Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

How Personal of a Personal Day

I took a personal day today. I just couldn’t take one more day of the routine. I couldn’t take one more day of everyone before me. I couldn’t do it. I needed some time to not care about anything--everything.

It was, obviously, supposed to be a “me first” day. And it was, when I contemplated it. For the few days leading up to the decision to take this specific day and then for a few days after I set the date and arranged for a sub, it was my day. I thought about where I would go for lunch and what I would buy with the $100 Hanukkah gelt (money) from my mother: shoes or shirt, or even both. And I wondered where I would spend the time before and after those activities. And it was lovely, this leisurely way of thinking. I was anticipating my day off as much as a teacher looks forward to summer vacation.

But then I realized that I need to bring my car in for service and it would be better to do it today than on the weekend. And then I remembered my credit card bill; it was high, not from purchases now hanging in my closet or on me, but from living life and going on vacation during winter break to visit Kenny's mother and my daughter on the other coast. So I decided I could survive without any new things. And the refrigerator, well, I teach on Tuesday nights after a whole day of teaching, so the leftovers had already been finished. Someone would need to make dinner, and since I’m the only cook in the house, it would be me. Why not make something nice, make the delicious, multi-stepped, Maltese squash pie that Kenny’s mother makes? So there was the supermarket, the cooking, and the cleaning up. Oh, and since I had spent the whole weekend providing feedback on essays for seniors, I hadn’t had time to provide feedback on the essays the freshman had written, I needed to get those done—since I already have a backlog of essays to grade this weekend. So instead of reading, writing or staring into space while I waited for my car to get fixed, I worked.

Still, I managed to get in lunch at a Mexican restaurant, picked for the frozen margarita that could accompany the meal, and the proximity to the house.

And then I went home and napped for an hour and a half.

And I talked with my older daughter out in LA, and my mother in Florida, and I took Poops for a walk in the rain. And I just finished reading a book.

I guess it was as personal a day as I could have.

I’m already anticipating taking another one in March; it’s a month with no days off--too much routine. Personal day. If this is how personal it can be, I say it’s worth it: the combination of me and them, the inability to only tend to myself, or, perhaps, that is utterly what has come to be personal for me.

Rape: The Scourge of Our Time

I was all fired up the other day to write about the heinous way women are treated in Afghanistan; the brutal absurdity of imprisoning women for being raped and of forcing them to marry the men who raped them; and how unhealthy it is for a society to give men absolute power over women. I was going to write about how conflicted I am about our leaving Afghanistan: Is it good to leave them to themselves, or is it bad since, obviously, the women aren’t much better off after our ten-year offensive. I even intended to bring in World War II and how we didn’t leave Europe, another scene of debilitatingly horrific acts of violence, until we had defeated Hitler and the evil of his regime.

Then my partner said that I should think about how many women in the military are raped. “Google ‘rape military.’” Then he mentioned a female soldier who accused a man (working for a contractor) of raping her, and how he got off with barely a slap on the wrist. And her, he said, she was jailed.

He’s right: All the wrongs committed against women cannot be dropped on the laps of Afghani men. We can’t just pooh-pooh the men of Afghanistan who conceal women behind burkas and walls, and who torch their schools, and rape them with bestial impunity, because the rest of the world doesn’t exactly present a shining example of gentlemanly behavior.

Women in the Congo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda have been raped as a course of war, as they have been during other conflicts, and throughout history. Reports of Libyan soldiers raping citizens have surfaced, as have sexual assaults by Egyptian police against demonstrators.

I googled “us military rape statistics,” and 2,230,000 results came up. That’s a lot of stories about men in the military who rape, and women (in the military and civilians) who have been raped by our representatives.

And here in the US, where we attempt to look down on their mistreatment of their women, well, we actually have a term for when a man doesn’t get that “no means no.” Date rape is not quite akin to opening a door for a woman. And the acceptance of the twisted logic of “she asked for it” by wearing a dress that was too tight or too revealing, or by being out too late, or by drinking too much is a psychic rape of all women. Women do not ask to be violated. No, Americans are not beacons in any one’s night.

People say that in Afghanistan it is an expression of their culture. Yeah, sure. Men take every right from a woman except the right to inhale and exhale and we let “culture” cover for that constant humiliation and exercise of power. Then what is it here? Can someone state as truth that rape is a reflection of our culture because we so degrade women by objectifying and sexualizing them? Have we let the deviants define us?

