waking up three or four times a night, kicking off the covers and letting the cooler night air dry off the trickles of sweat.  Hot flashes.  I made an appointment with Dr. A and he sent me off to the lab to have all my blood sucked out of my body some bloodwork done. Yesterday was my followup.

One thing I like about Dr. A, he gives you copies of your lab results and writes notes all over them as well.  I enjoy going home and persuing my results and contemplating what a special snowflake I am because my something something  is perfect and my something else is out of range and I get to take some more damn medication or supplement as if that will magically render me Normal.

Anyway.

So even though I finally had an actual cycle last week, according to my FSH and Progesterone levels, I am (or should be) in menopause.  Technically I would say not, because the literal translation of 'menopause' is "cessation of menses."  But I would expect that I'll see very few more trips to the Rite Aid to buy myself feminine hygiene products. 

Menopause.

Its not like its any big dramatic thing.  This is another natural progression in my aging process, it happens to women all the time.  Its not horri-bad, scary-bad, or really even bad.  But just like all of life's First Time's, this is MY first time in this place and you know my mind is running in teeny weeny circles trying to understand who I am in the context of Being Menopausal.

There's the mechanics of it, naturally.Now begins the more careful watching of my chemistry and finding out what will work best for me.  I'm more than a little bit worried about what menopause will mean for me in terms of physical changes, but I'm also aware that starting hormone therapy carries more benefit than risk at this point in time.

There's perhaps a shred of regret that the baby years are truly over.  I didn't really want any more babies, at least not at this point in my life.  I would have been happy to have more kids altogether, but hey, I started late, so I'm grateful I lucked out with two.  No, this wouldn't be the ideal time in either SG's life or mine to add a newborn, nor am I one of those women who enjoys pregnancy.  To be precise, I loathed being pregnant with a loathing typically reserved for spiders and traffic tickets.  So the Not Going to Have More Babies part is really just a twinge of nostalgia for the days when I held first Amazon Girl and then Race Car Man for the first time and for all the first times of everything they ever did after that.  I loved nursing my babies and holding them.  I loved their expressive faces and their first words and watching them learn to move and then crawl and walk and talk.  I could never get enough of gazing into their faces while they slept peacefully in my arms.  Come to think of it, in my arms (or their dad's) was pretty much the ONLY place either of them slept peacefully.   And just like that No More Babies is just fine with me.

I suppose more than the knowledge that my child bearing years are behind me, its the thoughts that revolve around who I am as a person and what this stage of life means in grand scheme of things.  There are a lot of adjectives that come to mind when you think of yourself as Still Young.  "Menopausal" does not happen to be one.

Entering menopause has me feeling less young, less inviting, less pretty, less a participant in the swing and uptick of life.  I'm sure I'm overthinking things, but I can't help but think that I'm somehow less.  Which is silly, and not something I'd ever even consider applying to anyone else that I know.  (See?  Still harder on myself than on you.) Its the nuance between being more in the game than not. Its like menopause is the crossing guard between having your whole life ahead of you and having most of it behind you.  I fear the loss of not just my sexuality, but my desirability.  SG would likely disagree with this assessment and logically, so would I, but logic and feelings are not one and the same and my feelings at this point in time are more in control than my analytical skills.

Billions of women have charted these waters ahead of me, certainly the literature reflecting their combined wisdom and experience is waiting for me to find it.  Short of that, however, it still remains to me alone to develop my sense of self, my understanding of who I really am as opposed to how I might feel at any given time.

Menopause is the end of something, but its not the end of the world and its not the end of me.  New things lie ahead.  I will adjust.  We all will adjust.

Symbolically speaking

 

Today is World Autism Awareness Day.  Did you know that? (Rhetorical question, and since probably 90% of my two readers have kids on the spectrum very likely a silly question as well.  Whatever.)

