The Grinch ... an allegory

Last Christmas, my son wanted to hear How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, almost every night. He’d stare at the pictures, listening intently. Only occasionally he’ll ask the big question. “Why?” He’s fascinated by why the Grinch stole Christmas – and WHY is precisely the question the good Doctor asks you not to ask: " The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. But I think that the most likely reason of all May have been that his heart was two sizes too small. " (1) Okay, fine, don’t tell us why, jerk-off. I love you, Dr. S, but perhaps it’s because he’s just a greedy, hoarding, sonofabitch – and I know that you can’t write that in a children’s book, but that IS the real reason. He’s greedy. We think we all know the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas; we’ve seen the made-for-TV cartoon version, and even Jim Carey has taken his turn starring as the wide-mouthed, googly-eyed green villain. But you probably don’t remember the original story, which (leave it to Dr. Seuss) is pretty compelling. When I read this story aloud for the first time … I wept. I wept, while my 4-year-old stared at me. “Why are you so sad, Mommy?” he asked. Well, Avery, you are too young to fully grasp this. So I said, “I’m just sad.” But I will happily tell you, dear reader, why this story made me so sad. You see, there are these people in the world called hoarders. I’m not particularly concerned with those who hoard cats and empty soda bottles – they don’t do much harm, except to themselves. It’s a free country. But mostly I just don’t care about them - because the hoarders I think are the most insane, crazy, malicious, and Grinch-like are those who hoard money. I’m talking about individuals who are currently hoarding billions of dollars, world-wide. In March 2011, Forbes magazine wrote, “Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year. This year the World's Billionaires have an average net worth of $3.5 billion, up $500 million in 12 months. The world has 1,011 10-figure titans, up from 793 a year ago but still shy of the record 1,125 in 2008. Of those billionaires on last year's list, only 12% saw their fortunes decline.“ Now, that is sick. “I’m a billionaire, but I could stand to have 500 million more.” Now I know most of them have foundations and such – but they are not giving away enough of their wealth. Compared with their total net worth, they aren’t even trying! They create foundations, and make themselves very public faces of ‘increasing taxes on the wealthy’ to make you think they’re not hoarding. But really they should be the focus of a hoarding intervention; sat down, by the people who love them, and forced to write checks until the money’s all gone – because tomorrow, guess what, they’ll make another million and be just fine. " He got stuck only once, for a minute or two. Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue Where the little Who stockings hung all in a row. "These stockings," he grinched, "are the first things to go!" Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant, Around the whole room, and he took every present! " (2) Gates, Buffet, and less public but similarly fucked-up guys in India, China, Mexico (Mexico has the #1 richest guy, by the way, Carlos Slim Helu) and the like… they truly are mad. MAD. Possibly the most disturbing thing about these isolated concentrators of wealth are they live in countries (or hail from countries – god knows they ‘live’ in at least 10 different homes, on deserted islands or on the moon) where people suffer the most from poverty. Again, to quote Forbes: “Eleven countries have at least double the number of billionaires they had a year ago, including China, India, Turkey and South Korea.” WHAT? Wait, WHAT? South Korea has billionaires? Wait, isn’t India where there’s no indoor plumbing in 50% of the country?! That country has BILLIONAIRES? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! What the fuck is going on… is that the Grinch is stealing Christmas. The only way to amass this kind of wealth is to basically enslave people. You are simply not paying the people who work for you enough. Look way down the food chain, look way way way down there, and you’ll find that at the most basic level, you are enslaving other human beings, so that you can plunder and hoard. You’re sick, and you need help. The middle class has long been the source of great innovation. To the best of my knowledge, Thomas Edison (he grew up in a tiny, four-room house and had six siblings), Alexander Graham Bell (his father was a professor, and he grew up in a modest home in Scotland), and Albert Einsten (his father owned his own business, but it went under and the family frequently fell on hard times) were not rich – but not poor. Often these men did their best work, while ALSO working a ‘day job’. These were educated, middle-class, and exceptional people who had enough leftover at the end of the day to go home and ‘tinker’. As the Greeks believed, once a person has their basic needs met, they are free to create art, innovate, think and dream. Einstein, Edison and Bell had time and energy leftover to invent, think, try things out, fail, try again, fail again, and keep trying until they created, wrote, or produced something amazing. The man who solved the Longitude problem by creating a perfect, seaworthy timekeeper – John Harrison – was a carpenter; his father was a carpenter. Harrison was brilliant, and his invention saved countless lives at sea – and he also had a day-job, and was a member of the middle class. Right now, the middle class is simply fighting to keep up. All of our time and energy goes towards just the basics – a home, health insurance, basic privacy, the right to marry whom we’d like… and we’re so busy fighting with our government and Big Business (who are in bed together – ew!) over things like ‘what’s in the food?’ and ‘why was this toy made by tiny children enslaved in China?’ – we are too tired and spent, to ‘tinker’. I’m sorry, but that’s a fact. We are spending so much time fighting with our unregulated banks, fighting our politicians to simply DO what we want them to do (who in turn ask us to fight with our neighbors over basic things we worked out DECADES ago, like separation of Church and State)… we are not innovating. We are just keeping our heads above water, and sometimes I feel like we’re going to go down, swinging. And the Grinches love to keep us busy with this shit, because that means they can just keep taking, and hoarding. And when we wake up briefly to “Why?”… the Grinches just make up lies. " As the Grinch took the tree, as he started to shove, He heard a small sound like the coo of a dove. He turned around fast, and he saw a small Who! Little Cindy-Lou Who, who was no more than two. She stared at the Grinch and said, "Santy Claus, why, Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?" But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick, He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick! "Why, my sweet little tot," the fake Santy Claus lied, "There's a light on this tree that won't light on one side. So I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear. I'll fix it up there, then I'll bring it back here." And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head, And he got her a drink, and he sent her to bed. And when Cindy-Lou Who was in bed with her cup, He crept to the chimney and stuffed the tree up! " (3) And my child asks why I’m crying. Because, my love. Because the world does not weep for those who are too tired to weep. Quotations 1,2 & 3: "How The Grinch Stole Christmas", Dr. Seuss, Random House; First Edition, 1957

