I've been thinking a great deal lately about Shel Silverstein's 1964 children's classic The Giving Tree. On the surface, it is a story about a boy and a tree who loves him. She gives him everything he could possibly desire – shade, sustenance, enjoyment, laughter. At first, this giving gives them both a sense of happiness. Yet ultimately, the tree is consumed by the boy's desires and ends up as nothing but a roting stump on which the boy, now an old man, can rest.
I remember this book as one of my childhood favorites. (I loved all Silverstein works for their variable “life lessons,” which children are especially good at detecting if only, at first pass, on the literal level.) Yet, I also remember feeling a profound disappointment when arriving at the end and learning that there was nothing left of the tree but a stump. I flipped back and forth between the last page and the back cover, desperate to discover that a few pages had indeed been removed.
How could the story end this way? Wasn't love supposed to do more than eat us up and render us near useless? As an avid consumer of fairy-tales, I always expected that somehow through the magic of love (and perhaps water and fairy dust), the tree would re-grow its branches when the boy returned, and instead of remaining an old and weary man, he too would be rendered young again to play in the tree's branches. (Doesn't this sound more like the Disney classics our generation was raised on?)
Of course, this story is also a fable about motherhood. In fact, in Judith Warner's Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, she suggests that The Giving Tree has become the prevailing metaphor for motherhood. Not only the motherhood of the 1950s and 60s when Silverstein was writing this work and women were being drawn in helplessly by the feminine mystique like moths to a porch light (especially those new fangled ones from the Sears and Roebuck catalog), but that this tale, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and is the writer's most famous work, still captivates us as the way we experience motherhood today, more than fifty years later.
Warner gives many examples to build her case from her interviews with hundreds of women and from stories in popular media in which uber self-sacrificing moms are rendered the great heroines of our time (as perhaps they should be?).
I can't say that Warner is wrong exactly. (When I mused about this with my mother-in-law, she agreed that sometimes, you are consumed by your children. And when I recently discussed the decision of when to wean with one of my best friends, she said simply that I would know, that there would come a day when I would feel as though my child was sucking the calcium right out of my bones.)
I also can't say that my childhood distaste for the ending of The Giving Tree was because of some intrinsic sense that I would be a mother someday and I feared the self-sacrificing love it would require of me.
What I can say is that at a gut level, I found (and still find) the story simply dissatisfying. While I loved the moments when the tree provided shade, shelter, even the fruit of its own labor, (an apt metaphor for breastfeeding, planting a garden, and/or bringing home a paycheck and groceries, all things that have been required of me in the past year) I could never understand why exactly the tree didn't tell the boy to build his house out of dirt or go buy some fiberglass when he wants to build a boat and sail away.
Yet, stories are things that get into your bones, especially if we grow up in their constant presence. And, in many ways, I did grow up in the shadow of The Giving Tree. I grew up fearing that without fighting against it, motherhood, by its very nature, would render me small, frightened and cloistered like my mother was always portraying her mother to me. (I also grew up hearing my father say that he'd be a very rich man if it wasn't for us kids.)
However, in my one year, one month and a few hours, my experience of motherhood has been not a selfless act, but a profoundly selfish one. I've not been emptied, cut down or diminished, but enriched – and tangibly so – by having a child. Maybe I am naive, but I want to believe that mothers, like trees, are magical beings and can give in ways that do not come at the expense of ourselves, but that enriches both tree and child. (Even in real life, where there seems an unfortunate dearth of fairy dust.)
What I can also say is that I think we need a new story. (I do, at least. Maybe this one will work for you, too. Or even better, write your own and leave it in the comments!) Here's mine:
Once upon a time, there was a tree and there was a child.
When the child was a baby, the tree let down her leaves to make a soft bed and the wind through her branches was a lullaby. The child slept and dreamed and both the tree and child were happy.
When the child was hungry, the tree would grow fruit and the child would eat the fruit and enjoy its taste. As the juice dripped down the child's chin, the tree would laugh, the child would smile. They both were happy.
As the child grew, the tree grew and there were new branches and new leaves. The tree showed the child how to climb up into the branches and look out at the big, wide world and imagine its possibilities. And instead of making a soft bed for sleeping, the leaves were a soft place to land when the child lost balance and fell out of the tree. So the child learned to climb higher and higher and see farther and farther in the world, and they both were happy.
