Social Math

I have this theory that if the United States were to stop minting pennies, Ecuador would fall into some sort of social and political chaos. It might actually prompt the government to dust off the Sucre again, Ecuador's national currency which was eliminated in 2000 in favor of the stable USD. Pennies count here. The practice of many Americans of throwing away pennies (yes, people do this, there is a facebook page) is wildly appalling to those of us in the southern hemisphere.

While there's nothing that can make you feel more like an ass than paying for something in the United States with a $1 coin, coins (exact change) are a powerful thing in Ecuador. And the queen of exact change is Sacagewea. Apparently there are other versions of the $1 coin (Susan B. Anthony in the '90's, and more recently they've decided women shouldn't be on coins and switched to former presidents), but the U.S. mint appears to exclusively send Ecuador's central bank Sacageweas. I hardly ever see $1 bills, and have never seen another type of dollar coin in circulation.  

So Ecuador is where much-hated American coins go to happily live, yet a paradoxical vacuum of exact change. To quote an American friend living in Quito: "I have accumulated 15 $1 coins. I kiiiiiiiiiind of feel like this is more valuable than a 20 dollar bill."

Amen, sister. Let me give you an example. Right now I'm waiting for the gas truck to come and replace two tanks of my indoor carbon monoxide machines, ie my gas tanks. These tanks are crucial to my life, since I light that gas to heat my shower and boil the water I drink. Right now I'm in my pajamas and haven't showered (since I have no gas), and the gas truck is on its way. I have $4.95 in coins. I also have a $20 bill. These tanks are going to cost $5, plus a $1 tip for the man to haul it upstairs to my apartment. I'm going to go ahead and predict that the man will accept my $4.95 in coins-- thus eliminating his tip and not even covering the normal cost of the tanks-- instead of changing my $20 bill. He won't have change. 

I've been in banks where they won't change a $100 bill into smaller bills/coins, real national BANKS. Small currency, while maybe not an economic commodity, is certainly a social commodity. This is what I've deemed social math.

Social math quiz: If I get into a taxi with a friend and I have 3 $1 coins and she has a $20 bill, which one of us is richer? That's right, me, because I can pay for the taxi. There's no way that cab driver has $19 in change. If on the off chance he does, he'll certainly whine about it and shame us ruthlessly. Social math explains why I'll only recharge my cell phone (prepaid phones... sigh) at one specific tienda in my neighborhood. They always change big (ie $10) bills without whining, and I in turn pay in exact change when feeling benevolent.

Money

<- This is $3.80 of food. It's 25 cents of bananas, 1 dollar of oranges, 1 dollar of grapes, 1 dollar of pineapple, 20 cents of papaya, 25 cents of lime, and 10 cents of tomato. That, below, is 50 cents of monster ecua carrots, a mystery of Andean nature which makes your skinny American carrots look weak and pathetic.

I started knowing exactly how much food does and should cost around November of last year. Around November I had been long-abandoned by Fulbright grant, yet went unpaid by the University that employs me. For months. I got to Christmas' doorstep before I saw a single cent of my salary... first because the finance office lost my contract, then because my bank wouldn't accept that I was a public employee (and am therefore paid by the state), then because important people started to hate me. I'm easy to hate when I can't afford a bottle of wine. So I went through 1st semester teacher blues, faculty meetings (bleh), mid-term exams, and a host of extra re-accreditation work without being paid. I also began feeling, for the first time in my decently long Ecualife, like I was approaching some semblance of equal footing with many of my colleagues and students-- lost in the bureaucratic jumble and thinking about pennies.

Escaped food

When people talk about food here, they are often talking about money, and what food their money will buy. A trip back from the market will often accompany a detailed report on the 10 cent increase in a pound of blackberries. "What's your favorite pizza in Ambato?" always comes with a multi-tiered explanation involving cost and how much free hot sauce you can get. Only the privileged buy produce at the supermarket, the rest of us are comparing cucumbers on street corners. Last November, fighting with old ladies at the market about how many tomatoes my 25 cents would buy, I began to get it.

First Communion/ Bible food

I should say the Ambato I occupy (and urban Ambato in general) is pretty solidly middle-class mestizo and I truly would hate to cement misguided fantasies about "the third-world." Middle-class Ecuadorians are not as consumption-obsessed and stuff-heavy as the American middle class, but are not poor and would never accept such a characterization. However, one of the unexpected consequences of being post-Fulbright, working for the Ecuadorian government, and generally being one of the gente (people), is a new perspective on normal economic constraints in Ecuador.

