Pouring

Not literally. Literally it has drizzled here and there, but mostly it's been hot-hot-hot-hot. I just mean everything's been happening, and all at once.

I feel kinda like I've run a marathon, and right as I was about to collapse past the finish line, it turns out there's another half-marathon to go. Which I did know about, but decided to kinda ignore in the interest of finishing the first marathon. Being less cryptic, this means that while JD was away for all but five days of a calendar month, I successfully disregarded the fact that mere days after he was finally home, our nanny (who is the best nanny in the world, and normally watches the Cub four days a week while I am at work) was taking off for three weeks. OUCH!!!!! We are managing, and it's only another week to go, but man, I am flat out exhausted.

Though I think what I need most is a somewhat prolonged period of time, like oh, let's dream big, a whole day, during which I am not the one in charge of Cub's well-being. And I am sure the fact that both he and I were sick last weekend and for the early part of last week, and that I am still not fully recovered, and that he is still coughing all have something to do with this. I've had less work hours, yes, but more than that, I've had like no hours for myself. Well, not entirely true-- this week, including the weekend so far, he's been out of my care for something like five hours during which I wasn't also working. Another week this might've been plenty. But given how long it's been since things were "normal" around here, and how long my to-do list is, I'm feeling about ready to snap.

My mom's surgery went well, and she's now recovering at home. My sister was there for the surgery and a couple of days before and after, which was good for everyone. Mom's still on restricted movement and such, but she's made it up the stairs to sleep in her own bed the night before last-- a major accomplishment. And before that, the milestones, in reverse chronological order, were going home (and, you know, mastery of the number two that is generally one's ticket out), walking, sitting, and talking in own voice. The last one was kinda funny, but more unnerving-- mom couldn't talk on the phone till the day after, and then she sounded nothing like herself. It was the pain relief meds, sure, but it was also her discomfort with how her throat felt after she was intubated for the surgery. I think it was day three or even day four before she had her regular voice back.

And just because major surgery is clearly not enough of a challenge, the degree of difficulty was upped when the one nursing home that my mom and aunt liked offered them a spot for my grandmother. To move in less than a week later. Which was this past Wednesday. So my aunt got to be the one to drive grandma over and to sit there with her all of that first day. My dad and uncle have been dealing with the apartment. In the meantime, it became apparent that grandma's home care workers weren't always giving her all her meds. And by became apparent I mean that the night person told mom on the phone that "somedays she's better if I don't give her all those pills in the morning." Yeah, thanks, lady.

The nursing home adjustment is going in fits and starts. The pharmacist from the pharmacy where all of grandma's meds used to come from faxed over his records without indicating that some dosages of some meds were discontinued in favor of bigger dosages. So the nursing home gave her waaay too much of those particular meds, her blood pressure fell, and so did she. They had to take her to the hospital to get checked out. Her PCP took it from there, both on the looking after her front, and figuring out the dosages with the nursing home front, and she was back at the facility that night. She's had a couple of better days, cognitively. But she's also been wanting to go home. We don't know what she means by home at this point, except that with these better days comes recognition that this place isn't it. Maybe, maybe, maybe, if the good days thing keeps up, she will learn that this is where she is supposed to be. Maybe.


I feel this just about summs things up: the other day I looked up and it was May 1st. WTF? When did this happen? Where did my April go? I remember April 1st. After that-- blurs. I clearly need a time machine. Or at least waaaaaaaay more coffee.



Also, if you want a good laugh at my expense, check out the opening paragraph of my latest piece on GITW. It's about self-care, and caps off our body shop month. (And if after reading that you want Vicky's number, I may be inclined to share. Particularly if you are inclined to share dark chocolate.)

Mr. Dracula, Jr., for now; and other things, loosely connected

I've been thinking about time this week, and scale.

Time is essentially meaningless to my grandmother these days, except in the narrowest of senses as she works to get through each day. There are good days, or rather good hours, unexpected by now. Sadly, at this point stumbling onto one of those elicits wonder more than anything else. They are tough to take advantage of, since they come on unpredictably, and leave just the same way. If I am on my way to class and my mom calls to say they just had a good conversation, calling grandma after class probably means she won't know who I am anymore.