Is the genesis of these rapes by Afghani men, African rebels, European fighters, and American soldiers the same? Is the problem a universal acceptance of “boys will be boys”? Have we conceded the stage to the bullies?

Googling “rape” brings up 206,000,000 results. No, we cannot breathe a sigh of relief that at least we don’t live there—because we do. Women can be strong, but not as strong as a 200 lb. man with societal support (for what else is indifference?) on his side.

Is rape the scourge of our time? We have defeated illnesses, now we must defeat a sickness.

A person who rapes is sick in the crudest sense of the word. And it is unhealthy to ignore a sickness in our midst. Why is it that we arrest prostitutes and not Johns? Why are we always protecting the men? Why are we protecting those who need no protection?

Maybe we women are being forced back to being the weaker sex because society is unable or unwilling to protecting us. What does that say about American culture?

“I Like Your Necklace”

The other day the “compliment clothing instinct” peeked out its pretty head. In the morning, as I walked by her, I blurted out to a student that I liked her ring. I couldn’t help it—it was so big, so obvious, so worthy of compliment; teacher-student relationship be damned—the girl has taste. It was a three-inch silver disc with intricate designs on it: quite the finger shield. A ring to be noticed—and complimented.

Then later when I was walking around the supermarket, a woman who almost walked into me (or did I almost walk into her?) complimented me on my necklace. As I said “thank you,” I reached for my neck to feel which necklace I was wearing. It was the necklace that I bought after my year of wearing no jewelry after father passed away.

And the next day I complimented a colleague on how lovely she looked. And she did the thank you blush and took the back straight-chest out stance.

Even when I tell my daughter, who doesn’t much like my voice or the words that come out of my mouth, how pretty she looks, I get a shy thank you and a tinge of blush to her beautiful cheeks.

Oh, how lovely it is to give and receive. Forget the lists. Forget the stores. Forget the gift cards. Give the gift of a compliment.

Why Do I Talk to My Mother?

Sometimes when I hear the Vaudevillesque ringtone I set for my mother’s calls I roll my eyes, press “Quiet,” and continue with my life. At other times, before the “answer phone call” instinct evolves into reflection and a pass on answering, I answer the call. And then, after the starter wave of information about her day, I wonder how I let myself be tricked again.

It’s not that I don’t get along with my mother or even that I dislike her, but I’m tired of the “world-revolves around your mother” conversations that we have. Sure, there’s the occasional “So how are you?” and “How are the girls?” but if I venture into an answer beyond “Fine,” I find her attention span diminished. She’s bored hearing my response or, and this is worse considering that her life and mine have never had anything in common, she’s done it/knows it/anticipated it, whatever “it” may be, from her place in sunny Florida.

I have learned that I need to accept that these calls are about her, they are not about me—that time has passed. I know that I’m not a young woman first stepping out on her own who needs all the concern and compassion she can get from her mother to shore herself up against the cruel, cruel world, but, seriously, isn’t my mother supposed to care more about me than the chicken she got at Costco that she’ll freeze in individual servings for when she’s in the mood for chicken?

Her loneliness is understandable. My father passed away almost two years ago. She went from having my father by her side to listen to her every critique for fifty-four years to having her distracted daughter via cellphone. One thing is clear: my father was more patient than I had ever imagined because, surely, she has not recently discovered the need to digest her day’s minutiae in talk. No, this must be a habit that she has transferred from my father to me. Before his passing, her calls had the endless detail of things of absolutely no importance, but the calls and the details weren’t endless, and, on occasion, there was a point. I had received the pearls that were gleaned after going through the mire with my father. Besides, she didn’t have as much time to chat since she needed to keep my father entertained with her non-stop talk show.

All that aside, there’s just so far compassion can take you when you hear the deliberations taken to go or not to go to tennis, and then to go or not to go out with “the girls” (who are all in their 70’s and 80’s) for breakfast after tennis. And to hear for the unknownth time that friend A doesn’t dress as nicely as she does, and that friend B thinks that restaurant A is good but she knows that it is not. Yes, I know, my life isn’t a fount of excitement, but at least I generally have a sense of audience and refrain from providing ad infinitum details ad infinitum times.

