Wednesday, December 9, 2015

It Just Isn't That Difficult

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” – Indira Gandhi

There is a great cliché that says “Love is a verb”. In other words, love shouldn’t be viewed as the noun it technically is; it should be seen as a verb, something we actively “do” on a daily basis as a way of reinvesting in our relationships, our marriage, our nation, and our communities. Loving relationships – of all kinds – do not just happen. We have to work at loving each other on a daily – sometimes even hourly – basis.

Why do we so often overlook the idea that peace is also something that we have to “do”? Something we have to work to achieve and maintain every day? Peace does not happen through inaction. Peace does not happen through conflict, as so many advocates of war have us believe. Peace happens through conscious action and understanding. There is a difference between understanding alternate ideologies and required consensual ideologies. All we must do is agree to allow one another to live and believe how we each live and believe. All we must do is accept differences. It really is that simple.

We have xenophobes demanding that people be expelled from the country, that those who practice a certain religion should not be allowed “in”. Of course they should. America is not a clique. This is not Mean Girls. Everyone is welcome at the table.

Peace is not the opposite of war, though, because like war, it takes so much work. And this, I think, is what people overlook. Peace does not just happen by laying down arms. It is a conscious effort, an active pursuit every day.

Peace is deliberate.

It will not happen by accident. And it will not happen by spewing hate or divisive rhetoric. We don’t fall into a time of peace as we fall into a lull in conversation. We must make it our purpose.

Peace is inclusive.

When we actively work to include everyone in society – yes, everyone – peace becomes attainable. When it is no longer about pushing the ideals of the dominant party in power onto the masses but about working to include the voices of each group, we will know we have found the correct road.

Peace is active.

We cannot wish it into existence. We can pray for it. We can desire it. We can yearn for it. But even then we still must do the work, the hard boots-on-the-ground work to make it happen. We mustn’t brush it to the side and say, “someone should really do something about that. Maybe if someone had done something, that [insert bad event here] wouldn’t have happened.” Ultimately we are all someone else and it is a responsibility that belongs to us all.

Peace is the bigger picture…

…but it is also the smaller one. It takes time, but remember, time will pass anyway. Put that time to positive use. And it takes effort. But in one of the greatest rewards possible, peace allows us the enormous satisfaction of instant gratification. We can see differences and tiny results the moment we begin working for it. Certainly we cannot expect results on a global scale immediately, but if we look for the small changes, we can see that we are, in fact, making a difference. One change can lead into the ripple of another. You may not get to see how far each of your ripples fully reaches, but keep making them. Keep working.

Can you stick to it? Can you commit? Can you be the only one smiling when all those around you give you no reason to? If you can, then one day, when you have no smile to give, they will be there with one of their own to give to you.

Peace is an active concept. It cannot happen through rejection. When we make an effort to move slightly beyond where we are comfortable, when we choose understanding over condemnation, when we take the hand of someone in need rather than pointing a finger to shame him, we work to make peace happen. We work to repair what is broken.

We work.




Thursday, November 19, 2015

Salty Tears of Teacherhood

“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” – Maya Angelou

Some stared at me in horror, some in outright discomfort, and others in simple astonishment. I don’t think they could believe this was happening any more than I could.

I, their teacher, the one who was always so happy and chirpy, so ready to joke and smile, was crying as I stood at the front of the classroom to talk to them.

I didn’t plan it.

When students sign up for my classes, I take an interest in them. I like to know their stories, where they’ve come from, what they’ve been through. I become very protective (in a completely appropriate way, of course). I try to help them. I encourage them to talk to me if they need to, to vent, they know they can come to me if they have a problem or need help. They become my kids. And no matter where they go, or how old they get, I’ll always still think of them as my kids.

Damn. Kids can be real heartbreakers.

I’ve noticed a…relaxing…in their work ethic as the semester counts down. And Wednesday, when I arrived at class with my favorite purple dry-erase marker and my lecture all planned out over the chapter they were supposed to have read, it was a dagger to the heart when only two people in the entire class could say they had completed the reading. Two.

So my talk began as simple disappointment. I don’t yell when I’m angry. I tend to get quieter. I asked, in all seriousness, why they were in college. One student dutifully answered “to learn.” Is it? I answered. Lately I see very little evidence of that. Think about why you’re here. 

I like to laugh, and tell stories, and have fun. That’s how I teach. But—

And I never saw it coming.

I cared too fucking much that these kids pulled their shit together. My throat got tight, and my eyes got blurry.

“I’m sorry,” I said to them. I had to pause for quite some time before I could even say anything else. “Somewhere along the semester, I failed you as a professor because I must have somehow made you think you didn’t have to work.” The tears were spilling over by now, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

I missed my chance in there somewhere to inspire them. To engage them. These were my kids. My responsibility.

“You weren’t prepared for today,” I told them. “Do better for Friday. Be better. Now, I need you to leave.” I had to dismiss class (though I don’t imagine that bothered them in the least). I was in no fit state to teach.

One student spoke to me nicely after class, and two students very sweetly approached me after class and hugged me. One of whom I never would have expected.

Maybe I haven’t failed them completely, after all.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Living with the Loss

"You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be." - Nigella Lawson

It’s crazy that the world just carried on today.

People were just walking, and talking, and laughing for God’s sake, as if my heart wasn’t breaking. As if today weren’t such an important day. No. They simply picked up their lives and carried on.

I can’t do that.

All day long, while I was talking to my students, or while I was walking around campus and witnessing the autumn life humming around me, only one thing mattered to me today, and it was the one thought I had to keep shoved down tightly. I mean, gagged. Gagged and stuffed in the back of a room. Because if I let myself think about it, I would cry. And crying and teaching do not mix.

Today is my son’s birthday. My Sam. He would have been 13 today.

“Would have been” is the worst thing, the hardest thing I have to say, because my son is dead. I can’t say “is”. It’s a tiny matter of verbiage that makes all the difference in the world to this mother. I am permanently broken by his loss. I’ve written about it numerous times. I’m sure I’ll continue writing about it because it never, not for one day, leaves my mind.

There are things about me that will not heal. I have not laughed the same since my son died. I do not laugh as deeply, nor as long. Where once I slept through the night, I have not done so since the night my son died. I wake multiple times. Sometimes I can get back to sleep relatively quickly. I cherish those times. Other nights I’m up for a few more hours before sleep finds me again.

I’m hypervigilant about my children sleeping. I check on them during the night more than most moms do. This is common for moms of newborns, I know, but my living children are 10 and 14. They are well out of SIDS range, but I still check on them. And when they get a cold, or have a stuffy nose from allergies, I nearly go out of my mind making sure they can breathe at night.

I’m scarred. I’m scared. I’m broken. I haven’t fallen apart yet because I have two living children. But there are days like today when I think to myself that dying wouldn’t be so bad. Days like today my heart hurts so much that I almost cannot keep breathing. And it would just be a relief to stop. I miss my son. I miss my husband. And dying would be so easy.

But then I flip my wrist, and I see my semicolon…my survivor tattoo. And I know: I can’t take the easy road. I’ll fight this darkness that has come upon me today. I miss my son terribly, and that never goes away. It does not get easier, but there are days when it is worse. But I will not let the darkness win.


