Mommy, PhD

Regenstein, the university’s stately old library, was one of my favorite places when I studied at UChicago. I knew every musty nook and cranny of that imperious space, its perpetual twilight lighting and impenetrable filing system. Although staffed by the world’s crankiest librarians, I never once saw anyone reprimanded for bringing in food, the tolerance of which saved us from determining which came first, nourishment or studying. I once spent 27 straight hours there preparing a paper.

UC’s new library — one that is arguably going to enjoy a reign as the best library in the country — opens this week and I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize it if I stepped on it. It is mostly subterranean (UC loves its underground) rising above ground only in one glittering, transparent dome, like a half-buried egg constructed entirely of Swarovski crystal.

To me, it is what architecture should be: a celebration of what the building stands for, an effigy of its soul. It’s lyrical, dramatic; a poem honoring the quest for understanding.

I miss Chicago.

I know many Republicans, and while I do not agree with them, I respect several, some deeply. I cannot imagine a single one of them explaining Sarah Palin.

Highly intelligent people prefer the “evolutionarily novel,” traits and values that have cropped up relatively recently in our evolution over the “evolutionarily familiar,” traits and values that have been with us since we lived in caves. Huh.

Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people have values novel in human evolutionary history, study finds.

Why the qualifier adoptive? I don’t see how it is relevant, at this point. Perhaps it will become so, but now?

I wish the media, and everyone else, would get this straight: once an adoption is finalized, a family is a family, with all of the rights, responsibilities, emotions, angsts, trials, and joys of a family formed by birth.

Angry and disturbed teenage girls are part of all sorts of families, and have all sorts of backgrounds. It may very well prove relevant that she was abandoned by her family in Mexico and adopted at 9, in fact, it’s hard to imagine that is not a key part of the story.

But it isn’t now.

Now, it clouds the story as it is. It carries the danger of people reacting with an “Oh, she’s adopted, that explains it …” or just as perilous, tucking it into their subconscious memories as something to warn potential adopters about. Could we wait until that matters?

At the moment, we have a disturbed girl, an alarming and long-term attack, a frightened family… isn’t that enough?

Florida Girl Accused of Trying to Poison Adoptive Family.

Appearing on MTV in 1996, O'Donnell condemns masturbation. The woman on her left wishes she hadn't fought for a seat on camera.

I’ll step off Christine O’Donnell with this post, promise, because it’s distracting and ultimately rather pointless, and a scenario we all got used to back under George W. Bush.

There is a difference, though.

No matter what your opinion of the man himself is, it must be acknowledged that he at least had the sense to be born to a smart father who preceded him in the White House. Even those of us who could not for a moment take the little twerp seriously knew enough to take him seriously.

The danger with O’Donnell is that she is such a joke that we’re standing around over here giggling, waiting for the next kee-razy thing she has to say, while smart people who know how to pull the puppet strings ride her all the way to the Senate. The same thing essentially happened with Bush Jr., but at least there was some idea of who would be in charge of what when he swaggered into his daddy’s chair.

The danger with O’Donnell is that we’re listening to her idiocy at all, that we’re repeating earlier mistakes, only worse. She doesn’t matter a bit, and there’s no reason she ever should.

Of all the stories we hear about beauty, how to get it, how to keep it, how to measure it… we need more like this one.

I’m willing to bet few of you know who Katie Piper is. I didn’t. But I do know who a whole slew of far less impressive young women are, young women with aggressive publicists or tabloid-feeding lifestyles. My daughter, thankfully, doesn’t know any of them yet.

I want her to know about Katie Piper.

Katie is a 26-year-old British woman who was severely burned in March 2008 when a stranger threw sulfuric acid on her. She’d recently moved into a flat with friends, was close with her parents and sisters, enjoyed London nightlife, dabbled in 20-something career stints, was maybe gonna be a newsreader. She was pretty.

I mention that she was pretty because it’s salient. It gives an idea of how she interacted with the world before the attack, of the face she was used to presenting to others, not rightly or wrongly but simply what she saw when she looked in the mirror. The face she wore when she met new people or passed strangers on the street.

The details of the attack are horrific enough without embellishment: violent ex-boyfriend, sexual assault, lying on the street, blinded, in agony, while rescuers, who didn’t know what the acid was, determined that they could safely approach her. More than 30 surgeries to date. Massive grafts. All of the skin on her face has been replaced. To maintain healing, today she must wear a face mask 23 hours a day.

The video footage of her going about in that mask is striking: many people she encounters react visibly, giggling or pointing, apparently thinking she’s costumed herself up for attention.

I hate to admit this, but when I see it, that’s what it looks like to me, too.

What astounds me about this young woman, and why I find her story important, is not her physical survival as much as her spiritual one. Everything about her life is different from what she’d planned. She lives with her parents, who spend part of each day rubbing lotions into her scars. She faces more surgery, of course, and she will remain blind in one eye. And of course, there’s that mask. Twenty-three hours a day.

Stories about her demonstrate her courage, but what is striking is to hear her tell her own story. It would be easy, I imagine, to be consumed by self-pity — this is not what she signed up for, after all — and perhaps her private moments contain some of that. In video footage of her venturing out, you can sometimes see her run away from people, hide her face, and sob.

But that is not what she talks about when she shares her story. What she shares is a wide smile and  a ready laugh. Not philosophizing or rationalizing or forgiving, just living. Talking about life as she knows it now, a life that is colorful and interesting and full.

Listen to her tell it, sometime, when you maybe need a reminder of just how remarkable people can be, listen to her talk about wearing her new face, her created face, her constructed face —  she calls it “my beautiful face.”

So when Anna asks me some day about beauty? I hope I remember to show her Katie Piper’s face.