Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, A Mother Thinks the Unthinkable
By Frida Berrigan
Posted on October 6, 2015, Printed on October 6, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176053/
Frida Berrigan's piece today speaks to me very personally. At 71, I have two
children and a grandchild in this world, and I feel some responsibility for
the sorry planet I'm leaving them. TomDispatch began as a no-name listserv,
springing from a post-9/11 foreboding that, though I had been mobilized and
active in the Vietnam War era, what was coming would be the worst years of
my life, politically speaking. As those repetitive ceremonies in which we
celebrated ourselves and our country as the greatest victims, survivors, and
dominators on the planet spread, as they refused to end, as the urge for
revenge of some all-encompassing sort grew and was encouraged by the Bush
administration, as I began to grasp where its top officials were thinking
about taking us (to hell and back, to quote a movie title of my childhood),
I had the urge to do something.
I had done good work as a book editor over the years, but this was
different. It was a powerful feeling that I couldn't just leave what seemed
to be a degrading country or world to my children without lifting a hand,
without trying to do something. I had no idea what, but from that feeling,
thanks to happenstance, dumb luck, and obsession, TomDispatch stumbled into
existence. And because I was then indeed doing something, I felt, amid the
gloom, a certain hope.
So I've never looked back. But, of course, one small critical website that
attempts to offer ways to reframe what's happening on our increasingly
embattled planet hardly represents a world-saving act, nor did I ever think
that such an act could be mine -- or really any individual's. What this has
meant, though, is that, 14 years later, when with utter exuberance my
grandson "races" me down a city block pulling me by the hand, I feel just
the sort of pleasure (at one remove since I'm no longer the parent) that
TomDispatch regular Berrigan describes so movingly with her own daughter.
And every time I'm with him, just as she describes, there are those other
moments, the ones when I suddenly remember what's happening on this planet,
the ones when I look at him and feel overcome by sadness verging on grief at
the potentially devastated world that may be his inheritance, my "gift" to
him. Those are indeed fears "too big to name." Still, Berrigan does a
remarkable job of bringing to consciousness a new sensibility that, however
seldom mentioned, must be increasingly common currency on this planet. Tom
Parenting on the Brink
Wrestling With Fears Too Big to Name
By Frida Berrigan
Madeline is in the swing, her face the picture of delight. "Mo, mo," she
cries and kicks her legs to show me that she wants me to push her higher and
faster. I push, and push, and push with both hands. There is no thought in
my head except for her joy. I'm completely present in this moment. It's
perfection. Madeline embodies the eternal now and she carries me with her,
pulling me out of my worries and fears and plans.
But not forever: after a few minutes, my mind and eyes wander. I take in the
whole busy playground, crowded with toddlers plunging headlong into
adventure and their attendant adults shouting exhortations to be careful,
offering snacks, or lost in the tiny offices they carry in their hands. It's
a gorgeous day. Sunny and blue and not too hot, a hint of fall in the
breeze. And then my eye is caught by a much younger mom across the
playground trying to convince her toddler that it's time to go.
When Madeline graduates from high school, I will be 57. Jeez, I think, that
mom will still be younger than I am now when her kid walks across that
stage. If I live to be 85, Madeline will be 46 and maybe by then I'll have
some grandkids. In fact, I'm suddenly convinced of it. Between Madeline
and her three-year-old brother Seamus and their eight-year-old sister
Rosena, I will definitely live to see grandkids. I reassure myself for the
millionth time that having kids in my late thirties was totally fine.
And then another thought comes to mind, the sort of thought that haunts the
parents of this moment: When I'm 85, it will be 2059, and what will that
look like? When my grandkids are my age now, it could be almost a new
century. And what will our planet look like then? And I feel that little
chill that must be increasingly commonplace among other parents of 2015.