Just like when people talk about food they're usually talking about money, when people talk about education they're usually talking about money. And education is pretty much the only thing I do right now. Teacher soapbox: out.

 Food I Recently Learned to Identify (cactus fruit)

I teach at a free public university, or higher ed for the masses. Wealthy families in Ambato send their children to the private university, or to Quito where the universities are better. Like many many public school teachers around the world, I pay out of pocket for classroom materials and any non-textbook thing I want to use in my classes. My university gives me access to my empty classroom, a whiteboard, and the occasional projector I can check out if there are any left in the computer lab. I pay for everything else-- from the toilet paper I use in the bathroom, to the marker to write on that whiteboard, to the paper to print an activity, to any/all copies I make. I am fined each time I don't sign in within 10 minutes before, or 5 minutes after, every class. Fined. Like $. For being 5 seconds late AFTER a class, even if I spent that 5 minutes peeing or helping a student (both noble causes).

Guinea Pigs (ie food)

Let's say it's exam time. My exam is 3 pages long and I have 120 students. That's 2 cents x 3 pages x 120 students = $7.20. That's a lot of ecua-money, in fact, that's more dollars than I make in the hour it takes to administer the exam.Or let's take a 10-page article/question packet for my history class. That's 2 cents x 10 pages x 30 students = $6.00... for 1 assignment for 1 class. Now you know how professors here spend their first 10 minutes of class-- letting students file out to make copies of the activity packet.

I know how this looks, me asking students to cover the costs of running a class. Is it a financial hardship for students to make their $2 of copies per week? Yes, in many cases. But it is for me too, and much more for teachers who have families and cars and health problems. Students don't complain-- they've been asked to cover these classroom costs since Kindergarten and the money collection for copies is highly ingrained in the culture. So I'll complain on their behalf. Why is Ecuador's "free public education" (guaranteed at the university level) not free, either for me or for them? Why can they NOT pay us on time, but then also fine me for being hospitalized (ie missing class for 1 day for obvious emergency)? And why, as professional university faculty, are we often so concerned about how many tomatoes we'll get for our 25 cents?

Brown (trying to try to be a Dr.)

I remember when I first found out it was possible to be a "Dr." without cutting people open. I was in elementary school, and it was report card season.

As kids we couldn't open the report card, only examine the envelope home to our parents. We would compare envelopes, trying to analyze each others family situation based upon the address label. Some kids had two envelopes, one for each divorced parent. Some kids had "Mr. and Mrs. _(last name)_" and some kids had "Dr. and Mrs. _(last name)_," which meant their dad was a doctor and they lived in a big house. It was an unrefined, vaguely cruel exercise in elementary school social comparison. My envelope was unique and therefore brag-worthy: "Dr. and Mr."

Mom's Graduation

Cue the first conversation about the "Ph.D." with my mother, a clinical psychologist, who (happy mother's day!) got her Ph.D. with 3 children and many more obstacles than I will likely face. Cue the first time, of many, I would count how old I would be when I was fully "educated." How many years until I graduated from middle school, then high school, then college, then got my PhD (I think 4 was the number in my head, although that number seems laughable now). Eventually, that age turned into just "old" and the idea of being "educated" faded away. That's when I knew I was ready.

Not What Anthropology Is, Unfortunately

Trying to try to be a Dr. was not always inevitable. In elementary school, I didn't know about "years off" and South America and the academic job market. Or that people who write books aren't usually famous, or wealthy, and sometimes people with Ph.D.s turn into crusty professors with nothing interesting to say in real life, or no sense of what real life is.

I didn't know it would take me 13 applications over 2 years to receive one single acceptance to graduate school. Why don't more people say that? That tons of capable people in the world want to be (fully funded) anthropologists and getting into a program is this absurd gauntlet (for being fully funded)? I did interviews with faculty members who spent the whole hour trying to talk me out of their university, or the Ph.D. in general. I went to one interview weekend which was so ridiculous in its applicant one-up-manship, it felt like a jargon-filled reality television show. Feature characters included the former pro baseball player (anthropology of sports) and the already practicing M.D.  (anthropology of medicine, apparently 6 years of postgraduate work was not enough).

So here it is: In September, I begin my Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Brown University. It's a small cohort (8) and we all got the big prize (full funding). Providence looks like a nice place to spend several years, and the Anthro building is on the corner of Hope Street and Power Street (which I can only take as a positive sign). I'll be back in Ecuador during the summers for my research. 