And although they were happy, there came a time when they were also lonely for the child was not a tree and the tree was not a child. The child also grew tired of looking out at the big, wide world and wanted to adventure in it. So, after many long nights, the tree told the child to go out and adventure.
Even though the child was scared (and the tree was also scared, but didn't want to show it), the tree helped the child pack and extra bag of fruit so that the child would not be alone in the big, wide world, but carry a piece of the tree on the journey. So, the child set out to experience the big, wide world and not just look at it. (They both, at this moment, weren't exactly sure if they'd be happy, but they wore brave faces for each other.)
While the child was off adventuring, the tree continued to grow and make fruit and the fruit fell to the ground and new trees sprung up around the first tree and the new trees brought more children.
While the child was off adventuring, the child saw and experienced many beautiful things. The child found new trees and climbed them and met other children and learned their ways. The child was indeed happy that it had been set lose upon the world by the tree.
When the child returned, the tree had grown and around it was an orchard full of trees and other children. The child too had grown into an adult and told the tree of all that was seen in the big, wide world. The child also brought back fruit from far away places and the tree and child decided to plant them in the orchard to grow new and different trees.
The child and tree leaned into each other and they looked out upon the orchard, at the children swinging from the branches of young trees. They saw that the world was made better because they both were in it, and they both were happy.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Ordinary Holiday
Being a Virgo, I am admittedly a perfectionist. Because of this, I tend to ruin holidays. I over plan, so the days I am most supposed to enjoy end up being an anxiety ridden mess.
My year long adventure into motherhood has been a great undoing of sorts in this aspect of my personality. I've been forced to recognize that I am not really in the least bit of control and that life is a daily set of negotiations, namely now with a being whose will I have come to discover is no less yielding than my own.
For the most part, there has been a great comfort and relief in this aspect of motherhood, namely because it has expedited a great life lesson I should have known all along. I've enjoyed being coerced into new life rhythms, dictated by time for naps and nursing, not to mention the way in which the world simply ceases to spin (if you'll let it) the instant that your child holds her hand up to your own in pure fascination with the size difference.
Yet, at the start of my second ever Mother's Day, I found my old habits ruling as I tried to plan the perfect holiday, a mix of family time and me time that would represent a near flawless 24 hours. The day, of course, would not go according to plan.
First, I wanted to finish reading a book, so I sneaked off early to bed on the night before Mother's Day only to be interrupted by a late-night package delivery that sent our dog into an uproar, despite the large sign outside our front door that begs people not to ring the door bell. Of course, this woke up our daughter and restarted our bedtime routine (the novel remains unread).
Next on my list, I wanted to sleep in. Instead, our daughter woke up at 2 am and then again at 4:30 am, flopping around in our bed like a fish between us and then, using the headboard, scooted herself into standing position and dropped down onto our shoulders or sides repeatedly in a WWE move that I can't imagine where she's learned seeing as she doesn't watch TV, until my husband finally got up and brought her downstairs to play. (Yes! Sleep!)
I did not want to do my own laundry. I ran out of clean bras and consequently suffered uncomfortably for most of the day in an old, ill-fitting one.
I wanted to go out to eat for breakfast. We ended up waiting outside the restaurant for nearly two hours while we chased our daughter up and down the sidewalk not only because Mother's Day is the most popular day to dine out according to the National Restaurant Association, but also because our restaurant was located mere blocks from the finish line for the Colorado Marathon.
As we navigated through a sea of runners in various colors of spandex, looking increasingly tired, sore and miserable, which was no doubt how I was beginning to feel, it did not help that my husband began to muse on the stupidity of those who willingly choose to do things they clearly hate.
This made me wonder about the purpose of Mother's Day to begin with and what it is we mother's really want. As I'd polled my other mother friends leading up to the holiday about how they would be spending “their special day,” most reported that they'd be spending time by themselves, going to a movie, getting a facial, sneaking off to read a book. My own list of wants was looking increasingly similar to theirs -- one single day off. Yet, isn't it virtually impossible to be simultaneously celebrated by your family and not be in the same room with them? It's no wonder that Anna Jarvis ended up arrested during a protest against the very holiday she spent her life trying to create.