And most of the time it's not even close anyway. She is forgetting people, and confusing those few she still remembers. The apartment she's lived in for the past nearly nineteen years is not familiar enough to not confuse her, and the other day she didn't know who my father was. She's known him for nearly thirty seven years now. She's confused my aunt, her younger daughter, for my mom more than a few times. She's erased generations and jumped decades.

Humans, I recently learned, have to make sense of their environment. (I don't mean colloquially-- we kinda all knew that. I mean as a scientifically demonstrable observation, shown by careful and controlled laboratory experiments.) We have an "interpreter" in our brains (located in the left hemisphere, if you care) dedicated to figuring out what's going on, or, lacking sufficient information to do that, making up a somewhat coherent story. These days, it seems, my grandmother's brain lacks sufficient information most of the time. And for some reason, the stories it makes up to compensate are not of the happy and content variety.

Her brain keeps telling her of danger, of people who want to kill her if she should remain alone in the apartment or at an unfamiliar doctor's office. Unfamiliar is terrifying, and a lot of the time even familiar becomes unfamiliar. Sometimes her home care givers are the scary ones. They mess with her medicines, or they want to take her money. She's afraid a lot. So far she always remembers my mother, and that's who she calls when she gets scared. But the things she wants my mom to do about it swing wildly and don't, usually, make a whole lot of sense.

It must be exhausting being her. Being scared so much, her body must be drenched in fight or flight hormones. Her brain must be in overdrive even if in reality it's just spinning wheels in place. I feel like talking to her when she is not all there is kinda cruel-- she can tell she is supposed to know who I am, but she doesn't, so she uses these neutrally-familiar sentences, and she and her brain work to get through the conversation. But I wonder if that doesn't just make things worse, doesn't overtax her, doesn't push her over the edge of what remains of comfort.

I think, I hope that she doesn't understand how sad her existence has become. She can't make any real plans for the future, and so doesn't have much to look forward to. If she has a doctor's appointment, she needs to be told repeatedly, to prepare her for needing to go. But not too far in advance, or she will get confused. The day before and the day of, many-many times. That's what the time has shrunk to for her.

It's not fair that she has to work so hard now, at the end of a life that was filled with loss and hard work from almost the very beginning. One day I will write about her remarkable life, but that's not the point now. I think the point is that I feel like her life, the remarkable part of it at least, is pretty much over. I feel like we are at the "make her as comfortable as possible" stage. And yet, how does one do that when what's making her uncomfortable is her brain, trying to make sense of the world?

My mother is having major surgery next week. I don't even know whether grandma knows or understands. She certainly isn't, can't be what a mother in this situation should be, what she has been most of her life. Instead, it's mom who is worried about what will happen while she is in the hospital and recovering.

We are looking at nursing homes now, in the city where she and my parents live and here, by me, too. The trick is that we need one where there is a critical mass of patients and personal speaking the Old Country language-- what gains she once made in English are long gone. If we are extremely lucky, maybe we can create a new reality for her-- one where the here and now is routine, comforting, and comfortable enough for her brain to rest.

It sucks that this is the best we can even hope for. I feel like time is circling around her, cackling at us. There are so many things I didn't get to ask. I have (and make) her hamantashen recipe, but not her gefilte fish recipe. If you think gefilte fish comes from jars-- PHE! And also HA! You are sadly mistaken. Gefilte fish used to come from my grandmother's kitchen. The best.gefilte.fish.EVAH. I was thinking about it this Passover as I experimented with new variations on her matzabrei recipe (turned out great, btw-- you should've come over for a taste) and, with Monkey and JD enjoying hospitality of a far-away land, ate the gefilte fish straight out of a jar (without bothering to re-stew it for the somewhat significant taste improvement that would've still fallen miles away from the grandma gold standard). More than that, it's the family stories, likely gone now forever.


Time also doesn't mean diddly squat to the Cub, but in a different, much happier, way. His tummy tells him when it's time to eat. He gets cranky when he is tired and needs to sleep. It is nearly always time to smile, laugh, or giggle, and, whenever possible, it is time to grab, reach, or even butt-bounce (or otherwise locomote) over to a place from whence he can reach some objects. In order, of course, to put said objects into his mouth. DUH!

