OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Waiting Room Anthropology

October 30th, 2008

An hour, or just less than that, spent at the orthodontist’s office this morning. I carry with me Thomas Kohnstamm’s Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? which I enjoy maybe because it is so totally antithetical to McCarthy’s The Road, which I just finished. I respond to that memoir voice, which I sort of feel like I can see through a little, and still enjoy. And I picked it up because of how the first chapter is about the life he isn’t choosing, which has me musing on how difficult it is to compare lives and how I don’t even feel like the phrase opt out applies if you opted out before being on a particular career path, and I never got so far, but I like tracing out hypothetical trajectories. And then there is the interruption to my hypothetical trajectory, sitting next to me right now.

When my son sits next to me in the waiting room not reading or distracting himself in any of the ways I’ve come to expect, it feels rude to pull out my own book and read, but being in this public space where people can hear us and all, we’re also not really having a conversation. And I forget how rare it is for it to be just the two of us out, no four-year-old energy to be contained and channeled and directed. So there is room to wonder why waiting rooms make me think of anthropology. I have uncharitable thoughts about the two teenaged girls across from us making each other laugh, but with a self-absorbed meanness that I, a former teenaged girl, think only teenaged girls are capable of. I am not eavesdropping on anything specific, not consciously, anyway, a cell phoned conversation with one’s mother, and humor at the expense of others. Maybe it’s that they so clearly don’t care that anyone else is present or hearing them, maybe it’s that they do care and this is a performance of not caring. I realize of course that it’s a bravado (feels like it should be a feminine form, but bravada, alas is only a make of Oldsmobile, says our trusty search engine) the being unsure how to occupy space, and a vein of of rebellious, conspicuous will to occupy it boisterously — I’d prefer that for them, as an anonymous, beneficent observer, to self-conscious awkward and uncomfortable occupation of space, the teenaged girl feeling that lives on in me in glimpses of wishing to shrink, to be invisible.

I think about the man my son is well on his way to becoming. He sits next to me, a little stiff, arms folded across his chest. I realize he doesn’t have his phone out because the friends he is in unceasing contact with would all be in class, cell phones put away (well that at least is reassuring). He is harder for me to read by the day, but he seems a little too uncomfortable to be truly labelled as stoic right now. When I ask if he’s apprehensive about discomfort he assures me he isn’t. I want the crumbs of his inner life, hate having to search for the right questions. But he doesn’t flinch or pull away when I put an arm around his shoulders. So I am not embarrassing him, right?

How could I possibly gotten to this waiting room from the waiting room of the Czech pediatrician whom I would have to take a subway and two busses and then walk up a steep hill to see? That far-away waiting room where I felt so watched, so desperate to prove myself a good mother, playing in the toy-filled room, trying to distract the baby and myself from my apprehensions as we waited for the doctor to see us, checking the enormous diaper bag I’d carried to make sure I had the requisite spare diaper, spare outfit, the little state-issued spiral bound notebook in which all of his shots and weighings were recorded, my strapping American baby whose numbers were all off of the Czech charts… I was sure that other women’s well-packed diaper bags contained the secrets of the sort of organization and preparation that seemed so out of reach to me, the knowledge of what sort of snacks would appeal to a toddler and not be too messy, the knowledge that allowed them to appear in public looking put-together, hair in something other than a desperate ponytail, clothes something other than ill-fitting early-maternity clothes because the other clothes I still had in my closet from before no longer fit, and clothes shopping where not just the language but also the sizing were foreign, incomprehenible was just one intimidation too many.

No, I am here with my almost-teenaged son who hates missing math because it is his favorite subject, the one he sees as most useful in the career he wants one day as a video game designer/programmer. I tease, don’t you want to be a philosopher or ‘cellist and starve honestly, and his answer is an earnest, “I am never going to stop playing the ‘cello.” How can I feel this tender towards another human being on so many levels? People with children one, two and three years older than him like to tell me how hard life with a teenager is, and I am sure I was no picnic. So it feels like it would be hubris to say, “No, you don’t know my son, the combination of analytical mind and deep moral reasoning, the earnestness and the sense of humor we share… and yeah, that whole breaking away thing may obscure those things a little, but they aren’t going to go away, I am going to continue perceiving them!” But secretly? I believe that regardless of the challenges, it’s this privilege to get to watch the man emerging from the baby I once held, however much access I am allowed.

When I think about the man he is becoming, I realize that ‘cellist or video game designer doesn’t make any difference at all, that what I want most for him is compassionate self-awareness, being relaxed and comfortable in the space he occupies while aware of the impact he has on others. I want him to be authentic, even if that means he is a little vulnerable, for there to be at least a few people with whom he can drop all of stoic guardedness I can see him starting to develop. It’s a ping of realization that I want for him a little more of all the things I want for myself, that this was the truth in The Road that I was responding to, the carrying of a flame, an adherence to a moral code undiminished by adult compromise or pragmatism. I want by some miracle of Lamarckian evolution to pass on to him the progress I have made — not to deprive him of character building struggles or anything, just I fear that the great manly code where all of these great, uniquely him things are hidden beneath layers of armor is a form of scarring. My father used to quote this thing about there being no life without growth, no growth without struggle, no struggle without pain. But my kids have taught me that you can grow through play and exploration, that frustration doesn’t have to be deep pain.

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