Finally, midway through the day, I stopped searching for something extraordinary, and instead went for having just our plain ordinary Sunday.
After the afternoon nap, we went grocery shopping, and I watched my daughter push her miniature cart down the aisle with unfettered delight. I even cooked dinner and was relieved not to spend another meal trying to keep her from throwing food onto the floor, but instead allowing our four-legged vacuum cleaner to earn his keep. My husband and I even did dishes together and teased each other over who was spilling more water outside the sink.
The day ended in our own backyard as we tumbled in the grass and my husband and I attempted to have a handstand contest that ended in a draw because we couldn't keep our daughter at safe distance from our flailing legs as she tried to emulate our handstands, her tiny diaper-widened bottom waving in the air.
Of course, it hit me, our ordinary life brings the kind of extraordinary pleasure I'd spent the whole day looking for and isn't that after all what Mother's Day, motherhood, is really about.
My year long adventure into motherhood has been a great undoing of sorts in this aspect of my personality. I've been forced to recognize that I am not really in the least bit of control and that life is a daily set of negotiations, namely now with a being whose will I have come to discover is no less yielding than my own.
For the most part, there has been a great comfort and relief in this aspect of motherhood, namely because it has expedited a great life lesson I should have known all along. I've enjoyed being coerced into new life rhythms, dictated by time for naps and nursing, not to mention the way in which the world simply ceases to spin (if you'll let it) the instant that your child holds her hand up to your own in pure fascination with the size difference.
Yet, at the start of my second ever Mother's Day, I found my old habits ruling as I tried to plan the perfect holiday, a mix of family time and me time that would represent a near flawless 24 hours. The day, of course, would not go according to plan.
First, I wanted to finish reading a book, so I sneaked off early to bed on the night before Mother's Day only to be interrupted by a late-night package delivery that sent our dog into an uproar, despite the large sign outside our front door that begs people not to ring the door bell. Of course, this woke up our daughter and restarted our bedtime routine (the novel remains unread).
Next on my list, I wanted to sleep in. Instead, our daughter woke up at 2 am and then again at 4:30 am, flopping around in our bed like a fish between us and then, using the headboard, scooted herself into standing position and dropped down onto our shoulders or sides repeatedly in a WWE move that I can't imagine where she's learned seeing as she doesn't watch TV, until my husband finally got up and brought her downstairs to play. (Yes! Sleep!)
I did not want to do my own laundry. I ran out of clean bras and consequently suffered uncomfortably for most of the day in an old, ill-fitting one.
I wanted to go out to eat for breakfast. We ended up waiting outside the restaurant for nearly two hours while we chased our daughter up and down the sidewalk not only because Mother's Day is the most popular day to dine out according to the National Restaurant Association, but also because our restaurant was located mere blocks from the finish line for the Colorado Marathon.
As we navigated through a sea of runners in various colors of spandex, looking increasingly tired, sore and miserable, which was no doubt how I was beginning to feel, it did not help that my husband began to muse on the stupidity of those who willingly choose to do things they clearly hate.
This made me wonder about the purpose of Mother's Day to begin with and what it is we mother's really want. As I'd polled my other mother friends leading up to the holiday about how they would be spending “their special day,” most reported that they'd be spending time by themselves, going to a movie, getting a facial, sneaking off to read a book. My own list of wants was looking increasingly similar to theirs -- one single day off. Yet, isn't it virtually impossible to be simultaneously celebrated by your family and not be in the same room with them? It's no wonder that Anna Jarvis ended up arrested during a protest against the very holiday she spent her life trying to create.
Finally, midway through the day, I stopped searching for something extraordinary, and instead went for having just our plain ordinary Sunday.
After the afternoon nap, we went grocery shopping, and I watched my daughter push her miniature cart down the aisle with unfettered delight. I even cooked dinner and was relieved not to spend another meal trying to keep her from throwing food onto the floor, but instead allowing our four-legged vacuum cleaner to earn his keep. My husband and I even did dishes together and teased each other over who was spilling more water outside the sink.
The day ended in our own backyard as we tumbled in the grass and my husband and I attempted to have a handstand contest that ended in a draw because we couldn't keep our daughter at safe distance from our flailing legs as she tried to emulate our handstands, her tiny diaper-widened bottom waving in the air.