It's not that he is indifferent to people around him. He clearly knows who we are. He pretty much always turns to look at the right person if you ask him where So-and-Such is and he has a particular look of joy for us that is different than the way he looks at other people. It's just that when you are gone, you are gone. He is happy to see me when I get back from work, and, unless he is in the middle of a particularly exciting round of eat-that-toy, he is definitely up for cuddling and catching up. And when Monkey's face appeared above his car seat yesterday, bright and early, as we picked up our world travelers at the airport, the smile that bloomed on his face was of surprise, recognition, delight, and of course adoration. Take two as JD stuck his face into the back seat for his turn. But when they were gone, they were gone. He only knew that he'd missed them when he saw them again.

Time's easy on my boy, and that's a good thing. He turned eight months on Wednesday, and though of his last month JD's been gone all but five days, no adoration, no familiarity, no joy is lost. (To be fair, there were some Skype calls there, but still.)

Here's Mr.Dracula Jr. now, in all his five-toothed glory.

I took this picture last week. Wanted to preserve the effect, as I was afraid that tooth number five, upper center left, would make itself too visible and spoil the symmetry. Turns out I was right, although it's not altogether gone just yet.

But it will be, soon enough. Like the Cub's unwillingness to roll over was gone-- poof-- one sunny morning nearly four weeks ago now, when he woke up, smiled, and rolled. One way and then the other, never losing the giant grin that said-- ha, NOW I get it, this is actually pretty fun. Like his initial resistance to the whole idea of having to open his mouth to let the spoon with the cereal in. Like, I am sure, the last missing skills in the pull self up and crawl skill sets will be, alarmingly soon.

Like his heart murmur. It, too, is gone-gone-gone-gone. The fact that was cheerfully announced at our follow up this week first by the NP and then by the big shot pediatric cardiologist himself. We did all the right things, they said. Which is to say we did nothing medical, played our usual baby gymnastics games, indulged his love of swimming in the big tub, and just watched. (Doesn't seem like much doing, does it? Hence the internally cocked eyebrow and a sarcastic grunt, internal again, at the whole "did" thing.) No future follow up, they said. Not even a need to mention on any future medical form that he ever had a murmur. I nearly burst. I had been preparing myself to hear that we will need to come back in a bit for another follow up, so the unexpectedly definitive verdict packed some serious buoyancy.

And relief. Because while I played it cool, and we played gymnastics games, I had been checking on his breathing when he sleeps more than is strictly reasonable. For a normal person, that is. Before the appointment, in the (few and far between) moments when I'd allowed myself to imagine the outcome that actually came to pass, I'd thought that should we escape, I would be able to cut down on the whole sleep-time vigilance thing. In actuality if I have, it's not been by much. I'm working on it though. I know there are more layers to this, and so I am slogging along.


So I've been thinking about time and scale this week. Two years ago I was writing about being newly bereaved at a grocery store. A year ago I was talking about reverse pain olympics and wearing maternity and obsessing about making it to 20 weeks before delivering, should the baby die. This week I packed away most of the maternity clothes, and took the first flowers of the season to the cemetery. And as I am finishing writing this, I can hear on the monitor that the baby is stirring in his crib. Crazy, isn't it?

Unmatched

JD is overseas again. This time for pleasure, and with Monkey in tow. They be having a great time. I be less wound up than when solo piloting the craft that included buttload of work deadlines in addition to the usual complement of school drop offs and pickups and the numerous extracurriculars. But I am not what you would call chilled. For one thing I have a crazy long list of things I am trying to get done, what with fewer things I have to do, aka everyone's favorite game-- catch up. For another, and more to the point, it turns out that having no reliable me time, courtesy of the unpredictable schedule of one teething infant, wears you down. Single parents everywhere, can I buy you a drink?

So, the list. I am making progress, slogging through. Many things on it that unquestionably need doing, but only a couple that I look forward to. King of the hill in the latter category is "the reader," as in my Google Reader, the oft-neglected, long-suffering aggregator of the flotation device that is my friends inside the computer.

