Only Connect

“Empathy:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this.”  –Merriam Webster Dictionary

The classroom was crowded with awkward adults and too-small chairs.  Crockpots burbled. The kids, still buzzing with adrenaline after performing the thrilling theatrical portion of the Third Grade Potlatch, were yanking on parental arms, clamoring in parental ears, and falling over each other in their haste to dig into the blatantly-not-Native-Alaskan lunch offerings.

Except for one kid.  She was hunched in her small plastic chair, tears running down her face.

I whispered to my own child, “Why is that little girl crying?”  I’d already intuited the answer -- but I wanted my eight-year-old’s take on the situation. 

My daughter glanced over quickly. “Her dad was supposed to come,” she whispered.  Then she added, unbidden, “Her parents got divorced recently, and I think that makes it extra hard for her.”

I think that makes it extra hard for her.  

Empathy is a concept that seems at once remarkably simple, and yet at the same time fascinatingly complex. It bubbles, iridescent, in the shared laughter of lifelong friends.  It quakes with stage-fright within the young actor’s parents.  It aches at a stranger’s loss. In the wordless glance of lovers, it is the joy and the tremor and the sheer humanity of deep connection: he understands.  

How crucial is empathy, for a child?  For an adult?  For a society? To what degree is it an innate skill, and to what degree is it a learned one?  These questions aren’t new; they’ve been rattling my brain for years.  I’ve wrestled with them when I’ve struggled to connect and communicate with adults who are close to me.  I’ve also spent a lot of time attempting to be a Good Mommy (or at least a Passable Mommy) to two kids who seem to differ wildly in their empathetic responses.

At the age of two, it was already obvious.  One of my twins was quick to sense subtle changes in my mood or her sister’s, and to offer a hug or a pacifier (respectively, that is; my oral fixation isn’t THAT bad.). A friend who regularly babysat my kids -- along with her own -- mentioned that she’d fallen into the habit of using this twin as a helper.  Apparently my toddler was able to understand that her little playmate had trouble walking on our uneven path, and earnestly offered her hand. The other twin… not so much.  “Mine!” was a favorite word in her vocabulary.

Over the subsequent six years, both kids grew and changed.  Both gained social skills.  Both evidenced some degree of generosity and kindness.  But one twin still seemed to struggle much more than her sister did in anticipating, understanding, and responding to the emotions of those around her.  And sometimes I worried.

Now, I whispered back to my young potlatch date, “Well, then, we need to invite her to eat lunch with us.”

“Yes,” my empathetic kid agreed immediately – but not without a tiny tinge of regret. My undivided attention is a rare prize.  Indeed, she and her sister had been thrilled when Jay and I said we would both be able to come to this event.  Jay, I knew, was squashed into a tiny chair in the class across the hall, earnestly balancing a paper plate of dubious delicacies.  Moreover, Crying Child is by no means a close friend to either of my kids.  “Sometimes she just isn’t very nice,” my daughter confided later.  “She says mean things about what I bring in my lunch.”  What?  Third graders scoff at homemade whole-grain bread?  Apparently, Crying Girl is into “pink stuff and TV shows”, rather than leaping in mud puddles, playing FBI Spy, and writing stories about secret portals into outer space. 

At that moment, though, it only mattered that she was a child who needed a grownup.  “Hi there.  I’m Molly’s and Lizzy’s mom.”  Yup, that’s my name.

The little girl looked up at me, tentatively, hopefully.

“Would you like to eat with us?” I asked.

Like magic, the tears disappeared.

Shuffling through the lunch queue, I helped my daughter and Crying Child fill their plates with food. This other kid, as it turned out, was picky.  And loud. Also, she could talk the hind leg off a donkey, a mule, and probably an alpaca, too.  She told me about her pets.  She told me about her father’s diabetes.  She told me everything, in an endless, poorly-modulated soliloquy that precluded all communication with my own child.  Empathizing with this lonely little human was easy -- but being nice to her took more effort.

As I’ve wrangled with how to teach my children to Share, Play Fair, and Not Be Selfish Little Bastards, it has dawned on me that being an empathetic person is not at all the same thing as being a nice person.  I’ve also come to realize that empathy consists of at least three interrelated but distinct components.  Intellectually being able to figure out what others feel (I’ll call this “knowing”) is different from vicariously experiencing emotions (“feeling”). Neither of these is precisely the same as giving a damn (“caring”). 