I tend to keep myself at arm's length (or better) from groups that seem to have mastered the art of "fundraising for autism by telling everyone how awful it is" or who tend to exclude people living successfully with autism from their advocacy activities.  I'm not an advocate of focusing on the more difficult aspects of autism in order to garner financial support and while symbolic gestures are nice, they aren't as helpful as we all wish they could be.  Trust me, if I thought festooning this blog with puzzle pieces and pink ribbons and equal signs could change the things in this world I think need changing, I'd do it in a heartbeat.  You wouldn't be able to read my words through all the bling.  

I posted a cute Meme that Autism with a side of fries put up on Facebook this morning.  It read simply, "April is Autism Awareness Month.  Or as I like to call it, every single day in this house."

Except that it isn't even that for me -- autism is such a constant part of our life that I don't even think of the word as it relates to us that often.  Sometimes its a happy face thing, sometimes not so much.  I see my son as a person, not as a diagnosis.  The strategies for supporting him are modeled around his diagnosis, but the way I love him is modeled around him.

The public as a whole is far more aware of autism than ever before.  That "1 in 88" statistic that came out last year was a rude awakening for all of us, but it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.  Autism is far more prevalent than we want to accept.  Sure, I'd like to know why that is, we all would.  As my son's parent I want to know more about how to create a world that he can live in fully than about how or why he was born the way he is.  

I'm not trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios.  A lot of very good people put a lot of effort in to the events and articles and graphics that mark World Autism Awareness Day and Autism Awareness Month.   I think I'm just tired and jaded.  I'm tired of symbolic activism.  Pink ribbons don't cure breast cancer, Red ribbons don't cure AIDS and blue avatars don't cure autism.  They don't ensure my son is less challenged today than he was yesterday and they don't change his diagnosis.  They didn't keep my friend from dying of cancer or my brother from presumably dying of heart disease.  They won't prevent another person from getting autism or breast cancer or leukemia or AIDS.  Symbols are the things we wear to tell others we are on their side, and that's a nice thing to do.  Symbols are also things manufacturers put on things because they know it will make us more likely to buy them.  

Symbols are NOT a substitute for writing letters or making phone calls to your legislators in support of marriage equality, or writing a check directly to help fund a study on autism or cancer or any number of important issues.  There aren't enough symbols in the world for me to express how badly I want to just wrap my arms around every sick, tired, lost, hurting person and tell them I love them and I wish I knew how to make it better.  Symbols are not a subsitute for being an active, involved parent for my son.   So you won't see me "lighting it up blue" today, or any other day, unless I happen to do so by accident.

That doesn't mean I don't want to have research on the causes of autism or the best ways to treat autism in children and adults.  I do.  I'm just...tired of the hoopla that doesn't seem to change much of anything.

Or maybe just a curmudgeon.  

 

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B-WEAR: We're just getting started.

Our real lives

 

I was thinking about my brother the other day.  I wonder sometimes in those last days of his life what thoughts were going through his head, if he was in pain, if he knew he was in trouble.  I wonder if he knew he was teetering on the brink of dying and whether he was OK with that or if he would have wanted more time to change things.  I prefer to cling to the latter notion.

I don't believe he was living the life he envisioned himself having, not by any means. That's the thought that inevitably leads me to the rabbit hole, the endless conundrum of the probability of any one person ever fully achieving self-expression versus the actual necessity of this occuring. 

Bloom where you're planted.  Be happy in the shoes you're in.  Success is the path, not the destination.  I want to believe these things - and in many ways I do believe these things - but I also believe that these are things we are taught to make us feel better about being forced into lives many of us have no viable option of escaping.  We gratify our need for expression and validation by telling ourselves - and asking others to confirm it for us - that we're OK.  

Its a beautiful, terrible thing, the human condition.  The ability of this world we've constructed to continue functioning, like the Matrix, relies on our inability to slow down and think too very hard about these things.  You can't grease the wheels of society if you are busy throwing aside convention to follow your dream or die trying.  It doesn't take too much imagination to believe that there are forces at play in our world that depend on this, on the natural tendency of tired, overwhelmed people to smooth over the wrinkles between reality and their sense of how things ought to be.

