Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  e eternal moderation expected of Roman men was, ultimately, a fl exible demand. For most of the population, who lived along the edges of subsistence, moderation was imposed, without pity, by the unrelenting pressures of their material condition; destitution was the better part of virtue. Sex outside the house was limited to occasional moments of release, a day at the spectacles, a religious festival, or a visit to a tavern. It was the more privileged classes who had to navigate the choppy waters of sexual restraint by the strength of the will alone. Th e city and the school off ered perpetual temptation. Rich youngbloods were characteristically plea sure seekers. Th e house hold itself was a haunt of allurements: private baths, spacious groves, shaded promenades, all attended by an army of servants. Th e dinner party remained the central venue of social intercourse in the Roman Empire, and unsurprisingly it is here that endless tales of erotic intrigue turn up. Th ough Roman men increasingly dined in the company of their wives, the all- male symposium— with trains of female as well as male servants and entertainers— was always a staple of sociability. “What happens to the boys when they’re in their cups, and what the men dare when Pan has hold of them, would take a long time to tell,” said the satirist. But to a phi los o pher, nowhere was the battle between desire and moderation so starkly fought. At the symposia, the quality of a man’s character was revealed. In a telling contrast, the vast body of ancient moral and medical literature rests almost completely silent on the ethics of self- stimulation. So eff ectively had slavery, prostitution, and other forms of conviviality rendered plea sure available to men of means, so far beyond ethical surveillance was this most private sphere of all, that it simply did not enter formal moral conversation. Late classical sexual culture was, tellingly, as anxious about nighttime revels as it was indiff erent to masturbation. Th e public sexual code of the second century was resolutely ancient. Th e association between masculinity and dominance, the benign neglect of youthful endeavors, the circulation of dishonored bodies, and the fl uid restraints of self- control were all distinctly late classical. In material terms, the Roman Empire was the most complete and most refi ned expression of a sexual economy that had its origins in the very birth of the classical Mediterranean city- state. If the disciplines of sexual self- knowledge were more rigorous in the high empire, the delivery of sexual pleasures was more effi - cient than ever. Th e velocity of commerce was greater, and the self- T H E M O R A L I T I E S O F S E X I N T H E R O M A N E M P I R E 

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  She remembers a lot of the stuff that happened to us. If the social worker’s coming to get our story, we need our sister Cherie.” Addie rests her arm against the kitchen door frame and tells us it’s fine, as long as it’s a local call. For us, a kitchen telephone hanging on the wall is usually just a good weapon waiting to be dismounted to help smash cockroaches and chase other vermin around the kitchen. “My only request is that before you use the phone, please ask first,” she says. “We may be expecting calls and just need to keep the line free.” Addie hands me the receiver and I approach the base to poke my fingers through the rotary holes. Each spin of the dial adds to my nervousness because I know I have to tell Cherie what I did. As I fill her in on what’s happened over the past few days, I can hear baby A.J. murmuring under her chin. “The social worker says the more details I give, the more likely the judge will emancipate me and take Cookie’s guardianship of the kids away. Can you get over here?” I wait for her to respond with annoyance, telling me she has a two-month-old to worry about and her in-laws will give her a hard time about watching him, but instead she says, “Hold on. Give me the address.” By nine thirty she’s on the front porch, introducing herself to Addie. See how stable my big sister’s life is? I want to ask Addie. Isn’t she great? Addie puts on another pot of coffee and some store-brand Oreos on a plate. I fill myself with sugar and caffeine, thrilled that Cherie and Addie are hitting it off with all this mother-to-mother talk. If we were here for any reason other than the affidavit, I’d be disappointed to see the social worker arrive and interrupt our breakfast date. On the table between my elbows, Ms. Davis places pages and pages of lined paper with carbon sheets in between each page. She explains that there will be two copies of my affidavit—one for my file and one for the judge. She encourages us to start at the very beginning, as far back as we can recall. She instructs me what to write in the very first paragraph of the affidavit I, Regina Marie Calcaterra, do swear that the information provided is a true description of my time with my mother, Camille Diane Calcaterra. The truthfulness of this affidavit is supported by my older sisters Cherie and Camille. Dated, November 1980. Then Ms. Davis tells us the rest of the affidavit will be in our own words. At first we search one another’s faces for memories and details . . . but it doesn’t take long before it’s all flowing so fast that my pen can barely keep up with our words.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was impossible so quickly to formulate a plan, but I felt the important thing was to go to Charles, to say something or other to him. It took me ages to get a cab, and as at last it locked and braked its way through the West End closing-time crowds, I found all my ideas of what I might do rattling away, leaving me in a queer empty panic. I left the cab in a jam a block from the Club and ran along the pavement and up the steps. The porter emerged from his cabin with an expression of moody servility and told me Charles had left quarter of an hour before. I hardly thanked him, but dawdled out again, realising that at this moment he was probably roaring along the Central Line on his way home. I drifted around in front of the Club as if waiting for somebody, hands in jacket-pockets, chewing my lip. Between the high neo-classical façade and that of the adjacent office block was a narrow chasm, gated from the street. The gate opened, and Abdul emerged, evidently also on his way home; he had on a light anorak over a T-shirt, and cheap grey slacks. I went up to him, surprised him as he locked the gate, greeted him with the conviction that he somehow held the answer to my problem. ‘Hey, William,’ he said, ‘all finished now.’ He gave me a flashy smile and was ready, I think, to move off and abandon me, so that I said recklessly: ‘Oh Abdul, did you know that Lord Nantwich had been to prison?’ He turned back and looked at me and I looked back at him closely, his lined face, pink inner lips and fierce eyes slightly bloodshot, more guarded in the street’s shadow. ‘Of course,’ he said lightly. ‘Everyone knows that.’ I pursed my lips and nodded three or four times. ‘Have you always known?’ ‘I have always known. Of course. I went to see him in there when I was a little boy. No place to take a kid,’ he added. It was a detail that gave my evening a sickening completeness, like an orchid seen in a nature film brought in a few seconds from bud to heavy perfection. I was laughing nervously as he turned back towards the gate. ‘Hey, come in here,’ he said. I followed him with a kind of absent-minded excitement and waited as he locked the gate behind us and went along after him past bins and milk-crates that were hard to make out in the alleyway’s blackness. He opened a door and the flickering of the strip-lights was dazzling. It was the Club’s kitchen, abundantly old-fashioned, with many pantries and offices, windowed partitions and white-tiled walls.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I thought this was important, as I was out for most of the day & the invalid has been more or less in his hands. Yesterday he was very bad & I spent much of the night with him, huddling on a stool under the mosquito net, giving him analgesics & mopping his brow. It was terribly hot & he seemed to be on fire: the sweat stood on his brow within seconds of my sponging it away, his long eye-lashes fluttered, his mouth hung open. He drank literally gallons of water. When at last he slept—murmuring and shifting incessantly—I felt again for a moment alone, weary & longing for sleep myself, yet sick with anxiety that I had not done it right, that he wd not recover. Of course when I went to bed I lay awake & tossed about & sweated as if it had been me that had been the scorpion’s victim. Then almost at once the dawn came up through the shutters, the heat, that seemed only to have faded for a moment, built up alarmingly & for once the beautiful simplicity of the house revealed itself as a menacing bareness, a kind of trap in which to escape from one room was only to be imprisoned in the next. I felt my responsibility weigh on me, at the same time as it buoyed me up—an asphyxiating feeling. More strictly it was like a cramp when swimming—a sudden challenge in a friendly element, threatening where before it had only sustained. Everything in this job is personal: it is government on the ground, journeys of many days with a band of men across deserts or through sudden floods & then the instantaneous fields of flowers. It is not sitting at a desk: it is standing in scant shade & deciding between one naked tribesman and another. It is not bookish & bureaucratic: it takes place in open spaces almost without end, in which the rare, unobvious & beautiful people materialise out of the quivering heat. Their beauty of course is neither here nor there: their heads could grow beneath their shoulders … But when I went back through the doorless aperture into the room where Taha was, asleep, unaware, & yet tormented, like some saint in ecstasy or martyrdom, I felt all my vague, ideal emotions about Africa & my wandering, autocratic life here take substance before my bleary eyes. He lay with his head back, half off the pillow, an arm flung out, the fingers twitching with his pulse, only an inch above the floor … At once I saw he was my responsibility made flesh: he was all the offspring I will never have, all my futurity. He became so beautiful to me that my mouth went dry, & when he woke he found me staring at him. I’m not sure if he was the one I prayed for or the one to whom I made my intercession.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  115Lecture 12—The Church and the Scientific Revolution CONTROVERSY õChurch authorities liked the Ptolemaic system for a few reasons, including that it had the enormous advantage of jibing with a literal interpretation of scripture—like the part where Joshua asks the Lord to make the sun stand still so the Israelites can finish massacring the Amorites. õThe truly controversial issue was that Copernicus and Galileo overturned Aristotle. The Catholic Church needed Aristotle. Theologians had built centuries of doctrine on the ideas of that pagan Greek. Take the doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist literally become the body and blood of Christ. õTo explain how in the world this could be when the stuff still looked like bread and wine, the church relied on Aristotle’s ideas of substance— the essence of something—and accidents, the outward appearance. The accidents of the bread and wine remained the same, but the unseen essence, the substance, became the Lord’s f lesh and blood. õThe medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas relied on this explanation of accidents and substance, as well as Aristotle’s theories of causation and a host of other things, in order to explain everything from God’s work in the world to the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. õCopernicus seems to have grasped the huge implications of dethroning Aristotle, and he proceeded very carefully. When he finally published his findings, he dedicated the book to Pope Paul III, whom he knew had an interest in the stars. And he emphasized in the dedication that his main audience was fellow astronomers, so theologians should not perceive his work as a threat.