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edenfallingThis past weekend, I finally got to visit Cat (and Evan) and see her son Alex, who is almost exactly one year old now. And he is adorable -- very even-tempered, very vocal (he delivers enthusiastic babble monologues, and will hold up his end of extended dialogues with quite varied babble), and very, very cute. He can stand up and shuffle a few steps while supporting himself on the edge of, say, a sofa or coffee table, but is not up to true walking just yet.
Hmm. Cat and Evan are also doing well. They recently moved from their extreme fixer-upper house into a condo that is part of a... well, the community is collectively into sustainable living, vegetarianism/veganism, alternative medicine, non-academic homeschooling, the left-wing bits of libertarianism, SCA and related activites, paganism and other non-traditional religions, and is also very LGBTQ- and polyamory-friendly. So.
It's not exactly my kind of place -- I would get hives having neighbors be that involved in my day-to-day life, and also, I am deeply indifferent to farming, think vaccinations are good and raw milk is kind of unsafe, regard a fair bit of left-wing homeschooling philosophy as gauzy hooey (despite having taught a year of homeschool myself), and believe going back onto the gold standard would be an act of deliberate blind insanity -- but, you know, whatever works for them. And I am quite taken with the SCA/paganism/LGBTQ/polyamory parts. Also, the new house is immeasurably safer than their old house, which is always a good thing. Alex deserves the best!
Anyway, I spent most of the weekend stoned on Benadryl, because Cat and Evan have three cats. I slept well despite that, partly because Benadryl can double as a sleeping pill, but mostly because they have no carpets and their couch (which I was sleeping on) is leather, and so there are no fabrics around to hold the cat hair and dander. It was frustrating to keep drifting off while trying to have conversations, especially since I don't speak with Cat much by phone anymore, so I really wanted to catch up while I was there in person.
It was good to see her again. It was also strange. Cat and I have been friends since we were six, and we've been friends with Susan as well since we were twelve, but of the three of us, Cat has definitely changed the most since we all went off to college. She always struck me as the most... mmm... grounded, I guess, when we were young. And in many ways she still is -- she has a deep certainty to her -- but in other ways... well. Let's just say her beliefs are not my beliefs.
It's funny, in a way, to say that, because the beliefs I am iffy about have nothing to do with her religion (which is a combination of Norse tradition and Druidism, btw.) The beliefs I am surprised by and uncomfortable with are political/social/medical. And that makes me uncomfortable with myself: because I start wondering how closed-minded I may be without realizing it; because I realize, when talking with her, that I hold opinions that I have not always done in-depth research to confirm and justify, which makes me feel off-balance; and because I really do think Cat is flat-out wrong about a number of things, and I can't figure out how someone who was so similar to me as a child -- we used to joke about having a psychic connection -- ended up in such a different place as an adult.
I have been closer to Susan than to Cat for the past six or seven years now, which is a reversal that has taken me a long time to acclimate to and accept. It's partly that Cat is married and a mother, while Susan and I are both single (by choice in my case, by bad luck in hers), but it's also that Susan and I both put effort into maintaining our connection -- we talk on the phone every couple weeks, and try to see each other at least once or twice a year -- while Cat has taken to avoiding her parents (and is therefore never in Madison for holidays) and is terrible about returning phone calls. Furthermore, Susan and I now see the world more similarly to each other than either of us does to Cat. We are more settled in mainstream American culture, we believe in Western medicine, we are moderate Democrats rather than far-left libertarians, etc.
...It occurs to me, also, that Susan and I both grew up within an established religious tradition. She's Methodist; I'm Unitarian Universalist. These are notably different backgrounds, but the point is, we were given a spiritual frame of reference into which we could weave our subsequent experiences. Cat had to create her own. Perhaps it's not surprising that she went out and created her own frame of reference in other areas as well.
...
Oh, I give up.
I should call Cat more regularly during the afternoons on my days off. I think I would have a better chance of catching her than when I try calling during the evenings, and if we talked more often, I wouldn't have such a sense of dislocation at each sporadic contact.
Besides, I want to be Alex's crazy Aunt Liz. That is something worth fighting for. :-)
Hmm. Cat and Evan are also doing well. They recently moved from their extreme fixer-upper house into a condo that is part of a... well, the community is collectively into sustainable living, vegetarianism/veganism, alternative medicine, non-academic homeschooling, the left-wing bits of libertarianism, SCA and related activites, paganism and other non-traditional religions, and is also very LGBTQ- and polyamory-friendly. So.