Tradition tells you to keep your nose to the grindstone, that life isn't fair and that conformity is essential for the majority.  We can't be all airy-fairily gallivanting off to chase our dreams.  Someone has to stay home and keep the lights on.  And so we make the sacrifices, pluck our dreams apart brick by brick until they are small enough to fit the lives we're living instead of changing our lives to fit our dreams.

And I don't know whether it is right or wrong - or if those words can really be applied - to follow one path or the other.  

Some of us tread the middle, and maybe we're okay with it, even more happy than not about it.  We all know people who are desperate to unhook the yoke and can't - or won't - because they didn't realize their dreams until too late and they don't know how to untangle from the obligations they've created, or they lack the resources to step out of the life they're in to find the one they want.  I would guess that's probably the case for most people.  And I would also guess that many people spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves and everyone else that no, they really are doing just what they want, even if inside them the dreams they once held shrivel up into nothing.

I wonder what Ken's dreams were, the ones he held inside and was never able to nurture into reality.  I wonder where his tipping points were and what he felt about them.  

Do we get a medal for being brave enough to learn to be happy with the life we have even if it isn't the one we wanted?

You know, I don't know what I really wanted to be in life.  Mostly I just wanted to be an adult (and its questionable whether I yet qualify).  I feel that I've spent a lot of my life mostly living in the moment and coping with the results.  Like everyone else I wanted to be famous.  If pushed - very hard - I could tell you that I wanted to sing for a living, but when no one ever came leaping out of the wings to offer to make me the next radio star, I suspected it wasn't really an option.  I always considered my horses to be a hobby, and it wasn't until the last few years I've wondered why I didn't think of them as a possible career.  Sure, I wouldn't have ever been rich, but I'm not rich now anyway.  

No, like most of the rest of the human race, I fell into a job that turned into a career and I've worked as hard as I needed to get where I've gotten and if I'd worked harder or been smarter I might have made if further by now but I'm not sure I really care.  

Don't get me wrong -- my life is really pretty great.  There are areas that could definitely use some improvement, and whether I want to admit it or not, I can see the places where I've painted myself into corners.  They aren't forever corners, not a one of them.  They are the obstacles I've chosen and I can either let them stop me or I can let them motivate me to do things differently in the future.

I imagine I will spend the rest of my life trying to identify the things I really want to do and trying to find ways to do more of those things before I'm too old to enjoy them.  And that's OK, and I don't necessarily think its sad in the context of my own life until I recognize the places I see it in the lives of others.  My brother didn't live long enough to start finding the ways to make his inner self become real again.  That's at least as tragic as the fact that the person he was supposed to be got lost in the first place.

Ken is the poster child for those of us whom circumstance dictated a life other than the one we would have chosen for ourselves.  Too many people don't have the resources or the support to self-actualize, to do anything more than try to survive, and just thinking that makes me start to feel a sense of panic, because I know deep down inside that we're meant to be and do more than just survive.   

I could spend my time wishing things were different, but I suspect, rightly, that my efforts are better spent doing things to change the equation for myself, for those I love.  

This self-actualized little boy is following his dream of being the cutest cowboy that ever lived.

And the women are scarce

 

How's that bawdy line go?  Montana, where the men are men, the women are scarce and the sheep are...

I couldn't presume why women are scarce in Montana, but in my neck of the woods its likely because they're out riding their horses.

Ayers Road, Sunday afternoon:

An outstanding ride, excellent company.  I need more weekends like that.

 

Saturday briefly.

Conversation at about 3 am this morning:

Me:  SG, how long have we been together? 

SG:  Mumble mumble something mumble

Me:  About three years?

SG:  Um.  Yeah.  (Snores)

Me:  Can you tell me why after three years of being together you have suddenly in the last six weeks lost the ability to put the toilet seat down when you're done?

SG: (Laughs) (Snores)

Me:  Is this some sort of passive aggressive thing?  'Cause if I get a wet ass in the middle of the night I'm not going to be PASSIVE aggressive about it.

