Interviewed by Tom Mangan
Linda DeVault, mother, widow, entrepreneur, diarist
AUTHORS
Michael Fuchs
Elizabeth Hilts
Paul Riddell
Gary Rivlin
Jim Motavalli
Barbara Shafferman
Jules Siegel
Keith Snyder
ARTISTS/POETS/
PHILOSOPHERS
Jon C. Allen
Will Baker
Mike Leung
Jon Sarkin
COOL SITE KEEPERS
Mike Cash
Scott O'Neal Colf
Godfrey Daniels
Cliff Davis, DDS
Tammy Hocking
Wes Modes
Frank Rogan
DIARISTS
Ralph Becker
J. D. Bruns
Linda DeVault
Mike Reed
Moira Richardson
Jessamyn West
FILMMAKERS
JOURNALISTS
Bernie
Mary Cooley-Jones
Lindsay Crysler
Jamie Dupree
M.O.A.T.M.A.I.
David Moll
Robert Niles
John Orr
Steven Ovadia
Pierce Presley
Mack Reed
Rip Rense
Curtis Ross
Neal Ross
John Scalzi
Catherine Seipp
David Sheets
Dwight Silverman
Matt Welch
MOVIE MAVENS
HUMORISTS
Debbie Farmer
Mike Jasper
Madeleine Begun Kane
Patrick Keller
Bob Sassone
Valerie Sprague
Ken Swarmer
Ian Wolff
SOLDIERS
TEACHERS
TECHIES
Chris Adamson
Mike Gunderloy
Michael Ivey
Greg Knauss
Floyd Maxwell
Ellen McDonough
Mike Pingleton
Wayne Thume
John Worth
TEENS
UNDECLARED
WEBLOGGERS
These situations exist at the extreme ends of the spectrum in terms of emotional intensity. Most people spend the bulk of their lives somewhere in the middle, leaving them with an inadequate frame of reference to draw upon when trying to understand.
The death of a spouse, childbirth, combat -- these situations all deal with mortality. From a distance, it's possible to speculate as to the range of emotions involved: sadness, pain, anger, fear, etc. All of us have felt them at one time or another, so that's our frame of reference in trying to understand what going through these situations must be like.
As I said, it's an inadequate frame of reference. When you are no longer considering mortality from a distance but confronted with it up close and personal, you quickly become acquainted with an entire realm of raw, visceral emotion which you never even knew existed -- feelings of unbelievable, terrifying magnitude. It's not like anything you've ever felt before.
I don't know what it is, but some nebulous something gets triggered; something which is beyond the scope of imagination or description. If you experience it firsthand you will learn how it feels, but I'm not sure anyone ever really "understands" it.
What do you think it means when deceased loved ones visit you in your dreams?
It's tempting to believe there's some otherworldly meaning involved, especially given how vivid dreams of this nature can be, but I don't think it means anything except that the person has been in your thoughts, subconscious or otherwise.
My reasoning is based on how it works for me with other types of dreams. The pattern is that I mostly dream of things I've been spending lots of time thinking about recently. Sometimes there's an exception, but when that happens it's usually something nonsensical, a phenomenon I attribute to the fact that our brains store enormous amounts of data that can get shifted around in strange ways; while our bodies rest, our minds might still be racing, processing bits and pieces of random information that for whatever reason occasionally get "stuck" in the part of our synapses that generate dreams.
It would be nice to think that when my children have dreams about their father, he's actually "visiting" them from some metaphysical plane ... but what I believe is that their brains construct scenarios involving him based on their supply of memories. And who's to say that should be distinguishable from what a "real visit" might be like, anyway? If it brings them comfort, it doesn't matter to me in the long run.
For the record, I have come to believe that there may be ways the dead communicate with us; my experience just hasn't convinced me that dreams are one of those ways. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn I'm completely wrong about it, as other things have happened in my life since my husband's death that I would never have believed possible if related to me by someone else.
I'm talking about tangible, observable things like you sometimes see on hokey TV programs claiming to investigate claims of ghosts, for instance -- inexplicable electrical disturbances, objects moving around, etc. I'm not nearly as smug about things like this as I used to be.
The tabloid reporter in me has to know: Could you expand on one of these impossible-to-explain-yet-it-really-happened occurrences?
There's a tabloid reporter in you? I'll bet he never stops hounding your inner child for ñuntoldî abuse stories, huh? Nevermind, that was completely tasteless.
Moving right along...
One evening my 15-year-old son and I were in the living room together; he was watching television and I was reading a book I'd gotten at the library earlier that afternoon. At the time I was doing research into paranormal/supernatural claims precisely because things had been happening around our house that seemed difficult or impossible to explain. I was getting pretty desperate to understand what was going on and had begun reading everything I could find on the subject.
