Our Childhood Baggage

The culvert I remember was probably a little wider than this one. Taken from nationews.com

All of us have a few totally random memories from our childhood-snapshots frozen in time of things that might not even seem that relevant any more. One such memory of mine brings back the horror of that moment vividly.

All I remember today is standing frozen at one end of a long and wide culvert, a thin broken wooden plank connecting one end to the other. I remember my father holding my hand and willing me to just jump and cross over to the other side. I couldn't. He tried telling me it was easy but it was not. The gap from one end to the other yawned and stretched before me like an endless chasm. He might as well have been asking me to leap over the Grand Canyon. After a couple of tries, he gave up, held my hand and we walked the longer way over to the other side.

My father probably did not give the incident much thought but what he never saw was the sheer terror only I was privy to. My body had reacted viscerally, it was a totally out-of-body experience and one I would bring up time and time again when faced with similar challenges--going down steep slopes, walking on slippery surfaces, even touching extremely tactile objects.

It was only years later, when my younger daughter was born with a similar problem, that I discovered that this was a real condition with a real name--sensory integration dysfunction. This was a disorder that was treatable when caught in early childhood. My daughter's was caught and treated. For me it was too late. I still live in mortal fear of even the slightest inclines and icy walks. The saving grace though is that I know my fears are not imagined but real. Equally important, they were validated by people other than my own self.

Today's wonderful essay in the New York Times by Lavanya Sunkara brought these memories rushing back. Like me, she too lived her childhood in shame, not knowing why her body was acting the way it did. Like me, it was only in the United States, that she discovered it was okay to be who she was--to come out of her shell and make the person within shine.

There are many, many things I love about my adopted country and one of them is this: every person is respected. Every child is brought up to live up to his or her full potential.

By not diagnosing my issues early on (like Lavanya, I too had to visit the bathroom nightly with company and that was yet another 'condition') my parents were not guilty of anything. What society as a whole was guilty of however, was shrouding issues like these in secrecy and shame, for not fully giving a child a voice."It's all in your head," was an established way of undercutting a child's very real fears--and this to me, still remains unforgivable.

As Lavanya's example and mine prove, America lets children be heard. Every day, the undersides of beds are checked for monsters. Everybody, even the disenfranchised, for the most part, has a voice. So, like Lavanya, I too will say, "Thank You!"

Review: Monkey Hunting by Cristina Garcia

Large portions of the book are set in Havana's Chinatown pictured above. This picture is from planetware.com

Excerpt:

Chen Pan is a young 20 year-old in China who signs a contract to make his fortune in Cuba. He is promised that the tropical island is full of riches, that "even the river fish jumped, unbidden, into frying pans." Chen Pan figures he would work in Cuba for a few years, and return to China a rich, content, man. So it is that he signs his life into slavery on a sugarcane plantation in Cuba. The ship journey over to the island is an indication of what lies ahead. After long, hard labor, Chen Pan finally escapes the plantation and makes his life in Havana. Pan's escape from slavery in Cuba and his survival in the country's harsh jungle eventually becomes the stuff of legend.

The rest of this review is here.

Parent Trap?

It's interesting that The Millions' Year in Reading launched yesterday. I saw it roll shortly after I watched this incredible video arguing marriage equality put forth by Moveon.org.

This young man, raised by two lesbian parents, makes a cogent argument for marriage equality. It made me worry that we have not arrived as a country if we need to prove that gay couples can raise stellar citizens. Can they be allowed to be parents only if the kids are perfect? How come heterosexual couples are not held to the same exacting standards?

Which is a perfect segue for my favorite book of 2011--The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson. The book is a perfect example of why not everybody should become parents. The self-absorbed parent Fangs, completely caught up in their art, wreak total havoc on the kids. It's worth a read. At the very least the arguments it puts forth in such a breezy fashion, will resonate long after the last page has been turned.

Banana Beer

After reading Naomi Benaron's wonderful book, Running the Rift, to be released in January, I now want to try banana beer.

The Manifestation of Cowardice: You Deserve Nothing

The protagonist is an English teacher at the International School of Paris.

First things first: I loved this book. Yet, You Deserve Nothing by the wonderfully talented Alexander Maksik is not an easy book to like. Not because of the very obvious moral transgression that is at the core of this book: the protagonist Will Silver, a high school teacher, has an illicit relationship with an underage student. But because it beautifully illustrates one of our key moral failings—cowardice.

Silver is the object of worship by all his students. He is a very likeable and loved teacher at the ISF, the International School in Paris, for American expats. Despite his teaching abilities Silver has deep moral failings. His students, who true to form, expect him to be a hero both inside and out of the classroom, are deeply disappointed when he wimps out. Silver might coerce his students to take to the soap box and fight for what they believe in, but he himself doesn’t practice what he preaches. This fall from grace is beautifully realized by Maksik through one of the voices that narrates the story—that of Gilad, a boy in Silver’s class.

Till the end Will remains a tad obtuse but Maksik does reveal that he has deserted his wife back in the U.S. after the sudden trauma of his parents’ death. Here too then is an act of cowardice—made worse by his seeking refuge in the blind affair with an underage girl. This girl, Marie, also slowly realizes she is making love to a ghost—the kids soon understand that adults are not all that they are cracked up to be. They are not heroes, just mostly hypocrites.

What makes You Deserve Nothing so arresting and readable is that it drives home some sobering truths. There are no shining heroes; life is complex; there are shades of moral fallacies in most of us. Will’s moral failings, his cowardice, make him so believably real, so very adult.

You Deserve Nothing takes an age-old story and makes it new. In doing so, it superbly shows us that life does not cough up easy answers. As Will’s colleague rightly points out, “The world disappoints you.” The best one can do then is to muddle along on one’s own internal moral compass—hoping for rare moments of courage and integrity in our darkest hours. It will have to do.

The picture of the school is from the ISP website.

Just My Type

Have you ever noticed how menus in fancy restaurants are always set in Papyrus? my daughter asked me a year ago. Until then I had not paid much attention to typefaces. But suddenly I saw them everywhere. The most egregious font violations--such as Sans Serif on hospital donation bins--were especially hard to take.

Simon Garfield's new book Just My Type, is a fun look at the history of fonts. I reviewed the breezy book for Bookbrowse.

REVIEW: The Coffee Trader by David Liss

The Coffee Trader is set in the city of Amsterdam.

Excerpt

It is 1659 in Amsterdam, a city which has defeated the Spanish and which has established itself as a strong hub of commerce. The thriving city is home to many Jews who have escaped the Inquisition and want to live here quietly under the strict supervision of the Ma'amad, the governing council of the Portuguese Jews. Miguel Lienzo is one such Jew who makes his living trading in futures and stocks on the floors of the Exchange. Lately, Lienzo has run into trouble. He has lost a lot of money in the sugar market and his brandy futures are looking questionable. He is in debt and is being hounded by Joachim Waagenaar, who "wants his money back." In addition, Miguel has a sworn enemy in Parido, a prominent member of the Ma'amad. Years ago, Miguel backed out of an engagement with Parido's daughter after being caught in bed with her servant. Parido is not one to ignore such slights easily and he is out for blood.

The rest of the review is here.

The picture of Amsterdam is borrowed from this blog.