I may be broken, but I’m yet to be defeated.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Teach the Children Well

“Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.” - Plato

The new school year is underway. That means that, once again, we have survived the hustle and bustle of back-to-school shopping. It seems as though every year the school supply lists grow longer and longer, more and more specific (we must bring Crayola map pencils and crayons, the list dictates; that is the only acceptable brand). I have two children to shop for, and that is enough for me. On top of the school supplies, there are still clothes and shoes to be bought.

My parents had five children to outfit for school every year, and they did not have a lot of money. We didn’t always get everything new every year. Backpacks were expected to last more than one year and not all of our clothes were new. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs.

I remember getting a beautiful light pink sweater in the second grade. I loved it so much. I was happy to have something new to wear and didn’t really notice the small white letters on the left chest. I proudly wore that sweater to school the next day and one of my classmates asked me about the monogram on my sweater. I had no idea what she meant. “The initials on your sweater,” she said. “That’s not your name. Where’d you get that sweater, Goodwill?” I had no answer for her because, honestly, I had no idea where the sweater came from. In all likelihood it may have come from Goodwill. That was the first time I ever felt like I wasn’t good enough because of what I wore. I never told my mom about that. She had so much to do keeping all of us kids taken care of. I didn’t want to make her feel bad.

In third grade, it was my turn to get a brand new backpack. I was so excited. I must have spent at least thirty minutes carefully going through the mom-approved backpack section to find “the one”. I got to start my school year with a new backpack. Not “new to me”, but actually new. I took such care of that bag. When it got a spot on it, I wiped it down with a damp wash cloth. I wanted it to last. But then something terrible happened. One of the nylon straps began to fray. I was just a kid; I didn’t know how to fix it, so I just trimmed off the frayed part. It began to unravel again. I had been so vigilant about taking care of this bag, and now I felt as though I had broken it. Defeated, I brought it to my dad. I was in tears. They had bought me a brand new backpack and I wrecked it.

Suddenly, my dad turned into a superhero.

He pulled out his cigarette lighter and melted the end of the nylon strap to keep it from fraying again. Just like that, my backpack was as good as new. I was amazed. My bag was healed. It was at that moment that I realized my dad can fix anything.

I still believe that.

Growing up, I didn’t have all the extras that many of the other kids my age had. I did appreciate what I had (though I did yearn from some of those name-brand clothes my peers wore). Not having everything I wanted gave me the ability to desire, to dream, to want, and to work. I learned to do extra chores, to save my own money, so I could buy little things I wanted or go to the mall with my friends.


We do a disservice to our kids by providing them all of their wants, by funding every mall trip and movie outing. Personal responsibility is an important lesson to learn. We aren’t trying to teach the lesson of deprivation, but we do want to teach them what it’s like to work for what they want, to care for what they have, and that everything they want is not necessarily what they need.


Saturday, August 8, 2015

Texas Women

“You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.” – Davy Crockett

I grew up watching those wonderful movies – Gone with the Wind, Steel Magnolias, and Fried Green Tomatoes – and I loved the smooth softness of those southern women. They were so sweet and buttery around the edges and had that hard strength in their core. I was so proud to be southern when I was younger. But then as I grew up, I slowly came to understand that I was different. I’m not quite southern. I most definitely am not northern, and I am not far enough west to be western. There is only one word for what I am:

Texan.

There is, I think, a difference between Texan women and southern women. Very often it is as subtle as light shades of grey, but it is there. Yes, we use the same phrases like, “Bless his heart” and “Oh, God love you” and yes, they mean the same thing when we use them, but Texas women are less inclined.

Less inclined to be submissive.

Less inclined to put up with shit.

Less inclined to skip that final coat of Aqua Net on their big hair.

Yes, I’m generalizing. But Texas women are tough. We have to be. There are so many geographical changes in Texas that it is as if there were five different states smushed together. And believe me, five different geographical areas breed five very different types of people. When these people cross lines, it can feel like culture shock. Going from north Texas to south Texas, or east Texas to west Texas can be a broadening experience.

My family lives in east Texas. I often refer to it as “behind the Pine Curtain” because east Texas (again, generally speaking) lacks a certain level of open-mindedness and live-and-let-live mentality. That being said, we are typically a friendly people to strangers; we nod and say hello; men hold doors for women; parking is usually free unless you’re downtown; and if you run short at the checkout, a stranger behind you is likely to give you the dollar you lack.

This is the world in which my daughters have grown up. So when I took my youngest daughter, nine years old, to Dallas for a day of adventure, she was shocked. Dallas is only an hour and a half away, but it is beyond the Pine Curtain, you see. It’s beyond east Texas. It is The Big City.

Her first shock was that we had to pay for parking at the Dallas World Aquarium. She nearly lost her mind at that. “But don’t we have to buy a ticket to get in?” she asked. “Why do we have to pay to park on top of that?” I told her nothing is free in Dallas.

Her next shock came as we entered the building and the man ahead of us did not hold the door for her. “Excuse me, sir!” she said. When he turned around, she said, “Aren’t you going to hold the door for us? We’re girls!” I admit, it probably looked like I was having convulsions I was trying so hard to keep a straight face and hold in the laughter. Maybe I should have reprimanded her, but she did use her manners. She called him “sir” as all well-mannered children are trained to do in the south (and Texas). In his embarrassment (he turned so red), he did hold the door for us. We then let him get ahead of us in line.

I taught my girls manners. They know how to behave in a restaurant, how to manipulate a knife and fork, how to act in church and school. They also know not to accept less than they deserve, not to be treated as second class, and not to be silent in causes that matter. They are true Texas women, and they are tough. They have learned strength from the strength they see around them.

The strength of Texas flows through me. I was born within her borders. Texas has never been an easy state. It wasn’t an easy state to acquire or hold. She’s hard. She’s unyielding unless you figure out how to treat her. This is why Texas women are tough. Our mother state is tough. As we grow in her shadow, on her land, we inherit that toughness of spirit.

Only once have I left the Great State. Of course, I had often traveled, but this was (supposed to be) a permanent move. When I married my second husband, we moved to Miami. For a time, life was good. He taught history at his school, I taught English and literature at mine, my daughter went to hers. But then the unthinkable happened and my husband – my beautiful, handsome, kind husband – died after his back surgery. I was two months pregnant, devastated, and widowed. But I knew what to do. My soul heard the call. My roots felt the pull.

Texas was calling me home.


We all came home. Even my husband. He rests in Texas soil next to my son, whom I lost when he was only three months old. The women must be strong to endure; to go on, a Texas woman cannot be soft and buttery. From her core to her edges, the Texas woman is the strength and solidity of iron, and the resiliency, comfort, and durability of leather. 


Thursday, July 16, 2015

Common Kindness

“Say and do something positive that will help the situation; it doesn’t take any brains to complain.” – Robert A. Cook

There is just so much. We are inundated all the time with the wretchedness of humanity: A man killed four marines in Tennessee. A man massacred over twenty people in a movie theater. People gathered in a parking lot to hear a politician speak were shot. A young girl and her friend were shot in the head for trying to get an education. The KKK is holding rallies in an effort to dumb down the next generation.

