Tuesday, December 23, 2014

2014 In Review

This past year I...

Spent a long birthday weekend with two of my favorite friends here.
Saw Neutral Milk Hotel, Tool, The National, Justin Timberlake, Steve Martin & Edie Brickell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Rufus Wainwright, Merle Haggard, and Spoon in concert.
Remodeled our master bathroom.
Redid the floors in our laundry room, half-bath and kids' bathroom.
Got to visit the campus of Google in Mountain View, CA and OMG, y'all. It's as nuts as you've heard.
Visited one of my best friends and her toddler in Atlanta three times.

Sent my flip-floppin' kiddo to a gymnastics camp put on by none other than Bela "You Can Do Eet!" Karoli.
Surprised that same flip-floppin' kid with a trip to San Antonio to see her FAVORITE performer (Justin Timberlake, see above) in concert in San Antonio.
Spent an AMAZING week in a beautiful house right on the water in Maine.
Lost a dear friend to ovarian cancer.
Watched a taping of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" from the front row.
Started seeing a therapist regularly.
Finally bought myself a computer (I haven't had a computer of my own since grad school.)
Celebrated my 6th anniversary with BH and my 15th anniversary with my employer.
Laughed way more than I cried.
Managed the change management and communications on a MAMMOTH system implementation at work.
Arranged to take a 3-month writing sabbatical from work that will start in January.

It has been a pretty good year, and I'm looking forward to what lies ahead.

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

The Woman Who Couldn't Apologize

Even when she yelled, "Fuck you! I'm never coming back here! Good luck!" slammed the door and stormed out on Christmas eve, not caring that my 9 year old daughter was watching.

Even when she said to me, "You're mean and hateful. You make everyone around you miserable. You need help."

Even when she said to me, "I feel sorry for your husband and your daughter having to live with you because you're such a bitch."

Even when she told me my house was "disgusting," and a "torture chamber" for my child. Even then.

She would not apologize. Or rather, she could not apologize.

She couldn't understand how heavy her words were, how they bruised and beat me.

She doesn't understand the role she had played in the fracture of our relationship. In her mind, I've built the chasm between us. It is all my fault because I am just such an awful, uncaring person.

She will never admit that she might be the slightest bit wrong, even though she is the only person on this planet who believes all these horrible things about me.

This is what she thinks of me, and she will never, ever apologize for the damage she's done.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

For Kim, On What Would've Been Her 46th Birthday

I thumbed through books filled with the words of others,
hoping to find that perfect couplet
the resonant stanza that could
or would
perhaps
maybe
convey what it is to lose
a teacher, a sister, a mother, a daughter,
a friend.

But nothing and no one
described the way I fell to my knees when I learned you were gone
or how we cried in a restaurant while toasting you,
not caring what anyone thought,
or how reading of the way you had made so many others
laugh, learn and grow
during your short, brilliant ride on this beautiful terrible planet
made all of us even more grateful for you.

Instead I went back to a lesson learned as a child
while standing around a pond at summer camp.
On the count of three, dozens of us threw green pinecones
into the mirror-still water.
In silence, we watched as the ripples from each spread out
and touched the others over and over again
until every one was connected
and the pond was alive with movement.

Each child you've taught, each friend you've made, each tear you've dried, each laugh you've shared
THAT is what connects us to you now
here
today.

You have gone, but the pond is not still.
Your waves run through us all and across this place.
We catch the shimmer of you in the autumn light
and commune in the stillness of your beauty,
offering thanks for your overwhelming love and strength.

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

One Week Later

Birth control pills were approved for contraceptive use in America when my mother was 14 years old. And Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America in 1973. That same year, I turned 4 years old and  became part of the first generation of American girls raised having safe and accessible choices when it came to our reproductive destiny.

Flash forward 40 years.

It is 11:50pm on a hot Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. I am crowded into the rotunda of the state capitol building with thousands of other people who are all wearing orange shirts, scarves and hair ribbons and screaming at the top of their lungs. Around me are half a dozen friends my age, and we are screaming too while we sweat and check news feeds on our phones as the clock nears midnight. My ears are vibrating in pain at the sheer volume of the voices—so guttural and primal and sustained—raised in a deafening unison roar. Then the clock strikes twelve, and impossibly, the volume of the screaming grows even louder. I have no idea if we’ve been successful in killing #SB5, but it damn sure feels like we’ve done something important by coming together and raising our voices in this way. I go home exhausted but too energized to sleep. I am wide awake.

---

Flash forward one week.

I’m still hoarse. My hair continues to stand up when I see photos or videos or read well-written accounts of what happened on Tuesday,June 25th in the Texas state capitol building. They are calling it “The People’s Filibuster.” And having been part of it, is still very much with me and many, many others.