I read blogs for years before I felt any real need to get me one of 'em too. When I did, completely coincidentally exactly two years ago-- how's that for a nearly missed, entirely forgotten up until this very moment (so much so I just had to click through the archives to check) fortuitously most appropriate piece of trivia,-- it was because I needed to speak. I've been talking a bit, in the comment sections of the few loss blogs I found by then. But I had more to say, to get out, to hold to the light and examine, on my own terms, in my own time. I hoped not to be talking entirely to myself, but I wasn't banking on it. I needed to speak, and so I started speaking.

But at some point there, I wasn't talking to myself. There were others. Suddenly, there was this incredible gift, given to me over and over-- to be heard, to be validated. When I jumped in, I had no idea how much I would need that, how attached I would become to it. This community that listens, embraces, and stands by you through thick and thin, that does not avert its eyes from the scary, the ugly, and the very painful, that knows better than to succumb to platitudes. This community that abides.

This community that is made up of amazing individuals--
generous, warm, unique-- un- matched. Faced with the same realiza- tion one fine and busy work day, incredible Kym conceived of a physical manifestation of this very concept-- the Sock It To Me funky sock exchange. Do you see the genius of the idea? It has it all-- the warmth, the support, the funky personal touch. Damn, but it's good.

And do you see the bounty of colorful goodness that the lovely Katie of The Happy Hours has gifted me with? The label said missmatched. But, forgive the bad pun, it's really should be unmatched. Just like the community from whence the exchange sprang, and to which it testifies. Check the built-in metaphor: we are all funky and unique as these here socks, but we mix, and we match, and we go together. Ok, ok, I'll stop with the metaphor murder now, but if you want to see more (and often way more laconic) tributes to this here community, be sure to visit the Sockeroo headquarters and have a click around. That sounds vaguely dirty. But you know what I mean, don't you?

(Psst... Katie is, these days, counting down to her beta. So, if you are so inclined, please go over, admire the funky socks she is sporting, and keep her company while she waits.)



As the weekend runs away from me in the (admittedly relaxed-like, but still) haze of various and necessary tasks, I keep looking forward to the soul food that is beginning to catch up on my reader. My plan, by the way, for when the catching up is fully accomplished, is to add more blogs to teh old reader. I have a list of those I've been meaning to check on more regularly, or to begin reading altogether. Fittingly, Katie, the giver of the unmatched socks, admitted, in a lovely card she sent with (decorated with sock stickers-- kid you not!) to having been a lurker around these parts.

So to wind this post down in style, and because I also, in my typically lame fashion, missed that delurking day when, apparently, it's acceptable to pester one's readers to come out of their individual bloggy closets, I thought I'd do it now. Hence-- for my blogoversary present, pretty please, with sprinkles on top, tell me who you are. The reader doesn't grow itself, you know.

Plans, best-laid (as usual)

Last time I wrote here was the day after JD left for the very far away place. And now it's something like day four after he got back. And a day shy of three weeks since my last post. Oy!

I definitely didn't mean to go this long between posts. In fact, for a while there I was going to write one titled "Just in time." It was going to mention a few coincidences, chief among them the fact that not three days after I finally took that picture of my neighbors' pink commode on the curb, it disappeared. I was going to talk about how nice it was of the aforementioned neighbors to have waited for weeks and weeks until I got my act together enough to take a picture, before losing hope of garbage men taking a hint, and the commode with it, and hauling the thing off, presumably to a commode farm, themselves. It was going to be an uplifting tale, leaving not a dry eye in the house. Until I realized, this past Saturday (or two weeks after I first noticed the absence of the pink elephant and conceived of a post titled "Just in time") that the commode is not gone. It has just been pulled back off the curb and to the side of the house. Make of this what you will.


A few things ate the time since my last post. That thing in the picture up top? The cover? It took a giant chunk of it, and the cake. Teething didn't help any. Like at all. Finally finding a use for rolling over was a neat trick, and certainly worth bonus mama paranoia points for getting on with it while sporting a nose nicely stuffed and frequently leaking (on account of that whole teething thing).

I keep thinking, as every weekend shows up on the horizon, that this is when I will find the time to do X, Y, and Z, and that the week after doesn't look too bad either. And then the weekend is here, and over before I have a chance to exhale.

