FORCES OF NATURE
When I was a teenager, I held my body close, shoulders curved inward, back hunched, hiding. I was covered from head to toe with clothing and with shame. My body, evil thing that it was, thing that needed to be abhorred, disciplined, resisted, was a burden that I would carry with me until I was liberated by death. The flesh, “bring it under subjection” the pastor preached, “resist the temptations of the flesh”—the flesh, the physical body, literally the thing, the living, breathing thing that carries us through our journey on this planet—was our worst enemy. He wasn’t the only pastor to preach that, it’s kind of a thing that’s out there, a thing that people actually teach their children. It was worse that my flesh was female. Female flesh is worse than male flesh because female flesh is what causes male flesh to stray. How could they give in to temptation, if we didn’t tempt them in the first place?
When I left the church, the message changed. My body wasn’t evil anymore, well, not totally, as long as I used it the right way, but it was wrong, all wrong. My legs weren’t long and lean, my abs weren’t well defined, my boobs were too small and my ass was too big. My hair wasn’t long and wavy and blonde and my cheekbones weren’t high enough or defined enough. When I was nineteen I bought a work-out VCR (yes, I’m that old) called “brand new butt” and tripped around the living room trying to follow the steps of those perfect ladies, those desirable ladies.
In the church I felt shame if I was desired, out of the church, I felt shame if I was not.
Then I got pregnant and gained too much weight. My baby bump took over my whole body instead of just being the perfect little round ball in the front, the rest of me remaining stubbornly unchanged, sexy. My face swelled, and my feet puffed up. I dutifully pulled out the maternity yoga DVD tried to follow along, but I was so exhausted! I dutifully counted out the kegels so my husband wouldn’t have to suffer after I pushed a giant alien out of my vagina.
As a forty-two year old mom, I worry about thinning hair, wrinkles and back fat, my body changing shape every three months without consulting me beforehand. I realize I have been at war with my body my whole life and I know that I’m not alone. I want to unlearn all of the bullshit and break the cycle. As that mom, with two beautiful children who believe in the power of humanity, self-respect, and mutual respect no matter your gender, identity or race, is it no wonder that seeing women—mothers—rock the Super Bowl with their grace, independence, and power would leave me with tears of joy?
And now, watching the backlash unfold, my thoughts rest with my kids and their friends. I hope that they will always have the courage to move through the world, not with their eyes covered, but wide open, resisting the shame, the pressure and the confusion of trying to fit someone else’s mold of what is desirable and proper, never feeling like they have to hide any part of themselves because it doesn’t fit that mold.
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Disclaimer:
These are the facts of my experience as I remember them. Conversations are not verbatim, unless I remember exact words, which is rare. Otherwise, they are written in the manner that they probably took place based on my knowledge of and experience with the characters involved. I understand that memories can be tricky and are subjective and I have told this story from a purely subjective point of view.
NEW YEAR—AND A FRESH PEEK AT WHAT I’VE BEEN WORKING ON…
AND THE PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK
We didn’t go to the ER. No matter how bad the cut, or bruise, or break, or flu or fever, we never would. We would pray and wait and know that whatever happened was solely in YHWH’s control. “If you willingly go to the doctors for your healings, it’s blasphemy. The same if we go to the health food store looking for herbs. If you have that faith, come to your pastor and if you need a food or herb, YHWH will show him. Call for the elders and the prayer of faith will save the sick.” Doctors were arrogant and blasphemous. They dared to believe that they could heal. They cut people’s bodies open and then sewed them back up again as if they had the same power as the Creator and it was an abomination.
I witnessed many people “accept YHWH’s will”. One man cut clean to the bone of his leg with a chainsaw. I heard Petra telling the small group of women gathered in her kitchen (I wasn’t supposed to overhear, but I overheard a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to), how she had to cut his clothes off of him in the bathtub because he was bleeding so much and how he drifted in and out of consciousness as she painstakingly picked out the bits of cloth and wood. After she’d cleaned the wound, she bound it as tightly as she could, put him in a makeshift splint made of slats of wood from the porch, and aside from changing the bandage regularly, left the wound to heal as it would. He didn’t die and he did walk again. I listened quietly, imagining the blood seeping out of the long gash, steadily, filling the space around his body in the bathtub, red and sticky against his dark blue denim robe, Petra bent over him, the man moaning and groaning, confused and in desperate pain, (I had a very vivid imagination) and it dawned on me that Petra was the only one allowed to see other men besides her husband naked. Puzzled by that thought at first, in the end I made sense of it because obviously, as Paulino’s wife, she was exempt from the rules that governed the rest of us. She must’ve also reached the state of perfection that set her above and beyond temptation.
Only one man, to my knowledge, died for lack of medical care. It happened when I was about six. Timothy was diabetic and had to stop taking his medication when he joined the church and put his faith in YHWH. After he slipped into a coma, the elders prayed for him around the clock for days before he finally died. We kids weren’t allowed to see him. There was no funeral, just men digging a grave behind the church building on Paulino’s land to bury him, while the women surrounded his wife inside, comforting and consoling her as she wept. I felt sad for his family, but I also wondered how he had sinned, what had he done to be struck down like that? I knew that sickness was YHWH’s way of punishing us, or getting our attention to tell us to change. The worse the sickness, the worse the sin. “He said he would chastise us if he loves us. You can’t pray for just anyone. I prayed for Brother Timothy when he cut his wrists, brought him out of the hospital. Why is he gone now? His cistern leaked and he never fixed it.” Timothy was a tale of warning. I never knew until this very moment, reading through the the old notes from Paulino’s sermons, that he had tried to commit suicide. That, of course, was the sin that he died for. I had no memory of him, only the memory of the solemn tone of any conversation about him. The only other body in the graveyard was a man who had been electrocuted while on a ladder trying to disentangle his child’s kite from the electric wire. He should have known better than to let his kids fly kites. They flew like birds in the sky and were breaking the commandment to not make any graven images. So, I knew that his death was the wrath of YHWH, too.
There was one other man I remember from when I was little, about four or five years old, who stopped taking his medication, but he didn’t die. He did end up back in the State Hospital, though. Roosevelt was a big man with an even bigger laugh, giant hands and an infectious smile. We used to sit us on his lap and play Paddy Cake. In fact, his favorite thing of all was to play with us kids and the feeling was mutual, we loved his visits. We didn’t know much else about him except that he wasn’t like the rest of us. There was something wrong with him, but Paulino was praying for him and YHWH was going to deliver him. One day after church after most people had gone home, Paulino and a few brothers who were left were praying and talking really quietly and for some reason I was there with my dad. My mom and siblings may have been there, too, but I don’t remember them. Roosevelt was sitting alone, agitated, rocking back and forth. Because I loved him, I wanted to know what was happening, but the brothers just kept sending me away every time I’d try to get to him.They’d say, “no, go stand in the back of the church, he isn’t safe to be around right now.” I was tiny, scared, and worried. I heard whispers about demons and fighting their voices his head. They said when he opened his mouth they could see the demon’s eyes in the back of his throat. I didn’t understand how someone who was so loving could be possessed with demons. They tried late into the night to cast the demons out, praying fervently, the hands of not only Paulino but two other elders laid on his head, his shoulders, his back. They spoke in tongues, eyes closed, brows furrowed, faces raised heavenward, and shook his body with the intensity of their prayer, but his rambling got worse and he started to push back and to yell at them to stop touching him. They reached for him again and he swung at them. He tried to stand up, and they pushed him back onto the pew.