The God in Our Hearts

When I was seven, my grandparents committed suicide. My grandfather was dying of cancer and had months to live; and my grandmother decided she couldn’t live without him. A year later, a boy in my religion class (I was raised Catholic, and attended ‘CDC’ classes) told me that my grandparents – because they had killed themselves – had gone to Hell. While it may be true that somewhere that is IN the Bible - I knew this was untrue. Nevertheless, it hurt. My grandparents were loving, giving people. They never hurt anyone, they never committed adultery, they’d honored their parents, they’d raised their children with love, and worked hard – and sure, they were flawed, but by any common-day estimation, they were rewarded in death for their good lives - by going to Heaven. This boy, who told me they’d gone to Hell, was eight years old. He didn’t know enough to know much about religious doctrine. He wasn’t old enough to really judge for himself whether or not it was ‘true’. He said it, because he knew it would cause me pain – and it did – and because getting a rise out of me for a moment, would be exiting, and make him feel powerful. I went home that day, in tears, and told my mother what the boy had said (about her parents). She made a tearful but restrained phone-call to the boy’s mother, who then in turn made the boy call me – and apologize. Why did the mothers intervene? After all, the boy was only stating a ‘fact’ that was in the Bible. The mothers intervened because, a) Nobody really knows if the whole, entire Bible is ‘true’, or if parts are allegory. b) The boy wasn’t stating a ‘fact’ as he’d read in the Bible; he was intentionally trying to hurt me. c) The boy needed to be taught that stating ‘facts’ from the Bible in order to hurt someone is not Godly, or Christ-like. It is a childish thing to do, and requires an apology from the offending person. d) The God in your heart – not the God in the Bible – who dictates our actions. The God in our hearts is not a vengeful God. The God in our hearts loves everyone, equally, without reservation or judgment. The God in our hearts knows the true way – and no words, in any Book, can equal the power of the God we know, in our hearts. In time, this boy became a dear friend. I loved him, deeply. He was kind, soulful, easy to laugh – precious to me. A few years ago, Cancer took him away from us. I know in my heart that – since my dear, beautiful grandparents went to Heaven – that they are some of those who greeted him at the bar, upon his arrival. They are having celestial martinis together, today – and every day – and forever. I just hope, one day, I can join them. But only if I listen to the God in my heart.

I have been following a couple of stories in the news recently regarding adopted children who have severe emotional trauma, etc. And when I came across this very personal article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/236488 I felt compelled to write.

Becoming a parent has been more difficult (and rewarding, joyous, complex) than anything I'd ever anticipated. As each person is a unique individual, my experience as a parent to my particular child is unique.

I cannot imagine the terrible pain and horror that these children must have suffered, to make them act in such a way that even a loving parent could not handle it. It terrifies me, and I cannot - in a million years, I could not - understand a world in which its common practice to terrorize children.

I think it terrifies most people and they cannot process what these children must have been through. Therefore, is 'easy' to just 'imagine' that the child is really OK and that the mother or father is 'unhinged'. But what a great injustice, to the children! To pretend away their pain. Shame on them, for not thinking or feeling with their hearts, I suppose.

In American society today, there is this assumption that parenting is parenting, and that children are all the same. That all you have to do is trust or love or believe in God or WHATEVER and things will "work out" and everyone will be "normal". Boy, that's a nice fantasy, isn't it? Tell that to the mother of a child riddled with Lou Gehrig's disease, or MS. Tell that to the mother of a child with severe emotional trauma. Tell that to the mother of a child who sings at the dinner table instead of eating, who runs out into traffic for no reason, tell that to... any mother, any mother, and she will tell you that her experience in raising her child or children is completely unique and no one has the right to judge any decision she might make. You do the best you can, you try to love unconditionally, and that is all you can do.

My therapist reminded me this morning: Avery is not "mine". The temptation to claim ownership - especially when you give birth to them - is strong. But children belong to... the universe, and to themselves, alone. You are their caretakers and guides many years, but in the end they are individuals and belong to ... something else, the Universe or God, if you like. It is so sad for us, as parents, to look at our children and see solitary beings. It feels scary, and lonely. We want them to be a part of something bigger, to know that they are not alone. But they are alone. We all are. We all are. It's the way life is.

In one of my favorite books, "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke, he talks about lots of things, especially solitude. We are a social culture, and we tend to assume that life is all about being with others, and it is. But life is also about the individual self, too. The unique individual that no one else can enter or be a part of. Rilke talks about how unsettling and scary it is, to recognize that we are each alone... but that the understanding of this is also the source of great art, music, theater, poetry. The singular soul - with all of its unique pain and joy - is a work of art. The letters are a short read and you can find several translations online, like this one: http://www.sfgoth.com/~immanis/rilke/letter1.html