Pesah starts tomorrow. Luckily, I am not hosting a seder this year. Hopefully that means I will have the time to tell you about the funky socks I got for the Sock It To Me exchange. And maybe that I will finally get the time to do X, Y, and Z. Definitely Z.

(Not Exactly) Wordless Wednesday

I need me drip coffee. No, wait, that's something else. Caffeine drip! Yes, that's it. I need a caffeine drip.

Paragraphs are hard. So are full sentences. So, yeah... bullets?

• Miss you
  
• Send chocolate?
  
• Kidding-- bought a bunch. Cause? These days it's not just an essential food group. It may just be the thin thread by which my sanity hangs.
  
• Final version of exam sent off minutes ago. Whew! Could be tough. But very fair. Here's to the students agreeing with the last statement.
  
• Can cross take picture of commode off my list.
  
• Finally. Took me close to five weeks. And starting now I no longer care if the garbage men do haul it away one of these Mondays. Except in the fascinated how long can this possibly sit there? way. At some point it's a landmark, no?
  
• Husband currently continents and oceans away. Will stay that way for more than two weeks yet. It's ok, really. As long as the chocolate and the caffeine continue uninterrupted. I think.
  
• Spring break at work next week. I will totally catch up. On everything. Stop!laughing!
  
• Send quotes, please. Not mushy. Or not overly. Something on identity, generations, roots, going forth, or any combination thereof. English or Old Country language.
  
• Above is to inscribe for Monkey. Ceremony in school Friday morning. Before that must make personalized cover for the prayer book the school is presenting first graders with. I have kick ass drawings. I have fabric. I am about to begin the part where a physical object is created. And yes, most other parents have turned theirs in already, why do you ask? Need coffee.
  
• In my defense-- the time they gave us to make these would've been enough if it didn't come at the worst possible crazy-busy-meet-grief-slammed time.
  
• Speaking of. I wrote a post on GITW last week. All about crowded and seasonally affected. In case, you know, you care.
  
• I should post already and attend to the cover.
  
• Oh, also the course I designed and teach solo started this week.
  
• Next week is break. Next week is break. Next week is break.
  
• Ok, this time it's for real-- over and out.
  
• Send quotes, please!
  

Baren Bitches Book Brigade: Never Let Me Go

Welcome to another installment of the quad-B. (I just made it up. Like it?) On the agenda for today is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Warning: If you haven't read the book, but may want to, slowly point your mouse towards the browser's back button, click away, and nobody gets hurt. Because this here post? Chock full of spoilers. It's a spoiler stew, so to speak. And as Mel correctly warned when suggesting the book for the book club, you are much better off not knowing a damn thing, not a tiny little thing about the book before you start reading. No, really. But if you are the sort to read the book even if you know how it all shakes out (or if you are in the habit of peeking at the last page) or if you are not going to read it anyway, but want to see what all the fuss is about, then by all means, read on.


I found the book to be engrossing. The week I had last week, and the weekend I was heading into, and this week again, I really had no business throwing book reading in there. I thought I'd start, and read a few pages here and there, and then maybe I would be far enough along to be able to read along with the book club today. Maybe even comment. But the book sucked me in, and so I sacrificed sleep-- the only thing with any sort of give in my days-- to finish it in just over two days. But here's the thing. I loved the start of the book. I got into the characters, the settings, the relationships, the big picture. But the closer it got to resolution, the less I was staying with it. It didn't hold charge for me at the end, it didn't ring true. Less individual characters than the overall structure that circumscribes their existence. But the way society turns out to function just didn't work for me, and falsified some of the character development with which I was originally fully on board. But more about that later. First, some thoughts and reflections.

One theme in the book that I kept returning to was that of parallel worlds. Students/carers/donors seem to live in a separate world from the rest of society. They seem allowed to interact and we know that they are taught about the ways of the ordinary people (for Hailsham students in particular, possibly in a way that would enable them to "pass" for an ordinary person-- for example in the instruction on having sex), but they don't seem to do it to any appreciable degree. That made me wonder, in such a context, which world is "real"? In the case of the world of the book, we don't really get a good idea of what the students think of "ordinary" people or their world. Media is not depicted, and current events are referred to only briefly. Other countries are mentioned in passing, but whether they have similar clone set ups are not articulated. (Likewise, we get only glimpses of what the people in the regular society think of the clones, but that's a bit of a separate topic.)