I watched and listened silently as small children do and I heard them say that they were getting worried he would hurt someone. Paulino shook his head in disappointment, “we have no choice, we have to send him back.”
“Back where,” I asked my dad.
“He’s not getting better,” my dad explained, “so we have to send him back to the State Hospital.” I didn’t know what the State Hospital was, but it sounded ominous and dangerous.
Roosevelt’s reaction to the plan confirmed my assumption. He cried and pleaded, “no, please don’t send me back there, I can’t go back. You don’t understand, I want to be here, I like it here, I can do it, I promise, just let me try again.” He reached out to no one in particular, his big hands opened wide, but then he turned to me, begging me not to be afraid, “don’t you want to play Paddy Cake, honey? Aww, come on, like we always do. You’re not afraid of me, are you? You were just sitting in my lap this morning. Tell them you’re not afraid, honey, please tell them you’re not afraid.” I stood motionless next to my dad, his hand resting protectively on my shoulder. Roosevelt’s arms dropped to his side and water seeped from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. I had never seen anyone look so defeated and alone and it made me so sad, but I was afraid, I was very afraid, not of him but of seeing the demons in his throat. I remember the darkness of the night and the blue and red lights of the ambulance strobing round and round. The men who drove the ambulance wore uniforms that looked like the police—I was afraid of the police. They loaded Roosevelt into the back, he had surrendered without a fight, and was strapped down to a bed with handles on the side that the men could pick up and move. They closed the doors to the back of the ambulance and locked them, and then they drove away. I watched it grow smaller and the lights flash further and further away, until it was gone. It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen. I held my dad’s hand and cried and wondered why it was YHWH’s will not to save him, why Paulino hadn’t been able to cast out the demons and make him happy again.
Months later, as we walked along the edge of the park, I looked up at a brick building with bars on the windows. “What is that building?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s the State Hospital,” someone replied. “That’s where Roosevelt lives now.” I wondered why they put him in jail. I turned to look again, craning my neck while being pulled along by my hand, feet tripping over themselves, the way we do when we’re tiny and at the mercy of the bigger person who is hurrying along, even though we may want to stop and look.
HOLIDAY SNEAK PEEK
MY BIRTH—PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL
My world was a world of passion and extremes. The people around me lived their lives from a place of deep conviction and devotion. That passion consumed my first images of the world and every moment of my development into young adulthood. I lived and breathed the rules set down for me from the moment I first opened my eyes. I believed them, I feared them, and they were all that was. The world outside was a place I should run and hide from, be wary of, and most certainly never, ever, become a part of. I struggled with all of my heart and soul to believe in everything that I was told to believe. To be that child, I had to fully embrace the responsibility of living up to fragmented, morphing, and contradictory expectations, to quash any doubt and swallow my questions before they could fully form. Fear drove me. Fear led me. Fear consumed me. In fact, as I wander back through the past, I’ve realized that fear was basically my only emotion. When I felt passion, joy, inspiration, sadness—they were all inevitably birthed from the deep fear that was injected into my everyday existence for as long as I can remember.
Of course I don’t remember my birth on the living room floor, but I know the story. “You were small, so even though I was a little bit scared to be having a baby at home, it was easier than I thought,” my mom never told me much about my birth until I was grown. “Your brother had been born in the hospital and I had hated it. They gave me drugs and strapped down my legs, I was so groggy and couldn’t really tell what was going on. Having you at home hurt a lot more, but it was better. You were so ugly when you were born! I remember one of the brothers saying, ‘what a beautiful baby’, and all I could think was, ‘really?’”
I was born in an ancient, nearly a century old, adobe farmhouse. Built in a typical desert style, it had rounded, plastered corners on the inside of the tiny rooms that numbered five in all—one bedroom that led into to the dining room, that in turn was visible to the kitchen through a high ceiling arch, the living room was to the left of the dining room and the minuscule bathroom was off of the kitchen. Outside of the kitchen door, the main door to the house, was a fully screened in porch. The house is still standing today, long since abandoned, a tree growing through the collapsed roof in the living room, but the walls are as strong as ever, the cabinets in the kitchen still the same brown paint as when we lived there. It was the first of many houses that our family would live in, all within a ten mile radius of each other in the middle of southeastern Colorado farmland. They were all a bit different and yet, the same, with small rooms, peeling paint, and chipped linoleum, surrounded by corn fields and feed lots, with parched yards that were filled with dust and weeds. My mom could not have birthed me in the hospital because it was a sin. Paulino’s wife, Petra, was the church midwife, having trained with an old hispanic midwife years before I was born. She loved to brag about how she’d never lost one child. If something bad happened, all we could do was pray and hope that YHWH would show mercy. If he didn’t, it was his will and we had to accept it. It wasn’t our place to understand why, only to believe and trust that there was a reason. He was the only one who could decide who lived and died. Taking control ourselves by going to the doctor, was blasphemy against him and his will.
It’s hard to remember those early years. It’s the ghosts of feelings mostly, that stick with me, muddled forms, wisps and mirages. I replay a blur of cold nights, driving to church, being carried to and from the truck, and especially having to always have a blanket thrown over my head despite my protests. I remember nights shockingly crisp and clear with full moons, looking up at the moon and asking my dad to get me that ball. “Oh, I can’t get you that ball,” he’d say, “it’s YHWH’s ball and since he put it in the sky, it has to stay there.” I remember confusing east with yeast, standing on a chair watching my mom make bread while looking out of the window facing the eastern sky. I thought that the ‘east’ used to rise the bread must’ve come from the east that I saw gazing out of the kitchen window. Despite my mom’s explanations, it took me years to distinguish between yeast and east.
I remember that, for a while, one of the single brothers lived with us. His name was Nathaniel, he easily became a part of our family and to this day he is like an uncle—we kids loved him. He knew how to wind us up like toys and then let us shoot across the room. He would tickle us until we were breathless and then he’d run out the door and leave for work with my dad. My mom, exasperated, would scold, “Stop winding them up. You get them crazy and then walk out and I’m left with a bunch of rowdy kids!”
“Oh, we’re just having a little fun,” Nathaniel would dismiss her protest, laughing and bending sideways while he maneuvered a sharp turn one way and then the other, staying just out of reach of our tiny hands.
“But then you go to work and I’m the one who has to deal with them.” Mom didn’t think it was funny.
Sometimes he and my dad would team up and tease us to tears, like the time when my grandparents sent us balloons. We almost never had balloons so we were really excited but couldn’t blow them up by ourselves. They helped us blow them up and then, one by one, rubbed them on our heads to create a static charge and then stuck them to the ceiling far out of our reach. No matter how much we jumped or stretched, we couldn’t get them back. “Those are our balloons, give them back,” we would demand.
“That’s not how you get what you want—what do you say?” They would continue to tease.
“Pleease, can I have my balloon back?” we would ask meekly. I didn’t think that made sense. Why make us say please for something they’d taken away from us in the first place?
I remember a bit later when one of the single sisters, Delia, lived with us for a few months. Delia was a wild woman with hair so short she looked like a boy. She was in her early twenties, new to the church and had a loud, enthusiastic laugh that embarrassed the grown-ups. They shunned her, so we did, too. When she was baptized, she ripped her rings off her hand and threw them into the river shouting, “I’m free!”, throwing her hands into the air and then falling backward, back into the water. There were nervous laughs that rippled through the crowd on the shore as she pushed her way through the swirling, muddy water back to us, her dress dragging heavily behind her. It was no way for a sister to behave. But when she moved in with us, we kids grew to like her. Every night she’d put us to sleep with a soft song that she’d taught us to sing in Spanish. We would sing with her until our eyelids grew heavy and we drifted off.