It goes on and on.

My heart grows heavy with it all. I am not one who reads a story and dismisses it. I linger over the details. I think about the families and how they may be coping with the “after” they have to live in. Having had my life divided in to numerous before’s and after’s, I can understand the shock and confusion that comes with it. How the ‘after’ always comes along so suddenly, BAM! Life is changed forever. Perhaps it’s because I can relate so well that I don’t just skim headlines and move along. I feel stories.

Being overly empathetic is difficult. I bring the weight of the world upon myself in this way. I pray for those whom I can, send out good vibes for others, but the unrelenting wave of humanity’s horrors is wearisome. Once I’m caught up in it, I find myself trapped. My mood begins to darken, and I get lower and lower.

I feel like May, in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, fated to feel the misery of the world, my heart perpetually breaking for the problems I can’t fix, my mind continually overwhelmed by just how awful one person can treat another.

But just as I’m at my darkest, when I’m trapped, just then my youngest will joyfully run through the house in her leotard and Batman cape.

She’s a reminder of all that is good in the world. All the positive, all the happiness, all the goodness that we so seldom see reported: the police officer who buys diapers and wipes for a woman instead of arresting her for shoplifting. The man who builds tiny houses for the homeless instead of reporting them for loitering. The dry cleaner who offers free service to those needing an outfit cleaned for a job interview. The boy who went to Target for a tie and got coached and prepped for a job interview.

These are great stories, but they are few and far between. We ask, “What is wrong with society?” If all the news/media show is darkness and negativity, is it a surprise that society is a negative place? When I pick up my eldest from school and she rants about how awful her day was, I let her go on and on. When she winds down, I always say, “I’m so sorry you had a rough day. Now tell me something good that happened today.” Balance. There should be positive with the negative.

If we want the world to be a certain way, we have to make it that way. How else will it get there? We want our children to know certain things, so we teach them. We want them to act a certain way, so we show them. If we all want the positive to dominate in society, we need to be proactive in making that happen. Random acts of kindness. Compliments. Respect. Help someone in need. They don’t have to be huge things. Something small to you can be something huge to someone who is struggling. One positive act from you can lead to the next person doing something kind for someone else. It becomes a society linked by positivity.


Far better to be linked by kindness than chained by hate.


Saturday, July 4, 2015

The PSAs of Parenting

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” - Buddha

Sometimes, parenting feels like an endless stream of PSAs. I have moments where I literally feel like I’m a parent in one of those old After-School specials; that’s how hokey, crafted, and wholesome the words are that come out of my mouth. As parents, we know all about “those” topics that we know we will have to discuss with our kids at some point, so I like to have something kind of cued up, pre thought-out, sort of simmering along on the back-burner.

Yesterday it was a good thing I had so many pots already boiling away because my nine year old was in a talkative mood and she wanted to talk about all kinds of things.

Here are some snippets:

On Love:
We were watching North and South. No, not the BBC series. The 1985 miniseries with Patrick Swayze (with the most glorious hair ever), James Read, Kirstie Alley, Philip Casnoff (omg…yum), Genie Francis, and oodles of other popular actors of the time.

My youngest is nine years old, almost ten, and the notions of race expressed in this miniseries are different than she has ever been exposed to. She was extraordinarily bothered by it.

“Mom,” she asked me, “Why is it bad for Virgilia and Grady to be together if they’re in love?”

(Virgilia [played by Kirstie Alley] is a white northern abolitionist who helps the slave Grady [played by Georg Stanford Brown] escape the south. They fall in love and get married.)

I explained that at this time in history, people had the wrong idea about the races and thought they shouldn’t date or marry each other, and isn’t that silly?

She was quiet for a little while, but not happy. I could see the little wheels turning in her head.

“So,” she finally said, “what would happen if someone brown wanted to love me? Is that still bad?”

And there it was. Time to bring pot #1 forward.

I turned the movie off, turned toward her and said, “No. You listen to me, now. It doesn’t matter if you love someone who is black, white, brown, red, yellow, or any other shade of any color there is. It doesn’t matter if you love a he or a she. What matters is that you love and that you are loved in return. You can’t special order what package your true love comes in. You just accept it when it comes, however it comes.”

She looked at me hard, and asked one more time, “It doesn’t matter anymore?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I confirmed.

My daughter will not grow up thinking love is wrong. And that’s all I have to say about that.

On Sisterhood:
Or this could probably be titled “On Fighting”. There is a four-year age gap between Emma and Violet. This leads to a lot of old-fashioned sisterly bickering and all-out door-slamming. There’s a big difference between almost-10 and almost-14, or – in other words – almost-fifth grade and almost-ninth grade. Emma still plays with dolls and Barbies, still creates magical worlds with legos and stuffed animals. Violet likes to play role-playing games on the computer, text on her phone, and read. Worlds apart. Emma’s answer to this is to nag Violet constantly about playing with her. This causes some frustration.

After this had gone on for a few hours, I called them both in to my room for a family meeting. Oh, how they hate family meetings. They know I’m about to talk…a lot. And I did. But the part I stressed was this:

“You need to remember that y’all are it. Sisters for life. At some point, you two will be living in this world without me. You two need to be able to lean on each other, learn from each other, and love each other. I need to know that even when I’m not here, you two will still be fine and will still have one another. You need each other, even if you can’t quite see it now.”

Emma’s father had died before she was born. Their brother had died in 2003. We are all familiar with the concept of death. But the girls had never applied it to me. They had never thought that I might not be there for the rest of their lives. This was a brand new thought to them. It shook them.

The fighting hasn’t magically stopped, but it has gotten better.

On Conscience:
“Mom, don’t you ever just want to do the wrong thing?” Emma asked me.

Questions like this can be delicate, but I always try to tell her the truth. Kids are excellent at sniffing out lies, and if you lie to them once, they are wary of trusting you again.

“Yeah, there are a lot of times I want to do the wrong thing,” I admitted.

“Really?” She seemed absolutely stunned that I would cop to that. “Why don’t you?”

Why don’t I? A most excellent question.

“Sometimes I do. Because I’m stubborn and want things my way. But I always end up feeling guilty so I wind up doing the right thing after all. It’s a hard lesson to learn. I make a lot of mistakes. I’ve learned to admit when I’m wrong and ask for help. I’ve learned it’s better to do the right thing even when you don’t want to.”

I didn’t think she was really listening to me because she was fiddling with the new panda bear pillow pet her aunt had just given her. But she was. She was processing.

“I’m still learning that,” she said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I like helping you learn,” I told her. “My goal is to be the voice you hear in your head. That’s why I do the right thing.”

We may be schmaltzy, but that’s fine. I talk to my girls. I talk to them about everything. When they have questions, they know they can ask me. When they have a problem, they know they can come to me. Maybe I sound like a hokey After-School special or one of those “The More You Know” TV spots, but I communicate with my kids. We talk about the silly little things, like what the dogs are thinking, to the big things, like equal rights.


I want to be the voice they hear in their heads because theirs are the voices that beat in my heart.