Unfortunately, I generally check out of our phone calls; I just can’t take the tone and substance of those conversations. Really? Does it matter? And that makes me feel bad. But I just can’t bring myself to focus on her monologue; it needs an accompaniment, like TV viewing needs food.

Maybe the point is that I had hoped that at some point from the time I became aware of her conversational limitations (at about fifteen) to now to have found more to my mother than she has revealed. But I have not. Is that why her calls are so hard on me? She is the sum of the details, and I need to accept that and stop expecting: voila, your philosopher-mother is on the line.

She is who she is—and she does a darn good job at being who she is. No, she is the best at it. No one does it better.

So here’s to you mom: You are who you are, fully. And I apologize for not having valued you before. Maybe at some point you’ll pause and I can tell you that. And if not, I will try, I will, to honor you for who you are—in all your glorious detailing. But maybe during shorter phone calls.

It's Cold

Is this the gloom of winter descending upon me?

It’s dark when I get up. It’s dark when I go to work. The chill air means that only my hands and face feel air unfiltered by layers of clothing, even it if it’s just the shared air of indoors. And it’s dark when I go to sleep, which is generally the case since I have always been an early-to-sleep-er, but of late it’s so early that a mere two months ago it would have been considered naptime.

And it’s been gray, so very gray. I didn’t realize how much the gloom could be gloomy; I used to think that it was lovely, but I see now that it seeps in with it a sense of isolation. Windows are closed. Doors are closed. But perspective is not closed.

I can’t let the cave take over since I am still of this world. This lousy, gray, gloomy world that I generally appreciate, or believe will get better—for us all. But not today. No. Today I’m letting the sadness descend. People are mean. People are cruel. People have egos. And I’m just tired of thinking about them. Curious, isn’t it, how people think they should be heeded when they heed not others. Who made your truth the only truth?

You want to keep your head in the sand, go ahead, just leave the rest of us alone so we can deal maturely with the horrible ways we have dealt poorly with the earth.

You don’t believe in abortion. Fine, don’t have one. Hey, guys, not sure if this applies to you anyway.

And do us all a favor, if you don’t like government, don’t become a politician, and don’t work for the government in any capacity, and don’t take money from the government. Is it necessary to always be a hypocrite just because you can?

And all of you terrorists—yes, if their purpose is to instill terror, then they are terrorists—why not let the rest of us use our words to try to solve the problems you have created and exacerbated instead of you continually lobbing your bombs and killing killing killing—just because you can. WooHoo! You killed another person. What did that get you? Do you really feel better? Do you really feel that the world is a better place now that you have forced death over life?

And you know what, I'm tired of the GOP candidates no longer bothering to attempt to impersonate an empathetic person, and I'm disgusted by people who think, heck, it's okay if you sexually harassed a woman--is it really anyone's business? YES IT IS. Stop protecting people who deserve no protection. What is with this society and its twisted desire to always protect those who have all the protection at the expense of everyone else--those they harassed and those they raped and those they demeaned. What kind of moral compass do we have? Where is it pointing? 

And ignoring the rape of boys to protect a game and a name? Unfathomable and unconscionable. And let me say, I am glad that Penn State lost on Saturday. I know, it's petty, but so be it--so be me. Don't these people care about anything but themselves and their careers? Hollow are they all. 

But my daughters are doing their homework. And my partner is studying. And my mother probably had chicken for dinner and will call to tell me about it. And my dog is waiting for just one more doggy treat for the night. And me. I feel tears. I’m tired. I haven’t even touched on the things that I have to deal with at work. The things that make me ache in empathy, and the things which cause me pain and tension and stress.

We’re such phonies, aren’t we? Pretending to care when all we hope to do is get home safely at the end of the day, without harming anyone or being harmed by anyone. (Did I mention my not getting home safely a few weeks ago when a man, who had obviously been abusing substances, side-swipped me?) Or are we the result of the hurts that we experience personally or from feeling the pain of others and by the time you reach 50 it’s just too much, too too much. We don’t become inured, we become inundated.

We can't help it, can we, to reach out--and to be reached for. But we are not an Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, for we are part of the world. With endurance, may we become an opening in the gloom.

Finally, A Benefit of Being Fifty

I tend to think of myself as a big mouth, but it’s more because I will interrupt people to make funny—to me and some of them—off-hand comments, and not so much because I spew my opinions to all, loudly and incessantly, as do some big-time big mouths.

