Now that I’ve learned about cocoa harvesting, I can’t buy chocolate that isn’t Fair Trade Certified.  Knowing that everything we buy is tainted with injustice somewhere along the line is troubling. You can’t give up everything; but child slavery is a good place to draw the line.

The Ivory Coast provides 43% of the cocoa beans used to make the world’s chocolate. The US Department of State estimates that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.

In 2001, in an attempt to avoid government regulation and intense media scrutiny, major cocoa companies made a voluntary commitment (the Cocoa Industry Protocol) to certify their cocoa “child labor-free” by July 2005, but that deadline passed with little fanfare. The deadline was then extended to certify 50% of farms “child-labor free” by July 2008. The cocoa companies trumpeted a few pilot programs, but continue to purchase and reap profits from child labor cocoa.

Hershey has been the slow to implement changes and has been the subject of an email campaign. Now, they have issued a press release, announcing a $10 million investment in West Africa to improve cocoa farming but it’s not clear that this will help any actual people.

Fuckers!

“Americans alone spend $13 billion a year on chocolate.” Ha, at least half of that comes from me, personally.

I need chocolate to live. I am not exaggerating. Without chocolate and coffee, there would be no reason to get out of bed or even breathe. My favorite form of chocolate is Toblerone and it isn’t Fair Trade Certified. It’s owned by Kraft, which helps to diminish its appeal, somewhat. Maybe I’ll have to write to them and beg them to get on board.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Favorite chocolate?

In the morning, my youngest Wolf will be going off to college. I am braced for Empty Nest Syndrome.

Being me, I googled Empty Nest Syndrome. All the images are depressing. The moms all look like the women in ads for antidepressants. Then there are a bunch of standard bird nests, sadder looking than the moms. There is even a website called emptynestmoms or something. There are also support groups. Ha.

I read a new agey thing with a nice mystical angle but in the end, it pronounced:

“There is no more empty nest syndrome, unless you have issues.”

Oh no! What?!? Fuck. But wait:

“It is, and has always been about, discovery and recovery … and best of all realizing you can have fun and create your own reality.”

God.

I just want to start all over again, to when each child was a baby. Everything seemed so easy. I could be a better mother and bake cookies. I would never yell.

I’m so proud of my boy and I know he’ll go on to change the world. But I wish I could stay in bed for around six months rather than contemplate my Empty Nest. You can bet I won’t be creating my own reality, unless that involves the reality of imaginary children who will let me cuddle them and never leave.

Recently I attended the wedding of one of Max’s oldest friends, who was also a member of his band.  It was a joy to see this wonderful young man celebrating his love for his adoring bride, his obvious soulmate.

The wedding was also an opportunity for me to see old friends, and to see some of Max’s school pals who were now grown ups.  There were babies and toddlers everywhere and I got to hold a placid baby girl wearing a pink tutu.

We couldn’t help but notice a family with three or four young children, all completely bald.  I assumed that one of the kids had lost his hair from chemotherapy and the others had shaven their heads in solidarity. You hear about this practice more and more, and I respect the sacrifice and devotion involved.

After several funny speeches, the bride and groom danced to a recording of a silly song about bees or something.  It looked like a dance you learn in preschool, with funny hand-motions. It was adorable. During their dance, one of the bald kids joined in, weaving between them and spinning around happily in her own world.

It was such a poignant bittersweet image: The glowing couple embarking on a new life together, the little child with cancer, whose fate was uncertain.

When I was drunk enough, I danced with my husband, who wouldn’t let me lead. Then I danced with some women who just wanted to shake it up regardless of the too-fast beat and our painful high heels. When we finally said goodbye to the groom, we learned that the bald kids had head-lice, not cancer.

Ha! See how things change depending on your perspective? It’s a good reminder that all experience is filtered through interpretation.  From now on, I hope I can remember that a tragic worldview could be a lapse of judgement or a tendency to see cancer instead of head-lice. I can’t think of a proverb to illustrate this insight.

Anyone up to it? It has to include the word head-lice.

Max was in preschool when he met Justine and her brother Lindsay. They became close friends and spent most of their time at our house or their apartment, where they lived with their dad, a single father.

Justine was an unusual little girl, with long blond bangs that hung over her eyes and a dreamy smile. She would often burst out laughing when I least expected it. She was less sensitive than her brother, but both of them screamed their heads off during long epic games of monopoly with Max, who likewise played with ferocious determination. Justine was a good mediator when Max and Lindsay had a spat.

