I remembered you older and taller

In the rough-and-tumble, cutthroat world of linguistics, there is a famous and longstanding debate between precriptivist and descriptivist approaches to grammar and language.

Prescriptivists fit the stereotype of the old school Grammar Nazi. They're a rules-first people. They have a firm notion for how English (or any language) should be structured and get prickly when people break the rules. Prescriptivists are liable to insist that infinitives shouldn't be split, that you shouldn't use which to introduce a restrictive phrase, and that you should only use the word unique when referring to something truly one of a kind (as opposed to merely very rare). Don't even get them started on literally, whose definition is now an endangered species due to Millennial misuse.

Descriptivists are the Montessori-school hippies, a live-and-let-live people. They have a notion for how English (or any language) should be structured, too, but they also pay keen attention to how the public is actually talking and writing. Sure, people should obey the "rules," but if a large segment of the population starts breaking a given rule in a consistent way... well, then perhaps the rule is outdated, and the new way of speaking should become the new rule. Descriptivism is the reason that, in 2013, Merriam-Webster updated their definition for literally to read "1) in a literal sense or manner; 2) in effect; virtually -- used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible."

Prescriptivism and descriptivism are better understood as poles on a spectrum than as a binary. Few people are diehard adherents to either camp. In our heart of hearts, most of us are descriptivist sympathizers with closet prescriptivist beliefs. ("Of course language and grammar should evolve... but I will throw myself over a cliff before I accept irregardless as a word.") We're willing to be flexible, to a point.

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Several years ago -- ten years ago, in fact! -- I wrote an aggrieved li'l post about patriotism, inspired by the disappointment I felt when plans to build an Islamic center in NYC sparked Islamophobic protests. I used the process of elimination as an analogy to describe how I arrive at my sense of national pride. "It's hard for me to define how, if, or in what ways I might be considered patriotic," I wrote, "but it's easy for me to pick out the people who don't belong at my Independence Day party. I don't like it when people fail to distinguish between the honor of military personnel and the debatable virtue of the wars in which they fight. I don't like it when people wax poetic about their desire to expatriate to other countries without first thoughtfully considering our own. I don't like utter apathy or non-voters, particularly if such people then complain or criticize the government. I don't like it when people fly the American and the confederate flags side by side."

Even in 2010, though, I was conscious of the limits of this "PoE Patriotism." My system assumed that it's possible to declare ABC values to be patriotic, while writing off XYZ values as nonsense spouted by kooks. I worried over journalists' attempts "to sensationalize and even rationalize the actions of bigoted, albeit frightened, individuals, who (whatever their motivations) will alienate, wound, and anger thousands of American citizens." When we give the kooks our attention -- and/or when they become larger, louder, and more aggressive -- they're harder to write off. "I can no longer take solace in the knowledge that the more accepting, tolerant view is the dominant one," I wrote, "because it is difficult for me to assess that this is truly the case."

Ten years later, the same issues are keeping me up at night, only now they're way more troubling and dire. And I think the grammarians can help. They can't solve our problems, but they can reframe the issue.

What I described in 2010 as my own "PoE Patriotism" was a form of prescriptivism, with me defining America according to its ideals (pluralism, equality, optimism, a love of peanut butter, the democratic process) while rejecting rule-breakers (bigots, racists, the closed-minded). It's worth remembering that strict prescriptivists don't need to trouble themselves trying to figure out how the rule-breakers fit into the system, because the system isn't the problem. The ideals are perfect. It's the rule-breakers who are conclusively wrong, and they need to reform their ways.

The fear I articulated in 2010 was my own creeping sense of descriptivism, the nagging worry that America is more properly defined according to its actions and its people, as they actually behave. This is a much scarier prospect, because descriptivists insist that we can't simply write off the bigots, the kooks, the deniers, the people who say "irregardless." They're present at your Independence Day party, rudely hogging the guacamole and refusing to wear a mask, whether you want them there or not.

The benefit of prescriptivism is its idealism. While descriptivists wade in the muck of the now, prescriptivists concentrate on how things should be and refuse to accept otherwise. The iron will of prescriptivism is what enables Americans in the 21st century to still feel patriotically stirred when the Declaration of Independence is read aloud.

The benefit of descriptivism is its flexibility. While prescriptivists cling to a static vision, the descriptivist future isn't yet set in stone. And nothing says we're doomed to the changes wrought by inertia: If enough people decide to follow the rules as written, the rules don't need to change. If someone comes up with an idea for a better rule, it can be enshrined with enough public traction.