“Buenas noches, YHWH
Buenas noches, YHWH
Buenas noches, YHWH
Te amamos.”
She had been a teacher before joining the church, was one of the few who had a college degree, and spoke Spanish fluently. When I was in fourth grade, she was my teacher for a semester, and for the first time, I actually learned how to diagram sentences and love it—I think that’s when my love of language, words, and how they fit together to form thoughts, was born. But by the next semester, they’d made her quit because Paulino’s nephews and nieces kept getting into trouble and said that it was because she was mean.
When I was five, I learned how to mourn the state of the world. It was Sabbath Day and some of the brothers were at our house for lunch. We loved it when the brothers came over. They would tickle us, throw us into the air, chase us around the yard, or more often, make us chase them, which was an exasperating game because we could never catch them. Regardless, we found it delightful. Of course, it was Sabbath so we weren’t supposed to play, but sometimes we did anyway. After lunch, one of the brothers picked up his guitar and told us that he had written a new song. My parents shushed us and we gathered around, closed our eyes and somberly prepared let the spirit move as he sang:
“The winds of change are blowing
It’s growing mighty cold
Prepare yourselves my brothers
For dark tales shall soon unfold
The time has gone beyond return
For this old ship called ‘earth’.
And satan shall soon be struck down
In the midst of his great mirth.”
The song was in the minor keys, crying all on its own, poetry of impending doom, the end of it all, the world, the evil in the world, a day of reckoning, the day of judgement. It built passionately into a crescendo inside my little chest until, all of a sudden, I was weeping, heavy sobs that shook my whole body. It was late afternoon, the sun slanted into the living room revealing the dust worms that danced effortlessly in the air. The room glowed eerily like a message directly from YHWH. I turned away. I knew I should rejoice in YHWH’s presence, but instead I wanted to run from it. One of the brothers, Miguel, another young person, barely twenty-two years old and also new to the church, followed me. He stooped down to my height and focused his huge, blue eyes directly into mine, which also made me want to run.
“What’s wrong little one, are you hurt?”
I shook my head, “no.”
“Okay then, are you afraid?” I was very afraid, terrified, by the world that the song painted, by the horrors that it promised, but that’s not why I was crying.
“I’m worried about all the people in the world,” I whispered. “I don’t want them to burn and I don’t know what to do about it.”
That was my actual moment of birth. The moment that I realized what it meant to be me in that world. It was the moment that the weight of the world descended onto my tiny shoulders and attached its self permanently. This memory is so crystal clear it could have happened yesterday.
In The Beginning—Sneak Peek #2
…Paulino Vasquez was our pastor and I would like to note that any quote from him will be in italics and has been taken directly from old sermon notes. Sermon notes were taken down by anyone in the congregation in real time, while Paulino was preaching. Luckily, my parents were often the note-takers, so I have a virtual treasure trove of words directly out of his mouth.
Purely based on looks, Paulino was an unassuming, modest man. No taller than five and a half feet, with the build of a laborer, broad shoulders and a stout frame (he worked in construction, specifically, pouring concrete). He spoke softly and smiled easily, his un-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard wagging when he talked and his mustache grown down over his top lip, concealing the four teeth left in his fifty-five year old mouth. He had shoulder length hair, the same color as his beard, that fell in greased ringlets from a receding hairline. But, looks can be deceiving and although he could be gentle and kind when he wanted to, he thought of his flock as his children, in fact he called us his children and grandchildren and, like a father or grandfather, he reserved the right to rebuke and chastise us when we needed it. It took knowing him to understand the power that he held over all of us, the absolute finality of his word, the fire, the “righteous anger” that flew like daggers from the pulpit when he preached. Of course, he wasn’t always fifty-five, but in my memory, he is frozen at that age…
…All of the baptisms I witnessed throughout my life happened in the Arkansas River. It was hard to find a spot where we could park all of our cars and then walk down to the edge. There were a few spots we used over the course of my life in the church, but the one I remember the most was the one we used when I was very young, no more than seven years old, that was off of a hidden turn under an overpass, where a narrow, dirt road led down a steep bank and off onto the flat flood plain at the river’s edge. The image of that turn is burned into my brain. It seeps often into my dreams and taunts me with foggy details. For some reason, every time I go there in my dreams, I never get past the turn. There were tiny roads made by ATV’s that wound around clumps of river grass that were taller than I was. The sand was soft and deep and someone always got their car stuck and the brothers would have to push and rock the car as the tires dug deeper and deeper each time the engine was revved.
We had to be baptized, first in water and then by the Spirit. “If you are not born of the water and of the spirit, you cannot enter into the kingdom”. I never knew how to tell if someone had been baptized by the Spirit. The only person we knew who had actually been baptized by the spirit was Paulino. Everyone had to be baptized, especially newborn babies. But, because it was winter when I was born, I wasn’t baptized until I was three months old. Usually we baptized the babies when they were two weeks old. I remember those baptisms, when mamas handed over their little bundles to Paulino. I’d automatically hold my breath on behalf of the baby as it was dunked in the dirty, freezing river. It was always so quiet, but the sunshine screaming, the rustling leaves and gurgle of the river were all deafening. I tried to hear angels rejoicing, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t. I figured I wasn’t worthy, they could keep you from hearing if you weren’t worthy.
That river sent shivers all through me, and the terror would grow as Paulino would step off of the edge into the muddy current. Sometimes the first step was deeper than he’d expected and he’d sway and stumble while someone would grab his arm to steady him. I’d watch as the water swirled around him, pulling at his robe. One step, up to his knees, two steps, up to his chest. He’d brace against the powerful flow, a nervous grin on his face, his grey hair slicked straight back from his ears. When my dad stepped in, just a bit, to hand over any one of my three little brothers, who will be introduced to this story as they are born, I’d squeeze my eyes tightly, certain that someone would drop the baby and he would go floating away. Laycher would put his hand over the baby’s face and dunk him completely under the water. When the baby came up, he would erupt in a sputtering scream, and I’d open my eyes, relieved that it was over. My mom would hurry to wrap the baby in a thick quilt and rush back to the car to change his wet clothes. The rest of us would sing:
“Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel’s feet have trod?
With it’s crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of YHWH”
It was one of our happy songs, one of hope and new beginnings, one that made us clap and sway, and made me feel like I was floating. The jitters of fear conjured by the water were replaced by butterflies of excitement and magic. The significance of those moments were not lost on me no matter my age.
Baptisms were always on the Sabbath. Sabbath was a holy day, so it made sense. Every week was a journey toward that single day, a culmination of build-up and expectation which peaked on the day of rest. When I was a kid, I loved Sabbath Day. We kept the Sabbath because it said to in the bible. It was really the only day I spent time with other people besides my family. I had no friends outside of the church. Church services were in the morning and after services, I would wait nervously to see where everyone ended up. I hated it when the families and single men, who we called brothers, and the single women, who we called sisters, would make plans all around us, but we would walk home dejectedly to a long day all on our own. Luckily, that didn’t happen often. My dad, in spite of being inconsequential in the grand scheme of things (more on that later), was the life of the party and people liked to spend time with him. Think of him as the jester at the king’s palace, nothing more than a faceless nobody really, but earning his place because of his ability to amuse people. We would share our lunches with other families or the single brothers, because they were way more fun than the single sisters. Having to spend the day with the single sisters was worse than spending it alone.