It's not exactly my kind of place -- I would get hives having neighbors be that involved in my day-to-day life, and also, I am deeply indifferent to farming, think vaccinations are good and raw milk is kind of unsafe, regard a fair bit of left-wing homeschooling philosophy as gauzy hooey (despite having taught a year of homeschool myself), and believe going back onto the gold standard would be an act of deliberate blind insanity -- but, you know, whatever works for them. And I am quite taken with the SCA/paganism/LGBTQ/polyamory parts. Also, the new house is immeasurably safer than their old house, which is always a good thing. Alex deserves the best!
Anyway, I spent most of the weekend stoned on Benadryl, because Cat and Evan have three cats. I slept well despite that, partly because Benadryl can double as a sleeping pill, but mostly because they have no carpets and their couch (which I was sleeping on) is leather, and so there are no fabrics around to hold the cat hair and dander. It was frustrating to keep drifting off while trying to have conversations, especially since I don't speak with Cat much by phone anymore, so I really wanted to catch up while I was there in person.
It was good to see her again. It was also strange. Cat and I have been friends since we were six, and we've been friends with Susan as well since we were twelve, but of the three of us, Cat has definitely changed the most since we all went off to college. She always struck me as the most... mmm... grounded, I guess, when we were young. And in many ways she still is -- she has a deep certainty to her -- but in other ways... well. Let's just say her beliefs are not my beliefs.
It's funny, in a way, to say that, because the beliefs I am iffy about have nothing to do with her religion (which is a combination of Norse tradition and Druidism, btw.) The beliefs I am surprised by and uncomfortable with are political/social/medical. And that makes me uncomfortable with myself: because I start wondering how closed-minded I may be without realizing it; because I realize, when talking with her, that I hold opinions that I have not always done in-depth research to confirm and justify, which makes me feel off-balance; and because I really do think Cat is flat-out wrong about a number of things, and I can't figure out how someone who was so similar to me as a child -- we used to joke about having a psychic connection -- ended up in such a different place as an adult.
I have been closer to Susan than to Cat for the past six or seven years now, which is a reversal that has taken me a long time to acclimate to and accept. It's partly that Cat is married and a mother, while Susan and I are both single (by choice in my case, by bad luck in hers), but it's also that Susan and I both put effort into maintaining our connection -- we talk on the phone every couple weeks, and try to see each other at least once or twice a year -- while Cat has taken to avoiding her parents (and is therefore never in Madison for holidays) and is terrible about returning phone calls. Furthermore, Susan and I now see the world more similarly to each other than either of us does to Cat. We are more settled in mainstream American culture, we believe in Western medicine, we are moderate Democrats rather than far-left libertarians, etc.
...It occurs to me, also, that Susan and I both grew up within an established religious tradition. She's Methodist; I'm Unitarian Universalist. These are notably different backgrounds, but the point is, we were given a spiritual frame of reference into which we could weave our subsequent experiences. Cat had to create her own. Perhaps it's not surprising that she went out and created her own frame of reference in other areas as well.
...
Oh, I give up.
I should call Cat more regularly during the afternoons on my days off. I think I would have a better chance of catching her than when I try calling during the evenings, and if we talked more often, I wouldn't have such a sense of dislocation at each sporadic contact.
Besides, I want to be Alex's crazy Aunt Liz. That is something worth fighting for. :-)
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-12 02:59 pm (UTC)That being said, the belief that vaccines are bad is as much a matter of faith as Catholicism or Unitarianism or creationism or pagan/Druidic/Norse belief systems.
Raw milk is the same thing.
My favorite example -- arsenic and lead are "natural." They are also toxic. Natural is not the arbiter of health. A "pesticide" may be natural because it doesn't have any "bad chemicals" (whatever those are) but it still kills things, right?
That being said, you cannot convince these believers. They believe, they are conspiracy oriented, and to argue is to invite discord and disagreement with friends and family.
And, you may want to screen or delete this comment, depending on who else is on your F list and hey, that's cool, says she who has been embroiled in this both as a family member and professionally. It hurts to be in fundamental disagreement with an old friend, and in some ways, what they are doing is great.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-13 03:16 am (UTC)And vaccines aren't exactly unnatural -- they are a way of working with the body's own immune system, by teaching it to recognize dangers before the bacteria or viruses hit in overwhelming force. That is only good sense, and given that Cat and Evan subscribe to other... um... I think Evan once put it as something like, "Western medicine lets things go horribly wrong and then cuts you up to try and fix the problem, whereas the proper way to do things is to keep the body from getting out of balance in the first place," you would think they would appreciate other preventative measures. But no. Vaccines = BAD. *headdesk*
Anyway, Susan and I don't want to start that fight. It would not go anywhere good. :-(
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-13 03:24 am (UTC)