And then I'm gone. You wouldn't know it to look at me. After all, I'm still
pushing the swing, still cooing and chatting with my buoyant 18-month-old
daughter, but my mind is racing, my heart is pounding. This playground will
not be here. This tranquil, stable, forever place wasn't built to last 100
years, not on a planet like this one at this moment anyway.
I look around and I know. None of this -- the municipal complex, the school
across the street, the supermarket up the road -- is built for 100 years,
especially not this hundred years. It won't last. And I can't imagine a
better future version of this either. What comes to mind instead are
apocalyptic images, cheesy ones cribbed from The Walking Dead, that zombie
series on AMC; The Day After, a 1980s made-for-TV dramatization of a nuclear
attack on the United States; Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel The Road; Brad
Pitt's grim but ultimately hopeful World War Z; and The Water Knife, a novel
set in the western United States in an almost waterless near future.
They all rush into my head and bump up against the grainy black-and-white
documentary footage of Hiroshima in 1945 that I saw way too young and will
never forget. This place, this playground, empty, rusted, submerged in
water, burned beyond recognition, covered in vines, overrun by trees. Empty.
Gone.
Then, of course, Madeline brings me back to our glorious present. She wants
to get out of the swing and hit the slides. She's fearless, emphatic, and
purposeful. She deserves a future. Her small body goes up those steps and
down the slide over and over and over again. And the rush of that slide is
new every time. She shouts and laughs at the bottom and races to do it
again. Now. Again. Now. This is reality. But my fears are real, too. The
future is terrifying. To have a child is to plant a flag in the future and
that is no small responsibility.
We Have Nothing to Fear but...
We mothers hear a lot these days about how to protect our children. We hear
dos and don'ts from mommy magazines, from our own mothers, our
pediatricians, each other, from lactation experts and the baby formula
industry, from the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug
Administration, from Doctor Bob Sears, from sociologists and psychiatrists
and child development specialists. We are afraid for our kids who need to be
protected from a world of dangers, including strangers, bumblebees, and
electrical outlets.
Such threats are discussed, dissected, and deconstructed constantly in the
media and ever-newer ones are raised, fears you never even thought about
until the nightly news or some other media outlet brought them up. But
hanging over all these humdrum, everyday worries is a far bigger fear that
we never talk about and that you won't read about in that mommy magazine or
see in any advice column. And yet, it's right there, staring us in the face
every single day, constant, existential, too big to name.
We can't say it, but we are increasingly afraid of the future, of tomorrow,
afraid for our children in ways that, in themselves, are frightening to
bring up. It's as diffuse as "anything can happen" and as specific as we are
running out of ______ [fill in the blank: clean water, fossil fuels, space
for people, arable land, cheap food stuffs, you name it]. Even if the supply
of whatever you chose to think about isn't yet dwindling in our world, you
know that it will one of these days. Whatever it is, that necessity of
everyday life will be gone (or too expensive for ordinary people) by ______
[2020, 2057, 2106].
It's paralyzing to look at Madeline and think such thoughts, to imagine an
ever-hotter planet, ever-less comfortable as a home not just for that vague
construct "humanity," but for my three very specific children, not to speak
of those grandchildren of my dreams and fantasies.
It's something that's so natural to push away. Who wouldn't prefer not to
think about it? And at least here, in our world, on some level we can still
do that.
For those of us who are white and western and relatively financially stable,
it's still possible to believe we're insulated from disaster -- or almost
possible anyway. We can hold on to the comfort that our children are
unlikely to be gunned down or beaten to death by police, for example. We can
watch the news and feel sadness for the mass exodus out of Syria and all
those who are dying along the way, but those feelings are tinged with relief
in knowing that we will not be refugees ourselves.
But for how long? What if?
They say: enjoy your kids while they're young; pretty soon they'll be
teenagers. Haha, right? Actually, I'm excited about each stage of my kids'
lives, but Madeline won't be a teenager until 2027. According to climate
scientists and environmentalists, that may already be "past the point of no
return." If warming continues without a major shift, there will be no
refreezing those melting ice shelves, no holding back the rising seas, no
scrubbing smog-clogged air, no button we can press to bring water back to
parched landscapes.