The hours would fly by as we played music and worshipped in our homes. When I was little, the grown-ups worshipped and I played with the other kids—until I was about eleven. Then I migrated toward the living rooms where deeply devotional conversations were taking place in the soft afternoon light. On crowded couches, dining room chairs circled around, or even sitting on the floor, the grown-ups barely noticed me there as I listened in on the confessions and advice that were muttered in hushed tones. A single woman full of sadness, looking down at her hands folded in her lap, a tear glistening at the corner of her eye, because the husband she left behind to join the church had not yet come to the light and she was worried that he was running out of time. “Just keep praying”, a brother would tell her leaning in closer, “YHWH hears our prayers and answers them if our hearts are pure. You need to be sure that your concern is for your husband’s soul and not for your own fulfillment or because you’re afraid to be alone.”
“That’s the hard part, isn’t it?”, she would say. “How can I be absolutely sure that what I want is for him and not just for my own carnal desires and insecurities?”
“Well, you have to search your soul and make yourself presentable before the Savior and then trust that he knows best”, the answer was always that simple. “Maybe we can pray with you, would you like that?”
There was only one right answer to that question—“yes.”
Privacy—What Is It—Really?
I feel fiercely protective of my privacy these days.
It’s not so much about how big corporations violate it with impunity, the multitude of debates about privacy in the courts or in congressional hearings, but rather, it’s about what it means to me and how that has changed over the years. This, just as I’m putting myself back out there, trying to get more attention, not less. Ironic, I know, but I think it’s because of putting myself out there that I started to ponder.
I was driving to a soccer game the other day, because, you know, that’s what I do these days—I drive. So, while driving, I grew tired of the same depressing bullshit on the news and my mind began to wander. I turned off the radio and breathed—relishing the silence and the view passing by through the windshield. Although the cold is slowing creeping back and I am constantly reminded that my least favorite season is fast approaching, the fall sun in the late afternoon is quite possibly the most beautiful type of light my eyes have ever had the pleasure of soaking in. It must have something to do with the angle of the sun, but the way it hits—well, everything, even with the colorful leaves all fallen— makes magic. It’s clear, but golden, crisp, but soft and it’s not that gentle kind of light that whispers around the tops of the trees, it’s a full light, round with substance, complete and pregnant, like a promise that whatever lies in the cold months ahead, as long as we focus on that light, we’ll get through.
My mind is often the host of lively debates, or full-on conversations. I spend a lot of time by myself, so I often have to have conversations with myself, playing a myriad of roles to compensate for the lack of other voices. I was thinking, as I do frequently because I’m a mom, about kids and their phones, social media and how so much of their lives are online. I fret over what could be good about it and what could be harmful, at the same time aware of the fact that it is simply their lives, period. Now that I am actively back on FaceBook to try to increase or to cement my presence in the virtual world, who knows, I notice how differently I interact with that world now than when I first signed on in 2007. I signed on originally because it seemed like a great way to share special moments I had with my children with friends and family. And at the time, it felt harmless. It was new, it was fun, I’d have long, inappropriate, heated discussions on that public forum because it’s what we were all doing (and, honestly, for the longest time, I didn’t know about the private message option or that my posts were automatically public unless I chose the private option), but it didn’t feel public, it felt like hanging out with people I loved. That was hard to do at the time. I had toddlers, I was very unwell, my illness making it difficult to even walk across the room, so hanging out with my friends on FaceBook was comforting and encouraging and I was very selective about who was in my group.
Now though, as I come back into the world I have been gone from for more than two years, I find that I am terribly protective of moments, photos, and experiences that I’m having. Before, I would post everything. Again, it was new, fun and everyone was doing it—food, coffee, bugs, or senseless rambling. Now, when I find myself picking up my camera to take a photo, or sitting down at the computer to write an update, I often stop and think, “no, that’s mine, I don’t want to give it away.” Privacy has become a luxury that I am holding on to, clinging to, really, because it barely exists anymore. This brought the in-the-head conversation around to my children and I said aloud, to the inside of my car, “they don’t even know what that is. So weird. The only world they’ve ever known is the one where you share everything, all the time, with everyone. And the more everyones who see your everything, the better it is for you. Do my children even know what privacy is?”
Of course, on some level, to some degree, they do, but there’s no way that it’s the same version as mine. Social media arrived so hard, and so fast and ballooned and morphed into so many incarnations that it has swallowed my now-antiquated version of privacy whole. My kids and their friends and those who came of age in this brave, new world are none the wiser.
I’m not sure what I’m even trying to say. Maybe, simply, that I feel a bit lost. Every generation, on some level, has difficulty accepting the nuances of the new world that is fully embraced by their offspring. I don’t know if I am struggling with acceptance, I just wonder, with things changing so quickly and being normalized in a vacuum, the vacuum of giant internet companies who have their fingers in every pie, what are my children losing and what are they gaining under this new definition of privacy? Will they know when a moment is too special to share with the world? Will they know how to put down the camera phone and just be in that magical fall sunlight? Will they know that they have the right to say, “no, this is mine. Holding this memory close is more important than how many likes it could generate?”
Sneak Peak Memoir
LIVE IN THE WORLD, BUT BE NOT OF THE WORLD
“We are called to live in the world, but be not of the world.”
It was hard to be separate from the world when it was all around us. We lived right in the middle of the most corrupt and wicked country on earth—Babylon. Until I was grown, I didn’t know the United States was call the United States. The only things I knew about the outside world came from Paulino, and according to the visions bestowed on him by the Holy Spirit, the USA was not only the most vile country on earth, it was the source of all of the evil that was seeping into the rest of the world. He commended Muslim countries, (not for their religion, Ishmael being the outcast brother of Isaac, the father of Islam was not the chosen one and therefore neither was the religion) but, what they did do right was to live under strict rules about dress and food in their cultures. Paulino’s attitude about Muslims was, “Yeah, they need to repent, but at least they don’t eat pork and they cover their nakedness.” We didn’t eat pork, or a lot of other things either, because it says not to in the Bible. Our rules about diet were even more complex, though, restricting a myriad of other foods not mentioned in the bible. I’ve never figured out, even now, the reasoning behind some of the food rules. For example, we couldn’t drink alcohol of any kind because it caused sin and debauchery. Even though the Bible talked about people drinking wine, Paulino insisted that the people who translated the Bible had gotten it wrong and they were actually writing about grape juice. So, we weren’t allowed to drink alcohol, nor were we allowed to use vinegar, or prepared mustard because they were fermented and therefore contained alcohol, no matter how minuscule the amount. But we were allowed to make pickles and sauerkraut, even though they were also fermented. All the food rules made shopping interesting.
People thought we were Muslim all the time and they would stop us to ask if we were, mostly while we were out grocery shopping. I’d see them walking towards us in the store and think, “Oh no, here we go again.” We kids would gather ourselves behind my mom and peak out shyly from behind her skirt. Like any kids, we were painfully embarrassed by our parents.
“Why do you have to talk to everyone?” We would whine.
“We have to take every chance we get, you never when someone is searching and their soul is ripe for saving,” they’d reply. “You should be proud to be an example of the truth of YHWH and not hide behind us all of the time.”