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  From there, these signals virtually influence the entire brain, and subliminal “decisions” are made that profoundly influence our actions. Many of our likes and dislikes, our attractions and repulsions, as well as our irrational fears, are the result of these implicit computations in our internal states. It can be said that humans have two brains: one in the gut (the enteric brain) and the “upstairs brain,” sitting within the vaulted dome of the cranium. These two brains are in direct communication with each other through the hefty vagus nerve. And if we go with the numbers—nine sensory/afferent nerves to every one motor/efferent nerve—our guts apparently have more to say to our brains (by a ratio of 9:1) than our brains have to say to our guts! p Let’s look more deeply at the functions of this massive nerve, which not only connects organs and brain, but functions primarily in the direction of gut to brain. Why is it even important for the body to talk to the brain in the first place? From the perspective of evolution (and the general parsimony of nature), it is unlikely that such a myriad of nerve fibers would be allotted to making bidirectional communication possible if that linkage weren’t vitally important. Most of us have experienced butterflies in our stomach when asked to make a public speech. On the other hand, some people are known for “having gall,” while others are quite “bitter” or “bilious.” And then too, at times we may have “knots in our guts” and are “twisted up inside.” q Or we may be “heavyhearted” or nursing a “heartache.” And blessed are the times when we have surrendered to the pure mirth of a spontaneous “belly laugh.” Or, again, we may be “openhearted and filled with warmth in our bellies,” feeling an inner peace and love for the whole world. On the occasions when we have accomplished notable achievements, our chests may “swell with pride.” Such is the variety of poignant messages emanating from our viscera. When aroused to fight or flight (sympathetic arousal), our guts tighten, and the motility of the gastrointestinal system is inhibited. After all, there is no sense in spending a lot of metabolic energy on digestion when it is best used to speed up the heart’s rhythm and to strengthen its contraction, as well as to tense our muscles in readiness for impending action.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I hope this book educates, encourages, and uplifts the growing community of people engaged in the struggle toward justice, just as they continue to encourage and uplift me. Bryan Stevenson Introduction [image file=image_rsrc32J.jpg] Higher GroundIwasn’t prepared to meet a condemned man. In 1983, I was a twenty-three-year-old student at Harvard Law School working in Georgia on an internship, eager and inexperienced and worried that I was in over my head. I had never seen the inside of a maximum-security prison—and had certainly never been to death row. When I learned that I would be visiting this prisoner alone, with no lawyer accompanying me, I tried not to let my panic show. Georgia’s death row is in a prison outside of Jackson, a remote town in a rural part of the state. I drove there by myself, heading south on I-75 from Atlanta, my heart pounding harder the closer I got. I didn’t really know anything about capital punishment and hadn’t even taken a class in criminal procedure yet. I didn’t have a basic grasp of the complex appeals process that shaped death penalty litigation, a process that would in time become as familiar to me as the back of my hand. When I signed up for this internship, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that I would actually be meeting condemned prisoners. To be honest, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a lawyer. As the miles ticked by on those rural roads, the more convinced I became that this man was going to be very disappointed to see me. — I studied philosophy in college and didn’t realize until my senior year that no one would pay me to philosophize when I graduated. My frantic search for a “post-graduation plan” led me to law school mostly because other graduate programs required you to know something about your field of study to enroll; law schools, it seemed, didn’t require you to know anything. At Harvard, I could study law while pursuing a graduate degree in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, which appealed to me. I was uncertain about what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it would have something to do with the lives of the poor, America’s history of racial inequality, and the struggle to be equitable and fair with one another. It would have something to do with the things I’d already seen in life so far and wondered about, but I couldn’t really put it together in a way that made a career path clear.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  JEROME. Therefore he does not ask as being himself ignorant. But as the Saviour asks where Lazarus is buried (John 11:34.), in order that they who shewed. Him the sepulchre might be so far prepared for faith, and believe that the dead was verily raised again—so John, about to be put to death by Herod, sends his disciples to Christ, that by this opportunity of seeing His signs and wonders they might believe on Him, and so might learn through their master’s enquiry. But John’s disciples had somewhat of bitterness and jealousy towards the Lord, as their former enquiry shewed, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? CHRYSOSTOM. Yet whilst John was with them he held them rightly convinced concerning Christ. But when he was going to die, he was more concerned on their behalf. For he feared that he might leave his disciples a prey to some pernicious doctrine, and that they should remain separate from Christ, to whom it had been his care to bring all his followers from the beginning. Had he said to them, Depart from me, for He is better than me, he would not have prevailed with them, as they would have supposed that he spoke this in humility, which opinion would have drawn them more closely to him. What then does he? He waits to hear through them that Christ works miracles. Nor did he send all, but two only, (whom perhaps he chose as more ready to believe than the rest,) that the reason of his enquiry might be unsuspected, and that from the things themselves which they should see they might understand the difference between him and Jesus. HILARY. John then is providing not for his own, but his disciples’ ignorance; that they might know that it was no other whom he had proclaimed, he sent them to see His works, that the works might establish what John had spoken; and that they should not look for any other Christ, than Him to whom His works had borne testimony.