In case you read this post a year ago, I haven't forgotten about you, aimless 20-somethings. I'll finish with the same Samuel Beckett quote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Peripheral/Beloved Characters, part 3

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about Ecuador is the nonchalant way people do absurd things in weird places without any sense of irony or self-awareness. Even in comedic tastes, Americans love their self-aware mock-umentaries while Ecuadorians prefer what we might call the "obvious"-- like clowns and secret camera shows. Often cultural differences make it so people around me just don't sense an irony which is so blatant and hilarious. So with that, I present the next installment of Peripheral/Beloved characters, all of whom strike me as people doing radically weird things in daily life but who are barely worth a second glance to Ecuadorians.

 The goats are like these. But in a city. On leashes.

1.) Goat-Walker
Goat-Walker is a middle-aged gentleman I see at least once a week walking past the University, usually Wednesday mornings or Friday afternoons. He is always wearing boots and holding a long rope with 5-6 leashed goats attached to them. He always looks as though his goats are pulling in a direction he does not want to go.

Goat-Walker has begun noticing me, because being light-skinned and light-eyed draws even more attention here than a man walking a legion of goats. I have this ongoing speculation about what Goat-Walker does. Is he selling his goats? If so, why are they always the same goats? Where do his goats need to go, or is this simply for exercise? Why is goat cheese 6 dollars a packet at the supermarket and not available at any local store I have inquired?

I can't resist stray alpacas.

There's also this unresolved question of how I am supposed to interact with a goat-walker and his leashed goats on city streets. If it were 6 dogs on leashes, I would definitely stop and ask to pet the dogs. So do I want to pet the goats? I think the answer is yes. However, I don't want to offend him, get an awkward "no", draw unwanted attention to him (does a man walking goats worry about unwanted attention?), or most importantly, make him think I want a date. It is this kind of social paralysis by analysis that keeps me from saying anything to Goat-Walker.

2.) Nut-Cracker Man on the Corner

As I'm turning onto the street where I usually see Goat-Walker, I pass a furniture store on the corner. In the early afternoons, there are sometimes 1-2 men sitting on the furniture store corner cracking walnuts with a hammer. They look to be store attendants. Again, they usually give me a "what the hell are you doing here?" look, as though a gringa walking to work is more absurd than furniture salesmen cracking walnuts on city streets. My primary questions regarding Nut-Cracker Man on the Corner are as follows: Do they sell the nuts or is this subsistence-only nut-cracking? Why are they pounding away with an old hammer instead of investing in an actual nut-cracking device, considering the amount of time they dedicate to this? Is this work at all related to the furniture store?

3.) Ancient Car-Sitting Neighbor

My neighborhood from across the river.

I wrote a year and a half ago about these peripheral characters -- the young children that live below me and run in fear every time they see me enter/leave our gate. I've since solved the mystery as to why they won't engage with me, or at least come to a logical resolution in my head. My neighbor below... hates me. She complains about every activity that occurs in my incredibly-boring house, as though my two friends coming over for wine is some kind of wild drunken orgy (in English) her kids will absorb and repeat. Anyway, I believe she has instructed her children not to engage with me in any form.

There is one neighbor who seems to like me though-- Ancient Car-Sitting Neighbor. He's probably about 90 years old, though still in decent physical shape, probably because he spends a lot of his time washing things in his garage. When he's not washing things, he likes to hang out in his car. At first I thought he was always waiting for someone, like his wife, who moves a lot slower than him. He usually is wearing a hat or sunglasses, as if he's about to go somewhere. But if I leave to run an errand, chances are high he'll STILL be sitting in his car outside his house when I get back. I think he just likes to sit in his car.

Incredibly elaborate dress-up parades downtown.

I suppose if most of your life consists of sitting and washing things, it's a perfect day to wash your car and then sit in it. At least then you have a view of things going on outside, like people leisurely walking their goats.

Año Viejo

My Christmas Tree

I have some complaints about the way Ecuador celebrates my holidays. Let's take Christmas. Look people, Christmas is the 25th day of December. It has been since some Priests declared that was the date Jesus was born, thus making it a holy day of consumerism, Jesus, and Chinese food (for people not interested in the second). But Ecuadorians celebrate, eat turkey, and open gifts on the night of the 24th, largely making the 25th just another Sunday at Grandma's house.

