fierce attachments

a mother-daughter blog about the fierce attachments in our lives… title inspired by Vivian Gornick's wonderful memoir

Category: odds and sods

January 4, 2013

the sessions the movie and more: part 2

by nikki meredith

The Intouchables

About 20 years ago, for a profile I planned, I interviewed Cheryl Cohen Greene, the sexual surrogate Helen Hunt plays in The Sessions.  (for part I of this post on The Sessions click here.) I found her irresistible. She had a way of talking about sex unlike anyone I’d ever met. She could be funny, very funny, though I can’t remember any specific examples, and while she could talk about sex explicitly, it seemed neither pornographic nor clinical. Her conversation about sex made sex seem like a part of life. A natural part of life. Imagine that. It seems remarkable that so few people can do that effectively. Even in the 21st century. Maybe especially in the 21st century. I squirm when I read Dan Savage, a syndicated columnist who writes an advice and sex column for both gays and straights. I love his writing, I love his politics but when he talks about sex, I want to dive under the table. When Cheryl talked about sex, I wanted to hear more. Read the rest of this entry »

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December 17, 2012

sex, surrogacy and supper: the movie the sessions, part 1

by nikki meredith

coming homeLast week I was having dinner with six of my friends – all of them, to one degree or other, hip or at least hipish. I mentioned that I saw The Sessions, the recently released film starring Helen Hunt and John Hawkes. I was fired-up about the film and I wanted to discuss it. Specifically, I wanted to talk about the following:

—  I know Cheryl Cohen Greene, the sexual surrogate on whom the Helen Hunt character is based in real life and as much as I love Helen Hunt, and as much as I admire her for tackling the role, I found her performance wanting. A characteristic that the real Cheryl Cohen Greene has, a characteristic that anyone who has ever met her will attest to, is her warmth. While Hunt portrays the quality all therapists must possess — unconditional positive regard — her version is crisp, clinical. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 21, 2012

absence makes the stomach grow fonder: food variety deprivation, fantasy and phenomena in the humanitarian aid worker life

by caitlin meredith

meal of desperation: canned fruit cocktail with a side of canned tuna

Food cravings are a motherfucker. After a few weeks of being in the field with the same slop every day, my gastronomic fantasy life takes on a bigger and bigger portion of my conscious and unconscious mind with debilitating consequences. I’ve been through this cycle enough times now to recognize the signs and symptoms, which I will presently share with you.

(In a future post I’ll talk about REAL food problems in refugee camps that will put my indulgent indignation in proper perspective, but for now I just need to whine.)

But before I get into the Meredith/Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Varied Food Deprivation, however, let me give you a small snapshot of what kind of culinary context I’m referring to. Let’s take my recent time in South Sudan as an example. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 25, 2012

what do I have in common with Julia Roberts? how being a dog owner is like being a celebrity

by nikki meredith

I have never been, nor will I ever be, a celebrity — not even for Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes.  But I maintain that having a dog shares some of the features of celebrityhood and if you walk around with two dogs, you’re on your way to being a super celebrity.

When our dog Alice was a puppy, I was astonished by how many people stopped to ask about her. And it wasn’t only people I encountered on the sidewalk or the hiking trail. People in cars would pull over, roll down their windows and shout out questions. Some actually parked and got out of their cars to ask about her.  Well, I thought, everyone loves a puppy. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 26, 2012

shitty in pink, part two: lots of refugee ladies, no ladies’ rooms

by caitlin meredith

the ladies’ room in a new refugee camp

Easy enough for me to tell my latrine sob story, but let me give an even stronger piece of advice: really, really try to avoid being a refugee in a newly created camp that only has trench latrines. As an aid worker I’m supposed to encourage all refugees to use only the designated camp latrines. Getting, and keeping, human shit away from food and clean water is about as central a public health intervention as you can get.  If you can do nothing else for a bunch of displaced people living in the middle of nowhere, establish a shitting field and make sure the community leaders enforce it. As a human being, and fellow lady to many of them, however, it’s pretty hard to push the trench. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 22, 2012

the path not taken: a mother and her aid worker daughter

by nikki meredith

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both…

 Robert Frost

“Mom, please tell me….if it’s going to be too hard on you, I won’t go.”