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Clement has what might seem an embarrassing amount of advice on the proper consumption of food and drink. His interest in dietetics and medical lore places him in the mainstream of imperial culture. Clement admired those who abstained from wine completely in the name of chastity and “thought it best if boys and girls are kept apart from this drug completely. It is not advisable to pour liquid heat on smouldering youth.… Ramped up by its influence, their privates expand and their breasts swell, so that their genitals are an omen, the image of fornication.” Clement would harness conventional medical wisdom in the name of not just healthful balance, but also transformation. “Food is for hunger and drink is for thirst, but it calls for the most acute self-protection against any slip, for one step down the path of wine makes one apt to fall. With care we can keep our souls pure, dry, and luminous.” The more extreme regimes of mortification, which will exploit the medical tradition with gusto, lie not far in the future.51 Clement’s Christians find their will to transcend the lures of desire and pleasure threatened in every direction. His writings are an unmatched guide to the mundane dangers of modest wealth in a household of the Roman Empire. He is the first Christian to worry about the temptation that slaves, specifically eunuchs, posed to the women of a household. He is distressed by the built environment of the ancient city, aghast at a culture in which erotic art was a normal accoutrement of the domestic sphere. Clement’s believers faced constant visual bombardment. They were surrounded by the vibrant erotic anarchy of ancient Alexandria. Clement was, like so many of his contemporaries, acutely sensitive to the ocular experience of living in a great Roman town. For him the words of Christ not to look with lust posed an overwhelming challenge. “He pulls up desire from its root.” Inviting looks were “nothing other than adultery with the eyes, desire cast from afar through them. For the eyes are corrupted before the rest of the body.” In his belief that vision was a sort of particulate intromission, it has been noted, Clement is not at all far from Achilles Tatius, who described the erotic gaze as “fondling from afar.” What for Achilles was one of the harmless thrills of life was for Clement an environmental hazard, clogging the air with pollutants that threatened the purity of the body.52

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  What most parents don’t realize is that their children can be reasonably content despite the failing marriage. Kids are not necessarily overwhelmed with distress because Mommy and Daddy are arguing. In fact, children and adults can cope pretty well in protecting one another during the stress of a failing marriage or unhappy intact marriage. Mothers and fathers often make every effort to shield their marital troubles from their children. It’s only after one or both have decided to divorce that they fight in full view. Children who sense tension at home turn their attention outside, spending more time with friends and participating in school activities. (Gary, whose parents’ marriage was often unhappy, did exactly the same thing.) Children learn at an early age to turn a deaf ear to their parents’ quarrels. The notion that all or even most parents who divorce are locked into screaming conflict that their children witness is plainly wrong. In many unhappy marriages, one or both people suffer for many years in total silence—feeling lonely, sexually deprived, and profoundly disappointed. Most of the children of divorce say that they had no idea their parents’ marriage was teetering on the brink. Although some had secretly thought about divorce or discussed it with their siblings, they had no inkling that their parents were planning to break up. Nor did they understand the reality of what divorce would entail for them. For children, divorce is a watershed that permanently alters their lives. The world is newly perceived as a far less reliable, more dangerous place because the closest relationships in their lives can no longer be expected to hold firm. More than anything else, this new anxiety represents the end of childhood. Karen confirmed this change in several of our follow-up interviews. Ten years after her parents’ divorce, I learned that she was attending the University of California at Santa Cruz so that she could run home on weekends and be available for crises. And there were plenty of those, mostly involving both her younger brother and sister. When she was twenty, she told me angrily, “Since their divorce I’ve been responsible for both my parents. My dad became a pathetically needy man who always wants a woman to take care of him. I’m the backup when his girlfriends leave him. My mom is still a mess, always involved with the wrong kind of men. I’ve had to take care of them as well as my brother and sister.” Many Losses WHEN MOST PEOPLE hear the word “divorce,” they think it means one failed marriage.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 4: Happiness or felicity is twofold. One is perfect, to which we look forward in the life to come; the other is imperfect, in respect of which some are said to be happy in this life. The happiness of this life is twofold, one is according to the active life, the other according to the contemplative life, as the Philosopher asserts (Ethic. x, 7,8). Now wealth conduces instrumentally to the happiness of the active life which consists in external actions, because as the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 8) “we do many things by friends, by riches, by political influence, as it were by instruments.” On the other hand, it does not conduce to the happiness of the contemplative life, rather is it an obstacle thereto, inasmuch as the anxiety it involves disturbs the quiet of the soul, which is most necessary to one who contemplates. Hence it is that the Philosopher asserts (Ethic. x, 8) that “for actions many things are needed, but the contemplative man needs no such things,” namely external goods, “for his operation; in fact they are obstacles to his