Because it's a last-minute culture, everyone rushes around on Christmas Eve buying gifts. This means that your boyfriend is potentially trapped in mall crowds at 8pm on December 24th and you potentially end up running to Christmas Eve service 20 minutes after it has started and have to potentially stand outside the cathedral asking the lady selling fire crackers about her merchandise instead of focusing on the coming Christ child. It also means there is nothing under the tree until 5 minutes before gift time, which really cuts away at the build-up factor we really value at the Lewis house.

New Years 2000

I can appreciate the way Ecuadorians celebrate Carnival (week of dancing + alcohol), birthdays (night of dancing + alcohol), independence days (weeks of dancing + alcohol) and the like. And yes, Christmas is ultimately about love and family. But if you've ever celebrated a personal holiday in a non-personal way, you understand the temporary loss of your traditions is not ideal. However, Ecuador does do one holiday really, really well: New Years Eve. This is coming from a person whose family celebrated New Years Eve by holding elaborate dress-up mystery parties and toilet-flushing ceremonies-- in other words, in style-- while growing up. So it means something.

Widow

There are two centerpieces to an Ecuadorian New Years Eve. The first consists of young men dressing in drag (they're supposed to be widows) and blocking streets. The widows require that every passing car, bus, or pedestrian give them spare change in exchange for passage. You also get the occasional dance/strip tease, which I've found are much better from professional drag queens (most popular people in Ecuador for one night a year) than amateurs. Almost all Ecuadorian men have banned with friends to dress as a widow at one point in their life-- usually during high school-- and brag about how much money they made that night. I've heard anywhere between $5-$50. Ecuadorians, of course, deny any linkages of the widow tradition to homosexuality or "real drag", although the anthropologist in me can't help but see thousands of heterosexual men dressed as women dancing with each other in the street as some sort of... something. Needless to say, the blockage of every single roadway with widows makes travel less than ideal on New Years Eve, and it can take 2-3 hours to just leave the city.

Typical Año Viejo, probably directed towards a drunk relative

The second centerpiece on New Years Eve consists of constructing an effagy/dummy that represents the past year (an "año viejo") and throwing it into the street to light on fire and burn to ashes. Seriously though. Get out the lighter fluid, it's going to be a happy new year! Who, upon reflection, hasn't wanted to burn a piece of the past year, whether it comes from a resolution to improve, hope for better fortune, or a desire for it to just disappear? It's really a genius tradition, not that American police would be happy about it coming to the States.

I should mention that the neighbors who live on the first floor of my house DESPISE me. The primary reasons seem to be that I'm a young single woman *gasp* surviving independently from parents or a husband and *scandal* every once in awhile I have the time/energy to invite my 3 friends over for a glass of wine. Anyway, for their año viejo they have constructed-- no joke-- a house. Kind of looks like... our house. People build año viejos for a variety of reasons-- discontent (the President is always a popular one), pop culture (I've seen 8 million smurfs this year), or to wish a certain person good fortune in the next year. However, I have received confirmation from Ecuadorians that my neighbor's house año viejo is not to wish me good fortune, but a slight at people living here (i.e. me). Ladies and gentlemen, I give you year 2 of cultural exchange: the Fulbright fallout.

A crucial part of the año viejo tradition is the accompanying note, which exists to enumerate regrets of the past and requests for the future. So an año viejo of the President will have a letter to Rafael Correa about his political failings, flops, and changes the person suggests for the future. They're usually satiric and quite funny. I'm going to the beach to celebrate New Years Eve, and although I don't yet have an año viejo to burn, I do have a short note:

Fall Scrapbook

Chimborazo: extinct volcano, highest point in Ecuador, and (due to its position along the equator) the farthest point on the Earth's surface from its center. Taken from the University.

 Me and my advisees (first-year language students).

My neighborhood/ the park outside of my house.

Robert and I picnicking at Parque de la Familia, above Ambato.

 The city of Ambato (in the valley) and most of Tungurahua province, after an extremely difficult hike.

That's right... 12 months here and I finally got a TV. Or rather, a friend got a new TV, and I got his 5-channel clunker.  Amazing.

Stairs from the main avenue leading up to my neighborhood.

Woman vs. Wild

The "safety briefing" at the US Embassy in Quito is an important rite of passage for anyone who lands in Ecuador with the help of government money. This one-hour conference, which is given by a beefy loud-talking foreign service officer who scares puppies in his free time, is designed to destroy any positive expectations you might have for your stay in Ecuador. It is characterized by hyperbolic stories about armed robberies gone wrong, unsolved kidnappings, and jungle diseases that eat away at your brain before you have time to register any symptoms. You leave the Embassy relatively sure you will be stabbed on your taxi ride home.