I still hid behind them as a matter of fact until I was older and had learned to wear our strangeness with pride. For most of my young life I thought people were asking if we were Muslin, which I knew was a type of cloth, and thought it was a bit strange to name a religion after a cloth. I knew that Muslims covered their heads with veils too, and our veils were usually made out of muslin, so I reasoned that that must of been why they were called Muslins, because of the muslin veils. Once people discovered that we weren’t Muslim, their next guess would be Catholic, some sort of rare, super conservative sect that they’d never heard of. My parents would shake their heads once again, definitely not Catholic, Paulino called the Catholic Church the Mother Harlot of all churches.
Living in the world meant driving our old, clunky, rusted up cars to shop at King Soopers, when I was really young, and later, at Walmart—I remember when they built the first Walmart in Pueblo sometime in the mid 1980’s. We would park in the parking lot, my mom would shut the engine off and then turn around to remind us what she expected of us. “Don’t touch anything,” she would say sternly, “don’t ask for anything, we are only getting what is on the list. Stay with me at all times—don’t wander off, there are very bad people in the world who steal little children, especially because we are separate from the world, some people don’t think that’s okay.” (We were always worried about Child Protective Services taking us away.) Entering the stores was like walking into a parallel universe, a world that existed and functioned along side of the one I lived in, but although it was right next to me, it was completely inaccessible to me. It was unnerving, everyone was suspect to me, someone who could corrupt me, and yet, it was also strangely exhilarating to watch that world pulsing around us. I was in awe of so many people just going about their lives, completely oblivious to the fact that they were going to burn in the lake of fire, people with their bodies exposed in tank-tops and shorts, their hair uncovered, jewelry and make-up adorning their naked bodies.
“This nail polish, it’s for attracting the opposite sex. Lipstick is the mark of the beast, clear or not, it’s for the same thing. The potions and lotions were originally for witchcraft. And a man who goes around in these tight shirts and pants reminds me of elves and they remind me of demons. He said he’ll destroy the wearers of strange apparel. When you know nakedness is coming, turn your eyes. People have no shame today. They’ll show anything, so turn and walk away. If you stay around it, you’ll get swallowed up like Adam and Eve did. Out of nowhere a temptation will enter your mind.”
I would try not to look, because seeing someone else’s nakedness would defile my mind, but unless I looked at the floor the whole time, it was impossible. People would stare, we would shrink behind my mom. Sometimes they would smile at us, but we would not smile back. I knew that I should be holding my head high because I was a beacon, a shining light to lead sinners to truth, but mostly I looked at the floor.
The aisles were filled with things we could not have, and like all of the naked bodies around me, it was an assault on my senses. Sometimes when my mom was distracted, I would hang back, squat down and reach for the Wonder Bread on the bottom shelf. I would squeeze it quickly and marvel when it popped right back to its original size. I was almost never caught, but still my face would get hot and my heart would pound and I would race to catch up with her. If my mom did catch me, she would say, “don’t do that, that’s someone’s food.” Then I would think, “But it’s poison food so why does it matter if I ruin it?” My mom baked all of our bread at home and it was not bouncy. Another thing that was fun to squish was marshmallows.
Because there was barely any food in the store that we could eat, Mom mostly bought basics like flour, oil, and salt, to make our own food. Most of the food there was unclean and would make us ill.
“Spirits and foods cause your sickness. A lot of evil thoughts come from this garbage food. We defile ourselves and so we can’t walk with him.”
The rules for food were ever shifting. Some were crystal clear—we didn’t eat things with artificial flavors and colors. Also, no white sugar, white flour or pesticide riddled foods, although we did buy beans, onions, corn and melons from local commercial farmers, all of which were heavily sprayed. Like I said, the food rules were confusing.
I’m Well, How Are You?
(reader requested topic)
For the most part, when we ask “how are you?”, we expect nothing more than a standard response, “I’m well, how are you?” But how many of us are actually well? What does it mean to be well, and how often does it happen that we want to say how we really are, but are too afraid? When a reader suggested I write about illness, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. As someone who’s been saddled with a chronic disease for the past fifteen years, it’s a subject that I’m never really certain I’m supposed to talk about. It’s true that most of us do encounter or experience illness at some point in our lives, whether it’s our own or that of a family member or friend; it touches all of our lives more often than we’d like to admit. It can be severe and deadly or persistent and benign—is there really such a thing as a benign illness? I don’t know. What I know is that we do need to talk about it because it’s one of those things that we tend discuss easily in the abstract, but then when it’s real, we want to run away, we want to hide, we want to pretend it isn’t real, that it’s not affecting us, that it’s not going to slow us down or change us. So, yeah, I do want to talk about it.
Why does the subject of illness cause such discomfort? For most of us, I think it’s difficult to come face to face with something that can’t be fixed, to see someone struggling or in pain and not be able to help, because as humans, we are naturally empathic creatures. The stories that tend to be told about illness are usually the triumphant ones, the ones that showcase extraordinary strength, perseverance, or quiet, modest suffering. How many eulogies repeatedly highlight the deceased’s ability to tough it out, never let on how badly they felt, continue to put other’s needs first in spite of their failing bodies or their tremendous pain? As a culture, we respect stoicism, we crave it, not just heroism but super-heroism. It protects us from having to see vulnerability in others or to feel it in ourselves. Vulnerability equals weakness, weakness invokes pity and pity diminishes both the giver and the receiver. But I would argue that vulnerability is simply part of being human. As infants we are completely at the mercy of other humans—we learn to need each other, to lean on each other, to form bonds of empathy.
Last week I was at the hospital for an infusion of the most recent medication we are trying to use to manage my disease. As the nurse gathered together the equipment she needed and sanitized the spot on my hand to insert the port for the IV, I pulled out the book that I’m working on and settled in to read, edit, rewrite—after all, I was going to be there for two and a half hours and I figured I’d make the most of it. She noticed the thick stack of papers in my lap and assumed that I was either a grad student or a professor, which was nice.
“Are you grading a thesis or writing one?” she asked.
“Oh, no, this is a manuscript,” I replied, “I’m writing a memoir.”
“So nice, how exciting,” she continued to chatter as she tightened the strap around my upper arm to make my veins swell. She tapped each vein thoughtfully, “I could write a book,” she said, “I’m from the Philippines and my life was rough, rough. My dad was a drunk and very violent. We kept begging my mom to leave him, but she wouldn’t, they just didn’t do that in those days. Then we came here and that certainly wasn’t easy.” She stopped tapping and readied the needle. I closed my eyes like I always do and steadied my breathing. “Then, I worked my way through college to become a nurse—had to spend a lot of years in therapy, and I’m still afraid of loud noises, but much better than before.” She slipped the needle in easily and looked up at me and smiled. Then as she taped the plastic line to my hand, I debated silently whether I should tell her what my book was about.
“I grew up in a cult,” I blurted out.
Her eyes widened in surprise and she quickly responded, “Oh, that’s so much worse.”
I felt a twinge of guilt, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, and then sadness that she felt like she had to say that. “No, not worse,” I smiled encouragingly, “just different.” I wanted her to know that I was fully acknowledging her pain and by extension, her courage. We continued a brief conversation for a few minutes about what it meant to be survivors, but what I want to highlight here is her response to my revelation.