These are things I know. This is a future I, unfortunately, can imagine.
These are the reasons I try to do all the right things: walk, eat mostly
vegetarian, grow some of our own food, conserve, reuse, reduce, recycle. We
had solar panels installed on our roof. We only have one car. We're trying,
but I know just as well that such lifestyle choices can't turn this around.
It will take everyone doing such things -- and far more than that. It will
require governments to come to their senses and oil companies to restrain
the urge to get every last drop of fossil fuel out of the ground. It will
take what Naomi Klein calls a "Marshall Plan for the Earth." In her
groundbreaking and hopeful book, This Changes Everything, she writes,
"I am convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity on an
even greater scale [than the New Deal]. As part of the project of getting
our emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again
have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close
the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs, and
reinvigorate democracy from the ground up."
Which brings me to fear and how it paralyzes. I don't want to be paralyzed
in the face of catastrophic climate change or any other looming calamity. I
want to be motivated and spurred to action not by an apocalyptic vision of
our local playground engulfed in flames or submerged under several feet of
water, but by the potential for the brighter future than is surely within
our grasp -- within my grasp today and Madeline's in some future that she
truly deserves.
Preparing for the Unthinkable
Growing up, I heard this a lot: "Don't be so First World, Frida."
That's what Phil Berrigan -- former priest, brazenly nonviolent activist,
tireless organizer for peace and justice -- would tell me, his eldest
daughter. If I was flippant or tweenish, that's what he would always say.
"Don't be so First World." It was his rejoinder when I asked for spending
money or permission to go to the movies. What he meant was: regulate your
wants, consider others, be comfortable being alone, put yourself second,
listen, be in solidarity, choose the harder path.
My father's admonishment sounds a discordant note amid today's morass of
parenting messages with their emphasis on success and ease and happiness.
But it prepared me for much of what I encountered along the road to
adulthood and it resonates deeply as I parent three children whose futures I
cannot imagine. Not really. Will they have clean water, a home, a democracy,
a playground for their children? Will they be able to buy food -- or even
grow it? Will they be able to afford transportation? I don't know.
What I can do is prepare them to distinguish needs from wants, to share
generously and build community, to stand up for what they believe and not
stand by while others are abused. When, as with Madeline at that playground,
the unspoken overwhelms me, I wonder whether I shouldn't sooner or later
start teaching them how the world works and basic skills that will serve
them well in an uncertain future: what electricity is and how to start a
fire, how to navigate by the stars, how to feed themselves by hunting and
gathering, how to build a shelter or find and purify water, or construct a
bicycle out of parts they come across on the road to perdition.
The only problem is that, like most of my peers and friends, I actually
don't know how to do any of that (except maybe for the bicycle building), so
I better get started. I should also be planting nut trees in our backyard
and working for global nuclear disarmament. I can help New London (a water's
edge community) be prepared and more resilient in the face of rising sea
levels and be active in our local Green Party.
I know that there's no simple solution, no easy or individual fix to what's
coming down the road. I know as well that there is no future except the one
we are making right now, this second, again and again and again. And in our
world, I call that hope, not despair. Perhaps you could just as easily call
it folly. Call it what you will. I don't have a label for my parenting
style. I'm not a helicopter mom or a tiger mom. But like a lot of other
people right now, whether they know it or not, realize it or not, I am
parenting on the brink of catastrophe. I'm terrified for my children, but I
am not paralyzed and I know I am not alone, which makes me, despite
everything, hopeful, not for myself, but for Madeline.