 

 

 

Relationship math

 

I love to read relationship books.  Whenever I read something that reminds me of my relationship with SG I marvel at how intuitive, how clever, how well researched the author must be.  When I read something that doesn't fit us at all, naturally either the author is a charlatan or we are the exception to the rule.  My husband is more than a standard deviation from the mean, if you know what I mean. 

Anyhow, this current book I'm reading is all about how Attachment Theory is really what comes into play in our love relationships, that our primary relationship with our partner follows many of the same patterns as child/parent attachment.  Similar to the way a healthy parental attachment fosters a sense of security and the ability to be happily independent in a child, a healthy attachment in an adult relationship makes each partner feel safer about indpendence - both theirs and their partner's.  According to this theory, then, a clingy, jealous or insecure partner isn't just being a jerk:  they're dealing with abandonment issues. 

Makes sense.  It helps me see my distaste for SG's road job in a different light; a person whose standard motto regarding relationships goes something like, "Everyone leaves.  Period." isn't likely to feel too secure about having their partner off living the single life for a couple of months at a time. 

Time and love do much to cure the places we are broken, and SG and I have seen a lot of that happening over the course of our relationship.  I'd love to say that I'm completely without insecurity, but I would be lying.  I am, however, much more secure in this relationship than I can recall being in a very long time.  

Which is good, because we're pretty sure he's going to end up going back on the road.

Its not that his in-town full-time job is a horrible job, or anything.  But its not what he's used to.  Its not what he likes or wants to do.  He likes the road.  He likes his solitude.  It doesn't mean he likes being away from me or that he doesn't want to be with me.  But its work and pay that agree with him, and if being alone for several weeks at a time are the price, its one he's happy to pay.  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.  Hell, at best we choose between several imperfect options and pick the one that's simply the least worst. 

We've had some very long and occasionally very intense discussions about this of late.  We've spent time exploring our feelings about our relationship, about ourselves, about what we want out of our lives and where we want to be ten or twenty years down the road.  We've talked about what's hard about him being gone for me -- being lonely very much the primary issue, followed by being overwhelmed -- and about what's hard for him about about the current situation. 

Compromises in relationships don't mean each party gets what they want and then they hold hands and skip down the primrose path while rose blossoms fall from the sky and birds sing love songs.  Oh, no.  Compromise means sometimes I have to give up more than I think I want to and other times the short stick gets drawn by my husband.  Compromise means maybe my husband goes on the road, but at the same time we get someone to come help with the housework and the yard so that I at least get a break to do things that I want to while he's gone.  Compromise means maybe he doesn't take the six month job that would bring a much bigger payout, but takes fall and spring work and spends the winter at home.   And lets be honest, the days he's here and I get to go gallivanting off on my horse while he stays home and wrangles my offspring there is absolutely no doubt about who is getting the short stick.

So little in life is absolutely perfect.  I would say, if pressed, that SG is the perfect man for me.  I think he would probably say I'm the perfect woman for him.  I know there are times both of us will tell you how the other is driving us insane or irritating the crap out of us, but even then there are billion reasons its worth it to get to the other side of the trying days.

Remind me I wrote this come fall, will you?

Internet, I cringe

I must start by making one thing...no, TWO things clear:

1.  I am a half-assed copyeditor.  I type fast, and make typing errors that I very often don't catch until well after I've hit the "Publish Now" button.  Just one more reason I'll never be a "brand."  Sue me.  HOWEVER:  Typos are not spelling errors.

2.  When I rant about spelling & grammatical errors I'm not talking about your Facebook updates or personal emails.  I'm not even really that concerned about personal pages and blogs.  What sends me into apoplexy are the errors I find crawling through "professional" websites like ants at a picnic, the kind that seem to regularly make it past copyeditors on major internationally-read news sites and web magazines.  So unless you write for or copy edit for one of them you are not the subject of this post and I love you dearly even if you do murder the written word on a daily basis. 

 

I've considered making one day a week an official "Rant & Rave" day here at Barnmaven.com, but one of the many things I've discovered I lack as a blogger is the ability to maintain a regular (or coherent) schedule. 

