Gratitude, hope & outrage

Confirmation

10/14

A Real Man

~

10/13

the engineer & the singing bowl

My youngest son, 18, visiting Kripalu Yoga & Health Center with me.

Will the time come when we don’t have to work so hard on a relationship?
No, the time will come when there will be no lapse in our efforts…
to be kind.

Gail & Hugh Prather

In my mind, one of the essentially revealing comments of the current occupant of the White House is what he said about marriage, just after his third:

I don’t want to have to go home and have to work at a relationship. A relationship you have to work at, in my opinion doesn’t work.

And about bringing more children into the world with her:

Sure. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids.

About about his wedding vows if she were horribly disfigured in a car accident.

Totally, no question in my mind…  How do the breasts look?

~

10/11

Earlier this week, I couldn’t tell say if she was a pop star or a film star, only that she was well after my time and probably never my taste, but when I heard about her instagram post, I went looking for it and it was so good (human rights front & center) that I later read it aloud to my husband.

Lots of people registered to vote because of it.

And even though I’ve had a string of challenging health days, I dragged myself to the coast of Maine, having been waiting for that unusually warm autumn day to instigate such a journey, and while it didn’t change anything, deep within something shifted, so that waking this morning in a sea of orange-leafed trees in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I find myself hopeful again.

~

10/9

I am so angry. And grief-stricken. And weary! (As a woman.) And yet, so very, very delighted (as a mother) to have our youngest home for an entire week so that I get to remind him again and again to get off his phone, and do his chores, and move his laundry, and go to bed.

After the past 6-week half-life without him, I’m savoring the day-to-day ordinariness of simply having him around without wanting anything more. (Except. Mid-terms.)

~

10/7

A personal allegory on Saturday afternoon.
Another’s blessing this morning.

These are the ways I’ve attempted to express what it is I feel about the SCOTUS confirmation–that which is beyond politics & procreative rights–as if when it comes to women, anything is separate.

Despondent.

I hate to claim it, but I think that names it.

Numb. Mute.

I could barely speak when it was final.

My niece just home from college with friends echoed the same. “The car fell silent,” she said, about hearing the news over the radio.

The world is much too quiet.

In this absence of sound, Juan Ramon Jimenez’s verse comes to mind:

My boat struck something deep.
Nothing happened.
Sound, silence, waves.

What if all the women went mute from this trauma? What if we remained silent until others hollered on our behalf?

The men who are protesting MOVE me. Those who don’t get it, won’t get it, mock it, deride it, dismiss it, skirt it, KILL me.

Don’t give me your Republican/Democrat bullshit. This is UNIVERSAL.

But it is too quiet.

Nothing happened? writes Jimenez. Or perhaps Everything happened…

And here I take liberty with his verse, understanding that my silence, our silence, the silence, is a tidal wave forming:

…And we are sitting in the middle of a revolution.

May it be so.

~

10/5

TO THE MEN: WADE in the WATER!

Women hold the water while men stay safe on solid ground.

I don’t know what Senator Collin’s deal is; what the story is about her husband and Russia; I don’t know what anyone woman’s deal is if she doesn’t get the stakes with this administration and this appointment.

What I do know is that the Patriarchy has their foot on our necks. Relies on us for beauty, support, warm fuzzies, flowers, holidays & gatherings, greeting cards & gifts, compassion & tenderness–the “You play it soft, so that I can play it tough” charade–in order to perpetuate the privilege of ”real men” (those not born of women) who don’t have to feel into all the yucky hard stuff that comes with vulnerability–his own and those around him.

She does the feeling for Him while He gets to have everything:

Senator Steven Daines, Montana, told The Associated Press: “This weekend there’s going to be a new Supreme Court justice and that he is going to walk his daughter down the aisle.”

He sweeps in at the right moment, while She holds the water, and then from time to time, behind closed doors, He collapses in Her arms before numbing himself again with certainty, telling Her how it is, as if She didn’t change His diapers or nurse Him at Her breast or hold Him while he sobbed.

So afraid of his dependency, He will convince her that She relies on Him, and if He is not convincing, He will hurt Her, because He has detached from what makes Him whole and if She won’t let Him suck Her dry, He has no purpose for Her.

Women can no longer be the hosts for men’s wholeness.

Men, WADE in the water!
AND clean your mess up.

I believe in you.

Women, men are not our solid ground.