contemplation.” Man is directed to future happiness by charity; and since voluntary poverty is an efficient exercise for the attaining of perfect charity, it follows that it is of great avail in acquiring the happiness of heaven. Wherefore our Lord said (Mat. 19:21): “Go, sell all [Vulg.: ‘what’] thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” Now riches once they are possessed are in themselves of a nature to hinder the perfection of charity, especially by enticing and distracting the mind. Hence it is written (Mat. 13:22) that “the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choketh up the word” of God, for as Gregory says (Hom. xv in Ev.) by “preventing the good desire from entering into the heart, they destroy life at its very outset.” Consequently it is difficult to safeguard charity amidst riches: wherefore our Lord said (Mat. 19:23) that “a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven,” which we must understand as referring to one who actually has wealth, since He says that this is impossible for him who places his affection in riches, according to the explanation of Chrysostom (Hom. lxiii in Matth.), for He adds (Mat. 19:24): “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Hence it is not said simply that the “rich man” is blessed, but “the rich man that is found without blemish, and that hath not gone after gold,” and this because he has done a difficult thing, wherefore the text continues (Mat. 19:9): “Who is he? and we will praise him; for he hath done wonderful things in his life,” namely by not loving riches though placed in the midst of them.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  No matter our financial position, our family somehow managed to spend just more than we had on holiday shopping. We didn’t qualify for credit cards, but there were many ways to spend money you didn’t have. You could write a future date on a check (a practice called “post-dating”) so the recipient couldn’t cash it until you had money in the bank. You could draw a short-term loan from a payday lender. If all else failed, you could borrow money from the grandparents. Indeed, I recall many winter conversations in which Mom pleaded with Mamaw and Papaw to lend her money to ensure that their grandchildren had a nice Christmas. They’d always protest Mom’s understanding of what made Christmas nice, but they’d still give in. It might be the day before Christmas, but our tree would be piled high with the trendiest gifts even as our family savings dwindled from very little to nothing, then from nothing to something less than that. When I was a baby, Mom and Lindsay frantically searched for a Teddy Ruxpin doll, a toy so popular that every store in town sold out. It was expensive and, as I was only two, unnecessary. But Lindsay still remembers the day wasted searching for the toy. Mom somehow received a tip about a stranger who was willing to part with one of his Ruxpins at a significant markup. Mom and Lindsay traveled to his house to fetch the trinket that stood between a child who could barely walk and the Christmas of his dreams. The only thing I remember of old Teddy is finding him in a box years later, his sweater tattered and his face covered in crusted snot. It was the holiday season that taught me about tax refunds, which I gathered were free bits of money sent to the poor in the new year to save them from the financial indiscretions of the old one. Income tax refunds were the ultimate backstops. “We can definitely afford this; we’ll just pay for it with the refund check” became a Christmas mantra. But the government was fickle. There were few moments more anxious than the one when Mom came home from the tax preparer in early January. Sometimes the refund exceeded expectations. But when Mom learned that Uncle Sam couldn’t cover the Christmas splurge because her “credits” weren’t as high as she had hoped, that could ruin your whole month. Ohio Januaries are depressing enough as it is. I assumed that rich people celebrated Christmas just like us, perhaps with fewer financial worries and even cooler presents. Yet I noticed after my cousin Bonnie was born that Christmastime at Aunt Wee’s house had a decidedly different flavor. Somehow my aunt and uncle’s children ended up with more pedestrian gifts than I had come to expect as a child.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Then ask what they understand about divorce. Ask about their friends’ experiences. Let them speak. Let them tell you about their worry of losing you, about their strange ideas of having to be put in a foster home, about children not having funds to go to college. They may be full of bad information and you can correct them gently. Some children will be frozen into silence. Try to help them say what they’re scared of or relieved about. After all, you know them well. Remember that whether or not they speak, every child will have a mind that is spinning fast forward. They will all be worried, some realistically, some exaggeratedly. Keep in mind that there are no empty spaces in their minds. Even when they say “I don’t know,” they can have ideas that are too scary to articulate. Keep in mind that they’ll try with all their might to protect you, that they’re just as worried about you as you are about them, and that they may happily lie to you about what they feel if they think it will comfort you. Then tell them what plans you are making and ask for response and input. Leave it open and tentative. Be sure to give them some real choices. The worst is when they feel like inanimate objects that are just distributed between two homes. This feeling of having no choice can lead to a combination of anger and powerlessness that has long-term effects on their initiative later in life. Tell them soberly that adults who divorce one another continue to love and care for their children until the children are grown. Talk about good plans and what you’ll do together. But don’t get carried away. Schedule another meeting to discuss future plans after everyone has had a chance to think, so you can mutually explore what’s possible. Most of all, you need to tell your children that divorce is very sad for both of you and that you are very sorry. Keep in mind that this is one of the saddest days in any child’s life and nothing will save you from having to face it. Level with them that things will be discombobulated for a while, but that you promise to keep them informed. End by saying how much you all need to help each other. Talk about courage, that you all need to try not to be cranky, but it’s okay to cry and be angry. You may all slip, but it’s important to try.