When they moved back to Cleveland, their dad’s hometown, we lost touch for the most part.  A few years ago, Justine came to visit me with her beautiful little daughter, who I longed to steal. Justine now played professional softball but somehow she was the same sweet dreamy girl I remembered.

Recently, after a mutual friend put us in touch via facebook. Justine sent me a message -

It is so good to reconnect with you. I miss max. I liked just knowing that one day we could see each other again. I remember being in 2nd grade and you telling us that we should get married one day. You would serve us a grilled cheese and then we would eat a flintstones vitamin. Being friends with max was some of my best childhood years.

Naturally I cried and cried. I saw that Justine had a website, and that was how I discovered that she recently made history by being the first woman to pitch batting practice to a Major League team. Not only that but she is also the first woman to coach a men’s professional baseball team.

I’m so proud of her achievements! I am also reminded that children come into the world with characteristics that can make them resilient or fragile, shy or outgoing, placid or temperamental.  They will take their own path in the end, regardless of what you do or don’t do. It’s a mystery and a miracle.

I loved so many of Max’s friends and I’m grateful that he brought them into my life. Justine holds a special place in my heart. Those were some of my happiest years, too.

Justine and Max -

Godammit, I was planning a dress-up-like-your-favorite-blogger style challenge but Bryanboy beat me to it with his Halloween Tavi. I grabbed this picture from twitter so it may not be his final choice but as you see, he has nailed it. Personally, I would have gone with the monolithic pink bow, but the icky layered scarves rule.

Isn’t it great that bloggers can swap roles this easily? I would like to see Sea of Shoes doing Halcoholic and Rumi doing Gala Darling. Karla should do Bryanboy and Tavi could do Diane Pernet. The possibilities are endless.

All you’d need to do me is a crappy black wig and red lipstick, with maybe a cane or a walker.

I have no plans for Halloween because my kid has a party to go to and I’m over it anyway. Years ago, I loved to open the door to groups of sweaty little kids dressed like gypsies and pirates and skeletons and ballerinas. All the kids on my street have grown up or moved away. Last year, I bought candy for trick-or-treaters and had to eat it all myself.

Too bad adults have taken Halloween away from children.  Adults are refusing to grow up, and kids are bound to pay a price.  I remember when Max was Darth Vader for Halloween, and when he was around 12, he was an Insurance Salesman. Charlie was once Frank Sinatra but nobody got it.

So I guess the blogger style challenge is pointless now. Unless we think we can out-Tavi* Bryanboy.

*copyright Bryanboy

Has everyone read about the woman from Tennessee who sent her adopted son back to Russia after deeming him too psychotic to handle?

People are up in arms about this, primarily against the mother, who put the 7 year old on a plane, alone, with a note pinned on him. Authorities haven’t decided what to charge her with. Russian officials are threatening to halt adoptions of Russian orphans.

The woman, who is single, refuses to comment, but her own mother says that the boy was violent and had threatened to burn down the house. She also says they were lied to by the Russian agency that arranged the adoption. Many of the orphans in Russia (and elsewhere) who’ve spent their lives in institutions are described by experts as “feral” (i.e. completely unsocialized.) Many have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

If you adopted a child and discovered that he was emotionally disturbed or mentally ill, would you want to send him back, like a defective product? What about if he was violent enough to make you fear for your life? What about if he turned out to be schizophrenic or autistic? What if you kept the child to fulfill your moral obligation but forever regretted the adoption?

I once knew a woman who adopted an infant that turned out to be severely autistic. When I met them, he was about four. He was an unattractive, whiney child who tried to stick his finger in my eye when he noticed I wore contact lenses. When we took him out to a park, he attacked another child. Once, while I was driving, he grabbed my hair from the back seat and yanked it with all his might. He was the most repellent kid I have ever come across, but she adored him. I felt, secretly, that if it were me, I’d send him back.

I know another mom who adores her biological child but sent him to a residential treatment center after he hurt her during one of his rages. It wasn’t an easy decision. But she didn’t want to risk further violence.

I feel bad for the woman in Tennessee. I’m assuming that she wanted a child more than anything, but didn’t have the fortitude to care for a deeply damaged kid. I feel bad for the boy, who most likely has been abused and will be further traumatized.

Should the mother be prosecuted? Should there be better screening of adoptive parents? Should society have some mechanism for mothers who aren’t equipped to mother,  that would absolve them of blame and spare a child from neglect or abuse?

~

If you never signed up for the Crazy Mothers Club, go here.