Cerebral understanding of others’ emotions does not presuppose a loving nature.  Such knowledge can help one figure out the most effective way to be kind, but it can also, alas, help one figure out precisely the most effective way to lie, to cheat, and to be cruel.  Socially maladroit kids are not the ones who morph into the vicious vipers of junior high.  Dictators?  Cult figures?  People who persuade everyone to drink the KoolAid?  A lot of them are masters of knowing-without-caring.

Conversely, it’s entirely possible to have a loving nature (that is, be deeply caring) without readily experiencing the emotions of others, or even being particularly adept at knowing what they are. The love emanating from such a person can sometimes be ill-timed, oddly expressed, or hard to interpret – and thus, sadly, hard to reciprocate -- but it is no less real.

Caring about others is undoubtedly a crucial trait – a society-building trait -- but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occasionally feel like a burden.  I’d also argue that feeling – wallowing in the external miasma of joy or angst -- isn’t entirely positive. On the plus side, a child who senses the wash of emotions around her may find it easier to make friends and to be the sort of loving and caring soul that every parent wants to see their kid become.  On the other hand, she is also more likely to pick up on every ounce of negativity and every cue of subtle disapproval.  She is more likely to internalize even the tiniest social rules and taboos – including the insidious, nasty, undermining ones that drip through every corner of our culture.  You don’t fit in.  Girls can’t do that. You should be prettier. The socially myopic, on the other hand, may find it easier to be cool with being totally uncool.

At the potlatch, it didn’t take a huge amount of empathy for me to guess that what Crying Child wanted was simply someone to play parent to her right now.  When she helped herself to seven cookies for dessert, I gently told her that she might not feel very good at recess if she ate that many.  She seemed pleased by my interference.  “How about if I put back four?” she asked.  When I told her that this idea showed good judgment, she glowed with pride and rushed to replace the goodies.

As my kids have gotten older, I’ve realized a few things.  First, my less-empathetic two-year-old was actually… pretty normal.  Toddlers are mostly narcissists.  Second, the acquisition of empathy, like pretty much every other talent in the human repertoire, depends neither on pure nature nor on pure nurture, but a blend of both.  Third, even those with an innate talent for empathy may have a lot to learn.

I’ve also had time to think a bit about the possible ramifications of worrying too little – or too much -- about what other people think.  My less empathetic kid sometimes still seems a little me-focused, but she also delights me with her individualism.  Guess which eight-year-old girl would prefer to never, ever bathe; thinks her farts are super-funny; and collects knives?  “I like being awkward”, she told me recently.  She also remarked, as if reporting a delightful discovery, “Sometimes I feel like everybody else’s universe is completely different from mine.”  I kind of love her for that.  But I do try to remind her, gently, to always consider the feelings of others.  Amazing as it may seem, there are actually people who simply do not appreciate the merits of small, grimy, farting, knife-wielding little girls.

I’ve noticed that the more-empathetic kid sometimes buries her own desires, in order to avoid conflict or try to meet the needs of others.  This pipsqueak of a person falls all over herself to make me happy.  I kind of love her for that – it’s hard not to.  But there is always going to be more pain in the world than she – or anyone -- can handle.   As an adult, she may have days, as many of us do, when she just can’t bear to read the New York Times headlines – and that’s okay. I try to teach her that sometimes, it’s good to be different, to be yourself, to make demands.  Sometimes, pissing off other people may actually be the right thing to do – even if your voice shakes.  Sometimes, it’s okay to step out of the shoes of others, and back into your own.  

At home that evening, when I was thanking my potlatch-date for sharing me with her hapless classmate, her twin chimed in unexpectedly.  “That happened in my class, too,” she said.  She named one little boy who had sat alone, crying. Two or three years ago, I thought, this twin would not have noticed – or cared. “But Ben and Sarah’s parents took care of him, and then he was all right.” 

“Yeah,” her sister agreed.  “That’s how it was for us, too.  Everything was all right.”

Those two little crying children, they were all right. 

And my two children?  They were all right, too.