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  For women, the decision to have a child was also mixed because it brought up again the issue of whether or not they could trust their husbands to be there. In fact, a fifth of the children were born out of wedlock, and none of the women in this group was in a stable or even a good relationship during the pregnancy. Most of these single mothers are having a very difficult time. Only a few have found stable partners and they are not working in jobs that pay well. After one or more abortions, they had decided to bring the child to term. Most had wanted a baby since early adolescence to offset their loneliness. These women spoke about their children with great love, and the ones I saw were well cared for at great sacrifice by mothers who had only a little help from their families. For the women who had children within a marriage, several obsessed about whether they should take their husband’s name because in the case of divorce, they reasoned, he might be more likely to provide support for a child that bore his name. The decision of some women to quit work full-time was also colored by their fear of relying on the continued presence of their husband to provide for the family. They also struggled with how many children to have. Most opted for one or two. A few had three. Every part of their lives—in love, marriage, and parenthood—evoked new promises and old disappointments. The men spoke of their growing wish to become fathers in the context of their relationships. One young man told me, “I think I’m finally ready to be a doting father.” Unlike men from intact families, they did not take fatherhood for granted. They had weighty agendas for their children, loved being fathers, and took great pride in their children. “My greatest joy is to see my children grow and develop and overcome the hang-ups that I had as a child,” one man told me. “My hope for me and for them is that the deleterious effect of the divorce and the pain that I endured as a child would someday stop. And that they will succeed in things I was never able to do.” Another spelled out his pleasure in his son’s achieving where he had failed as a child: “When I see Thomas do the things that I could never do as a child, I can’t explain how gratifying it is. He’s five years old. He has on his backpack. He’s raring to go. The bus comes and he gets on, ready for camp. No crying, no hesitation. I just couldn’t have done that. I was too insecure. I’d have said, no, no. And he just doesn’t have any of those fears. To see my son so well adjusted, to see him succeed in things I was never able to do, is the most rewarding thing that has ever happened to me.”

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Although the specifi c rigors and allowances of his sexual code fl ow from a reading of Paul’s epistles, Methodius does reveal one preoccupation that would have been as unfamiliar to the apostle as to Plato. “Of all evils, the greatest that has taken root among the many is the notion that the movements of the stars cause our sins and that the necessities of fate steer our life.” In his concern with astral determinism, Methodius marks himself as a man of his age. His tirade against determinism addressed one of the predominant themes of intellectual culture in the Roman Empire, one whose currents run through pop u lar wonderment and formal philosophy alike. Methodius dedicated an entire tract, On Free Will, to the problem of fate. He revealed himself as an advocate of radical moral freedom. Th e Christian was possessed of a “self- ruling and autonomous” moral faculty, “free of all compulsion, its own master to choose what it wishes, slave neither to fate nor fortune.” Th e problem of free will cut to the core of the most profound questions about the nature of the cosmos and man’s place in it. Unsurprisingly, debates about moral autonomy gravitated toward sex. Sex became a privileged testing ground for doctrines of moral freedom. Th e authors of romance knew as much. For Achilles Tatius, Leucippe’s “freedom” was a perfect alloy of her virtue, her social status, and her assurance that she was safe within the rules of the romantic narrative; Achilles Tatius playfully mocked Stoic ideals of freedom by revealing how little space for action was implied in the notion of voluntary assent to fate. For Christians, there could be no ambiguity about a matter so fundamental, and so eternally consequential, as the cause of sin. Nothing— not the stars, not physical violence, not even the quiet undertow of social expectation— could be held responsible for the individual’s choice of good and evil. Th e Christians of T H E W I L L A N D T H E WO R L D  the second and third centuries invented the notion of free will. Against the threat of gnostic determinism, amid a pop u lar culture increasingly addicted to astrology, and in opposition to a philosophical culture with ever more sophisticated accounts of moral causation, the Christians entered the fray with a message that was jarringly simple and distinctive. Th e individual, what ever his or her condition, was a moral agent with unqualifi ed ca-pability and responsibility. Th ese crystalline notions of freedom and re- sponsibility came to focus on the realm of moral behavior whose wellsprings might seem most inscrutable: sex. Th