So a few weeks ago, at the break-the-fast meal at a friend’s house, I touched on the power of being a fifty-year-old woman and how it related to my bigmouthedness. There was a man, Sergei, who stated that the high-tech pioneers in Israel in the 80’s were all Russians. I said, no, they weren’t. He restated his point. And I, I said that no, they were not Russian; rather, they were Israelis who had come out of the technology development departments in the military. He countered by saying they were Russians, since the Russians who immigrated to Israel had either been engineers or musicians, ha ha ha. I let it go, and from there other things came up and the discussion leapfrogged about.

And then another man, talking of the wonder of the US and how anyone can succeed if he/she tries (he even quoted, Lenin about picking up opportunity in the street, as a nod to Sergei), told of the success story of his parent’s non-English-speaking gardener who went on to become a successful non-English-speaking landscape company owner with a house probably bigger than his parent’s. And I said that I don’t think that that should be the only gauge of success in our country and that it’s not so easy to find other types of success—or even that kind. He, should I say, works for the government and while he has travelled the world has not tried to start a business or seek a pathless path for himself.

Not much by way of groundbreaking in the conversation department, but for me, these two mini-conversations were important. Generally, when the boys speak ‘round the table, their statements stand as if they know what they’re talking about, and generally, they state, I nod, and the conversation goes on. But I wasn’t in the mood to just let them slide through with pronouncements; I know or surmise a thing or two myself. Or maybe I realized that to speak up you don’t have to be bolstered by reams of data because no one at a dinner party has prepared as if for a press briefing. We know what we know.

And I know that the trapdoor under my seat will not open and send me into the blazing furnace in the basement if I say something that I feel or infer or think because that is enough support. Yes, my mind and feelings and connections are enough. Most people only back up their assertions with a single sentence of “evidence” anyway; and that evidence is often something someone read somewhere, and that’s generally an opinion anyway.

I like to think that my newfound bigmouthedness stems from the wisdom of age. And that wisdom is twofold. First, I feel that I know things, and in the scale of knowledge people have, I know more than some on some things, and less on others, but I have a range of knowledge and understanding of which I am proud. Second, I’m fifty and, it seems, my mouth has overridden my shy self-consciousness.

Is wisdom knowing that you don’t need to know it all to say something? Or is it knowing that it is better to speak than to remain silent? Or is it in knowing that thoughts have as much validity as facts? Or is it that experience, or living life, has taught me that experience, or living life, trumps any degree from any school, and any job, no matter how high-powered or high-paying? Is wisdom of age the true equalizer?

Abuse In My Past, Not In My Present

Lately I haven’t had many visitors to my site, which makes sense since I am not posting very often. And many of them who do come are looking to read my post on chin hairs. It seems that many many many women the world over are suffering from midlife beards. Oy. But yesterday someone came to the site who was reading post after post on abuse. Which lead me to go to a blog on spousal abuse—something that I haven’t done for a very long time. The post I read there was about how this woman had finally left her husband after he had repeatedly been dismissive of her. I read the “straw breaking the back” post. And that brought me to a deep sense of thankfulness and almost forgetfulness that that was my life in the not-too-distant past, which, thankfully, has no relation to my life in the present.

People say that women have children after their first child only because they forget how painful childbirth is. Regarding relationships after emotional and verbal abuse: you can only have a relationship if you remember the pain—but don’t keep the pain itself alive.

So here I am, 19 months in my rented apartment, 19 months after the house was finally sold, and 19 months since I lived in the same house as the man who tormented me. It is also six months since a friend from the past kindled a spark that lead to love that lead to almost three months of our living together. Three months of creating a relationship that is based on love, respect, concern, admiration, and, alright, quite a tinge of mutual attraction. Not only didn’t I think that I could be in a normal relationship after my marriage, but from the pit of despair I would hear of fairy tale endings and proclaim: “How lovely, but I know that will never be me.”

As I read the woman’s post, I found myself unable to empathize with her—it was a sad story and I was glad to read that she had overcome so much pressure (internal and external) to be her own life-saver. But letting myself sink into the details, and read past posts, and imagine what her life must have been like—and what it was at that moment—no, I didn’t go there. I couldn’t.

