Author: Natalie Hart

Voice: Cultures Not My Own, Part 2

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

Have you ever felt a particular affinity for a geography or culture that is not your own? Why? What about it do you love or identify with?

Part 2: Gender Culture

For many of my growing-up years, I felt more affinity for boy culture than for girl culture. Actually, let me rephrase that. I was an Anne of Green Gables obsessive, a happy skirt wearer, a sewer and crafter, one of the few who preferred Mary to Laura Ingalls. If it was girly, I liked it.

Except for playing with girls.

Individual girls were fine. I usually had one best friend, maybe two. But I didn’t always play with the girls during recess. Even before girls started getting really mean and political (grade 5), I often preferred to run around with the boys. In Australia, where I lived from ages 6-9, this took some doing. The enormous field of a playground at Jindalee State School was divided in half: girls’ side and boys’ side, and I was often yelled at for playing tag across The Line. That didn’t mean that I joined the boys’ side in the frequent battles for who got ownership of the lunch benches, but outside of jumprope, I have few memories of hanging with the girls at recess.

When we moved to Canada, it got worse. The tiny Christian school I went to had only six other people in my grade, all girls. For some reason, coming from Australia, I didn’t wear pants, just skirts. This was a problem. Even now, it doesn’t take much to transport me back to the Simpson’s department store with my mother, desperately communicating that I needed boy’s pants, not girls pants, expecting that any moment, sirens would start wailing because we were taking corduroys from the boy’s section to the girl’s changing room so I could try them on.

When I showed up in them at school, I was coolly informed that it was good that I’d finally worn pants, because the girls had gotten together and decided that I couldn’t come to school anymore in skirts, and they were going to tell me that week.

It is any wonder that I preferred to play soccer with my younger brother and his friends?

Boy recess culture was straightforward. You chose your team and you played.

Although I could be girly about boy culture. I couldn’t stand fighting, so I became the breaker-upper of playground fights. This being the 70s, there were no teachers on our playgrounds, which were city parks, in any case. My method of breaking up the fights: being more accurate with my feet than the boys were with their fists. I kicked them until they ran apart from each other. And then the drama was over. It wasn’t revisited in ostentatiously whispered conversations. It wasn’t rehashed every day for a week. It didn’t require intervention by the teacher.

Boys were so much easier than girls. Until puberty. When everyone became problematic.

How about you? Did you move in a pack of your own kind? Prefer the other side? One of those few who got along with everyone?

 

Voice: Cultures Not My Own, Part 1

~ Natalie Hart ~ 3 Comments

I am human again. Or at least I feel human again.

After enduring several days of throbbing, pulsating, piercing, stabbing, excruciating pain due to a dead, infected tooth, not to mention the nausea/vomiting from lack of food, lack of sleep and too much pain medication, I got a wonderful root canal. I promise not to tell you about the abscess.

Instead, I’ll go back to my intended blogging schedule with a voice exercise. I’m working on a “wondering,” but it’s not yet fully cooked.

Have you ever felt a particular affinity for a geography or culture that is not your own? Why? What about it do you love or identify with?

I’m going to make this answer a two-parter, because of a comment my daughter made, thinking I was talking about boys and girls. Today, I’ll cover geographical culture. Next time, it’ll be gender culture.

I grew up in Canada and Australia, in a largely Dutch immigrant subculture, although surrounded by a whole lot of everybody in Toronto. The only other culture I’ve been attracted to is Irish. (No, that’s not why I dyed my hair red. I did that because I love Anne of Green Gables.)

The first dance I ever choreographed and performed in public was to a song in Gaelic by Clannad. I had no idea what it was about, but it was emotional and atmospheric, so I called it “Gaelic Mourning” and danced in and out of a man’s suit jacket as if it belonged to someone I had loved. It was all very deep and meaningful to my 19-year-old self who’d never been in love and hadn’t had anyone I loved die in 12 years. My image of Irish culture then was like my impression of that song: misty, romantic, yearning.

Another aspect of my attraction to Irish culture connects to my Canadianness: to a certain degree, both cultures define themselves negatively, as “not them” — “them” being the English to the Irish and the Americans to Canadians. Yes, Ireland has its own long history and literature and culture and language and food, but when you grow up right next to a big bully of a country, you can’t help that self-righteous sneer, that disdain towards the hulk you’re dependent upon.