Why do we always feel like we have to minimize our own experiences in order to validate someone else’s? As well as craving stoicism we also demand that our focus be on the positive, to count our blessings, to always remember that no matter how bad it gets, someone else probably has it worse. I acknowledge the need to do this sometimes, to pull ourselves together and push forward and see brightness in the world no matter what we may be living through. What I take issue with is the expectation that we have to do that all the time. We don’t allow ourselves the right or the space to fall apart, and when we do, often the people around us see us as weak or pathetic or both, and therefore not deserving of respect. I would posit that someone who has the courage to fall apart or to be honest about their needs or their pain is actually far more courageous than if they were to continually hide it, especially from the people they love.
There is a time and place to be stoic, and to mask the reality of what is happening on the inside. I do that often, most of the time, in fact. But I also give myself permission to fall apart when chronic pain brings me to my knees. I call them my pity days, because in spite of the general perception of the meaning of pity, the actual definition paints a far different picture: “the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others.” I tell my husband that I just need a day to feel sorry for myself, to feel the darkness, the heaviness, to mourn the things that cannot be because my body decided to give up on me. He’s so used to it at this point that he’ll simply put his arms around me and say, “do you want me to feel sorry for you, too?” Sometimes I say, “no, I got this one,” and other times I say, “yes please”, because what I need at that moment is some empathy, someone to simply look at me and feel the sadness I feel that I can’t do the things I want to do, or be the person I want to be because of this thing that doesn’t give a damn about what I want.
And it works. Usually the next day, even if the pain isn’t better, I feel a renewed surge of that stoicism, the can-do attitude that we all so prize. I drag myself out of bed and wrestle the day with purpose and remind myself that yes, I may have a chronic disease, but at least I’m not dying.
Home Maker
I’ve become exactly what I was raised to be, a housewife. I'm damn good at it, but I wrestle on a daily basis with identity, purpose and legacy. Nearly seventy years after the fifties housewife in heels and pearls, martini in hand, I’m still trying to find my identity outside of it, my role outside of support person and caregiver. The myriad of roles the the housewife plays are now grouped under the new title SAHM (stay at home mom), which is really just rebranding. The name is supposed to connote choice, a woman choosing to be home, but that’s not always the case. I’ve been spiraling for a few months now, having lost my inspiration and drive to do most things including the daily tasks that are my responsibility. So I woke up this morning determined to find my way through it, needing to feel some sort of brightness and ambition again.
Homemaker, homemaker, h-o-m-e-m-a-k-e-r—maybe if I say it enough times I can make it sound sexy and important and mysterious. Home-maker, home maker. How do you make a home? Out of pure selflessness. Home is where memories are formed, where our self is formed. Home is where we feel safe, the place we return to to rest, recharge, let our guard down. Home is where we laugh, and cry, where it is okay to cry, where it’s okay to be afraid, or sick, or vulnerable in any way when you need to be. Home isn’t just four walls, it is a feeling, our shoulders dropping back in relief when we walk through the doorway, we kick off our shoes, lie down our bags and coats, lie down our stressful day. “It’s so nice to be home, so nice to sleep in my own bed.” We say that so often, even after coming back from an adventure or a relaxing vacation—no matter the bed, the home, it’s still better than where we’ve been because it’s ours, it’s us, it reflects us, it wraps around us like a warm embrace.
Home making—making a home—it is one of the things we humans have been doing consistently since the dawn of time. Maybe, making a home, a place where people can grow and thrive and be wrapped in consistency and security, safety and encouragement, is the greatest legacy of all. It demands skill, stamina, creativity, thinking outside the box, meticulous planning, forward thinking and the ability to act and react to a multitude of situations with dignity and decisiveness at a moment’s notice. It requires a great deal of intuition and an ability to always be one step ahead. Home making is anticipating people’s needs before they even know they have them, nourishing the body and the soul.
I have struggled mercilessly with the idea that “homemaker” is my only title. Until this morning, I never really considered what it means. When you take the words apart and unpack their meanings, the impact changes. I’m not a housewife, or a SAHM, I’m a Home Maker, and that I can throw my heart into, that is a title I can wear proudly. All of you career ladies have tons to be proud of, pushing through, leaning in, breaking the glass ceiling, demanding equality and crushing it at every job that a man has ever done. Women who choose to “do it all”, single moms who don’t have any choice but to “do it all”, women in double income families who have no choice but to “do it all”, you are rock stars. Because that’s the thing, right? Most of us don’t have a choice, but that doesn’t mean we can’t believe in what we do, or that we the makers of Home should feel left behind or like we’ve failed to achieve. I have felt that way for a long time. Our grandmothers and mothers fought so hard and endured so much ridicule and slogged through so much mire and beat their heads against so many walls, so that we could have more opportunity, but also so we could have the right to choose what we want to be and how we want to define ourselves. I’ve always felt like I have let them down, or have somehow failed as a modern woman because I don’t have a career. But making home will always be essential because it’s how we make humans and anyone who is doing it by choice or by default should feel nothing but pride. To be a home maker is to be completely vulnerable. Relying on your partner for financial and moral support in this modern world is terrifying because another message passed down from the women who came before is that a woman is never truly secure without her own money. Money is power, whether we like it or not. I’ve internalized that message so deeply that I’m not sure I can exorcise it. Legitimacy is tied up in what we can produce, how big of a shadow we can cast, how we command a room, a company, a life. If you don’t have that, what do you have?
Everything I’ve just written I know is true, but to believe it with every cell of my being is the work that I have to do. I don’t want my daughter to feel this way. I want her to believe in her power and her legitimacy no matter what she does, not just to believe in it, but to feel it in her bones.
Keurig Cups
I opened one eye and looked at my phone, 5:45. “No!”, I thought, “not on the weekend, I’m not getting up at 5:45 on the weekend!” I pulled my mask back over my eyes and tried to drift back into the dream I was having, tried to put myself back into the car, driving on an old railroad track past skeletons of rusted out airplanes, some of them on fire, my brother not having a clue where we were, “Google maps took us this way, it must’ve thought that the railroad track was a road,” he had concluded.
“Just because Google tries to send you that way doesn’t mean you have to follow,” I retorted, and then began looking franticly at my phone for any signs of where we were. I had felt surprised we even had service and was thinking about the international phone fees I was racking up while I was trying to locate us. The car came to a stop in front of a pile of colorful Moroccan carpets, and while my brother was trying to figure out how to drive over them—I woke up. So, when I closed my eyes again, determined to sleep because it’s Saturday, I focused on that pile of carpets. Then I remembered that I hadn’t really been enjoying the dream and didn’t really want to go back there. I decided to just let my mind go blank.
But, my mind doesn’t do blank, especially not when I want it to. Within minutes, it was filled with Keurig Cups. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s because it was the morning and I was subconsciously thinking of coffee. When I say filled, I mean literally. Mountains of them, everywhere, in every office all across the country. I’ve long been anxious about Keurig Cups, I’ve used them here or there in auto repair offices or basically any office that has a waiting room. I appreciate the free coffee, but every time I drop one, or two—I like strong coffee—into the trash, I feel a twinge of guilt. I’ve often wondered why, at this point in our history, any company would invent, on purpose, something so blatantly disposable. Most of us know the issues we face as a planet, islands of trash in the ocean, weather patterns going totally bonkers everywhere, polar ice melting, species disappearing, and something so small, like a disposable coffee container, when used daily by millions of people, has a massive impact. I was definitely not going back to sleep.