Perhaps I have some version of PTSD, where to relive, in any way, past horrors brings to the fore the accompanying anguish and sense of self-loss.

I didn’t feel good that I couldn’t send vibes of compassion out to this woman, that I could merely observe where she was and cheer it, but it felt safe to look from the distance—from my fortress. 

What can I say? I was abused, but it is over—it is a part of my past. Since then I have created layers of life and self that do not depend on that reality: that are independent of it. Since then I have other things, such as chin hairs, to worry about. And now I have a man by my side for whom I pluck those hairs, even if he would never comment on them in anything but an endearing way.

My my life, indeed, can be wondrous, even if once it was so very arduous.

To that blogger: May your life and all those who you wish in it sustain you and keep you fulfilled.

Romantic Weekend in Belfast

“Give us a hug.”

And with that tentative embrace, right after I stepped into the lobby of Belfast City Airport after almost 18-hours of traveling and waiting, and after being identified and identifying successfully, and with my red pocketbook slung over his back because I didn’t have a moment to put it down, we went back 28 years and we went forward 28 years. We went right back to the deep friendship we had already revived in our three months of daily hours-long email and phone conversations, but we also stepped into a romantic sphere that we had, because of our self-confidence-lacking 21-year-old’s and 22-year-old’s minds’, never broached. And so, a path not taken or a spark set ever so gently or a light at the end of a tunnel was brought into being.

And then there were the delicate kisses, or should I say the tentative checking to see if lips fit, if the mind interaction would be joined by its best bud: the body interaction. Indeed.

And with that four days of non-stop talking and walking and laughing and eating and lovemaking began. Yes, it was a wonderful weekend. Not wonderful because, as so many people have told me “I deserve to be happy,” but wonderful because it was in and of itself wondrous, not in comparison to what had come before, but in and of itself. What could be said about a man who not only looks right into my eyes when he tells me he loves me, but makes me feel that way when he makes me laugh, or sits down to eat a leisurely meal in a restaurant he had walked by for years but never went into because he didn’t have with whom he wanted to eat there. And what could be said of a man who doesn’t try to one-up a couple we met at the bed and breakfast where we stayed when they told us that theirs is a true love story because they got together again after breaking up three years ago.

Was it too easy? Should there have been an awkward phase to get over? Or was it that I was never with a man as a lover who was also the person who I felt the closest to, the person to whom I would reveal my secrets and my silliness? Had I never been in love with a friend, a best friend? Was that the secret? Not to want to run to tell anyone about what he said and did and how you felt because the person you want to talk to is there, across the table or across the pillow.

On one of our walks around Belfast, we walked around Titanic Quarter, where the Titanic was built. (A tee-shirt for sale in Belfast reads: The Titanic. Built by an Irishman. Sunk by an Englishman.) I remember when I saw the movie Titanic I thought how improbable the love story was. How, I thought, could a woman go from being with such a nasty, vile man as her fiancé to the loving and tender Jack? Here was my answer: in the man who was sharing with me a bag of chocolate-covered raisins as we sat next to the River Lagan and watched the current pick up and talked in the shadow of the cranes that held up the Titanic as it had been built. Sometimes we women learn from our mistakes. Yes, we do. We learn the difference between when a man says he loves you because of who you are—the good, the bad and the ugly (he did see me in the morning), and when a man says he loves you because he wants something from you.

Where do we go from here? Ah, the deliciously improbable is where. In nine days he will be moving here. This is not a trivial thing, especially for him. Twenty-eight years ago, when I left New York to move to Israel, he also left the states—only to return twice for two very brief visits more than 26 years ago. Without me here, this meltingly romantic man told me, he lost all desire to be in the states. And so, now, he is returning to a person he has loved for all those years and to a place he never expected to return to. And me, who has spoken of despair and lived through my personal hell; me, who was a pessimistic optimist, afraid to think I would ever be happy but afraid, too, to think I wouldn’t be; well, I am in love. In love with a man who is, according to the note his boss wrote for me, “a good guy.”

And after all those posts moaning about men who only want women who are thin or in shape or "care about their looks" or work out seven times a week, I have by my side a man who loves a curvy body--my curvy body.

So here I am. No longer alone. No longer wanting to be alone. I am looking forward to sharing my life with a man, my Kenny, who says to me, “Every day with you is the best day of my life.”