But thinking about this also brought to mind the topic not infrequently raised on the internets, the topic of whether we are living in a separate world, here. In the world of bereaved parents in particular (and in the world of infertility too) it is often the case that we begin to feel that most of the people in our real lives, our physical worlds, do not really understand us, that the world where we don't have to explain ourselves is the one in the computer. Ethereal world of electrons and words, but as real to us, and some days more real, than the one that includes our next door neighbors.

Another thing I kept picking up to consider was the way clone infertility is presented in the book. As a plot device it was a natural (pardon the pun) choice-- if there is no possibility of the clones having children themselves, there is less to handle logistically and there is (slightly) less of an ethical mess-- no need to consider whether a mother of a young child can be slated for donor status, or a father, or any of the other very messy questions one might come up with. But as far as making sense in the world, it is not really explored. Students are told at some point that they are infertile, and eventually it is tied to their forming views on sex. But we don't know whether the clones are infertile as a side effect of the way they are created, by design, or made so very early in life. Does it matter? Does it matter to you, the reader? To them? Should they want to know? To me it feels different if they are infertile as a result of the process that creates them than if they are sterilized as infants. One is an inescapable side-effect of the process, albeit one that the system freely exploits. The other is yet another decision, another action, that takes yet more away from these beings.

And that brings me straight to the Miss Emily vs. Miss Lucy debate. Should the clones be told their place in the world piecemeal, presumably preserving their happy childhoods or should they be told the whole stark truth from the beginning, allowing them to make what they will of it? I would like to postulate that maybe the difference here is not altogether academic and applicable only to the world of the novel. I would like to postulate that the difference is one between pity and empathy. Miss Emily sees her moral obligation in providing for the clones, even as she later admits to being revolted by them. Miss Lucy, on the other hand, seems genuinely respectful of their humanity, of them as individuals. Miss Emily sees the students only as other, while Miss Lucy sees them as equally human to herself. And isn't this a theme familiar to most infertiles and bereaved parents alike-- do the people around us pity us or give us empathy? Do they treat us as other, scary and possibly contagious, or as an equal, even if in pain or in need? We rarely want pity. But empathy, understanding that preserves our dignity? Many of us are thirsty for it, and not in the least because it seems to be in such short supply.

Ok, so this next point might solidify my standing as a politics geek. Eh-- what else is new, right? This point is about language and framing in the book. See, in the book, students are special, unlike say ordinary people. Donors are kindly providing for others, rather than are being taken apart, piece by piece, for the benefit of unseen privileged class. Carers care (duh), rather than make it more palatable for the same privileged class to dismember other human beings while still alive. And, of course, donors complete, rather than... well, we don't even know whether they die or become vegetables connected to machines while the rest of their organs are harvested. There are so many places to go from here. There is the whole transfer vs. implant media thing, for one. There is the fictitious and purposefully-named partial birth abortion (it doesn't exist! a bunch of medical procedures are clumped together under this colloquial umbrella). There is accountability in education, which really only means more standardized testing, which happens to be only peripherally related to actual student learning. And there is any number of euphemistically named political phenomena. Let me leave those alone for right now, except to say that language is important. And in the case of the students in the book, being raised from infancy for the role they are scripted into, language is also formative-- it imprints their view of themselves and their role.

Finally, towards the end of the book, Kathy finds herself separated from Tommy by the carer/donor divide. She is saddened and angered by all the talk of "you would see if you were a donor." What struck me is that the way she bristles at that is rather similar to the way many of us react (or used to react) to the glorification of parenthood and demarcation of certain truths to be only accessible to one who has crossed the threshold.

And now the questions.

At what point did you realize what the book was about and did it change the way you viewed the main characters?

Honestly, I had an inkling from about page 2, and I consider it to be a very nice setup. My very first thought about what a donor was donating was "organs." And it seemed clear that Kathy wasn't expected to just retire to a cottage in the country upon being done with her carer role at the end of the year. Gradually, more is revealed, and, sadly, not always in a satisfactory way. I would say that at the beginning I bought the premise, but by the end, had to, regretfully, take it back for a refund. There are many reasons for it, and I will try to run through them briefly.