First week of grade 10 history, the lesson was on xenophobia (fear or hatred of foreign things/people), and the prime example was the U.S. We were taught that Canada’s way with “other” cultures was to think of ourselves as a mosaic — each culture maintained its own brightness and beauty while being incorporated into a whole made beautiful by their addition. This was preferable to the American melting pot, wherein everyone was dumped into the stew and expected to come out one way, and that one way was throwing their weight around. (Gr. 10 history did not include any discussion of the assumptions of why the majority culture had all this power to decide how to treat “others” when the original inhabitants of both countries weren’t given that option. And I’ve heard much more scathing indictments about the melting pot from African Americans.) This defining ourselves against Big Brother wasn’t a vague, unspoken part of Canadian culture.

Now, as a dual citizen living in the States with her American husband and children, I’m them and not them. I say us and we when talking about American issues, but I maintain a kernel of that disdain in my Canadian heart of hearts.

I’d still love to visit Ireland, because now I also love the dark beer, but it doesn’t have the same romantic pull it did when I was in college. Does everyone have an “Irish phase”? Kind of like most girls have a “horse phase”?

 

Weekend Voice Exercise: Accents

~ Natalie Hart ~ 8 Comments

1. Where did you grow up? What are the Old World or native languages that predominate in that area? Any special accent?

I admit it. I am only starting with this exercise because the of the one word that appeared on almost every report card: conscientious. I am a conscientious student. This particular prompt doesn’t seem as interesting as others further down the list, but if the teacher tells me to start at the top, I’m going to start at the top. I’m going to trust that the teacher knows what she’s doing, and there’s a reason for starting here.

I grew up in Toronto, Canada and Brisbane, Australia — both lands of long vowels.

The Old World accents I remember most are Dutch: my Oma (grandmother), our minister, older church members. Every kind of Old World accent and language can be heard in Toronto, and I remember noting how similar Dutch-, Italian- and (for lack of a better descriptor) old Jewish-accented English is. But for the purposes of this question, the voice I hear most in my head is my Oma, Wilhelmina Hart’s.

“Hhya. You haff to lawff.”

Perhaps someone more talented in phonetic spelling could capture the simultaneously breathy and guttural sound of that speech. The “Ya” at the beginning is soft to start, but builds into a more explosive exhalation with not much of a “y” sound, but not so much that she sounded like she was in karate class. The “h” in “have” is soft. In the middle of “laugh” she’d go way in her throat; when I imitate it, I duck my chin a bit. Her laugh, itself, was very low in her throat. She loved to lawff.

My name, always spelled, “Nataly”; those “a’s” were soft, like a combo of “aw” and “ah,” with the last vowel a chin tuck, again.

“It comes handy-in.”

“It’s an unicum [oonickum].”

“I simple cannot.”

“Sort of so.” or “Sort of dat.”

When she wanted a little “Maria Tia,” she might ask whether there would be “spirituals” after dinner.

Charlottesville was four syllables: a hard “Ch” as if you were saying “cheese,” and the “es” is a syllable all on its own (said as if you were saying the name of the letter S).

All kinds of switched sounds: j’s are y’s, th’s a t/d combo, wh’s a v/f combo (i.e. to say “What nice, hey,” say a combo of “vat” and “fawt”), slight tongue roll at r’s.

She was a frugal Dutch woman who loved, and I mean loved a bargain — “bargain” said with a bit of a chin tuck in the first syllable. In later years, she’d poke things with her cane, wrinkle her nose as if it was distasteful that she was even considering this, and talk store managers even further down in price. I still have the urge to tell her when I get a great deal (like the winter coat I bought for my daughter last night, originally $120 for $35).

The ends of her sentences were so definite, with character. She didn’t trail off, although, in conversation, you might not be sure where one sentence started and another ended because she talked so much. Seriously. It was nonstop. It was wonderfully easy to visit her, because you were just folded into her ongoing conversation with herself.

And now I see the wisdom of the teacher: I started out reluctant, but wound up in tears, writing a love letter to my Oma.

Speaking of which, I found this letter from her, written when I was in college. Most of my letters from her were brief notes so she could send me the church bulletin, but this one is very personal. I had just spent Interim (a January term of study) in Toronto, and returned to Grand Rapids to, soon after, break up with my boyfriend at the time. He’s the son of one of my mother’s favorite professors when she was at Calvin, and he’d come up to Toronto over Christmas and met a lot of family. I’m going to transcribe it here, mostly for my own pleasure, but if you read on, imagine lovely old-lady cursive, slanted at a consistent and perfect angle to the right. All quotation marks are done with the first one at the lower left corner of the word, and the second in the upper right. And most periods look like low dashes.