I finally decided to see the doctor today, when my terrible sore throat turned into a fever with body aches and a rattling bronchial cough. Since I didn’t already have an appointment, I was told I could be a walk-in patient but I’d have to wait.

After an hour of waiting in a nearly empty waiting room, I was joined by a teenager who’d been stung by a bee. Her father was an asshole. They took the bee-sting girl and left me to wait, coughing my guts out. I asked why the girl got to be seen before me, and that seemed to elevate the hostility from behind the window.

I lay down across some chairs, and tried to stop coughing. Patients arrived and were led behind the door to see their doctors. They were all fat. The women behind the glass window were fat as well, and spoke in proud pidgin English or whatever it’s called when you’re Latina and refuse to use proper grammar.

A father arrived with four kids under the age of ten. I was entranced by how gently he brushed his son’s hair behind an ear stuffed with cotton. The youngest child walked over to me to look at the fish tank. We talked about the stuff in the tank and she called the sponge a “ponge.”  I was brokenhearted when her father took her away to see their doctor.

Three hours passed. I decided that the office women were punishing me for not being fat. I wanted to stick my head through the window and scream, “It’s not my fault I’m not fat.”

Meanwhile, I brought a book with me that I’ve meant to read for years: The Afterlife, by Donald Antrim. It turned out to be a memoir about a crazy mother. The writing is amazing. The kind of writing that hits the exact right spot, like sex. It was so intense that I had to keep putting it down to recover from it.

Finally, I pretended to have to use the restroom, and I went behind the door. I sat on a chair in the hall where no one could ignore me, and coughed dramatically.

A doctor I’ve never met before asked me what the problem was. I told her that one problem was the 3 1/2 hour wait. I confided that it was punitive because the office women hated me. She reacted badly to this so I apologized and told her my symptoms.

She gave me some antibiotics, some cough syrup with codeine, and a ridiculous lecture about my attitude. She told me that there was a time to be stoic and a time to be vulnerable. Except she said “vunerable” without the L. That was the last straw. I felt a visceral* repugnance for this doctor, who then went on to ask “What are you doing for yourself?” I am always disgusted by that question and I  don’t like to lower myself to answer it. I told her, Well, I write.

She said, “That doesn’t count. I mean, like music.”

*The word for this week is visceral.

After Jill and Braindance shared their childhood memories of  douche bags, I recalled my own uneasy feelings about those rubber things hanging over the bathtub when I was a kid.

They were certainly a fixture in our bathroom, along with an enema bag and maybe even some other scary medical-looking crap. Wow, our mothers and grandmas were so weird!

Try a Google image search for an actual douche bag, and most of what you’ll find are sickening guys and joke products that refer to the sickening guys. In other words, the old fashioned douche bag is a relic of another time, and its namesake is here to stay.

Who the hell invented the douche bag? What a maniac. In fact, what a douche! I am thankful to my mom for neglecting to give me any instructions on “feminine hygiene” or anything else. I learned everything I know from my sister, dirty books, and The Hite Report.

But I feel kind of bad about depriving my own kids of the douche bag experience. They never got to feel queasy about their mother’s weird rubber crap in the bathroom. They never knew the frisson of squeamish curiosity that is such a touchstone of childhood. God, I’m a failure.

Perhaps the shit on my dresser will make it up to them.  It seems like it might have that Mom Mystique that could haunt them for the rest of their lives. I’ll have to ask them. Take a look and tell me what you think.

That’s the anger part.
~

Death has been a topic of debate, in the news and over here, regarding the right of parents to withhold medical treatment from their children. Jump in, if you have strong feelings about this.

Also, I am finally getting some feedback on something I wrote about euthanasia nearly three years ago. How come now? I don’t get it! But I’m still interested in it, and in hearing other opinions.

Actually, I believe it is known as antinatalism.  I had no idea there were so many people passionately opposed to procreation, on the grounds that it morally indefensible to bring a child into the world when we know with certainty that it will lead to suffering and death.

Do you feel this is a crock of shit? I do, and here’s why. I believe that if I invited every antinatalist to commit suicide, I would get no takers. Why? Because they fucking want to live, that’s why! Even though life means suffering, THEY WANT MORE OF IT. But they don’t want to subject this thing they want more of, to any future beings.

I believe these avowed antinatalists are acting in bad faith by refusing to kill themselves. Shit or get off the pot, know what I mean?

Life is certainly filled with tragedy but as Woody Allen complained about a restaurant with bad food, the portions are so small!

By the way, I came upon this topic via Chip Smith, a provocateur (and antinatalist) whose website wants to make you mad, or at least ruffle your feathers.