Yes, to be continued.

Life and love after a bitter divorce.

The Fuzzy and Infinite Bead of Plenty

I ended my previous post, a month ago with this paragraph: “How could I not reach out my hand to touch this preposterous bead? It feels as if the ineffable quality that oversees the wonders and ways of the world is presenting me with the most precious bead of plenty—a bead that grows to encompass all manner of well-being, fuzzy and infinite.”

The bead that I was referring to is a man with whom, 28 years ago, I would walk along the daytime and nighttime streets of Manhattan (and one bridge to Brooklyn in a blizzard) being the most open I had ever been with anyone. This man suddenly appeared in my in-box from where he has since snuggled his way into that space I didn’t know existed: a heart untrammeled.

When I started this blog in April 2008, I needed an outlet from all the pain I was experiencing from another man I met 28 years ago: my ex-husband. (Speak about making the wrong choice!) When I began the divorce proceedings four years before that, it was not to clear my decks for another man or even—utterly preposterous—the idea of love; rather, it was to come up for air. For too long I had been stifled: stifled by him and stifled by myself in reaction to him. And the blog, well, I needed to figure out how to breathe again.

First I just poured out in pain. I was seeking to find solace in the opening up, in the discovery of shared pain, in the offering of words of wisdom from survivors, in the providing of comfort to those who only had pain. And then, once I began to find my breathe and my voice, I found that I didn’t just reside in pain. I found that I could write—and think—about things that did not revolve around my life and its downs and occasional ups. I would write about all manner of thing. I liked to think of myself as a columnist (note: I would love to be a columnist) sharing my point-of-view and insights. But always, always there was some new anguish from my ex-husband that I needed to screech out. And now, well it still happens because he has not changed, but I don’t want to dwell on it, I want to acknowledge it and return to the path that my life has taken.

I am, for a moment, without words. Not just that I never thought I would be so fulfilled from a man’s attentions, but that I honestly did not expect more than a freedom of self when I began the divorce journey and the blog journey. Who knows what is beyond, yonder on the horizon, but I know what is not there. What is not there is the pain that has been transcribed here.

In a telling reflection that life is never flawless, this man lives abroad. I will be visiting him for a few days in six weeks—the countdown is on. But when you have two writers unfolding their hearts to and for the other, it is a thing of transcendent beauty. My inbox surely runneth over.

My words, and my thoughts, and my creativity, I have begun to channel to this man as well as to the new book that I have started writing. And so, I guess, I am saying goodbye. Or maybe, because goodbye seems so final and hard, I am saying that when and if I return it will not be as a woman discovering a recipe for lemonade to use the lemons her life dropped into her basket, but it will be as a woman who has recipes for cakes and soups, the sustenance of life. Or maybe I won’t have any recipes to share, just stories that show it is possible to go from the depths of the tunnel where no light can penetrate, to a place that feels darn close to Everest.

Facing a Wall

I’m not sure why we need to confront all of our fears and overcome them. And I’m also not sure, on the flip side, why we always have to be upbeat and why everything needs to be seen through pink lenses. I wonder if this is similar to anti-bacterial soap? We think it’s good to get rid of all the germs that might have come upon us, only to discover that we have now weakened our defenses so that we can be felled by the slightest of germs.

Yesterday I went to a park to see a waterfall (after a marvelous feast of Maryland blue crabs at a picnic bench covered with newspapers in a slight rain). I had thought that there would be a walk through the woods, and then the waterfall to marvel at, and then back to the car. Lovely. But no, there was a waterfall, but, it turns out, this waterfall was supposed to be climbed. There was a narrow band of water cascading down a wall of rocks and boulders that people climb up to reach the top of the waterfall. People, as in people other than myself.

Jon (the man I have been dating for about six weeks), who happens to be six feet tall with rather long legs, stood atop the first boulder before I could even grasp the fact that I was expected to climb this boulder, and then innumerable other boulders in order to what?—get to the top and say I did.

But no, I am no rock climber. It could be my rather earthbound build, or it could be my discomfort at the notion of climbing a smooth faced object, notwithstanding the “foot holds” in it. Or it could be my not trusting myself to haul up my not delicate self from hold to hold. Or it could be that as I thought about conquering the task and getting up to where those other people were, way up there, that I would need to get down as well. The joy of the day faded to the gray color of the boulders. I could feel the fun leave and a dread enter.