I wondered what could be done. Asking people to recycle doesn’t work, too many simply don’t believe it’s an issue. Forcing people to recycle doesn’t work, again, they won’t, and how on earth would you enforce that anyway? The responsibility, I concluded, shouldn’t lie with consumers at all, it should lie with the company that comes up with the brilliant idea to fill most of America’s offices with more mountains of trash. At this point in our evolution we should be smart enough to pass laws that simply ban companies from making the products in the first place, because if they make them, people will use them, period. Imagine if we addressed just coffee waste (keeping in mind that I love coffee and have been guilty of contributing lots of disposable cups to the waste system), what if we started with four things, all used by coffee consumption: Keurig Cups, hot cups, cold cups, and straws? What would we use instead? I don’t think it should be up to me, the consumer, to come up with that answer. I think that those giant coffee corporations should be given an ultimatum to come up with alternatives. The consumer will use what is available—the companies should be required to make sure that the options that are available are friendly to our planet. They won’t do it on their own, corporations are like floods, they take the path of least resistance and destroy anything in their way. The CEO of Starbucks is considering a run for president on a climate change platform? He should put his money where his mouth is and take a bit of the company’s considerable wealth and put it into research for planet friendly coffee options. Like it or not, corporations are the most powerful forces in the world. Any forward movement on the issue is going to have to include them. As consumers, we can do our part, voting with our wallets, but it’s barely a drop in the bucket. Corporations are greedy. They will not act unless forced to. So, they should be forced to.
My kids are terrified by what is happening with our changing planet. The idea that in twelve years it will be too late to change course is causing them a great deal of stress. A couple of nights ago we watched an episode of Last Week Tonight, with Jon Oliver, one of their favorite shows, in which he was exploring the little known fact that women’s rights to equality have not yet been enshrined in the constitution (that’s right, ladies, we don’t yet have equal rights under the law—another rant for another day). Apparently, the ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment, that was first penned by Alice Paul in 1923 and later passed through Congress in 1972, never garnered the 38 state ratification required to add it to the constitution, and still hasn’t to this day. When I asked my daughter how it made her feel to not have equal rights guaranteed by the constitution simply because she’s female, she responded, “honestly, I’m more concerned about climate change right now—12 years and it’s over and no one seems to care.”
That really hit home for me. The future generation doesn’t have time to worry about equal rights because they’re more worried about the survival of the earth. That’s just wrong. Kids are having to skip school and take to the streets to try to get our attention—their childhood, which is supposed to be carefree, hijacked by the fear of not having a planet to live on. Think of all of the fears you had as a kid, was the lack of a planet one of them? While I’m immensely proud of our young people, and want them to be well-informed and active in advocacy, I am also immensely ashamed of our leaders, both in the political realm and the corporate one, because she’s right, they don’t seem to care. If they aren’t going to give a damn on their own, it’s time to force them to.
FRIENDSHIP (reader requested topic)
As a kid, I always believed that I had to have a best friend, that if I didn’t, I was hopeless and would die of loneliness. That friend had to be a girl like me, my exact age, and spend every possible moment with me. As a result, I had my heart broken countless times due to the inevitable moving and changes that most young families experience. Modern day friendships, I’ve learned by observing my children, seem to be as fluid as gender. I watch them float easily in and out of some friendships, while others stick like glue. The idea of a best friend doesn’t appear to be as important to them. The times that I’ve asked my children who their best friend is, they turn around and list off a number of kids. I chuckle to myself, why have one best friend when you can have five or six or ten best friends? I like this improved way of walking through life, rather than putting all of their hope and energy into one person the way I did.
Friendship is intriguing specifically because it is difficult to define, or to restrict under one umbrella. It changes over time, but at the same time, it remains the same. It is made up of the same facets no matter how old or young you are, or which century you live in. In my own life, the friendships I made as a child seem to be etched into my very cells. It’s not like I’ve remained the best of friends with all of those people, but I find that when I do see them again, it’s as if no time has past. Although we may have grown up to be very different adults, with almost nothing in common, the respect remains, the understanding, and for lack of a better word, the bond. Friendships that I developed in my formative years seem to be solidified in time and space, by shared experiences and a shared history. There are some people you connect with on such a profound level that no amount of time or distance can kill the connection. These are the friends that are like siblings, that no matter how great the distance has become, you would jump on a plane in a heartbeat if they needed you.
It’s not to say that friendships made in college and beyond aren’t deep and profound. The difference for me is that the friendships I’ve formed as an adult seem to happen on a more deliberate timeline, at slower pace. As an adult I find that I tend to gravitate toward people who have similar goals and beliefs, or sometimes, have kids who are friends with my kids. However, those friendships can also be etched onto the soul in a similar way as childhood, especially if they are strengthened by adversity. When I’ve spent a significant amount of time slogging through difficult times with people I’ve connected with as an adult, those are the friendships that, although they may feel stifled by time and distance, my repeated experience is, that when I run into those people again, the joy is real. The reunion may be brief, but the mutual boost of warmth and love reminds me that there is so much good in our world.
Friendship is precious, it feeds the soul. Time that is spent nurturing friendship is time well spent. I have been fortunate in my life to have friends that are not only my age, but also those who are much older than I. I am grateful for them, people who always believed in my strength and ability, who never once wavered in their complete confidence in my success in spite of my own doubt. These were people who, although they could have used their position to teach and mold me, instead, simply treated me like an equal, doling out the same respect that they would to someone their own age, a nod to my autonomy at a time when the mere fact that I was a child made me less than.
Bottom line, there is no roadmap or formula for friendship. It is born of a spark of familiarity, be it through convenience of proximity or a kindred spirit, a parallel, but separate life experience. And the most important thing I’ve learned is that, even though, while running the rat race of our lives, it often takes a concerted effort to simply keep in touch, it is so worth it. Connection with others, be it deep and profound or merely on the surface, is what helps us maintain our humanity. I know that in my own life, sometimes the thought of throwing a dinner party for friends, having a quick glass of wine before dinner, or jumping on a plane for a birthday, wedding, or graduation, makes me tired in advance, I am always so glad when I follow through. Afterward, though I may indeed be exhausted, my heart and mind are so full and motivated and refreshed, that I vow to do it again.
MOTHER’S DAY
The choice to become a mother was probably the most courageous choice I’ve ever made and I didn’t even know it. It’s not like I sat down and wrote up a list of pros and cons, or weighed the positive to negative. It was just something I did, the next step in my journey—it was time, I simply knew. What I didn’t know is that, while opening my heart wider than I knew it could open, and compelling me to love more deeply than I’ve ever loved before, (not like being in love with my spouse, a different kind of love that comes from my very cells and reverberates out through the universe), being a mother also had the potential to expose me to a world of hurt, should anything ever happen to my babies. The kind of hurt that you never recover from, that leaves a gaping hole, a bottomless void, forever. That is where the courage part comes in. I have been blessed to watch them grow and thrive. I am in awe of them daily. When I stand back and let them be, they astound me with their vision, so unclouded by experience and cynicism, their enthusiasm for life, the simplicity of their lens, their undaunted commitment to pursuing the things they believe are important. I hurt when they hurt, I smile when they smile—never before in my life have I been, nor in my future, will I be, so entwined in another person’s well-being. As a mother, I don’t only bathe myself in the precious moments, the magic minutes, stowing them away, treasuring them, I’m also bathed in the anxiety, the moments of panic, those moments every mother knows, when you turn around and for five seconds you can’t locate your toddler, or when your teenage daughter isn’t at the top of the driveway waiting for the bus as usual even though you just saw her walking up there not five minutes prior. Either someone swooped in and your worst fear has been realized, or she simply hopped on the bus, oblivious, and didn’t tell the driver to wait for her brother—in which case you’ll have to have a conversation with that girl about accountability.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
The future is female—is the refrain I’m hearing regularly these days. I sure hope it’s true. But mothers, perhaps, have had the power all along. Because, mostly (please note that I say mostly), we shape the future. If we claim our power, we can inspire our children, male and female, to do the same. To reject injustice, to speak the truth, to stand up when it matters most, and to demand the change and the forward movement that they know the world needs. The wisdom of children is no longer an abstract concept to me. And I’m not only speaking of my own, but of the many young ones that I’ve come in contact with who inspire me with their no-nonsense dedication to dreams that aspire to give birth to a world that they believe they can thrive in. I am deeply flawed as a human, and as a mother, but if I can give my children anything, I hope that it is the power to believe in themselves and the courage to be present in every moment of their lives, be they painful or triumphant.