Caitlin and I were sitting outside at Emporio Rulli, our neighborhood Italian Bakery drinking tea on a shimmering fall day. She was scheduled to leave soon for Darfur where she’d be working as an epidemiologist with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The news from the region was dreadful.  In a pitched battled against settled farmers, an armed militia group known as the Janjaweed were on a rampage, burning down villages, killing men, raping women. Children were starving.  The year she was scheduled to go, the fighting had reached a peak and the conflict was then considered one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.  I got a knot in my gut every time I thought of her embarking on that particular journey but there was more to the story. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 18, 2012

shitty in pink: lady aid worker conquers night time latrine visits

by caitlin meredith

My feet but NOT my pink Crocs!!! Borrowed from a friend!

I have one key piece of advice for female aid workers on their way to Africa: once you get there, get a potty. This might even be more important than my earlier advice about underwear. Displaying your undies  in full view of your boss only happens once a week – the potty issue comes up every night.

Nighttime elimination first became an issue when I worked in Darfur. Read the rest of this entry »

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June 27, 2012

the only thing Jesus Christ and J.R. Ewing have in common

by caitlin meredith

A Northern Californian childhood had some major advantages. There were mountains to hike and ski, the ocean to swim and fish, and the Redwood forest to breathe in and explore. The cultural patrimony was rich as well: hippies.  At least in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s, in Marin County hippies were parked in their VW Buses on every street corner, teaching me about the groovy universe. Hippies like my art teacher Turquoise who introduced my Montessori kindergarten class to Mother Earth and trail mix. Hippies like the parents of my classmates who named their children Meadow Rose and Morning Star and who didn’t allow refined sugar in their households.  And, of course, hippies like my parents who (before I was on the scene) spent weekends talking, then shouting, about their feelings in encounter groups.  Though hippies were long on organic produce (marijuana), psychotherapy and world peace, there were a few crucial American concepts they failed to transmit to those at their knee. Namely, Christianity and contemporary American television programming.

As a direct result of these missing pieces in my intellectual development, I believe I’m one of the only Americans over the age of 25 for whom Jesus Christ and J.R. Ewing occupy roughly the same plane in my cultural landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

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June 24, 2012

god, lies and Romney

by nikki meredith

via nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com

When I was in elementary school, I had a secret: my parents didn’t believe in god.  This was a source of anxiety for me because in the 1950’s everyone went to church. Everyone except my parents and their heathen friends.  I wasn’t totally left out of the religious experience, however.  Though they didn’t believe in god, they wanted me exposed to all sides of all issues, so they enrolled me in an after school bible class. That made things worse. The teacher illustrated stories from the bible on a felt board. The image that made the biggest impression on me was a tableau of a kindly Jesus Christ administering to lepers.  My parents didn’t administer to lepers so I concluded that people who believed in Christ and hence in God were kinder, gentler, in short, of better character. Consequently, I kept my parents’ atheism securely in the closet.

At some point along the way I noticed that my parents, in spite of their godlessness, seemed to be guided by compassion and integrity in  their work and in their personal lives. They didn’t nurse lepers, I don’t think they even knew any, but they were committed to social and economic justice.  I have no doubt that my father’s Jesuit education contributed to these beliefs just as my maternal grandmother’s activism – she was a feminist, an anarchist and a protégé of Emma Goldman’s — informed my mother’s world view.  At a later point, I also realized that a lot of religious people were capable of doing very bad things to other human beings. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 29, 2012

a beginner, forever

by caitlin meredith

Growing up, I took ten years of beginning tennis lessons. Whether it was sleep-away summer camp, a junior high elective or after school enrichment at the public park, I never advanced to intermediate. This wasn’t due to a crippling lack of athleticism – I could scamper around the court and hit the ball well enough – I just preferred the beginners’ classes. The guppy-level teachers were always smilier and cuter than their gruffer, more advanced counterparts. The intermediate coach expected you to remember what to do with your right shoulder when you served; the beginner coach was just thrilled you showed up.

Tennis isn’t the only endeavor I’ve sought out but had low-to-no goals for. Read the rest of this entry »

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