What I mean by "desperate to understand": I am a hard-core realist, albeit one with the occasional lapse into idealism. For better or worse, my tendency has always been more toward the pragmatic than the romantic; I'm not given to flights of fancy and I have no appetite for melodrama. So when these weird things started happening, I was determined to find the reasonable explanation I was sure must be there somewhere. Except I didn't find it, and things kept happening. So it really was a kind of desperation that sent me investigating less orthodox possible explanations for what was going on.
To that end, I started reading about supposed near-death experiences, life-after-death scenarios, things like that. At one of the grief-support groups I'd attended, someone mentioned a few books she'd found helpful. On her list was a book written by a man who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.
Now, I've seen some of these people do their thing. My opinion is that some of them, at least, are outright frauds. From what I've seen, all it takes to pass for a "psychic" in a certain kind of audience (read: one that really, really wants to believe) is a keen sense of observation and a sharp ear for picking up clues. I'd never seen this particular guy in action, the one who wrote the book, but like I said I was pretty desperate to figure out what was going on by this time, so I was willing to consider just about anything.
This brings us back to the story:
I'd brought home the book in question and sat in my rocking chair reading while my son watched television, just the two of us in the room. I wasn't more than a half-dozen pages into the book when the television suddenly turned off... but not really. What happened was that the picture slowly disappeared in a shrinking pattern until it was pinpoint sized on the screen, then nothing at all. It didn't look like it looks when you turn the television off - when that happens, the screen goes blank all at once. There were two lights on in the room, neither of which dimmed at all, and the television itself didn't actually go off; the LED light was still on.
We've had that particular television for about 7 years and neither I nor my son can remember something like this ever happening before (and it hasn't since).
When it started happening, the sound got "smaller" along with the picture, which made me look up from the book. My son said something like, "Did you see that? What happened?" This is going to sound like some of the aforementioned melodrama that I dislike, but my first impulse was to look at the book. When I realized the last thing I'd read, my heart started pounding.
It was a paragraph which read: "One of the most common ways a passed loved one indicates his or her presence is through the manipulation of electrical devices. For instance, many people report lights rapidly turning off and on in a room which had special significance in the loved one's life; others tell stories of television or telephone disruption."
After I'd reread the paragraph, the picture came back on the TV. just as it had gone away --- gradually, starting with a pinpoint and increasing in size.
For what it's worth, later in the book the author speculates about why it might be that electrical devices would make fairly accessible conduits for communication between the living and the dead, stuff about how our bodies generate electricity, our hearts and brains respond to it, etc. Okay, maybe. Or maybe there is some scientific/technical explanation for what happened to my television and it's just coincidence that it happened precisely as I read that particular paragraph, and that it never happened before and has never happened since.
For me, the timing of it really is the mindblower. Natural skeptic that I am, I'd be inclined to attribute the whole thing to some sort of freak power surge before I'd run screaming about ghosts or spirits. But that it happened at the moment it did, when I'd just read that particular passage.... well, it was strange.
I can't say it "proves" anything to me, but combined with everything else that has happened, it certainly makes me wonder about these things more seriously than I did previously.
I'd say an aspect of my character which is unique (in terms of American society, if not the whole of human experience) is a relative disinterest in the pursuit of public favor, particularly of the superficial/temporary kind and especially when it requires a compromise of integrity or diminishment of my core belief system.
An example -- I openly oppose the notion that mediocrity is an acceptable standard, despite the fact that embracing mediocrity is the surest way to endear oneself to the American majority. In the context of the Web, essentially meaningless ñawardsî which purport to measure the ñbestî of this or that are a prime example... which is why I stopped acknowledging them a long time ago.
The qualities you describe in No. 4 are the answers to a different question: what sets you apart from the crowd. I was looking for an example of what makes you unique ... something you did because of who you are and couldn't have been done by anyone else, for the same reason. An anecdote that illustrates what makes you you, in other words.
"Couldn't have been done by anyone else."
Well, I'd be thrilled to discover that I'm irreplaceable, but when it comes down to it I believe "anyone" similarly qualified and equipped could do just about anything that I've done. Mind you, now, they wouldn't necessarily achieve exactly the same end result. Maybe they wouldn't do a thing as well or with as much passion... or maybe they'd do it better. But let's face it, just about everything from great works of art to brilliant business strategies have been successfully duplicated and it's been argued that if Einstein hadn't developed the theory of relativity, sooner or later someone else would have.
I have no idea whether that's true, but even when considering my most obscure talents/skills/peccadilloes, I fear that if a diligent enough search were launched someone (but not just "anyone") could probably be found to do in my stead whatever it is I might have done. A humbling thought, but there it is.
An exception: I've given birth to four children who are unique in all the world. No one except me could've conceived and delivered precisely these children, not even the aforementioned "similarly qualified" person, as "similar" is just not quite close enough when it comes to DNA. What this means is that it would be impossible for anyone else to reproduce (!) my children.