Frida Berrigan, a TomDispatch regular, writes the Little Insurrections blog
for WagingNonviolence.org, is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being
Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood, and lives in New
London, Connecticut.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Frida Berrigan
C 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176053
Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, A Mother Thinks the Unthinkable
By Frida Berrigan
Posted on October 6, 2015, Printed on October 6, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176053/
Frida Berrigan's piece today speaks to me very personally. At 71, I have two
children and a grandchild in this world, and I feel some responsibility for
the sorry planet I'm leaving them. TomDispatch began as a no-name listserv,
springing from a post-9/11 foreboding that, though I had been mobilized and
active in the Vietnam War era, what was coming would be the worst years of
my life, politically speaking. As those repetitive ceremonies in which we
celebrated ourselves and our country as the greatest victims, survivors, and
dominators on the planet spread, as they refused to end, as the urge for
revenge of some all-encompassing sort grew and was encouraged by the Bush
administration, as I began to grasp where its top officials were thinking
about taking us (to hell and back, to quote a movie title of my childhood),
I had the urge to do something.
I had done good work as a book editor over the years, but this was
different. It was a powerful feeling that I couldn't just leave what seemed
to be a degrading country or world to my children without lifting a hand,
without trying to do something. I had no idea what, but from that feeling,
thanks to happenstance, dumb luck, and obsession, TomDispatch stumbled into
existence. And because I was then indeed doing something, I felt, amid the
gloom, a certain hope.
So I've never looked back. But, of course, one small critical website that
attempts to offer ways to reframe what's happening on our increasingly
embattled planet hardly represents a world-saving act, nor did I ever think
that such an act could be mine -- or really any individual's. What this has
meant, though, is that, 14 years later, when with utter exuberance my
grandson "races" me down a city block pulling me by the hand, I feel just
the sort of pleasure (at one remove since I'm no longer the parent) that
TomDispatch regular Berrigan describes so movingly with her own daughter.
And every time I'm with him, just as she describes, there are those other
moments, the ones when I suddenly remember what's happening on this planet,
the ones when I look at him and feel overcome by sadness verging on grief at
the potentially devastated world that may be his inheritance, my "gift" to
him. Those are indeed fears "too big to name." Still, Berrigan does a
remarkable job of bringing to consciousness a new sensibility that, however
seldom mentioned, must be increasingly common currency on this planet. Tom
Parenting on the Brink
Wrestling With Fears Too Big to Name
By Frida Berrigan
Madeline is in the swing, her face the picture of delight. "Mo, mo," she
cries and kicks her legs to show me that she wants me to push her higher and
faster. I push, and push, and push with both hands. There is no thought in
my head except for her joy. I'm completely present in this moment. It's
perfection. Madeline embodies the eternal now and she carries me with her,
pulling me out of my worries and fears and plans.
But not forever: after a few minutes, my mind and eyes wander. I take in the
whole busy playground, crowded with toddlers plunging headlong into
adventure and their attendant adults shouting exhortations to be careful,
offering snacks, or lost in the tiny offices they carry in their hands. It's
a gorgeous day. Sunny and blue and not too hot, a hint of fall in the
breeze. And then my eye is caught by a much younger mom across the
playground trying to convince her toddler that it's time to go.
When Madeline graduates from high school, I will be 57. Jeez, I think, that
mom will still be younger than I am now when her kid walks across that
stage. If I live to be 85, Madeline will be 46 and maybe by then I'll have
some grandkids. In fact, I'm suddenly convinced of it. Between Madeline and
her three-year-old brother Seamus and their eight-year-old sister Rosena, I
will definitely live to see grandkids. I reassure myself for the millionth
time that having kids in my late thirties was totally fine.
And then another thought comes to mind, the sort of thought that haunts the
parents of this moment: When I'm 85, it will be 2059, and what will that
look like? When my grandkids are my age now, it could be almost a new
century. And what will our planet look like then? And I feel that little
chill that must be increasingly commonplace among other parents of 2015.