Many parts

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…”

--Jacques, As You Like It (Act II, scene vii), William Shakespeare

[Nameless… wordless… swathed in black and creeping purposefully through the shadows… a killer stalked.  Silently, the hooded figure moved forward.  The quarry, unknowing, took a final breath at the cliff-edge.  At last, with a single cold-hearted shove, the murderer sent the victim plunging to certain doom.]

As the slayer strode remorselessly offstage -- as quickly and purposefully as a four-foot-tall person can stride while wearing a sweatshirt that hangs well past her knees -- her hood slipped a bit, and one of her long blonde pigtails sprang out.

Last week, I was part of a small but appreciative audience who were treated to a theatrical smorgasbord of unprecedented oddness: namely, sixteen three-minute(ish) plays written, directed, and acted by children aged 8-15.

The performance was the culmination of my kids’ Spring Break Camp with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater, and was therefore one of those Things Parents Have To Show Up For.  I expected it to be, at best, cute, and perhaps unintentionally funny.  I did not, however, think it would inspire any degree of artistic contemplation.  But after I watched one of my twin eight-year-olds send a fellow actor to his purported demise, I began to wonder.

The audience giggled, of course.  I did too.   I simply couldn’t help it.  But I knew, in my heart, that Lizzy, the most diminutive of all sixteen playwright/thespians, was not trying to be funny.  She was being, wholeheartedly, The Mysterious Killer.

“All the world’s a stage…”

Acting has always tempted and intrigued me, although I’ve never had much success with it.  As a ten-year-old, I longed to follow in my big sister’s footsteps and earn a lead role in the school play.  I didn’t.  Instead, I was given a green pointy hat and placed among the ignominious horde of awkward elves on the rickety risers at the back of the stage. 

By high school, I was too intimidated by the apparent coolness and popularity of the theater crowd to seriously consider signing up.  Besides, I was busy with the math club and the track team. 

Math meets and track meets did not garner much in the way of audience. Not that it was really an audience I wanted – certainly not in my teen years, when being entirely invisible seemed far more appealing than being noticed.  No, what appealed to me about theater – and what still does – is the idea of being someone else, while still, enigmatically, being myself.

“…and all the men and women merely players …”

Looking through the Spring Break theater program, I noted that Molly was playing the role of “Mother” in two plays, and “Chatty Kathy” (a talkative young woman vying for the hand of a prince via a jump-roping contest) in a third.  Her twin, meanwhile, in addition to playing the nefarious (and seemingly motiveless) murderer, had garnered roles as a boy who befriends a dragon, and as a monster who devours children in their beds. 

I knew that the camp instructors had set things up such that each child, regardless of age or gender, could audition for any role he or she wanted.  Thus, the program reflected, at least to some degree, the parts my kids had chosen to play.  That fascinated me – because, what roles, real or imagined, do any of us choose? 

I’ve never had the luxury of choosing a theatrical role, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to find myself in the roles assigned to me. This past summer, I helped out with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater’s annual outdoor production.  It was the third time I’d done so.

The first time, years back, I was part of all the crowd scenes in Julius Caesar, including the bludgeoning of an innocent poet.  While I’m not actually in the habit of bludgeoning poets, no matter the odiousness of their doggerel, the role did make me think more deeply about what can happen – and why -- when mob-madness takes hold.

In my second Shakespearean foray, I was assigned to be a dancing shepherdess.  Yes, really.  Dancing.  Also, giggling, flirting, and singing, in a shepherdess-y dress and hair ribbons.    And you know what?  It was hugely fun.  Part of my psyche (unbeknownst to everyone, including myself) actually enjoys giggling, flirting, and -- heaven help the audience -- dancing and singing.

This year, I gathered props, mended costumes, and spent a couple of scenes onstage in a non-speaking role as a “forester”.  There wasn’t much skill required, but in every tech rehearsal and dress rehearsal and each of the show’s thirteen performances, I pretended to be a stalwart member of a down-to-earth woodsy cadre.  I pretended to be terrified of the knife-wielding Orlando.  I pretended to be amused by the banter of my betters, touched by the plight of an exhausted old man, and fascinated by the ruminations of the melancholy Jaques: 

“…they have their exits and their entrances …”

Rather than merely pretending, though, I decided to find the corner of my brain that really, truly, was intrigued by this speech.  As I sat on the stage – which usually meant sitting in a dirty, frigid puddle, because it never stopped goddamn raining last summer – I let my heavy ragged brown dress fall haphazardly around my booted ankles, and I wondered. 