However, there is a bright side. At the end of the safety briefing, puppy-scaring man distributes a laminated card of emergency Embassy contact numbers. He assures you that if (/when) you're about to die in Ecuador, they will do their best to send a helicopter to rescue you. I've toted around my laminated card for a whole year. Last weekend was the first time I seriously considered dialing that emergency switchboard number.

My boyfriend Roberto invited me to go camping with several of his friends. I like camping, and haven't done anything fun since classes started, so I agreed. Our group of 8 headed out on Saturday-- a sunny, flawless afternoon. During the second pickup truck ride up steep mountain roads, a cold, thick, fog moved in. At that point, I suspected we were in for disaster. All doubt was removed when we got dropped at our "campsite": the deserted side of a mountain in the heart of the Northern Andean Páramo. The pickup truck drove away. Apparently overlymachoadventurerman (my nickname for a friend of a friend) knew the person who owned that face of the mountain.

After a year of living in the mountains, I think I understand why countless cultures have revered them to the point of worship. In the Ecuadorian Andes, the mountain can explode or shift or just stand there motionless, but either way it will kick your ass. You should fear the mountain. Saturday started out sunny, but it rained hard on the mountain. It kept raining, and it got dark. We made a campfire huddling under a plastic tarp that probably should have been used to protect the two shoddy tents we had as shelter.

In typical Ecuadorian fashion, no one else seemed quite as worried about what I registered as an actual survival situation. As you can see from the picture at left (8pm), Robert looks mildly uncomfortable but still optimistic about the state of the evening, and I look like I want to curl up in a ball and die. At 9 pm someone woke up and announced that the Rio Amazonas was running through our tent. Everything was soaked, and we huddled in the single dry spot in the tent, like sad polar bears floating on a chunk of warming ice. I was trying to recall what the first signs of hypothermia were from girl scout camp. 

At 11pm I wandered into the freezing blackness to find a cell phone signal. Around 1130pm I announced intentions to call the  Embassy, physically shaking from the cold. We debated whether the helicopter would rescue all of us, or only me--the American citizen. We decided the latter. Around midnight, overlymachoadventurerman finally called his aunt/uncle down the mountain to come rescue us (an indigenous couple who looked like they could spend days on the mountain without flinching). We spent an additional 45 minutes using machetes and our 3 flashlights to wander back to the "road," literally chopping down spiky bushes and screaming so our rescue team could hear us.

On Sunday, I woke up with a bronchial infection wearing dry clothes borrowed from a 4'10" pregnant lady (cousin of overlymachoadventurerman?). An indigenous woman rubbed leaves all over my chest and stuffed my shirt with hot newspaper. I thought it was probably anthropologically interesting, but was too exhausted and sick to take notes. As we sat by a fire waiting for our clothes to dry, I informed Robert that next time we were going to the beach.

Maeby

This is Maeby (Mae), the mild-mannered, increasingly playful stray who wandered into my front gate last Friday-- freezing and starving. I'll maybe keep her. She is sweet and seems to love me since I fill her bowl every day. I want a medical check-up, I'm skeptical of her smell, and we need to have a serious discussion about the bed (she wants on). Sounds like my other relationships?

Sunbathing Maeby

Sleepy Maeby

Maeby chewing on approved chewing device.

"Fresh" Start

From the air, Quito looks like a spilled a bucket of legos on crinkled slabs of grass, bumpy and artificial like the kind they have at putt-putt courses. Over time those legos got squished and sun-washed and chewed on by the dog. At night, a heavy fog sits in the city's narrow valley. You try not to imagine the robbers out that evening plotting in foggy corners. You try not to remember the cold, acrid air on the other side of the airport's glass sliding doors. Those are ground concerns. Since Quito is mostly-- perhaps only-- beautiful by air, you must let it have its moment.

Lewis Family Reunion 2011

I spent my vacation in the States. It was perfect. I live in (and am mostly preoccupied with) places where other people come from, so I was almost surprised to remember there is a place I come from. Yes, home is complicated and usually involves borrowing a car. It's a mix of family, dogs, friend's couches, the beach and long, long stretches of cornfields. But there are people I love regardless of where I wander home to. Thanks to everyone who put me up, called, or shared a table with me in July/August. It was extremely fun-- also necessary to be reminded of the support network I have in the States.