And then I'm gone. You wouldn't know it to look at me. After all, I'm still
pushing the swing, still cooing and chatting with my buoyant 18-month-old
daughter, but my mind is racing, my heart is pounding. This playground will
not be here. This tranquil, stable, forever place wasn't built to last 100
years, not on a planet like this one at this moment anyway.
I look around and I know. None of this -- the municipal complex, the school
across the street, the supermarket up the road -- is built for 100 years,
especially not this hundred years. It won't last. And I can't imagine a
better future version of this either. What comes to mind instead are
apocalyptic images, cheesy ones cribbed from The Walking Dead, that zombie
series on AMC; The Day After, a 1980s made-for-TV dramatization of a nuclear
attack on the United States; Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel The Road; Brad
Pitt's grim but ultimately hopeful World War Z; and The Water Knife, a novel
set in the western United States in an almost waterless near future.
They all rush into my head and bump up against the grainy black-and-white
documentary footage of Hiroshima in 1945 that I saw way too young and will
never forget. This place, this playground, empty, rusted, submerged in
water, burned beyond recognition, covered in vines, overrun by trees. Empty.
Gone.
Then, of course, Madeline brings me back to our glorious present. She wants
to get out of the swing and hit the slides. She's fearless, emphatic, and
purposeful. She deserves a future. Her small body goes up those steps and
down the slide over and over and over again. And the rush of that slide is
new every time. She shouts and laughs at the bottom and races to do it
again. Now. Again. Now. This is reality. But my fears are real, too. The
future is terrifying. To have a child is to plant a flag in the future and
that is no small responsibility.
We Have Nothing to Fear but...
We mothers hear a lot these days about how to protect our children. We hear
dos and don'ts from mommy magazines, from our own mothers, our
pediatricians, each other, from lactation experts and the baby formula
industry, from the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug
Administration, from Doctor Bob Sears, from sociologists and psychiatrists
and child development specialists. We are afraid for our kids who need to be
protected from a world of dangers, including strangers, bumblebees, and
electrical outlets.
Such threats are discussed, dissected, and deconstructed constantly in the
media and ever-newer ones are raised, fears you never even thought about
until the nightly news or some other media outlet brought them up. But
hanging over all these humdrum, everyday worries is a far bigger fear that
we never talk about and that you won't read about in that mommy magazine or
see in any advice column. And yet, it's right there, staring us in the face
every single day, constant, existential, too big to name.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1939293650/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1939293650/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20We can't
say it, but we are increasingly afraid of the future, of tomorrow, afraid
for our children in ways that, in themselves, are frightening to bring up.
It's as diffuse as "anything can happen" and as specific as we are running
out of ______ [fill in the blank: clean water, fossil fuels, space for
people, arable land, cheap food stuffs, you name it]. Even if the supply of
whatever you chose to think about isn't yet dwindling in our world, you know
that it will one of these days. Whatever it is, that necessity of everyday
life will be gone (or too expensive for ordinary people) by ______ [2020,
2057, 2106].
It's paralyzing to look at Madeline and think such thoughts, to imagine an
ever-hotter planet, ever-less comfortable as a home not just for that vague
construct "humanity," but for my three very specific children, not to speak
of those grandchildren of my dreams and fantasies.
It's something that's so natural to push away. Who wouldn't prefer not to
think about it? And at least here, in our world, on some level we can still
do that.
For those of us who are white and western and relatively financially stable,
it's still possible to believe we're insulated from disaster -- or almost
possible anyway. We can hold on to the comfort that our children are
unlikely to be gunned down or beaten to death by police, for example. We can
watch the news and feel sadness for the mass exodus out of Syria and all
those who are dying along the way, but those feelings are tinged with relief
in knowing that we will not be refugees ourselves.
But for how long? What if?
They say: enjoy your kids while they're young; pretty soon they'll be
teenagers. Haha, right? Actually, I'm excited about each stage of my kids'
lives, but Madeline won't be a teenager until 2027. According to climate
scientists and environmentalists, that may already be "past the point of no
return." If warming continues without a major shift, there will be no
refreezing those melting ice shelves, no holding back the rising seas, no
scrubbing smog-clogged air, no button we can press to bring water back to
parched landscapes.