I wondered about the roles we assign ourselves, and the roles we are assigned by others, and how they differ.  I pondered to what degree we really get to be the directors of the ongoing improv shows known as “our own lives”.  I speculated as to what roles my friends, my family, or my kids might cast me in.  I questioned my interpretation of the roles I already play – mother, scientist, outdoor enthusiast, wife, writer, professor, activist, friend, daughter.  I contemplated what other (astonishing, rewarding, hilarious, shocking) roles I might be capable of playing, were I ever to assign them to myself.

Some of these same questions floated back into my head, as I watched sixteen kid-crafted plays unfurl on stage last week. The participants in the Spring Break camp varied widely in their acting and writing abilities, but I found myself more interested in their intent than in their skill.  What iconic roles did they create and fulfill?  Why did the plays include seven mothers (no, eight – I forgot the mother dragon), and only two fathers?  Why were all the parents (even the dragon) so bland, dysfunctional, and naysaying?

Lizzy was not the only kid whose roles reached far outside the realm of the predictable.  The iconoclastic eleven-year-old daughter of my good friends (whom Lizzy blatantly looks up to) was cast as a delightfully spacey father in Molly’s play, as well as a dashing (if argumentative) Romeo.  Then there was a boy – he looked to be about eleven – who put on a lilac wig and a skirt to play the part of “Pretty Lulu”.  I kind of loved that boy. 

Ever since Robert Rosenthal’s 1964 classic classroom experiment showed that merely telling teachers that some (randomly selected) children had great potential caused actual increases in IQ in those kids, study after study has likewise demonstrated that expectations – and the roles we are assigned based on those expectations – deeply impact our reality.  Just knowing this, and having the tiniest inkling of the terrible injustices that it engenders, chafes and angers me.  If the whole world says you’ve got to play the part of “adorable little girl” or “suspicious black teenager” or “skinny white boy who definitely shouldn’t put on a skirt and jump rope” it’s all too easy to just say, Yeah, sure, that’s who I am.  And… that’s who I’m not.

Over the course of a single airplane journey this winter, Lizzy was off-handedly called “Princess” by three different strangers.  All of them were, I’m sure, entirely well-meaning, but I longed to correct them. That little girl in slightly grimy old jeans is not a princess.  Really.  Trust me on this one.  Clearly, each of these men (they were all men) had badly miscast my kid in their personal stage-plays. 

But, to be fair, perhaps I’d miscast them in my own.  I’d assumed, with a shocking lack of creativity, that Guy #2 was “Bored Fiftyish Male TSA Agent”.   But who was he, really?  What if he also played a secret nighttime role?  Perhaps, mentally, I should have called him, “Princess” too. Yes, I’ve removed my laptop from my carry-on, Princess.  Yes, those are my shoes, thanks, Princess.

Maybe it seems frivolous – or even insulting – to imagine random strangers as clandestine drag queens, but I assure you I don’t intend it that way.  To me, humans are intriguing precisely because each of us can, and does, play so many roles.  My most fascinating and wonderful friends – the ones I long to spend more time with -- tend to be individuals who contain multitudes.  If you’ve worked as a nurse, a shipwright, a stay-at-home-dad, a mathematician and a gardener, you’re probably an interesting person to eat dinner with.  If I’ve seen you as word nerd, apple pie baker, guide-puppy caretaker, computer programmer, hiker, and gay-leather-fetish-gear-wearer, you are all the more human to me. 

“…and one man in his time plays many parts…”

Sixteen kids got up on stage last week, and my optimistic core rejoiced.  Yes, other people will always try to force roles upon us, try to direct us, try to limit us.  But, ultimately, we are all still our own writers, our own directors, and our own actors.   No matter where our name appears on the playbill, we all have many, many roles to play.

[Nameless… wordless… the four-foot tall murderer strode offstage, hoodie flapping at her shins and pigtails askew…]

Differently Hacked

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of cute little online lists purporting to offer “life hacks”: quick and easy low-cost tweaks that will save you time and energy. 