Thursday, July 2, 2015

All the Colors of the World

“You don’t fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.” – Bobby Seale

We are not all the same, and I thank my God for that. For years the idea of being “colorblind” has been disseminated, as if that is the solution to racism. I cannot think of anything worse. “Don’t see those color differences,” those righteous people said. I have two words for that: Bull. Shit.

What an insult to pretend the entire world is a single shade. How pompous, how arrogant of anyone to decide what shade all people of the world should be seen as. Because somewhere, someone is deciding that you – you, the person reading this – are the wrong color and they are erasing your skin tone and replacing it with the “appropriate” shade to make us all “colorblind”. Do you see the problem yet?

Making everything one color takes all the other color out of the world. And what a dismally dull world that would be.

See those colors. See all the beautiful colors we come in. It is a glorious array.

We talk about race in my classroom. At first, the students are incredibly uncomfortable and say little. But they learn that my classroom is a safe space. They can offer honest opinions, viewpoints, and insights without fighting or recriminations. We have academic debates. Eventually, in many classes they really open up and we have good discussions. Sometimes they get…lively. Overwhelmingly they tell me after class that they have never been allowed to discuss it before.

What madness is this?

Racism is a problem in this country. How can this problem be improved, and ultimately fixed, if it isn’t talked about?

So we talk even more. I’m building more and more into my college syllabus because I find that they want to talk about it and no one lets them.

Last semester, one student asked me what racial term I preferred. I told her she’s welcome to call me “white”. I’m about as pale as they come; “white” describes me pretty well. So I asked her the same question; I had a feeling I knew where she was going.

“Black,” she said, without hesitation. “I’m not from Africa. My mama is not from Africa, and her mama was not from Africa. We aren’t African-Americans. We’re ‘black’”. This set off an entirely new discussion in the classroom: “Black” vs. “African-American”. My white students weren’t as quiet as I expected them to be; several asked some great questions that day.

I told this class that I was raised with the idea of everyone being colorblind, that we should look at people as if we were all the same color. It was like grenades exploding in the classroom. Loud voices, all talking at once. Oh no, they did not like that idea at all. I held up my hand and they settled down. I had them tell me why they disliked the idea.

Student #1: “Because it’ll never work. People will always judge first based on what they see, and they’ll always see skin color first.” Many heads nodded, murmured “yeahs” and “uh-huhs”.

Student #2: “If we’re all the same color then we’re all the same. But in a bad way, I mean. Like carbon copies.” More nodding heads.

Student #3: “You know that if we’re all one color, that color’s gonna be white. Ain’t nobody gonna make everybody in this world black. I don’t want to be white. No offense, Ms. P., but I am a beautiful black woman, a proud black woman, and if someone doesn’t want to see the color of my skin they don’t have to look. They don’t have to know me. My life does not depend on them.” She got the loudest cheers and applause.

She also made the best point.

I try to teach my students how to argue and debate logically and keep their emotions to a minimum. I try (try!) to teach them that arguments based on emotion don’t last, that they have to think their way through. And that’s what we face with racism: we have to think through it. We can’t react to it with emotional knee-jerks that only fan its fire.

We used to see things only in black and white. That’s what my kids call “the olden days”. We shouldn’t do that anymore. Now we live in the splendid and superb world of high-definition where everything is bright and rich and deep and every nuance of color is perfectly tinted to our viewing pleasure. Let’s embrace every shade there is.



Friday, June 12, 2015

You'd Have to Be a Throner

“Sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot” – George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

I threw down for an Icee cup a couple of days ago, Game of Thrones-style.

I had just finished up my grocery shopping and decided to stop at my favorite Valero gas station. They have the best Icees (all Icees are not created equal). Even better? All Icees at this particular Valero are only .99, and I planned on getting a large.

I walked in at the same time as another customer, a guy who kindly held the door for me. Seems he was there for the same reason. We were both brought up short by the fact that there was only ONE large Icee cup left. He inquired about more from the clerk behind the counter and she informed him more were on the way that afternoon, but for now, we were left to duke it out over that one sorry large Icee cup.

What to do? What to do? Surely there was a solution here. I looked at him, he looked at me. Neither of us really wanted to be the better person here.  (I get it; it’s just an Icee, and we could have gotten mediums. Not the point.)

“Soooo,” he said.

“I’m closer,” I said.

“Shit, that’s not fair,” he replied. “I can’t hit a girl to take you down.”

“Good point.” I noticed he was wearing a Game of Thrones t-shirt. I’m a fan. I’ve read all the books (a few times), I have the dvds. So I asked him if he was a fan or just liked the t-shirt.

“I’m kind of a super-fan,” he said (I think he actually blushed a little, but it was hard to tell with his little hipster beard). “Why, what’d you have in mind?”

We decided to battle for the Icee cup using house words. The powerful houses in GoT have mottos (“Winter Is Coming”, “Growing Strong”, “Ours Is the Fury”, etc.). So we decided to select house words and explain why the words we chose were the best.

Honor system. Whose honor? Tyrion’s (he may be a Lannister, but he is actually one of the more honorable characters from the show). The clerk behind the counter (also a fan) was our Tyrion.

We flipped a coin to see who began. Hipster man won. I could’ve Milk-of-the-Poppied that smirk right off his face.

“We Do not Sow.” And then he ever so slightly lowered his chin and raised one single eyebrow.

I couldn’t help it. I snickered (I think it was as much for the aspirational “put-me-in-my-place” facial expression as it was for the words he chose).

“What!? Ironborn! We take what we want! Pay the iron price. We don’t ask. We fuckin’ take. Ironborn are strong, certain, and steady. They’re hard. They don’t back down. They are the shit.”

“Fire and Blood, my man,” I said. “She’ll cook your Ironborn where they stand and then take whatever she wants anyway. She rides fucking dragons while you’re buying penny stock in Eunuchs R Us.”

We turned to our “Tyrion” who was laughing her ass off at our pitiful trash-talk. She pointed at me and said, “House Targaryen wins the cup: Fire and Blood.” But because she was so impressed with our little contest, she comped both our Icees.


I did so enjoy filling my large Icee cup. I may have even done so with a bit of a swagger. Man, that was one of the best-tasting Icees I’ve had in a long time.



Sunday, May 24, 2015

Now We Gather

“What do girls do who haven’t any mothers to help them through their troubles?” – Louisa May Alcott

The sign in pre-op read “Visitors are limited to two at a time”. We weren’t breaking the rule, not really. We came in two at a time. Then another two. And so on, and so on…until there were eight of us visitors in the tiny pre-op room.

The nurses allowed it. I think they could see on our faces that we weren’t going anywhere. We were there to stay. Because that woman in the hospital bed? That woman with the IV and the compression socks and the blood pressure cuff? That woman about to undergo surgery for breast cancer? That was our mother. That was my father’s wife. So no, we were not leaving that room.

My mother was diagnosed with a malignant invasive tumor a few weeks ago. And just like that, Cancer invaded our lives. It’s a two-syllable word that carries all the weight of the world with it. My life is inextricably tied to hers. I know her heartbeat, from both the inside and the outside. She gave me life, she gave me love, and she gave me the know-how to be the survivor that I am.

When she told me the biopsy revealed the cancer, it sort of slid around in my head for a while, carving out tracks all over the place. There was nowhere I didn’t feel it. It took a few days before I could even say the words out loud: “My mother has cancer.”