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  NINETEEN Picking Up the Pieces, One by One PART FIVE My Best Case: Lisa TWENTY Is Not Fighting Enough? TWENTY-ONE Children of Divorce TWENTY-TWO Conclusions Appendix: Research Sample Index Acknowledgments About the Author BOOKS BY JUDITH WALLERSTEIN, PH.D. Copyright Notes PrefaceIN THE FALL OF 1994 I received a phone call that was to entirely revise my understanding of divorce and how it has changed the nature of American society. On the other end of the line was Karen James, one of the children in a longitudinal study on divorce that I began in 1971 and last wrote about in the late 1980s. I remembered her well. Karen was a charming, lively child who was ten years old when her parents separated. I had interviewed her then, and again when she was fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five years old. The last time we met she was miserable, living with a man she didn’t love. I recalled how concerned I was about her despair. But the voice on the phone sounded strong and vibrant. “This is Karen James,” she announced. “I’m calling from North Carolina. How are you?” After we exchanged routine pleasantries, she said, “I’m going to be in the Bay Area next week. Do you have time to see me?” “Of course,” I answered. “I’ve thought about you many times.” “I’m in a whole other place than our last meeting,” said Karen. “It’s all new. I’m coming to town to get married next Saturday but I can come up to Marin on Thursday afternoon. Would that work?” I told Karen that I was honored that she could fit me in during such a busy week, and we set a time to get together. I was absolutely delighted by her call. Karen is one of the many children who, after divorce, moved into the vacuum created by parents who are overwhelmed by the changes in their lives and unable to carry on as they had before. Divorce often leads to a partial or complete collapse in an adult’s ability to parent for months and sometimes years after the breakup. Caught up in rebuilding their own lives, mothers and fathers are preoccupied with a thousand and one concerns, which can blind them to the needs of their children. In many such familes, one child—often the oldest girl—takes on responsibilities far beyond anything she has done before. These young caregivers quietly assume the nurturing and moral guidance of their younger siblings and also serve as confidant, adviser, caregiver, and even parent for their own parents during the years that follow.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  By seeing how your life has been different from that of people raised in good intact families, you will begin to understand these roots for the first time. Your fears may not vanish, but they can surely be muted. That’s my first purpose. This book is also written for those of you who are married to a child of divorce. Why is it that in dealing with your spouse you so often feel as if you’re walking on eggs? Why do you have to be so careful about even trivial disagreements, and why is it so hard to change your plans? In deciding to have children, you may have run into an emotional blockade, and when it comes to getting along with your spouse’s family, the complications never cease. Your spouse has deep anxieties that seem strangely out of sync in such an otherwise highly functioning person. But if you can understand your spouse and accommodate to special needs, he or she will be profoundly grateful. Children of divorce have not had many people in their lives who understand how scared they sometimes get in situations that others take for granted. And, of course, this book is written for those parents who are standing at the crossroads. Should you decide to divorce, what will happen to your children and how can you help them? Should you decide to stay together, what will be the price for you and your children who grow up in an unhappy marriage? I have drawn on many decades of research on divorce to offer advice to parents at the time of the breakup and during the years that follow. I have spelled out how to tell children of your decision to divorce. This is very important in setting the stage for the postdivorce family. Your child will never forget what you say (or fail to say) and the emotional ambience of the family meeting. I also explain in detail how to choose a custody arrangement that will benefit you and your child, and how to modify this arrangement as the child grows and her needs and interests change. Among the many issues I discuss is how to help your child when there has been violence in the home; many children witness it as the marriage comes to a stormy end and people who would not normally strike one another do so with abandon. I have been concerned for many years about the child’s sense that as a child of divorce she has fewer rights and less influence on her life compared to her friends in intact families; I suggest many ways that parents can help the child feel she is loved and respected.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  When I got to the court where the hearing would take place, about a three-hour drive from the prison, I went to see Avery in the court’s basement holding cell. After going through my usual protocol about the milkshake, I tried to get him to understand what would happen in court. I was concerned that seeing some of the witnesses—people who had dealt with him when he was in foster care—might upset him. The testimony the experts would provide would also be very direct in characterizing his disabilities and illness. I wanted him to understand why we were doing that. He was pleasant and agreeable, as always. When I went upstairs to the courtroom, I spotted the correctional officer who had given me such a hard time when I had first met Avery. I hadn’t seen the officer since that initial ugly encounter. I had asked another client about the guard and was told that he had a bad reputation and usually worked the late shift. Most people tried to steer clear of him. He must have been the officer assigned to transport Avery to the hearing, which made me worried about how Avery might have been treated on the trip, but he had seemed his usual self. Over the next three days we presented our evidence about Avery’s background. The experts who spoke about Avery’s disabilities were terrific. They weren’t partial or biased, just very persuasive in detailing how organic brain damage, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder can conspire to create severe mental impairment. They explained that the psychosis and other serious mental health problems that burdened Mr. Jenkins could lead to dangerous behavior, but this behavior was a manifestation of serious illness, not a reflection of his character. We also put forth evidence about the foster care system and how it had failed Avery. Several of the foster parents with whom Avery had been placed were later convicted of sexual abuse and criminal mismanagement of foster children. We discussed how Avery had been passed from one