Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (April 13, 2012)
12 Street roots April 13, 2012 Cautionary tales can have happy, and fearless endings BY M ELISSA FA VA R A It helps to look right at what you’re afraid C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T of. We don’t want to open the phone bill hen I was 7 ,1 listened up when my because we’re afraid to see the amount due, mom told me about Adam Walsh, the but open it we must. So, I agreed to go with little boy who was abducted and Ro’s best friend Jascha and his mom Jill to a murdered in Florida, and I never strayed scene from from my nightmares: the bouldering her at the grocery store. I believed my fifth gym, where adults and kids climb man-made grade teacher when he told our class that Len rock walls, clinging to tiny handholds without Bias tried cocaine one time and his heart a net or a rope. exploded; I never dabbled in the white Jascha is six months older than Ramona, so powder drugs. When my mom told me at 12 his mom Jill, a fellow only-child-haver, has that if I had sex I would get pregnant and gotten to the Next Big Challenge in Parenting drop out of high school, I believed that for a before me every time. I have largely parented very long time; when I finally stopped for years via calling Jill to ask, “What did you believing it, I believed my high school teacher do when your kid wouldn’t stop peeing his who told us we would get AIDS if we ever had pants/bit another child at daycare/ate dirt?” sex without using condoms once, and I used Etcetera. Jill always has answers. I’ve never condoms. Religiously. come right out and said, “I’m afraid I’ll ruin I grew up in the 1980s and absorbed every my kid by being too nervous,” but like the fear that the schools, the government, and my best of mothers, Jill is psychic and offered me parents imparted during that time of Just a part of the solution before I had to ask. Saying No. I never got pregnant by accident, The rock climbing gym. Past the got hooked on cocaine, or had an STD. But, frightening adult walls that arch at 45-degree man, ask my husband what it’s like to have angles from the spongy floor is the kid room, me as a passenger in a car (fingernail marks where 10-foot-tall walls covered in brightly on the dashboard and a wife who pips and colored handholds beckon children to squeals every time you turn left). And when scramble up and then speed back down on a my daughter Ramona plays with a puppy, I’m metal slide that dumps them off where they chasing after to make sure she doesn’t fall on started. Ten feet. Up. With... no... net. it and injure them both. Monkey bars are Jascha, an old hand at climbing, seized Ro’s problematic. I am afraid. Those healthy fears hand and pulled her to the easiest section of I absorbed? They kept me safe, maybe. They the wall where the places to get a grip with also made me an anxious person. small hands and feet were closely crowded I hate that because now I’m in charge of together while I focused on my Mason jar of keeping my daughter Ramona (aka Rose aka tea and on not having an internal Ro), age five, safe — and the temptation is hemorrhage. Jill took my hand and reminded there to scare her. Why shouldn’t she cross me that the floor was soft and Ramona was the street by herself? She might get hit by a good at using her body. Ro clung to the wall car! Why shouldn’t she climb that tree? like a champ, making it to the top where she Because she might fall and break her neck! rolled over the wall’s edge and high-fived Why shouldn’t she take her shoes off at Grant Jascha. No broken neck for her. No heart Park? She might step on broken glass! attack for me. It’s bad. And while it actually is a big deal I started thinking about why my elders to le a rn "to" c ro ss h ie s tr e e l by oneself, I ’ve decided to scare me. I know that the begun to think that, though we live in intentions were good — keep kids off hard frightening times (the war on women, bad drugs. Keep kids safe from diseases, economy, nuts in governments both here and unintended pregnancy. And I can understand abroad), I’m not doing Ramona a favor if my that why those things are to be avoided might tools of persuasion on taking care of herself seem difficult to articulate well to kids. It’s make her less brave than she is. Climbing more expedient to create bogeymen than it is trees is good for you, right? to discuss tough concepts. But I think that if W Melissa Favara teaches English in Vancouver and lives and writes in North Portland, where she parents Ramona, age 5. She hosts a bi-monthly reading series, and counts her husband and her city as the two great loves o f her life. my mother had said, “You’ll want boys to like you. And boys get highly sexed before girls do, so they’ll really want to get down, but because they’re young, they might not be aware of how important it is to be safe. And it will mean something different to them than it means to you when you’re 14 or 15. You should wait until college when you have a clearer sense of who you are and what you want,” I would have heard that. I’d have had questions. But we could have had a dialogue that gave me a realistic sense of what I was facing. I think Ramona and I could have conversations like that. I think when the time comes, I’ll be ready. For now, we can practice street-crossing skills, and her dad can teach her the finer points of tree-climbing so she can move in the world without my panic limiting her. At the rock climbing gym, emboldened by the success of her first climb, Ro went for the hardest end of the kiddie wall with Jascha, where the grips were much farther apart and the wall angled out enough to make hanging on really challenging. I resisted the impulse to run to her as she bit her lip, reached above for a place to pull, and missed. She fell about five feet and landed on her bottom. A brief thought of crying flickered across her face. Then she stood up, went to the middle- difficult section of the wall, and climbed. A couple of minutes later, she was cresting the wall, hurtling down the slide, high-fiving every kid around. She has to fall sometimes to learn her own limits and expand them. I have to let her. As we left the gym, Jill high-fived me. “Good job, Mommy,” she said. Part of growing up, and continuing to grow up, involves taking risks. When we’re lucky, we have people who care about us there to encourage us to try new things, brush us off when we tumble, and talk about it after. Post climbing, Ro said, “I was NERVOUS to try, Mama. But I’m proud I can CLIMB!” Thanks for that, fearless kid. Let’s keep talking about it. Mary Pacios A Retrospective 3 - June 1 Reception for the Artist First Thursday, May 3, 2012 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm Music by: ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 1 3 1 SE OAK ST PORTLAND Gypsy Jazz West Kim Swennes on Celtic Harp REFRESHMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED EVENT WILL BE IN THE DINING HALL FEATURING VOICES FROM THE NEWLY RELEASED ORAL HISTORY INCLUDING SEATTLE ACT1VIST/NARRAT0RS ARNETTE ADAMS ANITRA FREEMAN, MONA JOYNER, DEBRA MARTINSON JESSIE PEDRO, ANNA TAILFEATHERS 0 DELORES WINSTON. Portrait of Jim, charcoal, 44”x30” 2011 ARTREACH GALLERY SW Park & SW Madison First Congregational Church (Across from the Portland Art Museum) Portland, Oregon 97205 ”SMtt 81 BI? torsi j o o w ä t o t o wiife t o hartes to n of ¡¡¡I cite bb Ihn sjjjfkrsideofÄFBfrifa ^fteytoätoiadersWififjoitorifä! tariaKstässto” ftwrf t e Pitos® te rn ? ' Hours: Mon - Fri 10:00 am - 2:00 pm of Bei Osti «ito ab sDsiHSitaiaoctoismbilhhwImBiidtaiSFtI ft« Ito Se 1«. rtj® b M î « Wft î äm M is «Mï H * as t« iffiogisp; ~8 îfh I fe r« FBinifc ÄwioLtteratofefe “Anytime I see a vendor and have extra money, I am never reluctant to buy one of my favorite papers - Street Roots! Keep up all the good work!” — Carrie Zuber SPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR SOCIAL 6 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AT WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY VANCOUVER; C= RED BY PEACE AND JUSTICE WORKS, ST, FRANCIS OF ASSISI CATHOLIC CHUf^H^ STREET ROOTS & WOMEN S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE 8 FREEBOM FOR MORE W O a M A W J 0t) X0 ROOM Of HER OWN, SEE;