What grammarians' longstanding prescriptivist/descriptionist debate tells us is that rules are valuable. Ideals matter. But ultimately, for better or for worse, the dictionary can be rewritten, and the quorum to make it happen might be smaller than you think.

Only possibilities down the road and back

The most disorienting thing about becoming a parent right at the outset of a global pandemic is that I'll never know what it's like to be a first-time mom not during a global pandemic. 

How many visitors would we have gotten -- or wanted -- during those first few weeks, when the baby was at his squishiest and fragilest and we felt the most at sea?

How often would we have left the house? Would we have taken the baby to a restaurant by now? Would we have asked family members to babysit him for an evening? Or overnight? Would I have sought out a local mom group?

How worried would I be about his safety? The same? Less?

How would I have felt dropping him off for his first day of daycare? Would I still have felt -- justly or not -- guilty? Or as guilty? (Would it have felt merely like I was choosing work over my baby, as opposed to feeling like I was choosing work over my baby and gambling with his health?)

How would we have bonded as a family? How many fewer hours (days?) would we have spent together? Would it have been more difficult for GR and I to share the day-to-day tasks of parenthood? How much more resentment or FOMO would we have felt, watching our child-free friends continue to live less tethered, more flexible lives (rather than watching, with a sense of black comedy, as everyone else was forced into quarantine, too, just as our baby was born)?

I'll also never know what it's like to live during the Age of Coronavirus while not being a brand-new mom. How strictly would we have isolated ourselves in March? June? September? When it comes to what I regard as safe or reasonable or "worth the risk," how differently would my internal barometer have been calibrated?

Everyone has a version of this story. Other people will never know what it's like to get married (or lose a parent, or get divorced, or graduate high school, or...) not during a global pandemic. In nearly all ways, as usual, I count myself lucky.

When I think of love as something new

Labor hurt more than I thought it would.

Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what I expected. (Labor is famously painful! Pain is arguably its defining quality! The word labor is etymologically inextricable from the concepts of hardship and suffering!) Many women across the world experience labor -- either by choice or by circumstance -- without the benefit of pain medication, so I suppose I imagined the pain to be strong yet endurable. I fancy myself someone with at least average pain tolerance. Perhaps I envisioned my experience would be like that of so many television women: brow glistening appealingly with the sweat of effort, wincing but resolute as each contraction brings a brief but intense cramp, panting with relief and bantering with my husband during the shortening oases of time between them, until it's time to push -- and then Pop! comes the baby.

Instead, the pain annihilated me. When we arrived at the hospital around midnight, my water had already broken and I asked for an epidural immediately, but the anesthesiologist wasn't able to get to me until 3am. I spent those three hours in back labor, while GR spent the time getting increasingly freaked out watching it happen. The pain erased my inner monologue; the only thoughts I was capable of generating were OW and I CAN'T. There was no oasis of relief between contractions, only high peaks of unbearable pain followed by smaller peaks of pain that were merely agonizing. I squirmed and yelled and blubbered and flailed my arms in odd directions. I stopped responding to GR's worried questions.

Epidurals, as far as I'm concerned, may as well be magic. Within a minute or two of the insertion, the pain-fog dissipated and I became a person again. I whiled away the next few hours watching Aquaman and Toy Story on mute in the darkened room, feeling contractions as intermittent periods of uncomfortable tightening and pressure. GR (now content in the knowledge that I wasn't, in fact, dying) dozed in the chair next to me.

In most areas of life, we consider it self-evident that pain is bad -- or, rather, that while pain is an essential biological signal, the desire for pain relief is a no-brainer. (If you're able to eliminate your pain, the conventional wisdom goes, by all means do so!) The pain of labor is pretty unique in that there is a significant chunk of people who believe that there's something morally righteous about experiencing it -- that the desire for relief makes you weak, or selfish, or insufficiently committed to motherhood. In 2009, Dr. Denis Walsh (prominent British midwife; man) chided women for wanting epidurals. Speaking to a reporter about an academic article he'd penned advocating natural childbirth, he marveled: "A large number of women want to avoid pain. Some just don’t fancy the pain [of childbirth]." Scoffing at this absurd phenomenon of a human disliking pain, he asserted, "Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing, which has quite a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby."

Dr. Condescension here is an easy target, but as any formerly pregnant person familiar with the discourse on the topic can attest, the pressure to at least consider natural childbirth is ubiquitous. Going natural -- experiencing the full pain of labor, from soup to nuts -- is not framed as a morally neutral choice: it's desirable, honorable, better. Opting for pain relief is giving in, giving up, taking the easy way out.