My eldest sister flew in from North Carolina to be with Mom for the week surrounding the surgery, and my brother drove down from Dallas on the day of the surgery, so all five of us kids were there for her that day. This is mom. The materfamilias. The matriarch. We will always rally for her.

We stayed in that little pre-op room for hours waiting for surgery time. There were chairs for two people (as per the sign), so we rotated who sat down. Some of us sat on the floor, some stood, one of us sat at the foot of Mom’s bed. There was never a question of anyone leaving and sitting in the waiting room. I almost can’t remember what we talked about, but I know what we didn’t talk about.

We didn’t talk about what we were all thinking about: we were all thinking about a surgery that never happened thirty years ago when Mom’s mom went into the hospital for her own surgery and died on the table before the surgery even began. We were all terrified that history was going to repeat itself. Mom was scared. Dad was scared. We children were scared – and we definitely felt like children that day.

I’ve had to send my children off to surgery before. That’s a hard thing to do, entrusting such a small person into the care of strangers who will cut on her. This is the first time I’ve ever sent my mom to surgery. The first time I’ve had to hug her goodbye, turn away from her, and walk out of the room because they were taking her away.

What if she didn’t make it? What if she died in surgery? What if this was the last day I had a mother here on earth?

Unbearable. That's what these questions were. I only had an hour before I had to pick up my daughters from school, so I didn’t join the others when they left the hospital to go to lunch. I couldn’t have eaten anyway. I found a back corner of the waiting room, pulled up my knees, buried my head, and just let all the worry, all the fear, and all the emotion I’d been holding back all morning finally come pouring out.

It took a long time to calm down and when I finally did, the knees of my jeans were soaked. I wished I’d had someone to lean on, someone to hold me while I cried, someone to tell me everything would be okay. Even a random stranger in the waiting room would have been comforting at that point. I just needed a hug. But it was just me, so I pulled myself together and left to deliver the girls from school to home.

On the way back to the hospital I received the text that Mom was out of surgery and it had gone smoothly. She was in recovery. Pure relief washed over me.

She was in recovery for over an hour before they moved her to her room for the night. We all – yes, all eight of us – swarmed up to the room to be there when she arrived. She looked so small, so pale and delicate. But she was mom, and she was alive, and they had cut that entire evil tumor out of her.


They pushed her bed into place and hooked her IV to the wall. In a hospital, everything smells the same. No matter what it is – cups, paper, blankets – everything smells like hospital. But when I leaned down to hug my mother, she smelled like her. Her smell. Her heartbeat. Her life. In that moment, the world was right.


Sunday, May 17, 2015

A Room with Many Doors

“The future is called ‘perhaps’, which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.” – Tennessee Williams

I don’t believe in a single future.

I used to. We’re trained to. When I was a kid, I grew up believing that life was a straight line, that we go from Point A to Point B to Point C and it’s all very orderly, very neat: no muss, no fuss.

After all, how many times were we all asked that question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” As if we were supposed to know – as children – what our future was supposed to hold for us. But they always expected an answer. And woe be to the child who answered “I don’t know.” Oh! All those helpful suggestions, all those nagging follow-ups.

And then, if we changed our minds, we were…flighty. Flaky. Indecisive. “But I thought you wanted to be a veterinarian?” Hello? I was eight years old when I said that. Are you really going to hold me to what I said when Grizzly Adams was playing on TV?

We grow up, we live, we exist, not in one straight line but more in a series of “choose your own adventure” books. When we reach the end of our present, our current chapter, so to speak, we stand in a Room with Many Doors. Each door has a different future we could have. We always have so many options. Will we like them all? No. Of course not. But they are all there. For us. So many different paths we could choose. So many different decisions we could make. So many ripples that will spread out from making a single choice.

My initial dream was to continue on for my doctoral degree immediately following my master’s degree. I was accepted at several institutions for this: Texas A&M, Yale, University of North Texas. But then I found out I was expecting my first child and my entire world shifted. Suddenly, I was spinning on a new axis. I was going to have a baby. This was a new dream. A better dream. Something I didn’t know I wanted so much became what I wanted the most. The future I had thought about for so long was changing. Without knowing it, I had walked through a new door.

After I had my second child, Sam, I felt the bumps in the universe beginning. My husband and I decided to divorce a few months after Sam’s birth. A few weeks after that decision was made, my son died in his sleep. Suddenly, I had no future. It was gone. Wiped away. At least, that’s how it felt.

It was – most definitely – the end of my present. Every. single. day I made the conscious choice to walk back into the Room with Many Doors and, once again, chose to enter into the future. Every day I did that. After a while, I didn’t have to remind myself to do it. After a while, I didn’t have to tell myself to keep breathing.

We like to plan our future. It’s great to plan, to be prepared. It’s also important to know that plans don’t always work out the way you think they will. Sometimes the plan goes scarily, horrifyingly awry. Because your plan? Your original plan? That was only one possible future for you. I married the love of my life in 2004. It wasn’t part of the plan for him to die in 2005, but he did.

The future I planned changed. I didn’t give it permission to do that, and it changed anyway. So I was at the end of my present – again – and back in my Room with Many Doors. I had to walk through another door and into another future.

Life is not linear. The future offers us many chances, many options. When one doesn’t work out the way we planned, or the way we want it to, we have the chance to walk through another door. Too often, though, we become so attached to the picture we form in our head of what the future is supposed to look like that we find ourselves paralyzed when confronted with the need to change the image.


We have to remember that the future we plan is but one version of ourselves. Often we won’t know what other versions we are capable of until we are standing in the Room with Many Doors. We won’t know until the next door swings open.


Saturday, May 9, 2015

A Different Kind of Mother's Day Gift

“Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.” – Tupac Shakur

My nine year old is hosting her first sleepover ever right now. There is a room of giggling, squealing nine-year-old girls on the other side of the house who have just stuffed themselves with almost an entire large cheese pizza (little girls can eat a lot). They are now happily swiping polish on each other’s nails and watching Dog with a Blog (one of Disney’s more hideous shows, in my opinion). They just spent two hours coloring every flagstone in my backyard with sidewalk chalk so my backyard is blooming with dusty color. It’s fabulous.

This sleepover came with much drama in the making.

Emma desperately wanted to invite some friends over for a “just because” sleepover this weekend. I tried to tell her it’s Mother’s Day weekend and a lot of her friends may not be able to come because their parents may have plans, but she was determined that it simply had to be this weekend.

So, we sat down and made invitations for the three girls she wanted to invite (I just didn’t think my nerves, my sanity, could handle more than that). We included my number to RSVP yes or no, the drop-off time, the pick-up time, all the details. We made them colorful, we made them personalized. She was super excited.

She handed them out on Monday. By Friday afternoon, no one had RSVP’d. I had no idea who was coming, or even if anyone was coming. Emma was terribly upset because she thought her sleepover was falling apart before it began.

During the week, Emma made a list of activities for her and her friends to do. She didn’t want to just “wing it” at her sleepover; she wanted to make sure there were plenty of fun things to keep everyone going. On her trusty little notepad, she wrote:

1. draw with outside chalk
2. play with bubbles
3. wii
4. paint nails
5. makeovers
6. fashion show
7. color
8. FOOD!!!
9. make blanket forts
10. have fun and no fighting!