Sure, why not?  I’ll click on that.  I like quick.  I like easy.  I like low-stress.  Cheap is nice, too.  Last night, just before heading off to snow-bike 350 miles through the Alaska wilderness, Jay told me that "Everyone says you're the lowest-maintenance wife I could possibly have."  I'm not entirely sure how to interpret this comment, but I"m going to take it to mean that I’m just the sort of person who does lots of hacking. In, um, a totally complimentary sort of way, of course.

Somehow, though, the hacks on offer never seem to be precisely the hacks I am looking for.  For example, “When ironing a button-up shirt, flip it inside out to easily iron over the button side.”  I can see where this might come in handy, if I wore shirts with buttons.  Actually, I think I do own one of those -- but not an iron.  Wait, Jay has a ski-waxing iron.  Does that count? 

Speaking of irons, another hack tells me I can use my hair-straightener as a collar iron.  Also, I should organize my makeup with a magnetic board, and hang up a magazine rack in my bathroom to house my hairdryer. 

Hmmm. 

Nonetheless, I’m still pretty sure I’m just the sort of person who hacks her life, and always has. Thus, I’ve taken the liberty of putting together my own list of super-duper totally universally useful shortcuts.

1)      When you and your sister are fighting during your unsupervised after-school time and you snap the delicate foot off your mother's tiny mahogany end-table, just glue it back on with Elmer's glue, and strap it tightly with rubber bands.  Remove the rubber bands five minutes before she gets home.  Tell her about it thirty years later. 

Hi, Mom. See?  No one really looks at table legs.

2)      When you walk a couple of miles to your high school on a Saturday morning to take the SAT, and you're so incredibly prepared that you neglect to bring anything with you -- including three sharpened number two pencils, or in fact any pencil at all -- just quickly search the curbside gutter area.  Look, there’s one.  You’re, like, totally ivy league material.

3)      Whenever a pesky black fly or mosquito has snuck inside your head net, but your hands and arms are entirely covered with semi-liquid mud, catch the insect with your tongue, and swallow it.  Problem solved.

4)      When the engine dies on your friend's VW bus because the wiring has shorted out, re-insulate it by wrapping it in one of the condoms he conveniently seems to keep in the glove box.  Ask no questions.

5)      Toilet won't flush at the Greyhound rest stop?  Small horde of women upset?  Quickly lift off the lid of the tank, plunge your arm in shoulder-deep, and use a twisted paperclip to reconnect the handle arm to the chain that lifts the flapper.  Stare back at all the women who are now staring at you.  You’re welcome, ladies.

6)      Has your landlady’s mentally handicapped son just accidentally cut a hole in a plastic cistern pipe with a machete, causing hundreds of gallons of gravity-fed water to start fountaining into the house foundations?  Just tightly wrap the pipe in an old bicycle tube. 

7)      When you’re planning to travel from Fairbanks Alaska to suburban New York via two planes and three trains as a solo adult with twin toddlers, buy two umbrella strollers for $14.99 each at Walmart.  Make Velcro straps to attach the strollers side by side -- but with one several inches in front of the other, so the wheels don’t lock.  (Note: when you’re wheeling two exhausted children through Grand Central Station while wearing a massive purple backpack holding all of your collective luggage, be sure to apologize to everyone you inadvertently whack.)

8)      Need to shatter the vertical stack of frozen poop that forms in your outhouse after several months of Alaskan winter? Try using a four foot long 18-pound crowbar!

9)      Are you cross-country skiing for 30 or more hours straight?  Keep your mp3 player well stocked with audio books, and stuff the player in your bra so that the twenty-below-zero chill doesn’t sap the battery life.  [Note: you might possibly want to avoid listening to The Hunger Games while alone in a dark, remote forest at 3 a.m.]

10)   On any mornings when you happen to be walking half a mile to the school bus stop with your first graders at 56 degrees below zero, keep things lively and nutritious by putting a plastic spoon in each child’s double-mittened hand, giving them each a small bowl of piping-hot oatmeal, and challenging them to see who can eat it before it freezes solid.

11)   Are your feet cracking open and bleeding at multiple locations from the ceaselessly dry air?  Try duct tape. 

12)   Duct tape. 

13)   I’d add more, but from here on in, the answer is still going to be duct tape.