Of course, it hit me, our ordinary life brings the kind of extraordinary pleasure I'd spent the whole day looking for and isn't that after all what Mother's Day, motherhood, is really about.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Financial Insecurity
A few days ago, like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, my husband and I walked into a bank and slipped a note across the counter to the teller.
Give me all my money, it read.
The clerk, a girl in her twenties who will compliment me on my wallet during our transaction before she learns with disappointment that it was purchased at a thrift store, barely raised her eyebrows. Instead, with a friendly smile, she turned from us to consult her manager and seek approval on the cashier’s check we had, in actuality, requested.
Like many of our fellow Americans, my husband and I are refinancing our home. We’re “taking advantage of the incredible interest rates" that we've been told won’t be around much longer. After we lock our rate, I watch several news reports noting that the interest rate has indeed “reached an all-time, 30-month high.” Because it is a point above the rate I’ve cleverly secured, these reports make me grin with pleasure.
The current “mortgage crisis” that has triggered “the great recession” seems chock-full of these double entendres, a mastery of language with the soul purpose of reducing meaning so that the rest of us can’t figure out what the hell is really going on.
Maybe it’s because too many talented writers have gone into the marketing industry and credit is now extended to us with dazzling phrases like “Chase Freedom,” which, by the way, is now trademarked.
I can’t help but notice that these same catch-phrases being tossed around today are the very same ones first used on us in 2006, the height of the sub-prime mortgage craze, when my husband and I first set out to purchase our home.
At the time, we had been married for two years and were rapidly outgrowing our small rental. Like everyone else, we wanted to buy a home. Also like everyone else, we had no idea what we were doing.
Despite this fact, everyone seemed to support us from our parents to our friends to our co-workers. Perhaps it was because they all held mortgages and wanted us to join them in their sinking ship. Regardless, there was no shortage of encouraging advice. Rent is like flushing money down the toilet, they said. The housing market is only going to go up, you might as well get in now. You can write the interest off your income taxes.
Even in the supermarket, I remember circling the aisles and hearing the manager on the intercom beaconing us to stop at the branch bank at the front of the store to find out more about the historic interest rate lows.
Only our landlord was sad to hear that we would be leaving our cottage, which we’d completely renovated in trade for a few months of free rent. She even offered us their five bedroom farmhouse that they were having to re-list because a deal to develop the land had been blocked by the town. Yet, we thumbed our nose at the offer in trade for the coveted dream of ownership.
The first mortgage officer we visited was the epitome of the crooked brokers that have been recently cartooned. (It should be noted that his office was located in the Merrill Lynch Building.) He tried to offer us a loan nearly 5 times that of our annual income and, even though our credit scores were well into the 700s, he also claimed that we’d never qualify for a fixed 30-year rate and would have to go with a 7-year ARM for 80% of our loan and the remaining 10% would be a fifteen-year balloon (we had figured out how to get 10% down out of our retirement vehicles, which ended up costing us a bundle in taxes, but that's for another essay).
It is only in retrospect that I am now well-versed enough to understand why exactly he was selling us a load of goods. Fortunately for us, we simply got a bad vibe at his insistence that we should buy a house for much more than we felt we could comfortably afford. (Also, for any of you marketers reading this, I would avoid pairing the word “balloon” with anything having to do with finances. While attractive to young children, it is far too accurate an image of something that will eventually explode.)
When we left his office, it was with a rancid taste in our mouths that has only gotten worse as we’ve watched houses on our block foreclose, and I can only surmise that these losses were because of his loans or from others like him.
I’m going to spare you the details. Our story is not the tragedy that it could have been. We ended up with a decent sized house priced at a little less than 2.5 times our annual salaries and a 30-year fixed rate from a broker who sends us birthday and Christmas cards and who I feel bonded with enough to call a friend though I think he thinks I’m a little weird and all too eager to talk interest rates and amortization tables. Although we’ve watched our house drop in value over the last eighteen months, we are not underwater with our loan (despite the fact that today 24% of residential home owners are.)
So, this time around, I can’t really understand exactly how it is that we are again being offered something for a seeming nothing, a new loan with a lower interest rate. And perhaps, the reason why I feel a bit like a robber standing at the bank asking for my own money to make this transaction.
