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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels December 10, 2004 I'll Shut Up - Right After This Yummy ribs with Soccer Mom cult John Darling We descend into the darkest days of the year, with drizzly storms coming off the ocean from the southwest, covering Mt. Ashland with snow, which excites the kids, who will cut school to board on the first day. And, one of the soccer mom tribe gets depressed on this rainy day, compounded by relationship stuff and a period - and one of us phones the other, then another, no plan to this, mind you, it just happens, and soon she's consoled by the sheer caring of people just wanting to check in with her, ask her to coffee or hike, ask how the kids are. It's also "just Ashland." People don't come here to be anonymous, but to be connected. The soccer mom cult wanted to come together. Our sons all connected first, then brought us in - and we found we had as much in common as they do. It's a pollination across the generations, a band that has developed a strategy of frequent partying known as potlucks, looking for any birthday, holiday, presidential debate or other excuse to guzzle beer and tasty dishes while the kids run like banshees, paintballing, video-gaming and hooting through bedrooms, back yard and garage. On a recent, dark Friday night, one also felt compelled to go out to the lake and scream and dance naked and break something from the past that needed to be broken. She found willing women from this group to go with her and, so schooled are they over the years in the ways of goddesses, elements, earth, sage, rattles and drums, that they didn't need any instruction to help her out. In this spontaneously created soccer mom tribe of friends, we share that bond, the challenge of kids maturing into teen years and when you mention that to people, about having teens, they always raise their brows and say, wow, that must be tough, quite a challenge there, how are you handling it? I'm always taken aback by that. I know the stereotypes: they're supposed to be into drugs, drinking, sex and getting alienated from school, parents, society and acting out with a lot of disrespect and disappearing. Are they? Some. But, basically, the kids are stable and grounded, and we parents look at their happiness, humor, energy and sound instincts and are comforted. What have we done right? Nothing. I think that from the moment they were born, we just looked on them with awe and a sense that they already knew everything a person has to know in life, but of course needed instruction on skills, such as how to brush their teeth, operate a stove, read. As for walking and talking, they didn't yet know how to do these, but knew how to learn on their own. And they did. They also walk their talk. They mastered this because they've been allowed to guide by their own instinct and think for themselves. I'm driving the kids to school and they turn up the radio, asking me to listen to this song, in which a guy, to a rock background, delivers a rap sermon on our society, starting out with our mad polarities around drugs, in which we jail people for using "a plant that grows in the dirt" but have multi-million dollar televised campaigns promoting all-night, drug-induced sexual arousal for 80-year old guys. Not to mention other legal, mind-altering meds helping you to "fit in" to society. "Didja get it?" they ask, after the song. Of course I get it. Being a parent in pretty good communication with my kids and their friends, I basically get that they are adults at about 15 and have formed philosophies and lifestyles to wisely handle all the things that make adult society shriek, pass laws and pound pulpits - and propound self-satisfying but futile polices of abstinence. As if. The kids see through society's - and this administration's - posturings on such things and learn they're on their own as far as making life decisions and that they have the tools and inner wisdom to make those decisions. Driving to school, Colin asks me what are the politics around abortion and why do the anti's hate it? I say it's not about pro or anti - it's about power. No one really wants to make a woman raise an unwanted child (usually alone) but it's important for the anti's to be able to legislate sex among consenting adults as much as possible, because the more fear and shame you can instill around natural functions, the more you disempower the individual and get her to doubt herself and bow to authority - and that's the dominator model, the old patriarchal system that has steadily been in decline in the last half century and thrives on bogeymen like gay marriage, abortion, pot and terrorism. "Hm," says Colin. It was a long explanation, but I want him to know. I've worked many years inside politics and seen how they will say just about anything and propose just about any law or program if it will energize and solidify their political base and it hardly matters if the politician or lobbyist really cares or believes in it, although sometimes they do. As for abortion, I've seen enough from the inside to know that while the grass roots folk are impassioned, the real emotion is not for the fetus - it's against the feminist movement, which is really women taking power back after 5,000 miserable, subjugated years of patriarchal domination. Still, I say to my kids, when you grow up, I'd like you to be president. Don't settle for something in between. Only the president has the real power. Get involved in city politics for a few years, run for the state legislature, get a base in a big city, get elected to Congress and bloody well go for the presidency. You have the brains and charisma and you care what happens to the world. You'll need to care! The world is in trouble and it needs caring people like you to get in there and hold to the passion and happy instincts you grew up with here in Ashland, Oregon - and do something good, rather like Bill Clinton did, wading into the filth and lies of politics, but keeping his humor, passion and, above all, his self. One of these kids will do it. I can feel it. They're being raised here on the nectar of love, humor and higher consciousness, being exposed to hundreds of adults who want them to be the people to make a newer world. Colin has me type up his school paper using a parent's biography and interview and here's how it ends: "My dad learned about Vietnam one August morning at college and everyone was buzzing with talk about 'the war.' He said what war? The students said President Johnson has started a war and my dad was so very happy he had got out of the Marines when he did, a few weeks earlier, because when he went in three years ago, he was more than willing to be in war and kill people or be killed but very early on in boot camp he realized it was all a bunch of crap to get young men to win their manhood by risking their lives, when in reality they of course were already men, whether they went in the military or not and he told me if I ever went in the military, he would be very disappointed in me." I e-mail his bio sketch to the soccer moms and, at the next gathering - at Marty's new Fast Break by the north interchange - they share their enjoyment and laughs over it, while we devour some of his awesome ribs and beer. Contact John Darling, an Ashland writer and counselor, at [email protected]. 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