I love that she wrote “no fighting” on her list of ways to have fun. She put a lot of thought into this list (especially number 8, can you tell? Three exclamation marks.). But now who was coming?

Early Friday evening I received a call from one of the girl’s parents saying that she wouldn’t be able to attend “after all”. After all? Really? Was she planning to attend in the first place? So our list of possible attendees was down to two. Then we got a call – finally – that someone was coming! Emma just lit up like a sunbeam.

The final sleepover invitee didn’t RSVP until Saturday morning (this is for the sleepover Saturday afternoon). She was also coming. Now Emma would get to have two guests. She was so thrilled I thought her skin was going to explode.

Emma bustled around the house, cleaning, organizing, straightening things up. I ordered pizza for a dinner treat and Emma was practically dancing with joy. Then her friends began arriving and she went into full-on hostess mode:

“Hello, Emily, would you like me to show you where you can put your bags?”

“Oh, don’t mind the dogs. They’re a bit sniffy, but they won’t jump.”

“Come in, Mackey, come in, let me give you a tour of the house.”

She just reveled in her tiny group of people and was so all-consumingly happy that her sleepover had come to fruition.

She’s nine years old and this dream of hers – To Host a Sleepover - that she’s had for a couple of years, has come true. She’s riding high and living her dream. Right now. Right now she knows the glorious, intensely satisfying feeling of wishes coming true.


It's not stargazer lilies. It's not chocolate-covered caramels. It's not even a Coke Icee. This is the best Mother’s Day present I could get: to make my daughter’s wish come true.


Sunday, May 3, 2015

Straight...Not Narrow

“A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see things.” – Michel de Montaigne

There are many legitimate problems in the world that need to be controlled: systemic racism, hunger, disease, poverty…just to name a few of the top-billed. Then there are the so-called problems, or at least what society has decided is a problem, has turned into a problem, and has now worked itself into a tizzy about. I’m going to say it, and so many people will roll their eyes, or huff, or groan, or say, “Ugh, not this again. I’m so tired of hearing about this.”

Some people are gay.

I understand completely that not everyone embraces that lifestyle. And for those people, that’s their right, of course. They shouldn’t be judged for that any more than those who support the LGBTQ community. So often people preach tolerance but are pretty one-sided about it (“You have to believe what I believe! Be tolerant, dammit!”). But we have to understand that not everyone will agree.

The thing is, someone else’s lifestyle isn’t about us. It’s about them, whether they live the way we approve of or not. And that’s hard because we always want to “fix” anything we perceive as “wrong”. The bottom line is that we don’t need to approve of gay relationships any more than we need approval for straight relationships.

I am straight. I am an ally, which means that I support the LGBTQ community. This isn’t a trend. It isn’t a bandwagon. Look past the media hype and the labels and realize that we are simply talking about people. We are talking about people who fall in love, but cannot share that with anyone because of public shame. We are talking about people in long-term committed relationships, people who have laughed and cried and suffered joy and loss together, but who cannot celebrate their love by standing before their friends and family in a marriage ceremony. We are talking about children who know they are different but who aren’t allowed to talk about it because they know their parents won’t love them anymore. We are talking about people who kill themselves every day because society refuses to allow them to have a place. Society says, “You don’t belong here. You’re wrong. You’re unacceptable.” And these people, sadly, tormentedly, listen.

I am an ally. And I am a Christian. The basis of my faith is to love others. My faith is not a weapon that I use against others. Bible verses are not like rocks to be flung at people in an effort to beat them into submission. My faith guides me; it’s a map for my life, for how I live. It’s personal. It would be supremely arrogant of me to expect everyone I meet to believe exactly as I believe. We don’t expect the world to share our favorite color, our favorite movie, our favorite book. We cannot expect the world to believe exactly as we believe. While I am a Christian, I know there are many other religions, and people with no religion, in the world that do not believe what I do. I don’t expect them to. In as much as I believe that I am right, they believe just as much that they are. No one wins those arguments.

We don’t regulate religious views in this country, so why do we try to legislate adult relationships? I know what the bible says about marriage, but remember, faith is personal. It’s the overlay for your own life, not someone else’s. You can’t apply your filter to someone else’s photo, so to speak. Not everyone has the same faith, the same religious views, so arguments about religion, in a country without a government based on religion, don’t wash. When discussing gay marriage, there is often the view from opponents that it will compromise the sanctity of marriage. When just under 50% of marriages end in divorce, I’m not entirely sure what sanctity is being threatened. When heterosexuals marry and divorce repeatedly, just what does that say about the sanctity of marriage? Commitment is commitment. Love is love. Who are we to judge whose love is stronger, or better, or more worthy of marriageable status?

Who are we to judge at all?

I’ve seen many relationships I thought were odd. I’ve seen a 72-year-old man in a romantic relationship with a 44-year-old woman. I’ve seen a 64-year-old woman in a relationship with a 30-year-old man. I’ve known a man who was married nine times who was dating a woman who had never been married. While these relationships might not be my particular brand of feed, I was not the one in them. I have no idea what they looked like from the inside. But you see, these relationships did not affect my life or the lives of the general population. If they made me feel uncomfortable, I did not have to stare at them (staring is rude, in general, anyway).

My mission is to love others. I try to let that guide my life. I cannot change the behavior of the world, but I can make sure that mine is respectful, and open, and that hopefully no one is worse off for having met me. In my life, I am not in control of a lot of things, but I am in control of how I treat people, and while I may not receive respect from everyone, I can make sure that I offer it. It is so easy to belittle and berate others in an effort to build ourselves up, to make someone else feel as small and unwanted as we feel sometimes. But there is no ground for growth there. Denying someone respect because of your personal disapproval only holds you back, not them. So grow. Don’t automatically turn away from someone just because they live or love differently from you.


I love it when I see people in love. I don’t mind if it’s a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Love is love. And there needs to be more of that. 



Sunday, April 26, 2015

Summer Thoughts

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde

My semester is limping to an end. I can’t quite see over the stacks of papers yet to be graded on my office desk, but I know the end will be here soon, so there is hope. What’s getting me through these last dark days?

Summer.

Lots and lots of thoughts of summer. Long delicious days in the hot Texas sun will be spent doing very little. I’m so ridiculously happy that I live just a few houses up the street from my parents for many reasons, but in the summer, one of those reasons is because they have a pool. One of my favorite things to do is slip out a book I’ve already read a dozen times, hop on a pool float, and just…ahhhhhhh.

(sometimes this may also include a delightfully cold adult beverage)

So these days, when I get overwhelmed with the grading, the students, the administrative paperwork, etc… I fantasize about my summer reading list. I dream about the books I can’t wait to pick up and read yet again. So what’s on my list so far?