~

10/5

Each time I see a photo of men with other men protesting (like right in our town last night), or I see a call for men to do the same, or a video of young male students standing together holding signs that say: WE BELIEVE, I am brought to tears.

Not because women need rescuing, but because we need more and more men to take the baton that is theirs.

As my friend Jess put it: Patriarchy is a men’s issue.

We are so tired. We have been holding this alone for too long. Silently. Shamefully. Sinfully. All the ways we were told we were wrong. Because of what men did. (Or didn’t do.)

I am so touched. I am so grateful. I am so relieved. To the men gathering with men. You have restored my faith. My hope. My sense of what we can do together.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

~

9/30

I am so grateful. Despite differing faiths (or lack thereof) as well as homes in vastly different parts of the country, along with different income levels and lifestyles—most all, if not all, of my many, many siblings and their grown children! (including my own) are engaged when it comes to the politics of gender, race, hate, discrimination, healthcare, poverty, the planet and LOVE; while significant swaths of extended family are similarly informed/inspired, speaking out and showing up for others and this nation with intelligence, commitment, devotion & love.

~

9/30

It took me a day not to turn away from this.

 

9/29

I woke like I rarely do—belly down; and like I never have—with my palms crisscrossed under my throat.

~

9/29

My Son, My Son

~

9/28

It’s as if the men are saying: We were once entitled to you. You were our spoils. And you can’t take that away. Maybe we can no longer grab you. But we could once. And it’s unfair to change the rules we made about your bodies.

9/28

I’m sooooo grateful to all those speaking up, listening, learning and echoing the human rights of women. THANK YOU!!! You encourage me.

Parasites & Politics

Like Trump & the body politic, I want to thank these parasites for taking up residence in my belly over the course of the summer.

They brought into stark relief the deep imbalance already present in my system and highlighted the places that function well.

Despite this helpfulness, it would be detrimental to continue to host these organisms who daily damage the systems upon which my vitality depends.

And yet, even in this way, they have been useful–forcing me out of the habit of complacency to seek out new healers.

These are the thoughts I scribbled down this morning from the mat.

As class began, I sat tall, suddenly understanding the intersection of body-mind-spirit as three sovereign triangles, while simultaneously Senators of the United States of America gathered in our nation’s capital to disregard my humanity.

E Pluribus Unum.

Fears unrealized, metastasize, leading to the election of a man like Trump, emboldening those who disregard the many to protect the one.

Giardia. Blastocystis. Entamoeba. Until something is named we suffer in the dark. But once identified, the path to equilibrium is revealed.

Misogyny. Oppression. Patriarchy.

Even sick and assaulted, the body is our greatest ally—insists on being heard; serves as our faithful companion—there when we incarnate in our mother’s womb and there when we leave this world.

How so might we recognize and respond to the the body politic?

The doctor tells me that I must treat this infestation for at least 6 months, without letting up, and after that, the underlying issues that made possible such a vicious attack must be addressed.

I am heeding her counsel, just as I am turning toward the voices of women, particularly those further marginalized by race, as the path to a more perfect union.

At the moment of most abundance

My son calls about once a week, typically on his walk home from work or on his way home from class (sometimes sustainable design, sometimes women’s studies); and his brain at 9 pm is on fire, and the possibilities in front of him unlimited, and his capacity to ponder and purpose and pursue lines of thinking is exponentially expansive while my world steadily shrinks in the dark.

“I bought a new spice rack and a Q-tip holder today,” I tell him. “And I found a chai frosted pumpkin loaf at Trader Joes!”

Which is to say, I’m tired, and not just at 9 pm, but in 2018 and 2017 and 2016.

Has it been this long?

It won’t always be this way.

Once my guys (and the country) are set, I’ll rise up again, right? Just as soon as I dismantle all the photo albums and the bins and the boxes in the basement and the attic, 25 years of home-nourishing that in this empty nest weigh me down.

It’s just around the corner.

57 is apparently the peak of women’s happiness, not 18 or 21 as suspected. My mother died at that peak and my grandmother just before it, like the leaves who let go at the height of their beauty.

What is that poem? I have it somewhere. What’s her name? It’s something unusual.

Monza Naff, that’s it!

Wait, aren’t I FB friends with someone named Monza Naff? Did she write the verse that I’ve turned toward every September when the anniversary of my mother’s passing comes along? (Is that how we became friends. Memory!)