March 7, 1987

Darling Nataly,

Is it not exciting to get such a lovely vase of flowers from Claude Monet (more than 100 years old) a wonderful painter!

Thank you so much for your visit by letter and giving me a glimpse of your life in Grand Rapids.

Naturally it is a big adjustment after your exciting interim to be back in the normal running. On top of it you broke your “budding” relationship.

No wonder my granddaughter is a bit in “mixed feelings.”

Was it the right thing? Hard to tell. I found him a charming [slath? can’t figure this word out] young man and enjoyed the evening in his company.

Listening to each other is certainly not to get to know each other and it has to come from both sides. Also it takes time to show the “utmost” for each other — are you ready for that? [Note: I wasn’t talking about sex here, but she sure makes it sound like I was!] It might change your whole outlook and how your coming years will develop. Even the knowledge that God is always listening to us brings sometimes no clarity in our thinking.

I am looking forward to your “meditation.” Usual this kind of writing is also a blessing for yourself.

Wonderful that you have such a bond with Amy again.

I received a letter from Steve who is looking forward to his Toronto adventure. He is satisfied with his courses and I think you too on the whole. [By this she means that I also seem satisfied with my courses, not that my cousin seems satisfied with me — how could he be, he was in Arizona.]

It would be so great to have you home at Easter. Springbreak here starts next week and will be short.

Uncle Bill and Carroll just returned from Cuba (2 weeks).

Maaike’s tonsils were removed last week. She was very brave. She had to stay home from school for 10 days.

Uncle Dirk gave me a call this week from Philadelphia. We will hope Rodney’s operation is a succes [sic] – he was 3 hours in surgery – most likely they will return this weekend.

I was very proud to read in “Calvin Today” that 4 Taunton Rd students earned substantial grants. “Congratulations!!!” Well done.

Letter writing is still an effort for me. So is church going, reading and … walking. But I am coming along. I am thankful for all the support and love. Wonderful blessings from the Lord.

A bug hug from

Oma

Her faith was deep and real, so she could admit this truth, “Even the knowledge that God is always listening to us brings sometimes no clarity in our thinking.”

I would love to read any responses with stories of your grandparents. Let’s have a big old cryfest here on won·der.

Beginnings

~ Natalie Hart ~ 7 Comments

Welcome to my first day.

I called this blog “ won·der, n., v., adj. ,” because wonder in every sense of the word will be the fuel (definitions via Merriam-Webster).

noun:

  • a cause of astonishment or admiration
  • the quality of exciting amazed admiration
  • a rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience
  • a feeling of doubt or uncertainty

verb:

  • to be in a state of wonder
  • to feel surprise
  • to feel curiosity or doubt
  • to be curious or in doubt about

adjective (wondrous, wonderful):

  • exciting amazement or admiration
  • effective or efficient far beyond anything previously known or anticipated

I also called it won·der, n., v., adj. because it’s a state I often find myself in. I’ve never managed to be “cool.” I get too enthusiastic, too passionate (positively and negatively), too invested about too many things. The detachment required for true coolness has always eluded me, which is the way I like it. So this blog may find me, now and then, exhibiting excited amazement or admiration. It might find me so surprised or astonished that I feel compelled to share the source with you.

It will definitely find me wondering. One of my favorite moments in my children’s worship stories is the “wondering” portion at the end.

* When the Israelites went through to freedom on dry land, I wonder whether the walls of water on either side were solid, or could you stick your hand through them? (Thanks for a friend for that great question.) I wonder whether you’d try to stick your hand through?

* I wonder when David found out why Samuel anointed him? I wonder if the oil dripped in his eyes? Did it stain his tunic? Did that annoy his mother?

* If Ruth was your friend, I wonder whether you would’ve told her to go with Naomi or would you have told her she was nuts for even considering it?

Wondering like this led to my most recent writing project: an imaginative retelling of the David and Saul story, aimed at middle schoolers (no, it’s not ready for anyone’s eyes yet). It’s fascinating to look at biblical stories and see the people as people, to not just gloss over them to get to the lesson we’re supposed to learn.

But religious stuff isn’t the only topic I’ll be wondering about.

Frankly, I’m wondering whether I’ll ever be a published novelist. To hone my craft in the hopes of reaching that goal, I’m giving myself weekend writing assignments that I’ll post here. To start, I’ll work through the exercises on Barbara Samuel’s Voice Worksheet.

Thank you for sticking with me so far. Hopefully, I’ll see you again.