The whole thing—and all of the action that has followed—has made me do a lot of reflecting, and I found myself wondering: Why am I so damn passionate about the abortion issue? Why did I wear my headphones listening to Texas state senator Wendy Davis filibuster against anti-abortion legislation on the senate floor almost all day while I was at work?  Why did I rush down to the capitol that night when I saw the 3rd point of order raised against Senator Davis—and the intense reaction to what was going on in the rotunda—live on the 10 o’clock news? Why did I stand there for hours and hours with thousands of orange-clad strangers who, like me, desperately wanted to be heard that night? Why did I go back to the capitol this week to stand with 6,000 others there to protest the blatantly anti-woman legislation that is back in front of the Texas legislature?


The answer to all these questions is simple: Because this issue—women’s accessibility to safe, affordable LEGAL gynecological services including pregnancy termination—is not only important to women, it says a great deal about how women are viewed in our society. 

A bit of background: When I became sexually active in my late teens, I had access to inexpensive birth control via the Planned Parenthood clinic in the town where I was attending college. I also got regular “well woman” check-ups at that same clinic (required in order to maintain my birth control prescription), and I was able to do all this without my parents’ or my partner’s permission or intervention. To me, taking care of my lady business was simply a part of becoming an independent young woman. It never occurred to me that what I was doing with regard to my reproductive health would (our could) ever be anyone else’s business. Because I had no memory of what life had been life prior to the pill or legalized abortion, I never considered what I was doing a fragile freedom that might be threatened or even disappear. In essence, I’d received all the spoils of a war that I knew little about. And, like many women my age, I became complacent and assumed my reproductive rights were protected. But clearly, I was wrong.

It didn’t happen overnight—the most insidious change rarely does. Over the past two decades, the lines between the church and the statehouse have become so blurred that the foundational principle of the separation of church and state has become little more than a hollow footnote in America. Simultaneously, politicians who run on platforms of “limited government” and “personal freedom” while also advocating for the increased government intrusion into women’s reproductive organs have continued to win local, statewide and national elections. The result of this perfect theocratic storm has been that, little by little, the rights that my grandmother’s and mother’s generation fought so hard to secure are being stripped away. Like many other women in America, I now live in a state where a very vocal, organized, fundamentalist religious minority has managed to bring us to the brink of passing some of the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the entire country. Meanwhile, our state leaders and GOP legislators have the gall to smile their lipless smiles and tell us that it’s all for own good. And this condescending “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it… we know what’s best for you” stance is insulting, infuriating bullshit.

Let me clarify that I am NOT “pro-abortion” as I’m sure some would be quick to label me. Come ON!! Who in their right minds would wish that they or someone they love would ever EVER have to undergo an abortion? No one, that’s who. That’s why the bogus-yet-frequently-repeated claim that those of us who are pro-choice are actually “pro-abortion” makes my blood boil. It’s just fucking stupid, and if you say it, I have no choice but to think that you’re an ill-informed, myopic idiot.

I have a young daughter, and the thought of her ever facing the agonizing choices that come with an unplanned or unsustainable pregnancy is enough to make my stomach turn and bring me to tears. As a parent, my ultimate goals are to protect her, guide her toward good choices in her life, and to do everything within my power to ensure she is safe, happy and healthy. And I hope beyond description that she will never undergo an abortion procedure. But as a realist who resides on planet Earth, I also understand and accept that no matter how much praying anyone does, unplanned and unsustainable pregnancies can–and do--happen to females of child-bearing age regardless of their race, address, financial situation, sexual history, religion, marital status, or political affiliation. And yes, that potentially includes my daughter. What I hope for her is to never have to consider having an abortion, but if she does, I want her to have options and access and not be shamed or criminalized for her choice. Period.

The people of my grandmothers’ and mothers’ generations fought hard to ensure that first, women were granted access to birth control and later, that the cloak of danger and criminality that surrounded abortion was lifted. And after years of admitedly taking these freedoms for granted, I now have all of their fight inside me.
Also inside me is the fight of that indignant 19 year old casually picking up her birth control pills at the women’s clinic who cannot fathom why my—or any other woman’s--reproductive choices should be anyone else’s damn business.
Now I have a daughter who is nearly 9 years old. She deserves the same reproductive freedoms that I and all of the other American women of my generation have been guaranteed as a legal right. And Hell yes, I’ve got her fight inside of me too.

So even if the Texas legislature wins this battle, they now have a full-fledged war on their hands. I'm ready for the fight, and I'm bringing lots of people with me.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012