If anything, anyone who has turned on the news knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch, you can be hurt by what you don’t know, and easy credit is simply too good to be true.
I’ve done the math many times over (there is a great website for amortization calculations if you’d like to do your own ) and the bank is loosing money on this deal (and pressumably the millions of others like it).
Even with $4,000 in incentives for servicers backed by the government’s HASP program (which I can count as coming out of this taxpayer’s pocket), I’m not a borrower anywhere near default. I suppose they risk losing me to another bank that will beat their price and there is a miniscule amount they collect in service fees (which I immediately recoup because my first payment on my new mortgage isn’t due for 60 days.) Even though it will take me four more years to pay off this loan if I make every scheduled payment as I’m starting over at 30 years, at the end of the day what I pay will be lower than staying in my current loan.
As of the end of January, 1.3 million borrowers were taking advantage of loan modifications available through HASP, the Homeowners Affordability and Sustainability Program (yet another ACONYM that is supposed to suggest "free money"). This doesn’t include countless borrowers like me who just want to refinance to follow the trends on the 30-year bond.
With the dominant narrative circulating -- the Wall Street bankers armed with their clever language and incompetent ratings agencies that made sub-prime deals sound like a song (even the term sub-prime seems to suggest you are getting a better deal that is lower than prime even when it is actually far above) -- I am eager to be seemingly on the “right,” money-saving side of this transaction. Yet, I think it’s all too Pollyanna to believe that the banks (and the bankers who’ve all continued to make millions thanks to the fact that their companies are publicly held and therefore all the risk is assumed by their stockholders) are actually taking a hit.
Perhaps it should be noted that HASP only applies to the safest, most likely to repay their debts homeowners, those whose loans are gaurenteed by Uncle Sam's cousin's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and not the borrowers who were sold these complicated language and reality defying products that opened up the doors to this whole mess. Maybe that is a piece of the grand irony here. We are using our tax dollars to sure up loans that would in all likelihood be repaid. We're making the safest of bets and everyone seems happy about it.
As we walk out of the bank, my husband and I feel light and airy. We joke to each other about the soreness in our wrists from signing the pile of mortgage papers and wonder if anyone has ever made a successful personal injury claim. Yet, somehow I can’t escape the feeling that the alarm has indeed been triggered. It’s just that we can’t hear it yet.
Give me all my money, it read.
The clerk, a girl in her twenties who will compliment me on my wallet during our transaction before she learns with disappointment that it was purchased at a thrift store, barely raised her eyebrows. Instead, with a friendly smile, she turned from us to consult her manager and seek approval on the cashier’s check we had, in actuality, requested.
Like many of our fellow Americans, my husband and I are refinancing our home. We’re “taking advantage of the incredible interest rates" that we've been told won’t be around much longer. After we lock our rate, I watch several news reports noting that the interest rate has indeed “reached an all-time, 30-month high.” Because it is a point above the rate I’ve cleverly secured, these reports make me grin with pleasure.
The current “mortgage crisis” that has triggered “the great recession” seems chock-full of these double entendres, a mastery of language with the soul purpose of reducing meaning so that the rest of us can’t figure out what the hell is really going on.
Maybe it’s because too many talented writers have gone into the marketing industry and credit is now extended to us with dazzling phrases like “Chase Freedom,” which, by the way, is now trademarked.
I can’t help but notice that these same catch-phrases being tossed around today are the very same ones first used on us in 2006, the height of the sub-prime mortgage craze, when my husband and I first set out to purchase our home.
At the time, we had been married for two years and were rapidly outgrowing our small rental. Like everyone else, we wanted to buy a home. Also like everyone else, we had no idea what we were doing.
Despite this fact, everyone seemed to support us from our parents to our friends to our co-workers. Perhaps it was because they all held mortgages and wanted us to join them in their sinking ship. Regardless, there was no shortage of encouraging advice. Rent is like flushing money down the toilet, they said. The housing market is only going to go up, you might as well get in now. You can write the interest off your income taxes.
Even in the supermarket, I remember circling the aisles and hearing the manager on the intercom beaconing us to stop at the branch bank at the front of the store to find out more about the historic interest rate lows.