Friends and family, I issue the following invitation, effective immediately: Please come to me, urgently and with all due sternness, with any causal evidence that my decision to get an epidural is interfering with my ability to lovingly care for my infant son (who is, by the way, at this moment snoozing on my chest, mouth open, hands adorably tucked under his chin). I will admit the error of my ways, schedule a lecture circuit expressing my contrition, and join Dr. Walsh in advocating the utility of laboring painfully.

Otherwise, you can find me cheerfully recommending epidurals to anyone who asks.

No one's getting older, and nothing ever changes, and I will never lose you

Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2019:
  - GR and I will re-up the lease on our apartment, partly because we like our current pad but mostly because we don't want to have to move again already. We'll start making tentative, slouching moves towards homeownership (including but not limited to my figuring out why everyone is always complaining about property taxes).
  - I'll get a full-time job. I'll also go on the academic job market again in the fall, for the third and maybe final time.
  - I'll visit a new state, and/or explore a new major city of a state I've already visited.
  - I'll keep working at those guitar lessons. I won't be consistent about practicing and will remain firmly at novice level, but I'll make some progress.
  - GR and I will see Hamilton, courtesy of Broadway in Chicago.
  - [Insert an extensive amount of angsty dithering about how or whether I should include on this list the don't-get-excited-it's-still-TBD possibility of GR and I "starting a family," which will likely become the subject of its own blog post. (The angsty dithering, that is. Why does it feel so fraught?)]


How prescient I actually was:
  - Behold, possibly my wrongest-ever prediction. GR and I didn't re-up our lease and instead made aggressive moves towards homeownership that yielded a house by May, followed by months of renovation work that trickles on to the present day. I know so much about property taxes now that I personally contested our tax assessment when it came in during the fall. (I did not succeed. I fought the law and the law didn't "win" so much as "laugh dismissively at the idea that I thought myself capable of trying.")
  - 50/50 on this one. I signed on full time with Beige, Inc. in February, and then quietly let this year's academic job market proceed without me.
  - Success! In November, GR and I spent an extended long weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico (both a new state and new city for me), in which we experienced Meow Wolf, hiked through Tent Rocks, and burned our Midwestern tongues off with red chiles.
  - Nope. Home buying, followed immediately by home renovation, became Linda's Dominating Hobbies of 2019.
  - Had a couple of near-miss opportunities on this one, but ultimately: failure.
  - A baby, guys! It's happening.*

* To be fair, though, I never did actually address the question I posed in my 2019 predictions list: Why did I feel so squirrely about saying "Hopefully I will get pregnant this year"? Even referring to it euphemistically and in brackets felt like nudging into a taboo. But why? Some theories:

1) The common gendered bullshit. Our nation boasts a long, rich history of deliberately making women feel uncomfortable about their own bodily functions, including fertility. (A fun/famous example: in the 1952 I Love Lucy episode announcing Lucy Ricardo/Lucille Ball's pregnancy, the show was barred from actually having the characters say the word pregnant, because it was considered vulgar by CBS's censors.)
2a) The desire to protect one's own privacy in the event of infertility and/or miscarriage. (It can be painful to state your intentions publicly to the world, only to have those intentions agonizingly frustrated.)
2b) The feeling that, if you were to experience infertility and/or miscarriage, these experiences are somehow shameful or reflect poorly on you and should be kept secret (see "common gendered bullshit," above).
3) The run-of-the-mill discretion most of us usually exercise when it comes to, ahem, intimacy/bedroom topics.

As far as I can tell, when you maintain the cone of silence around "family planning," you're simultaneously capitulating to sexist tradition and honoring the wisdom of approaching sensitive topics delicately. There's no right answer.

Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2020:
 - Our baby will be born within a day or two of the estimated due date. GR and I will greet our newborn still undecided about their name. 
 - We will not take our baby on an airplane. However, we will travel with the baby to a different state. (Wisconsin counts but will be something of a cop-out way to fulfill this prediction.)
 - In contrast to the 2016 Presidential Election -- every twist and turn of which I followed closely for months -- I will self-preservationally keep my distance from the 2020 election circus and will pretty much just show up to vote.
 - I will spend fewer days in hospitals and/or rehabilitation centers than I did in 2019.
 - I will either 1) go to one museum that I've never visited before, or 2) go to a concert for a band I've never seen live before.
 - I will get an Instagram account, roughly five to seven years after everyone else jumped aboard that particular social media train. I will use it mostly for lurking and will actively avoid posting baby photos out of paranoid privacy concerns.