1.      Villette by Charlotte Brontë – I adore this book. It’s wonderfully thick. There’s so much depth and narration. I read it for the first time in grad school and I fell in love with it. I read my first copy so much that it broke in half. It was among the first books I replaced after the fire. Of course, it’s Brontë, so this is old-school writing. But, man, this is old-school awesome.
2.      The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – Many people don’t realize this is actually the first book in a series, but the book can also stand alone itself. I read this one for the first time in high school Spanish when I was a senior. It had nothing to do with the class; he was done teaching for the year and we had to fill up our time with something, so I borrowed the book from someone in the classroom. Seriously, hand to God, I nearly threw up laughing at a couple of parts in this book. I’ve read it a dozen times since.
3.      Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling– any of them. All of them. Strangely, though, there’s a good chance I’ll start with book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I love it. It’s dark and twisty. And let’s face it, so am I. But it’s also optimistic and uplifting, and I have my moments. Once I’ve read that one, I may plow into the series from beginning to end (yes, I’ll read the last book yet again). Or I’ll read the series in random order depending on which book I feel like reading. I’ve read them all so many times that I can practically recite them line by line. Such great themes and descriptions, such wonderful power in these books. Kid or grown-up, it doesn’t matter. These are great books if you give yourself over to them.
4.      Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – no one is better with Regency wit and sarcasm than Jane Austen (she was not a Victorian novelist…many people mistakenly believe that). Her characters are a delight, and she writes the best book boyfriends ever. Aside from that, you genuinely root for these characters (well, for most of them…others, you just wish a piano would fall out of the sky and land on them).
5.      On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark – this is my favorite Mary Higgins Clark book. There is just something deliciously dark and prickly about it, but not so dark and prickly that it will keep me from sleeping. I have so many of her books, and I become so engrossed in them no matter how many times I read them. Stillwatch; Weep No More, My Lady; While My Pretty One Sleeps; and All around the Town are other favorites that she wrote that I will also probably read this summer.
6.      The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis – this is part of the Chronicles of Narnia series and is my favorite book in that series. I am a huge fan of the entire series, but I always begin with this one. I know The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is many people’s favorite, and it ranks high in the canon of literature, but The Horse and His Boy will always hold my heart. It’s endearing. It’s charming.
7.      Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – This one I was introduced to waayyyy back in the 8th grade. It’s wistful and haunting and twisted in an old-fashioned way. I knew it was great the first time I read it, when I was 12, but I didn’t realize how great. Only as I’ve gotten older and have re-read it so often do I get the wonderfulness of it.
8.      Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells – This book is funny, and sassy, and sad, and spirited, and so full of life and dysfunction and humor and spite that I can’t help but love it. The idea of friends-to-the-end, no matter what, is fascinating to me. I love the Ya-Yas, warped and twisted as they are. Probably because they are warped and twisted, and have found – and stayed with – each other.
9.      The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins – I’m confused by the classification of these books as “Young Adult” as the themes that permeate the books speak to everyone. Perhaps the publishers felt the dystopian setting would turn off older readers. The books are fantastic: social commentary wrapped up in entertainment. What could be better? This is a trilogy; there are three books in the series. What’s so great about this series is that kids and adults can read and enjoy these books and then have a conversation – together – about them. They aren’t just “kid” books or “adult” books. Universal problems and engaging characters, a book that once it sucks you in you can’t put down: there’s nothing better.
10.  One for the Money by Janet Evanovich – This is the first book in the Stephanie Plum series. They are wonderfully funny and a little bit spicy and remind me of a cheesy 80s movie even when I’m reading the book. I love it. Stephanie Plum is down on her luck and goes to work for her cousin as a bounty hunter. She’s terrible at it and gets in over her head (of course). It’s just super fluffy reading that is perfect for summer.


It’s a diverse list, and it’ll keep me going for a while. It’s by no means complete. I gobble up books the way some people eat pizza: I can read a whole book in one sitting. There are never enough books, and there is never enough time to read as much as I want to. 



Friday, April 17, 2015

My Unintended Social Experiment: HairGate


“The most violent element in society is ignorance” – Emma Goldman

This week, I unwittingly found myself the conductor of a social experiment. How did I conduct such a high academic enterprise without even meaning to?

I wore my hair differently.

Yup. It’s that simple. You see, every day I straighten my hair. Otherwise it curls. And I don’t mean little tip-up-at-the-ends Carol-Brady-flip curls. I mean serious volume, brush-both-sides-of-the-doorframe curls. Disaffected 90’s grunge hair. Because of this, yes, I’m very attached to my hair straightener.

This week my hair straightener began acting up. I turned it on and it smoked. Not because of product build-up on the plates; it was smoking from the cord. Oh crap. That’s not good, I thought. I immediately unplugged it and helplessly watched the cord melt off. It was 9:30 at night. I had work the next morning.

Ok. Curls it would have to be.

 
Curls, Day 1

This was me the first day I wore my hair curly. Not too bad, right? Of course, keep in mind some of it had already been straightened before the Death of the Hair Straightener. I’d slept on my hair, and that managed to flatten some of it out.  I am so far out of my comfort zone here. Before this day, I hadn’t worn my hair curly for years. Possibly decades.


 
 Curls, Day 2. They're growing.

This is the next day. Yes, the hair is bigger. It was a combination of f actors, really: I had just showered that morning, it was dreadfully humid outside, and there was no straightening involved this time.

This is the hair I sported for the next two days before I was finally able to replace my hair straightener. Several people did compliment my hair, some people looked at me and simply pointed out that my hair was different (thanks for that…I had no idea), and others just looked at me and blinked.

What I found truly incredible about these Three Days of Hair, were the things some people said to me, or asked me. This is the unwitting social experiment of it all. Over the course of the past three days, but mostly when the curls were at their peak on the last two days, I was asked or told the following at least once, and some more than once:

- You [finally] did your hair today! I got this one from a lot of people, two of whom actually used the word “finally”. I “do” my hair every day (unless I wear a ball cap). Ironically, these were the days I didn’t “do” it.

- Your hair is different. Gee, you don’t say. Damn curls must’ve just appeared there when I wasn’t looking. How ‘bout that? Is this a true/false statement? How am I supposed to respond to this?

- Are you dating someone? As if the only reason I could possibly have for changing something about myself is for a man in my life. But no. I’m not dating anyone. Why? Do you know someone? (haha, kidding…sort of…)

- Are you going through a breakup? No. Again, my hair does not revolve around my status as a Plus One.

- Are you a Gypsy? I swear to God. Has no one ever seen a white person with curly hair before?

- Are you really Jewish?  *sigh* I don’t even know what to do with this one. Maybe you’ve missed the cross I wear around my neck every day, which would make me the worst Jew ever. And I didn’t know curly hair was a sign of The People.

- Are you part black? Oh my God. Didn’t you ever watch Mean Girls? You can’t just ask someone this question. Three people asked me if I am part black. Three. I can only assume it’s because of the curls. It certainly can’t be because of the pasty skin that I rock. Thanks for playing, and I would proudly own it if I were, but no, to my knowledge, I’m not.

Are any of these assumptions or questions appropriate? Why would anyone feel free to ask them of me – suddenly – simply because my hair was different? And why would they need to be asked at all? Is my ethnicity anyone’s business? Is my relationship status? Maybe I just wanted to change my hair. Maybe I will again, even if my hair straightener doesn’t break. As I get older, I’m learning to embrace the curls. I actually kind of liked them this week. Why is society so judgmental of the least difference, the least quirk, in others?