AUTUMN

~Urge me to drop every leaf I don’t need
Every task or habit I repeat past its season
Every sorrow I rehearse
Each unfulfilled hope I recall
Every person or possession
to which I cling-
Until my branches are bare,
until I hold fast
to Nothing

Blow me about
in your wild iron sky,
crush
all that’s puffed up,
fluff
all that in me needs
to go to seed,
send my shadows to sleep.

Tutor me
through straining night winds
In the passion of moan and pant
The gift of letting go
At the moment of most abundance
In the way of
falling apples, figs, maple leaves, pecans.

Open my eyes
to your languid light,
let me stare in your face
until I see no difference
between soar and fall

until I recognize
eternity
in single breaths,
faint whispers of cool air
through lungs.

Show me the way of dying
in glorious boldness
Yellow,gold, orange, rust, red, burgundy.

~

“At the moment of most abundance.”

Yesterday, I woke with the runs, today I woke angry. “Anger is sad’s bodyguard.” This is sometimes true about anger, especially if it is stuck. But I needn’t fear. She is coming. We saw her yesterday.

Dr. Ford–vulnerable, poised, transparent in terror and anxiety, clear, considerate, accomplished, tender, fierce.

What is leaving is just as certain.

We saw that yesterday afternoon too.

Petulant. Entitled. Blaming.

Kavanaugh and Trump are emblematic of the Patriarchy unhinged; and day after day this creaking of the archaic contraction that has long oppressed so many wakes more and more of us, especially the women–from our illusion that strength and purpose and understanding is outside of us–finally realizing that we can lead–through tenderness, strength and purpose matched with commitment to voicing what is true, while loving husbands and brothers and uncles and sons.

“I can’t think of anything but Kavanaugh and chai-frosted pumpkin cake,” I might have said to my son when he called home last night, but instead I marveled at his capacities, and how I helped bring them to bear, and how if I’m fortunate, they will help make life better for others, and for himself, long after I’m gone.

COMPLICIT

Turns out I was heartbroken when Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court; though I’m just feeling it in 2018.

I don’t even remember–Was he conservative or liberal?

What was most relevant was that he was a he, and she a she.

Disposable.

I always thought it was her that I disdained or the whole sordid ordeal. A decade later during labor, I cringed when my midwife pulled out a cold coke can to place on my lower back.

I never allowed myself the time or space to sort out the complexity of my feelings during the Thomas hearings, if in fact I was equipped to do so.

Newly married, teaching sixth-grade social studies, I was immersed in a beach town where girls were raised to be desirable and boys to be desiring and our bodies up for grabs, leers, comments–the hoots & hollers from passing cars serving as our A+ report card for coming of age in just the right way.

“I can’t believe how big your tits are,” a colleague said, outside the principal’s office after we’d seen each other on the beach the day before. (He was one of the nice guys.)

One of the not so nice guys was talking to our sixth-grade students–the 11-year-old boys–about my ass. (Some of the girls confided this to me.)

Before teaching, I managed a restaurant where from time to time, I reported to the Head Chef’s office. Above his desk hung a woman’s spread, updated monthly, facing us both as we talked about menus and staff. The same view welcomed or rather unwelcomed me at the car repair shop or when using the bathroom at say, my aunt and uncle’s house.

Which is to say, what was Anita Hill thinking?

She must have lived in a different world to speak about such things in public.

I can barely listen to that hearing. Every few moments I have to hit pause. My skin crawls now with the audacity.

Of men.

…How another good guy, Joe Biden, put Clarence Thomas dirty words in her mouth for all to see and hear so that it was she who we found distasteful instead of him.

Isn’t it always that way.

(See, Elizabeth Bruenig’s piece: “She Reported Her Rape. Her Hometown Turned Against Her.”)

But “distasteful” misses the mark, doesn’t it? As does sordid or gross or crude; which a man’s personal habits or interests may be; but when shared with others, unwelcomed, or exposed in the workplace like my colleagues, or like Keillor, Franken and Lauer, is something more than discomfort.

It is the perpetuation of a man’s world where women, if not invisible, should remember their place. And other women should help keep them there. Like I did when those 11-year old girls complained about the teacher who was talking about my ass, by shaking my head and doing… Nothing.

“You have a husband and sons, don’t you?” writes a Facebook follower on my wall. “Aren’t you worried that some woman could bring them down with a lie?”

Somehow it’s still about the men.

When I listen to Anita Hill now, I no longer hear a dirty woman. I hear a warrior.

I didn’t have your back Anita Hill.

I have yours, Professor Ford.