I'm here in Ambato again. The immigration officer stamped my passport with 12-VIII cultural exchange visa, even though that was last year (I'm now under a 12-VII volunteer visa). I still occupy a dusty grey, mostly empty apartment with dishes always in the sink. Ambato's three seasons are still cold, cold with rainy, and cold with sunburn, and they still usually occur in the same day. And faculty meetings and getting my contract at the University have been, frankly, disastrous undertakings. So perhaps this hasn't been the freshest of "fresh starts." But I'm moving along my bumpy way, and things are certainly changing.

Pailon del Diablo, Banos, Ecuador

For instance: I moved my plastic table to the other side of the living room, and bought new wine glasses. I'm now a real teacher, with real power to do things like give grades and yell. I am housing the new Fulbright ETA in Ambato, Paige, until she finds a place to call her own. I think my Spanish has improved (all it needed was a month's rest). And though I'm not sure why, I'm sporting this new "no one can push me around" attitude I feel like I will need in the coming year.

Today is the first day of classes!

Grief and Bigness

I'm still amazed and confused about the dizzying hugeness of grief. A well-meaning person once concluded that grief has 5 stages, but I suspect that person probably scanned their eyes across the murky city sky one evening and concluded that the sky has 5 stars. For people like me, who tend to lay down and look up during vacant nights on the countryside, it's clear we'll spend our whole life discovering new facets of grief and still wonder why it's so big.

Catie was big to me too, almost mythically large in the way only a big sister of 4 sisters can be. This might explain why the space she left when we lost her, or she lost herself, seemed to have black-hole-esque proportions. The picture at left might begin to describe what it's like to be very small and have a big sister (that's me watching, in the far right corner). I spent my adolescence wondering if I'd ever be big enough to fit into her clothes, big enough to have friends like hers, big enough to drive away in my convertible when things got rough. But now, when I take the few items of clothing we kept of hers out of storage and hold them up to me, I realize how little she was. Quite little, actually.

Wading around in grief, you stumble across questions depending on the season. Other people are wading around in it too, but their questions are different, so you hope for people to have compassion for that unique question that only you are living through. Like there was that day I turned 18 years and 356 days old. Since my older sister only lived to be 18 years and 355 days old, I wondered if that made me older than her. This might seem irrelevant to some people, but I assure you the question of whether I was officially older than my only older sister really shook some walls inside. I also waded through a period where, despite a lifetime of being told I resembled my sister, I actually saw her features when I looked in the mirror. I questioned whether resentment or joy was the primary emotion I felt towards the mirror. Even though I'm largely past that question, I still see her when my mascara smudges underneath my eyes like hers always did.

Fortunately--particularly for those of us who've experienced an unusually big or confusing loss-- I don't think we're ever even allowed to know the full scope of a loss at any one point. In Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes that "the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and (...) thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past." I think this is true, since I mostly remember the way my sister sounded when she laughed, not the way she sounded when she cried. Perhaps we're also spared the burden of the future. After all, if we knew the exact number sleepless nights that loss would eventually provoke, we probably would be too paralyzed to continue. Bigness is generally taken down to what we can handle, so we can keep walking and making coffee and calling the cable company, because that's what people do.

Catie's kindergarten poem about herself

Sometimes in grief, it becomes "strong" to say the loss was small and had no power over us and "weak" to call it what it might well have been-- pretty freaking gigantic. It becomes "strong" to be steadily optimistic and "weak" to admit you occasionally believe horrible things about the universe because that person is gone, even though the most wise people in history have thought those thoughts as well. I've never particularly bought into these falsities. Like I am smart and fulfilled and generally thankful for how fabulous my life is, but I'm not going to conclude that it was therefore ok that my sister died at a crucial point in my identity formation. Pretending big grief is small, or actually joy in disguise, makes everyone around more comfortable, but can also leave the person wading through their loss feeling like a failure on top of everything else.

Catie's kindergarten poem about me

I also think making grief seem small can dilute the true joy and peace that comes before, during and after loss. Because those exist too, and they're even more huge than the loss itself. I feel joyful that I like to swim in the big waves and dance and sing in the shower and drink coffee with huge amounts of cream and sugar, since these are things I learned directly or indirectly from her. I also feel joyful that I have things like Catie's kindergarten poem book, which makes me laugh hysterically every time. Today would have been Catie's 26th birthday, and that makes me joyful, too.