If, however, today were Rant & Rave Monday, it would be the perfect day to talk about words and what they mean and how words that sound the same mean very different things and how important it is to your audience that you use words in the proper context.

I read once that avid readers make better spellers, since the frequency with which we see words naturally increases our familiarity with the proper spelling and meaning of them.  I can only apply this anecdotally to myself, since I fell in love with the printed word at the tender age of three and have only narrowly managed to escape reading my way into poverty by garnering incrementally better-paying employment every step of my career.  If I didn't make what I make today, books & horses would have me filing bankruptcy a thousand times a thousand (Except they don't let you file that often, in which case I'd just be sitting under a mountain of debt and scrounging family dinners out of restauarant garbage cans or begging for change on freeway off-ramps).

If the digital media outlets I read are any indicator, the proofreading and copyediting professions are dying a very painful and slow death.  Is it simply that the proliferation of written media has created an amplified venue for such errors, or is it an even worse situation in which the lack of professional editing creates a compounded situation where people read works with mistakes and proliferate those mistakes honestly because they trusted websites like The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to present professionally written and edited articles?  I mean, if the WSJ can't spell "depository" correctly, can ANYONE?  Or when CNN's front page article says that "Conversationalists" aren't concerned about the environmental impact of golf balls in Loch Ness, should we  dismiss it with a "hey, its a mistake anyone can make"?  Sure, anyone can make that mistake; NOT everyone is writing headliness for one of the largest news outlets in the first world.

Is the deterioration of the ability to properly spell and to use words properly a natural phenomena?  Am I simply unwilling to let go of an art that was doomed from its infancy?  Maybe someone with a masters in linguistics could enlighten me, but until then, I vow to go down swinging.

Personally, I think that blogging itself and the mass proliferation of bloggers into media outlets has something to do with the problem.  Many legitimate news outlets have recognized the value and power of the blogger's voice; however many also seem to be taking a pass at doing more than eyeballing submissions for spelling and grammatical errors.  Hint:  Huffpo, if you want your writers to be taken seriously, help them with their words.  Please.  When one of your bloggers writes about the "hoards of visitors" that came to see her new baby, I don't think she meant that she's hoarding the people who came by and perhaps saving them for a rainy day.  I think you might have kindly told her that the word she was looking for was "hordes" and that one word is something that TLC has a regular show about and the other is the pillaging throng she probably thought she was referring to.

To another writer who was recently touched by a story in the news:  It didn't strike a 'cord' with you unless you meant it hit the thing you pull your drapes with.   The phrase you are reaching for is "struck a chord," because the metaphor is a musical reference.

And while I'm at it, Huffpo, please fire whoever is writing your front page top news story headlines.  They make you sound like the National Enquirer.  Half the time I wonder if you haven't been hacked by Anonymous and set up to sound like a third-rate gossip rag.

Writers, you really do have a reponsibility, if you are submitting work for consideration or writing because you are paid to, to ensure the clarity and accuracy of your words.  Don't assume the media outlet is going to do a good job of editing your work; if you want to come across to your audience as a professional and a subject matter expert, you only help yourself by making sure your work is correct in its substance and its form.  If you are not strong on spelling and grammar, do yourself a favor and hire a copyeditor who is.  Pay them a few bucks per piece to make you look and sound as good as you'd like to. 

What I do for a living, what I'm paid for, I must do well.  I was hired for my expertise and experience in my field, and the people who pay me expect me to be the subject matter expert in my skillset.  The same goes for those of you who make a living crafting with your words.  Writers in digital and print media not only carry the responsibility of producing good work; you have an additional and not-small task to be the arbiters of our language.  The words you produce will influence those who read them now and in the future.  You are either helping to preserve good spelling and form or you are helping to destroy them.

I remember being young and reading so many words I'd never heard spoken aloud.  On many occasions I would attempt to use them in conversation.  Sometimes I'd get laughed at, but I truly appreciated those who made the effort to correct me.  They saved me from much future embarassment.   In the same spirit, I leave comments when I can for those writers who have erred, not to embarass you, but to save you from imprecision; may you now go forth and do the same for others.