Only our landlord was sad to hear that we would be leaving our cottage, which we’d completely renovated in trade for a few months of free rent. She even offered us their five bedroom farmhouse that they were having to re-list because a deal to develop the land had been blocked by the town. Yet, we thumbed our nose at the offer in trade for the coveted dream of ownership.
The first mortgage officer we visited was the epitome of the crooked brokers that have been recently cartooned. (It should be noted that his office was located in the Merrill Lynch Building.) He tried to offer us a loan nearly 5 times that of our annual income and, even though our credit scores were well into the 700s, he also claimed that we’d never qualify for a fixed 30-year rate and would have to go with a 7-year ARM for 80% of our loan and the remaining 10% would be a fifteen-year balloon (we had figured out how to get 10% down out of our retirement vehicles, which ended up costing us a bundle in taxes, but that's for another essay).
It is only in retrospect that I am now well-versed enough to understand why exactly he was selling us a load of goods. Fortunately for us, we simply got a bad vibe at his insistence that we should buy a house for much more than we felt we could comfortably afford. (Also, for any of you marketers reading this, I would avoid pairing the word “balloon” with anything having to do with finances. While attractive to young children, it is far too accurate an image of something that will eventually explode.)
When we left his office, it was with a rancid taste in our mouths that has only gotten worse as we’ve watched houses on our block foreclose, and I can only surmise that these losses were because of his loans or from others like him.
I’m going to spare you the details. Our story is not the tragedy that it could have been. We ended up with a decent sized house priced at a little less than 2.5 times our annual salaries and a 30-year fixed rate from a broker who sends us birthday and Christmas cards and who I feel bonded with enough to call a friend though I think he thinks I’m a little weird and all too eager to talk interest rates and amortization tables. Although we’ve watched our house drop in value over the last eighteen months, we are not underwater with our loan (despite the fact that today 24% of residential home owners are.)
So, this time around, I can’t really understand exactly how it is that we are again being offered something for a seeming nothing, a new loan with a lower interest rate. And perhaps, the reason why I feel a bit like a robber standing at the bank asking for my own money to make this transaction.
If anything, anyone who has turned on the news knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch, you can be hurt by what you don’t know, and easy credit is simply too good to be true.
I’ve done the math many times over (there is a great website for amortization calculations if you’d like to do your own ) and the bank is loosing money on this deal (and pressumably the millions of others like it).
Even with $4,000 in incentives for servicers backed by the government’s HASP program (which I can count as coming out of this taxpayer’s pocket), I’m not a borrower anywhere near default. I suppose they risk losing me to another bank that will beat their price and there is a miniscule amount they collect in service fees (which I immediately recoup because my first payment on my new mortgage isn’t due for 60 days.) Even though it will take me four more years to pay off this loan if I make every scheduled payment as I’m starting over at 30 years, at the end of the day what I pay will be lower than staying in my current loan.
As of the end of January, 1.3 million borrowers were taking advantage of loan modifications available through HASP, the Homeowners Affordability and Sustainability Program (yet another ACONYM that is supposed to suggest "free money"). This doesn’t include countless borrowers like me who just want to refinance to follow the trends on the 30-year bond.
With the dominant narrative circulating -- the Wall Street bankers armed with their clever language and incompetent ratings agencies that made sub-prime deals sound like a song (even the term sub-prime seems to suggest you are getting a better deal that is lower than prime even when it is actually far above) -- I am eager to be seemingly on the “right,” money-saving side of this transaction. Yet, I think it’s all too Pollyanna to believe that the banks (and the bankers who’ve all continued to make millions thanks to the fact that their companies are publicly held and therefore all the risk is assumed by their stockholders) are actually taking a hit.
Perhaps it should be noted that HASP only applies to the safest, most likely to repay their debts homeowners, those whose loans are gaurenteed by Uncle Sam's cousin's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and not the borrowers who were sold these complicated language and reality defying products that opened up the doors to this whole mess. Maybe that is a piece of the grand irony here. We are using our tax dollars to sure up loans that would in all likelihood be repaid. We're making the safest of bets and everyone seems happy about it.
As we walk out of the bank, my husband and I feel light and airy. We joke to each other about the soreness in our wrists from signing the pile of mortgage papers and wonder if anyone has ever made a successful personal injury claim. Yet, somehow I can’t escape the feeling that the alarm has indeed been triggered. It’s just that we can’t hear it yet.
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