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Penelope Ayers is a memoir about the year I spent getting to know my mother-in-law, a beautiful, gracious, lonely New Orleanian who discovered one February morning that she has cancer. When she reached out for help, three generations of her fractured, colorful family responded, and in so doing, we all experienced grace and healing.
I wrote this morning about Kathleen Norris’ The Quotidian Mysteries. Part of Norris’ point is that creative thoughts often arise in the mundane details of life. While folding laundry, an idea pops into her head for a poem, or she remembers that she wanted to write a friend a note, or she recall the words of a Psalm and considers them anew. These things happen for me. I enjoy solitude. On a Myers Briggs test, I split right down the extrovert/introvert line. I get energy from people, but I also draw energy from time all by myself.
But I’ve had too much time alone this year. We moved to Connecticut, and so we left behind 7 years of relationships at work, school, and church. The weather plus pregnancy pushed us inside for much of the winter. And now, with Marilee needing me more or less around the clock, I still feel somewhat homebound (although spring makes it so much better, doesn’t it?).
I’ve been thinking lately that one of the blessings of quotidian life–every day life, life in laundry and taking out the trash and cooking dinner–quotidian life is not blessed only in the solitude and contemplation that it affords. Solitude can easily lead to loneliness. It is also a blessing to live the quotidian life in community. I can’t email while holding Marilee or changing her diaper or folding her clothes. But I can easily attend to those everyday tasks while talking with a friend who is in the room with me. I can’t really talk on the phone while Penny and William run around the yard. But I can chat with another parent from our neighborhood as our kids kick balls and run and jump and every so often need our attention.
Quotidian actions fill my days, and I am trying to be attentive to and grateful for the rhythms of life with a newborn. And yet I long for more of those moments to be ones that extend beyond my own thoughts, my own creativity, my own memory. I trust it is a holy longing, to share the ins and outs of household work with others, to watch our children grow together, to experience the quotidian in community.
posted September 21, 2010 at 10:17 am
The words to that ‘song’ are disgusting.
Recently a blogger-I-like posted a video of two brothers, the younger one with Ds. The blogger thought the video was a nice representation of brotherly love. Honestly, I thought it was a little creepy (suspicious). It’s on Utb with music by the Magic Polar Bears.
Where does one go with that?
posted September 21, 2010 at 2:47 pm
More than disgusting, it’s terrifying!
As a teacher, I take safe environments classes which detail how special needs children are more susceptible to pedophiles. These lyrics are actually encouraging men to see young women with Down syndrome as ‘easy marks’ for sexual exploitation. To think it was considered for an award is a sign of how sick the culture is.
When it came out, Down syndrome advocacy groups defended this episode of “Family Guy” although Sarah Palin complained that Trig was being mocked.They felt it was a teachable moment, on the order of Chris Burke’s wonderful series, “Life Goes On”.
Now that the lyrics to the song are out, they are against “Down Syndrome Girl”. They should have seen it coming. Nothing positive comes from “Family Guy”.
posted February 3, 2011 at 3:53 am
You don’t have a sense of humor. This song is not just about the down syndrome, but the preparing for a date. My mother is teaches down syndrome and other special children for a living, so you can’t say that I don’t know about down syndrome. This song is not offensive at all.
posted February 22, 2011 at 8:37 am
you people need to chillax, its just a song and its funny so stfu
posted April 16, 2011 at 6:22 pm
The episode was revolutionary, who else even mentions down-syndrome teenagers? Not only does Family Guy present the audience with a different way of looking at people but in this episode they give the down-syndrome girl an attitude. She is the one with the power, she is the one who gives Chris the heave-ho and she is the one in command of the situation.
I love the way that Family Guy addresses disability in comedy with Joe in his wheelchair getting into all sorts of situations and a down-syndrome girl as Chris’s date. Only by bringing these very real issues around disability to the forefront do we stand a chance at changing society’s attitude. It is the very people who find something like this offensive who represent the biggest discriminators against disability simply because they continue to see down-syndrome people as different and not worthy or capable of being in the spotlight.
The humour is supposed to grab your attention and make you think but if all you see is a ‘poor disabled person’ who needs your sympathy then perhaps that’s the REAL problem. Disability does not mean lack of a funny bone or the need for deadly propriety at any cost. Lighten up, smile, laugh and treat EVERYONE regardless of ability, race, language or otherwise as human then we might stand a chance at being considered humane.
Ever wondered why Family Guy has a Black guy, a Cop in a wheelchair, a fat idiot as the star and a sex maniac who is your A-typical respectable (pilot) guy? It is a satirical comment on how society sees stereotypes, if you don’t get that basic premiss then perhaps that is the bigger problem here?