I spend 30 minutes each day straightening my hair. That’s almost four hours of my time a week wasted to make my hair—what? More adult? More professional? I’m turning it into something that it’s not to be perceived as something “more”. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t be afraid to be anything other than what I am: me.


Monday, April 6, 2015

The F-Word

“The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary.” – Gloria Steinem

I don’t offend people on purpose. In fact, I am a very open-minded person. I hold my beliefs quite strongly, and I am (more than) happy to share those beliefs, but if someone does not agree with me, I don’t turn into a “hater”. I may not choose to surround myself with people who disagree with me, but I also will not dispute their right to their own opinions.

But every now and then, I say something that offends people without meaning to. For instance, what if I dropped the F-word right now? Would you shame me? Run away and never read my blog again? Let’s find out.

Feminism.

Oh dear. There it is. The big bad F-word. Oh. Did you think I meant something else? That other F-word? That other one might be less offensive to people. “Feminism” bothers people. It scares some people (but they won’t admit that). It makes a lot of people extraordinarily nervous.

It’s the word that does it, really.

If you asked people if they support the idea that men and women should be treated equally, most would respond positively. If you asked people if one gender should be placed in domination or a position of power over the other, many – if not most – would say no. You have asked these two questions without ever using the term “Feminism”, yet this is precisely what Feminism is. It is the idea that men and women have equal rights and sovereignty.

That’s not so frightening, is it? Looking at that, why on earth would anyone – man or woman – not be a feminist? How can you look at your own mother, your sister, your aunt, your wife, your daughter, and think she is not human enough to deserve every right and privilege that someone with an XY chromosome enjoys? Feminism is such a simple concept. It is not a scary idea at all.

So why the bad rap?

Well, it’s complicated…and it’s not.

Let’s start with the simple story. For a long time, Feminists didn’t have the despicable reputation they have had since the 1970s. In fact, Feminists in America have been around since the 1840s. But in the late 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly swooped in to destroy the Equal Rights Amendment and taint the term “Feminist’ as a whole. She called Feminists “radicals” and claimed they would destroy the traditional American family. She convinced conservative America that Feminists were mostly concerned about abortion, they were chafing against their roles as wives, and that the ERA would mean daughters would be forced into the military draft. Because of her efforts, the ERA was never ratified in the states and Feminists were now viewed with suspicion, often with hatred, and always as man-haters.

Thanks, Phyllis. You're a peach.

The truth of the Feminist movement is much more complex, and ties much more closely to the changes the country was going through. Typically, the Feminist movement is seen in three waves. The first wave dates from the Seneca Falls gathering in 1848. This was the first Women's Convention ever in the US. This was with beginning of the women's suffrage movement in America. Clearly, Feminism is not a modern concept. The question then, of course, because of the time period and the tone of the country, was whether to push for women’s rights or for civil rights. The Civil War saw the emancipation of slavery (in theory), and Feminists began pushing harder for women’s rights, yet the right to vote was not achieved until the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.

The second wave of Feminism has an early date from WWII when masses of women flooded the workforce. Sixteen million men had gone to war, and women were called upon to leave the home and keep the economy functioning. This had never happened before. Men, who had always ruled the country and the employment roster, had never invited women into the workforce. But now, Rosie the Riveter showed them the way. Suddenly, women were taught that they could be productive, earning members of society. They were valuable. They had worth beyond the incubating power of their wombs. Those chains that bound them to ovens and dinner tables were no longer entirely welcome, and when the boys came home from ‘over there’, the women in the workforce didn’t necessarily want to leave the jobs they’d come to love.

This WWII date, though, was almost a default start date because of the war. By the 1960s and 1970s, though, it was no longer default. It was active. Women were eager to take control of their own bodies and their own lives. There were protests in Atlantic City outside the Miss America pageants. Many women were tired of being seen solely on the basis of appearance. Bra-burning, the motto of the powerful Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a Woman?" began to gain popularity. Society was changing, and everyone could feel it.

Back in 1923, Alice Paul (all hail Alice Paul… “hail!”) introduced the Equal Rights Amendment stating that no one can be discriminated against in the United States based on gender, be that person male or female. This amendment failed to pass. It was reintroduced every year, and every year it failed. However, in 1972, it hit its time and suddenly took off. It had incredible support. It passed in federal congress, which meant that it now went to the states. It needed to be ratified by both houses in the states in 38 states in order to be added as an amendment to the Constitution. In no time at all, 30 states ratified it. Suddenly, support slowed. Support crept to 33 states. Then out of nowhere came Phyllis Schlafly and her anti-ERA campaign. By the deadline in June of 1982, only 35 states had ratified the amendment, it was 3 short, and the ERA was dead. Each year, the ERA is re-introduced in congress, and each year it fails to re-ignite. This needs to change. The time is now.

We are long overdue to guarantee the rights of all the people.

Feminism’s third wave began generating in the late 1980s, around 1988ish, but is often given the official date of 1993. A new generation of thinkers, writers, artists, and activists were coming of age. Having grown up through the machismo of the 80s, a decade where Feminism took a heavy hit, this new generation took the time to rework it, give it a facelift, and add their own touches. Feminism in the past had often been thought to pertain only to upper class white women. This newer generation brought to it the idea of women of color, immigrant women, lower class women, working women, and stay-at-home women: “Feminists” in all meanings of the word. Feminism was individually driven, looked at and considered on a one-to-one basis, and communicated on a singular level. 

Then we arrive at the controversial and much-contested "Fourth Wave". Has it dropped, people wonder. Are we living in the fourth wave? Yes, we most certainly are. As of 2008, this is a Fourth-Wave world. As each wave has before it, the Fourth Wave gathers strength from the previous three. The Fourth Wave is tech-heavy and inclusive. Third-Wave Feminists saw the inclusion of People of Color, immigrants, all classes, and all jobs. Fourth Wavers include all people. Those in the Fourth Wave understand that feminists include men, women, and the LGBTQIA community because it is all about equal rights. That's all a feminist wants. The Fourth Wave dates from the first generation who has grown up with the Internet as an integrated part of their lives; it wasn't learned after the fact. It was lived. This allows for a more inclusive life and more information to spread with the push of a button. 

Feminists are not plotting to take over the world. Feminists are not “man-haters” or anti-man. We are in favor of equality, of justice, of parity. The Equal Pay Act does not quite work. I still make less than my male colleagues, despite our matched qualifications. Males still tend to be promoted over females. These are facts. I cannot blame for this. People are raised a certain way and a certain type of thinking takes time to change. I can only educate and hope the general framework changes.

What is the point of this long-winded lecture?

Feminism isn’t a bad thing. Equality isn’t a bad thing. And you don’t have to be a woman to be a Feminist. Men need to take up the banner as well. Being a Feminist doesn’t mean that we don’t need the support of our men. We most definitely do. If any ideology is to change, it takes the support of the entire community, not a community divided against itself.


When I’m asked if I’m a Feminist, my answer is, “Of course I’m a Feminist. I’m all for equality. Why aren’t you?”

I love this shirt, despite the terrible grammatical mistake