These are things I know. This is a future I, unfortunately, can imagine.
These are the reasons I try to do all the right things: walk, eat mostly
vegetarian, grow some of our own food, conserve, reuse, reduce, recycle. We
had solar panels installed on our roof. We only have one car. We're trying,
but I know just as well that such lifestyle choices can't turn this around.
It will take everyone doing such things -- and far more than that. It will
require governments to come to their senses and oil companies to restrain
the urge to get every last drop of fossil fuel out of the ground. It will
take what Naomi Klein calls a "Marshall Plan for the Earth." In her
groundbreaking and hopeful book, This Changes Everything, she writes,
"I am convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity on an
even greater scale [than the New Deal]. As part of the project of getting
our emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again
have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close
the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs, and
reinvigorate democracy from the ground up."
Which brings me to fear and how it paralyzes. I don't want to be paralyzed
in the face of catastrophic climate change or any other looming calamity. I
want to be motivated and spurred to action not by an apocalyptic vision of
our local playground engulfed in flames or submerged under several feet of
water, but by the potential for the brighter future than is surely within
our grasp -- within my grasp today and Madeline's in some future that she
truly deserves.
Preparing for the Unthinkable
Growing up, I heard this a lot: "Don't be so First World, Frida."
That's what Phil Berrigan -- former priest, brazenly nonviolent activist,
tireless organizer for peace and justice -- would tell me, his eldest
daughter. If I was flippant or tweenish, that's what he would always say.
"Don't be so First World." It was his rejoinder when I asked for spending
money or permission to go to the movies. What he meant was: regulate your
wants, consider others, be comfortable being alone, put yourself second,
listen, be in solidarity, choose the harder path.
My father's admonishment sounds a discordant note amid today's morass of
parenting messages with their emphasis on success and ease and happiness.
But it prepared me for much of what I encountered along the road to
adulthood and it resonates deeply as I parent three children whose futures I
cannot imagine. Not really. Will they have clean water, a home, a democracy,
a playground for their children? Will they be able to buy food -- or even
grow it? Will they be able to afford transportation? I don't know.
What I can do is prepare them to distinguish needs from wants, to share
generously and build community, to stand up for what they believe and not
stand by while others are abused. When, as with Madeline at that playground,
the unspoken overwhelms me, I wonder whether I shouldn't sooner or later
start teaching them how the world works and basic skills that will serve
them well in an uncertain future: what electricity is and how to start a
fire, how to navigate by the stars, how to feed themselves by hunting and
gathering, how to build a shelter or find and purify water, or construct a
bicycle out of parts they come across on the road to perdition.
The only problem is that, like most of my peers and friends, I actually
don't know how to do any of that (except maybe for the bicycle building), so
I better get started. I should also be planting nut trees in our backyard
and working for global nuclear disarmament. I can help New London (a water's
edge community) be prepared and more resilient in the face of rising sea
levels and be active in our local Green Party.
I know that there's no simple solution, no easy or individual fix to what's
coming down the road. I know as well that there is no future except the one
we are making right now, this second, again and again and again. And in our
world, I call that hope, not despair. Perhaps you could just as easily call
it folly. Call it what you will. I don't have a label for my parenting
style. I'm not a helicopter mom or a tiger mom. But like a lot of other
people right now, whether they know it or not, realize it or not, I am
parenting on the brink of catastrophe. I'm terrified for my children, but I
am not paralyzed and I know I am not alone, which makes me, despite
everything, hopeful, not for myself, but for Madeline.
Frida Berrigan, a TomDispatch regular, writes the Little Insurrections blog
for WagingNonviolence.org, is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being
Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood, and lives in New
London, Connecticut.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Frida Berrigan
C 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176053