unhappy situation to the next, until he was drug-addicted and homeless. Several former foster parents admitted to being very frustrated by Avery because they weren’t equipped to deal with his serious mental health problems. I argued to the judge that not taking Avery’s mental health issues into consideration at trial was as cruel as saying to someone who has lost his legs, “You must climb these stairs with no assistance, and if you don’t, you’re just lazy.” Or to say to someone who is blind, “You should get across this busy interstate highway unaided, or you’re just cowardly.” There are hundreds of ways we accommodate physical disabilities—or at least understand them. We get angry when people fail to recognize the need for thoughtful and compassionate assistance when it comes to the physically disabled, but because mental disabilities aren’t visible in the same way, we tend to be dismissive of the needs of the disabled and quick to judge their deficits and failures.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Cherie turns off the ignition and helps us unload two stacks of presents so high we have to coach each other to navigate our eager approach to the front door, where we’re met by a woman in a velour jogging suit and giant hair who, instead of welcoming us or introducing herself, tells us Cookie hasn’t returned with the kids yet. “Of course she hasn’t,” Cherie says. We look at each other, wondering how long it will take her to invite us in. We finally break the awkwardness and trudge back to the car. Cherie starts the car and flips on the heat full-blast. Then she walks to the corner phone booth to call her husband and tell him she’ll be home later than she planned. We sing to the radio and take turns knocking on the front door to ask whether Cookie has called with an update. Hours pass. Cherie tells us she’s running low on gas and has to go home to feed her baby. She drives Camille and me back to the Petermans’. Every hour we call Rosie and Norm’s house, and the answer is always the same. Hoping she’ll respond first thing Monday morning, we leave a message for Rosie and Norm’s social worker, whose number Addie agreed to pin on the corkboard by her phone. We stay up through the night. When Camille’s alarm clock flashes 6:00 in bright red digits, we tiptoe out to Addie’s kitchen and pick up the phone again. Their foster mother’s voice is groggy and irritated, and Rosie and Norm are still gone. MS . HARVEY BELIEVES our conclusion that Cookie’s run with the kids. “But it’s Christmas Eve,” she says, “and there’s really not a lot we can do besides wait until the county’s back from the holiday. I wouldn’t worry, though—” “Our mother has our eight-year-old sister and our twelve-year-old brother holed up in a car behind some grocery store, or in the house of whatever scuzzball she’s sleeping with this week. And you wouldn’t worry ?” Camille yells into the phone. I fold my arms across me, sick to my stomach. When Camille gets upset, the weight of my guilt for coming forward multiplies. “With the state watching over your mother’s shoulder, it doesn’t seem very likely she would do Norman and Roseanne any harm.” “She just kidnapped Norm and Rosie,” Camille says. “And you don’t think we should call the police?” “They would have to have been abducted by a stranger to warrant my calling the police.” “Our mother is more dangerous to those kids than any stranger,” Camille says. “You’re fools if you don’t track her down.” “Merry Christmas, Camille,” Ms. Harvey says, ending the call. “Tell Regina, too. Enjoy your time off from school. When I’m back from holiday vacation, I’ll look up your mother’s most recent address in the files.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  For the first time, I’m able to look differently at my childhood; at some parts, even gratefully. But the doors that his class is opening in my mind don’t offer escape from my past. The week before midterms, Cherie calls my dorm’s pay phone every night with updates about Rosie that are so dark, at moments I have to tune her out. I hear phrases— “—Clyde—” “—Cookie blames her—” “—severely depressed—” “—pills went missing—” “—only thirteen!” Mr. Brownstein’s not surprised when I pop in during his office hours. “More discussion about our laws and republic?” he says with a smile. “No. Not really. Mr. Brownstein, I have some things happening in my family.” I feel that he’s the only professor I can trust to share my background with. He removes his glasses and gestures toward the open chair across from him. “Regina, please. Sit.” “Look,” I tell him. “I prefer not to share all of this with my professors. I’m here to learn, not for sympathy.” “That’s fine.” “I don’t know if you know why your class matters so much to me, but learning the ins and outs of policy is . . . well, it’s how I’ve been able to survive.” “In your life?” he says. “Yes.” Nervously, I fold my hands. There’s no turning back, as hard as I’ve tried to paint an impression for Mr. Brownstein, the professor I admire most, that my life is neatly tied up in a bow. “Things in my family have always been difficult, and now my little sister is having a really bad time. My mother is . . . well, she’s a difficult woman, to put it mildly, and I really don’t know what’s going to happen next. And there’s the midterm next week, and I’m studying really hard—” “I know you are, Regina.” “But if I don’t end up with a good grade on it, I don’t want you to think this class isn’t a priority to me.” “When I teach history and politics,” he says, “I don’t teach it for you only to memorize answers to a test that will be forgotten days later. I teach this class so you can learn who you are as an individual—to appreciate what those more learned than you have long valued. I see how hard you’re working, Regina, and I see a lot of potential in you. I told the class at the start of the semester that if it’s not clear to me that a student has an appreciation for our government and how our nation fits into the world, I’ll fail them. But we’re not even halfway through the term, and I have a good feeling you’ll pass this class.” I leave his office, too exhausted to meet Sheryl and our friends from home for dinner in the cafeteria. When I go to plop my head on my pillow, I discover that KiKi’s written a message on ripped-off notebook paper: Call Camille .