This Mother’s Day was for me, less about my kids and husband showing their appreciation, (although that is always nice), and more about my connections with other mothers. I began the day with a smile, that turned to a warm glow and the comfort of camaraderie as, throughout the day, email, after text message, after facebook message, appeared on my phone from other moms, all of them lifting me up, saluting me, giving me the nod—it’s a tough job, but we’ve got this, right? The message was, “hey, it’s a pleasure to be mothering with you.” Those confirmations made my day, because, yes, I am so fortunate to be mothering with so many amazing women—non of us perfect, but all of us dedicated, to those precious beings that we so courageously chose to give our hearts to.
To mothers around the world, believe in yourselves—they are the future, we are their present.
I wrote this in 2016, rediscovered it today—it is so relevant.
Dear Grandma,
I find it hard to focus on anything. This great weight of uncertainty and sadness pressing on my chest and clouding my mind. This disaster of an election is just beginning to roll forward the ball of unfortunate, unknown, and downright dangerous events that will take place over the coming years. Donald Trump, I will never call him President, may only be in office for four years, but the echoes of his time there will ripple far into the future, the future that my children are headed into. The Supreme Court they know will be chosen by him. The international tone that he sets will be the one that hangs over their heads as they travel and grow into their careers. My daughter may not have the right to choose. This is no small tremor. This is an earthquake. People keep saying “what does it mean?” and “maybe he’ll be different now”, but there’s no part of Donald Trump that we haven’t seen. He is crass. He is a bigot. He does believe he has the right to denigrate and objectify women. He laid it all out there. He made no apologies and still, somehow, he made it to the finish line. No matter what it means, no matter how it happened, we cannot forget who he really is. Sugarcoating the truth does not make it any less true.
Dress It Up When You’re Feeling Down
I just changed my clothes five times. I’m not even going anywhere special. But everything feels wrong. It seems like my body changes shape on a yearly basis and my wardrobe can’t keep up. I’ve always been super conscious about actively modeling a positive body image for my children. Lately, it’s rough. I keep gaining weight and losing weight and then gaining it again without changing any of my eating or exercise habits. Styles that suited me a year ago now look weird.
Spring has arrived, nature is shifting, it’s not as cold (still freezing by my standards), but I’m stuck. The mud that sucks at my tires on the dirt road and jerks the car from side to side, also seems to be sucking at my life force. It’s transition time, but I’m not morphing. Not the way I want to be. At times like these, I turn to, yes, the page, but also, to my closet. From my perspective, clothing is art for the body. It’s not about keeping up with trends or being ‘en vogue’, it’s about expressing on the outside the way I feel on the inside, or, on days like this, faking it till I make it. I live in a bubble, a bubble within a bubble, not having a job outside of my home and living in a rural place. I watch the world go by through a very narrow lens, one that is informed by those bubbles and accentuated by what I glean from the radio, the internet and magazines and books that I read. I can be as isolated or as involved as I choose to be, but if I wanted to be a hermit, it would be super easy.
Even if I chose to be a hermit, I would not spend my day in p-jays. I don’t see it as a societal curse, because, most days, there aren’t many people who even see me. It’s not about them, it’s about me. So, today, I’m reflecting on concepts of beauty. I never understand when someone says they don’t care, or it doesn’t matter. We all have our ideas of how we want to present ourselves to the world, what makes us feel confident. I think that whatever that is, it should be okay. The most important thing for me has been to know that if something looks off, it’s the piece that’s wrong, not my body. The clothes must fit my body, not the other way around. I could go on a tirade about the fashion industry not producing clothes for real women’s bodies, but, while true, for the most part, it is a tired rant. I’d rather give myself permission to simply laugh when the jeans I bought in my normal size won’t go past my thighs, or the shirt dress won’t button over my bust.
Beauty does start from within, but sometimes it takes some effort without to coax it to the surface.
Spanx
I’d love to see a guy in Spanx. A guy who gives enough of a crap about his beer gut to huff and puff and squeeze and groan as he struggles with the unforgiving elastic, stuffing the rolls in and trying to breathe afterward. Then smiling cheerfully as he sits at the table in his best suit picking at the food on his plate because he knows there is no way it is possible to have both food and Spanx sharing the same space in his body. I’d love to watch him grab the back of the chair, trying not to pass out from the shallow breaths he’s been taking all night and the too many glasses of wine that have replaced his meal.
I’m forty-one. I know, still young in the grand scheme of things, but physical evolution hasn’t quite caught up to mental evolution nor to our continuous redefinition of what it means to age, to be past our prime. We’ve decided that because we still “feel” young, we are still young, even if our bodies haven’t gotten the memo. So we struggle against them and their constant reminders that age comes for us all no matter how young we feel. I know that barely a century ago, I would, at this age, be past my prime and resigned to that fact. But now, I feel like I’m just beginning. My mind is clear. I am grounded and sure. I’m excited about possibilities. I know that I matter. Hard to say the same of my twenty-five year old self, or my thirty year old self, or my thirty-five year old self.
My body has decided that it doesn’t care what my mind feels like. I struggle with sleep. I struggle with my hair and skin. I struggle with exhaustion that creeps up from out of no where. I work hard to keep all of these things in check. Almost a year ago I decided that my eyelashes were woefully inadequate. I’d never noticed before, but when someone offered me a serum to make them grow I looked closer and bemoaned the fact that they, too, were deserting me!
My dermatologist told me that I should be using a retinol cream every night for age spots and fine lines. I have age spots? I tried the cream for two nights and woke up to dry, flaky skin on my forehead and cheeks. I tossed it into the trash. He had assured me that every woman over the age of thirty-five should be using a retinol cream just as a matter of fact. Every woman? Guess men don’t get age spots and fine lines. He also told me with a chuckle that even botox wouldn’t help the deep grooves of worry on my forehead. I’ve studied them in the mirror more times than I’d like to admit, stretching the skin out, imagining what it would be like without them, despising the permanent scowl they have etched into my face.
As I age, I don’t want to run from it or be afraid to talk about it. I’d rather embrace the crone. Wisdom comes from experience, experience can only come with time. Why is youth the ideal? My youth eluded me. Now is all I have. And I’m curious about the double standard that seeps in from all directions between aging men and women. Why do women have to try so much harder? Why do we have to care so much more?
I was thinking about how our bodies change after giving birth. We kill ourselves trying to make them go back to what they were, bombarded by the tabloids about all the celebrities who bounced right back. I figure that if men gave birth, saggy boobs and stretch marks would probably be sexy.
Like “dad bods”.