First, what is the societal set-up? Is there legislation governing clone conduct and interactions with the wider world? It seemed a lot more congruous while I thought this whole thing was more of a hush-hush operation, and even then it was shaky, but once we hear Miss Emily's explanation, very little of it makes sense. (As an aside, if it was fully official and known, I highly doubt regular people would be called ordinary. Because don't we all know how nobody wants to think of themselves as ordinary [cue American Beauty soundtrack]. Unless, that is, one finds oneself in the land of Shit Out of Luck, a place from which ordinary looks divine and unattainable). I am going to elaborate on that a bit more below, but the short of it is that to me, the dystopia setup here doesn't hold water, unlike, say, the one from The Handmaid's Tale.

There are plenty of places where I could put this particular question, but let's put it here, under the not holding water heading-- how is it possible that the students are reading so much, and none of them has ever stumbled onto, for example, A Modest Proposal? They have, by Kathy's own reckoning, discovered irony at some point. How have they not ever read anything suggestive of their treatment not being morally defensible? Oh, forget books. They have TV. They watch American sitcoms. Do they not also watch movies? Nothing? Really?

This part has been bugging me since I figured out it won't be answered for us-- who is Kathy speaking to? She is very deliberate, saying on more than one occasion things like "I want to now speak of X." It is an outsider, since it is not a character in the story, not even a peripheral one, since she's had to explain everything. But neither is it a person entirely unfamiliar with the topic-- right on page one or two she talks about the person she is addressing no doubt knowing some aspects of the carer establishment. Is this a reporter? A government official? A (new) lover? An ordinary person of some other description?

Speaking of, why haven't there been a reporter? Seemingly, not a single one? Ever? Nobody is interested in speaking to these children/adults? Do we really believe that no newspaper editor wants to publish a series? Do we really believe that, as Miss Emily will have us believe, the whole society in its infinite homogeneity doesn't want to know where the cures come from, doesn't want to humanize the clones? Have none of the reporters ever read A Modest Proposal either?

How are the clones produced? Is a human womb required? Who is used? Do women volunteer? Are they conscripted? Has not one of them ever wanted to keep the clone baby she just carried for nine months?

Through most of the book I kept thinking there was a one to one correspondence between clones and their intended organ recipients. I kept thinking these were clones of privileged people, setting themselves up for organ replacement later in life to prolong theirs. I think this was both for scientific reasons (thinking about organ rejection) and for social, in terms of how society would work if everyone was complicit. I thought it made less sense the way it turns out to work. But upon doing some more thinking, I no longer think it matters all that much-- as I say, society piece of this doesn't work for me in very many ways.

One thing that struck me while reading the book is that the characters seem very passive. Although certain knowledge is withheld from them along the way, and they do have questions, they do not really rebel or protest their fate, or try to escape. They seem quite accepting of the future that has been laid out for them. Why do you think this is so?

I think we are meant to see the students as accultured to not questioning their fate. The most they seem able to do is look for a deferral. And I do know that propaganda is a strong and powerful force. But I can't entirely buy that they would remain passive after leaving school for the transitional setups. They have this limited freedom. They interact with the ordinary people. They are even allowed to have sex with the ordinary people. Has not one of them ever done so? Enough to form an emotional connection? Enough to want to not go into the carer/donor world?

It is interesting that when looking for deferrals, clones only think in terms of the authorities of their world. Never does it occur to them to petition regular courts, to seek protection from human rights organizations. I mean, they can read newspapers, though we almost never see them do it. They can watch TV. I don't think it's a coincidence that education is considered a very dangerous thing in societies where people are subjugated. To be able to read-- slaves had been punished, killed for that. Canonical act of rebellion. And the clones read. They study art and literature. And still nothing?

At the end of Never Let Me Go, they mentioned “designer babies” had turned people against the whole clone issue. Now, ABC news featured a story tonight (3/3/09) about parents being able to build their baby http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6998135&page=1 (a bit of reality reflecting art). How does this make you feel? Do you think PGD should only be used to avoid health issues and genetic defects? Is it ok to use it to have a baby who can save your current child’s life through marrow transplant? Is it ok to pick hair type and eye color?

