Who's Polluting My Pool?

Lately I’ve felt so scattered by all that I have to do that I can’t seem to settle my mind enough to concentrate on a book. But today I had go to Sasha’s school, which is way out at the end of a subway line, so I took something to read for the ride, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. This book is a kind of a touchstone, or I Ching, for me. Every so often, I pick it up and read a bit. Whatever story I chance upon always seems uncannily relevant to my life at the moment, exactly the wild woman wisdom I need to hear.

The chapter I opened to was about creativity, characterized as a flowing river, ever-replenishing, from which one can always draw sustenance--unless something is blocking the flow. Aha, I thought, just the thing! I have a million writing ideas percolating inside me these days but can’t seem to get them out on the page. The book relayed a cautionary tale, La Llorona, about creativity being blocked: La Llorona, a poor woman, takes up with a rich man, who gives her two children. He then decides to take them and leave La Llorona for someone his family chose for him. Crazed, La Llorona throws the children in the river, they drown, then she falls to the riverbank and dies of grief. In one version of the tale, the man is a rich manufacturer, and when La Llorona is pregnant with his children, she drinks from the river, which is polluted by his factories. Her twin babies are born blind and with webbed feet. The man rejects both La Llorona and the babies. She throws them into the river rather than subject them to the hard life before them, then dies of grief herself. In order to enter heaven, La Llorona must find the souls of her babies--in the second version the water is too polluted to see into--and wanders the riverbanks ever after, calling for them.

Pretty gruesome, huh? Pinkola Estés explains the tale in terms of creativity: La Llorona allowed her river, her life source, become polluted, poisoned, by a destructive animus--in this case, the rich man. I tried to decipher this tale’s relevance to me. Yeah, it’s true I’m not making good use of my creative energies lately. Too much kid business to attend to, worries about finances, encroachments on my time. But I also have the loving support of family and friends, who--generally-- do not sap my energy. No destructive animus here, I decided. No one polluting my pool. Nope. The tale was meant for someone else.

I exited the train at the end of the line, and met up with Ozzie. Together we went to Sasha's school for a conference I myself had requested for the purpose of opening a dialogue about mainstreaming Sasha. I wanted to be up front with Hillside that this is a goal of ours, and that we need their help to prepare Sasha, both academically and emotionally, for the transition. I hoped they would share their expertise about which schools would be better suited for Sasha, and would help us establish relationships with those schools. From past experience, I knew that addressing parents’ concerns was not Hillside's forté but the process of mainstreaming required their participation.

Ozzie and I anticipated that they would insist that Sasha couldn't be mainstreamed, that she was doing terribly. But the meeting opened with one teacher plunking down a huge volume listing the city's hundreds of public high schools in front of me and Ozzie. That’s good, I thought. They’re listening, trying to help. But then began a subtler method of dissuasion: they cautioned us about large, overwhelming schools, oversized classes, dangerous neighborhoods. When we asked what schools they recommended, they shrugged their shoulders. They gave anecdotes illustrating Sasha’s immaturity and unreadiness. Always her failings were in spite of Hillside's wonderful program that fully addressed the students' academic and social/emotional needs. Then I understood. The list of schools was a raft they were throwing out to us since we were (ill-advisedly) choosing to venture out into the ocean of other school possibilities. They fully expected us to drown.

We left the meeting feeling sapped of the very energy we need to accomplish our goal. I felt poisoned. Then it hit me: the destructive animus. It's the school! Although Hillside has helped Sasha in many ways, the majority of my interactions with them have been supremely frustrating. When I've expressed concerns about Sasha not getting any homework, or watching (uneducational, PG-13) movies in class, or not being challenged, I have felt, at the very least, unlistened to and more often than not, demoralized, alienated, mute, powerless. What can I do? There's no place else to go. Sasha likes it there. But now we are exploring leaving, mainstreaming. We're still in the initial stages of feeling out whether it's even possible and if so, where, but I feel a rush of energy at the idea that I, as a parent, may not always have to swallow this poison. Even if we don't end up mainstreaming Sasha, just recognizing the source of the pollution has helped unblock my creative flow. The water's clearer than it was before; I can see deeper into the pool. Wild woman wisdom at work.