In the literal sense, it's largely because of who I am that they are who they are. And, in one of those neat displays of circular congruity so often seen in nature, it also works the other around -- though I wouldn't say giving birth and being a mother is "the" thing that makes me who I am, it's an element that inevitably informs the other aspects of my life.
From your perspective of a mother of four, describe a "traditional family value" that really makes your blood boil.
"Traditional family" = mother + father + children.
In my estimation this is the ideal family model, so values intended to support, encourage or strengthen it do not make my blood boil.
Quite the opposite. I'm all for the idea of family-as-priority and am long past the days when I bought the lie that a married mother and father living under the same roof with their children was nice but not necessary. If it's not the most dangerous lie ever concocted, it surely ranks somewhere near the top of the list.
This isn't to say nontraditional families can't function well. Of course they can, just as a three-legged dog can still walk and might even learn a modified way of running. He'd still be better off with the fourth leg.
Still, identifying the traditional family as ideal is fine; attempting to control the lives of those who don't meet that ideal is not.
The problem is there's been widespread appropriation of the catchphrase "traditional family values" by an increasingly zealous religious right in this country. And some of these groups are known for instigating certain actions which DO make my blood boil.
Two which come to mind are efforts to railroad homosexuals out of the teaching profession and attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ostensibly these are actions undertaken "in defense of traditional family values" but in the end it's about controlling the personal lives of others by force of law - something which definitely makes my blood boil, as does the fact that in the eyes of many the only worthy family values are those held by Christians and supported by King James-Version scripture.
You won't find too many references to "traditional family values" which are not inextricably linked to organized religion, and that bugs me.
What's the most prominent mistake from your youth that you'd go to some length to discourage your kids from repeating?
Getting married at age 18 instead of going to college to study piano.
If you make major decisions before you've had time to figure out the person you are, you're taking a huge chance. How many of us have the same sensibilities at 28, 38, 48 that we did at 18? When I got married at 18 I was essentially gambling that the same things would hold meaning for me 20, 30, 40 years later as did then. I lost that gamble, and it only took three years -- I was divorced at 21.
Now, there are things which happened as a result of that marriage that I don't regret, most notably that I had two sons who are evolving into the most incredible, brilliant, handsome young men any parent could hope to claim. But it was a hard road for a while. When the marriage ended, the boys were toddlers. I snapped out of the stupor and of necessity grew up real quick.
For the next few years, we struggled from one crisis to the next and I spent the precious little "down time" I had gathering information, attending classes, researching and otherwise laying the groundwork to start a business which eventually became pretty successful, but not before we changed addresses several times, had utilities turned off for nonpayment once or twice and ate an awful lot of (awful) boxed macaroni and cheese, five-for-a-dollar on sale at Alpha Beta.
It was an existence that stood in bleak contrast to the romantic, glamorous life I'd envisioned as an 18-year-old newlywed, and many nights as I sat up at 3 a.m. trying to study while holding a crying baby I felt like the biggest rube in the world. Sometimes a friend would try to set me up with a "nice guy" but I was uninterested, the failed marriage having caused me to question my own judgment and wonder whether any love relationship was ultimately sustainable.
So instead of dating, I focused on my business, my boys, and figuring out some vital "me" stuff that I'd never had time to consider while scrounging rent money or lugging laundry up and down three flights of stairs to a laundromat six miles away in a borrowed rattle-trap car with two toddlers in tow.
That period in my life represents a huge learning curve and I'm grateful for the lessons, the practical ones and the more philosophic ones. I learned about the satisfaction of honest accomplishment, the counterproductivity of the "victim" stance when measured against the inward and outward benefits to be reaped by taking personal responsibility for bad choices, the dangers of mindless consumerism and the mundane miracle of compound interest, the inadvisability of using sex as a tool of manipulation or emotion as blackmail, the value in striving beyond sufficiency toward excellence, and on and on.
These are important lessons which helped shape me into a more competent, complete person and continue to serve me well to this day...but I know people who've learned the same things without the serious hardship I experienced as a result of marrying young, suggesting that such hardship is not a prerequisite to the learning process.
I remarried some years later, and that relationship (which ended with my husband's death) bore little resemblance to the earlier one in large part because I was not the same person I'd been at 18.
In simplified terms, I'd grown up -- I brought something more to the relationship than a big smile and a host of uninformed expectations. One of the most important results for me was confirmation of a suspicion that the problems with that early relationship hadn't happened because the concept of marriage is necessarily flawed, which is what I tried for a long time to convince myself, but because any relationship can only be as good or as substantial as the people in it.
Naturally I would prefer that my children learn what they need to know in order to be good and decent human beings without there being involved an unnecessary degree of chaos and unhappiness, so while I acknowledge that a certain number of mistakes will be made by anyone finding their way in life, I will nevertheless do all I can to steer them away from the particular mistake of marrying very young or otherwise entangling themselves before they've had the opportunity to get out and interact with the world, which is the only way they're going to discover their best true selves.
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