I think this is a fine line. If you were planning on having another child anyway, and the question is whether you could use technology to make sure that kid would be able to save an older sibling's life, I would say that's ethical. Because if you had several children already, and one of them matched the sick one, it would be ok to have that kid help. If you are having a child for the sole purpose of saving the sick one, that's dicey.

Avoiding fatal genetic defects-- yes. Yes. Because I don't want anyone else to grieve a child, if they can avoid it.

Eye color? Hair color? I just threw up a little in my mouth.

If you were a student a Hailsham, would you have wanted to know your ultimate destiny as a Donor? Why or why not? How do you think knowing at that point in your life would have affected you? Does this desire to know your outcome apply to your own real life? In what situations do you find knowledge helpful? At what times can it be detrimental?

I think the complicating thing is that the kids are so small when they first arrive at the school. But there is an age when I think it's better to know. I actually think that what Miss Lucy was trying to tell Tommy was that just like if he didn't want to be artistic he didn't need to be, he didn't have to donate if he didn't want to. Not an option anyone else ever presented them.




Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.

Stories

I live and work in an amazing place, a nexus. Two institutions with which I have been associated in the last nearly seventeen years are chock full of brilliant people doing incredible things. And I've seen it up close. I've taken classes taught by Nobel Laureates. I've worked with people who by rights should be (are you listening, Stockholm?).

And everywhere you turn, there are stories, extraordinary stories. Stories of inspiration and persistence. Stories of tiny molecules responsible for big things. Molecules that interact with other molecules. These interactions are the stuff of life-- how things work or how disease happens,-- a change that causes a change, that causes a change. Some of these stories are old enough to be in textbooks, some so new they are under embargo pending publication, and some incomplete, still in progress. I go to class or to talks to hear the stories, or I stumble upon them as I dig through the literature.

I've admired these stories, for substance, but also for elegance. I've been impressed with the insight needed to ask the question in just that way, or with the enormous progress a person or a group can make in just a few years (ahem... rarely... more often, it's a long and torturous road). But not until last week did I feel personally affected by one of these stories.

As I walked back to my office across the darkened and subdued campus last week, the story I just heard kept reverberating in me. Not intellectually, or, rather, not only intellectually. Don't get me wrong-- the story's nothing to sneeze at, intellectually speaking. It's got balls, for it took giant intellectual balls to ask that particular question. It's got insight, for it took a boatload of that to pick the particular approach that ended up paying out so generously, plus another boatload to choose where to look. It's got elegance, for there was that in reconciling the new, beautiful data with the old, seemingly contradictory, results. And the resulting model,-- dayyyymn, but it's elegant.

But that wasn't what was rocking my boat the other night. I was surprised to find that I was literally buoyed, high as a kite on vapors of a promise. It occurred to me that if this story keeps unfolding as it seems poised to do, by the time it's my daughter's turn to worry about pregnancy and childbirth, one of the big bad things of today will likely become no more than "oh, that? They've got a pill for that now." A promise of less heartache, less hurt, less pain. A promise of a better world. A promise of a monster, a true honest to goodness monster, a killer, tamed. Put out of business. Caged.

I walked along, thinking. Thinking that unlike all these other stories, this one might affect my daughter, likely will. Her or one of her many friends. (Which, because she is Monkey, would also deeply affect her.) I had this feeling that one day it will be relevant. And for the first time in all these years I realized that one day I will be able to tell my children "You know, I heard the guy speak before they worked out the whole thing, but when they already knew X and Y."

And then I imagined how I will tell them about how bad it was, you know, before. Which brought me right the fuck down to earth, in a hurry. Because that before is now. Because the big bad is still out there, hurting or killing women and babies. And it will keep doing that even as all these researchers are working double time to get from X and Y all the way to "we've got a pill for that." More than that, I could suddenly see, feel even, that when the after is here, the women hurt by the big bad in the before will still be hurt. For them, there will not be much comfort in the fortune of others. For them that fortune might even sting, because really, why did it not come in time for them? Why the fuck not?

And I realized that, as in so many things, the after really can't come soon enough.