Dread. Why should I do something that I dread? And on my day off, too.

So I said no.

Jon tried to encourage me, and then he tried to get me to overcome my fear. But I was having none of it. I would not be talked into doing something that I didn’t want to do, that I didn’t feel comfortable doing. Is this giving into my fear or is this being realistic? Why can’t a mountain of boulders be just that and not something that represents a fear that I need to overcome? Why can’t I keep within this fear—protecting me?

Part of me—a big part—thinks I’m stronger for not letting someone else’s cajoling push me past what I felt comfortable doing. Did I get to where I am to believe someone else say which fears I need to overcome, or did I get to where I am so that I could listen to myself—and have a self to hear and trust.

Tomorrow I have another wall to face. Another wall that I have not faced before, but this time I have decided to push through the fear and trepidation and—paint it! Yes, tomorrow, all on my own, I will paint the wall opposite my bed in Blue Bayou. I will not get a sample and paint a three inch block to be sure that it’s really the color I want. No. I put up at least thirty paint sample sheets on my wall for about a week and narrowed it down to this color. It is the color. A decision has been made.

And I have not painted since I was about eight and my parent’s painted their bedroom chocolate brown. I was assigned the bottom molding. But I will do it. And it will be as perfect as I am capable of painting a wall.

This is a wall that I want to encounter—and climb.

Isn’t life about encountering walls, some to be walked around, some to turn away from, and some to walk right through?

Memorial Day 2010

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM U.S. CASUALTY STATUS
FATALITIES AS OF: May 28, 2010, 10 a.m. EDT
Total deaths of US military and DoD civilians  4,404*

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM U.S. CASUALTY STATUS
FATALITIES AS OF: May 28, 2010, 10 a.m. EDT
Total deaths Worldwide (in and around Afghanistan)  1,076*

http://www.defense.gov/NEWS/casualty.pdf

http://icasualties.org/ (for a non-government-based accounting)

(These figures do not, in my understanding, include suicides as a result of service in these wars.)

All weekend I have been thinking about Memorial Day and what I want to write about it (which obviously means what I think about it). At first I thought I would write about how I have been talking about war for the last two months with my seniors, what with our talking about Achilles and the Trojan War, reading excerpts from All Quiet on the Western Front, reading The Things They Carried, watching a video about the Vietnam War, listening to anti-war songs, and then reading a few poems about war. The books had their powerful messages, and they were received, for the most part. And between my co-teacher and myself we have hammered at the point that it is their responsibility to not unquestioningly accept the call to war.

And then I thought that I would talk about what it feels like to discuss this with students, some of whom are joining the military or going to military academies in a few weeks, and others who are “blown away” at the idea that a generation ago they would have been drafted as opposed to skipping off to their party schools.

And I also thought that I would write about what Memorial Day means living here, in Northern Virginia, where the motorcycles that will ride in the Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom motorcycle march into Washington to remind the government and people that there are still MIAs and POWs, to commemorate their fallen friends, and to support the troops who are serving currently, start making themselves seen and heard on Friday. Seeing their gray hair and beards sticking out from under their helmets and their deeply-wrinkled faces gives a sense of the passage of time, and also of how time is not a healer of all things.

And then I read this article in the New York Times: “Child Brides Escape Marriage, but Not Lashes,” and I watched the video clip of a young girl being lashed with a leather strap with great force by a (physically) grown man while other men stood around and watched and then prayed, because she dared to run away from the man who is old enough to be her great-great grandfather but is her husband. And I read of a father and brother who killed their daughter/sister because she defied her marriage arrangement after she ran away because she had been continually beaten by her hubby and his family. And I cannot help but wonder what are we doing in Afghanistan? Not wonder, no, RAGE.

We have been there since October 2001. Osama Bin Laden is still about. The Taliban is still about. The horrific manipulation of women continues. Maybe this is callous, but if we haven’t managed to make a dent into the twisted way that society manages itself, then I say leave. If they want to keep things as they are, as their “traditions” dictate, then we should just get the hell out of there. Women and men have been decrying the status of women there since before the war and now, almost nine years into it, the same heartaches are heard. Isn’t there a point when one’s friends realize that only the suffering friend can help him/herself by seeking help?

It could be that I am wrong and this is a distortion, and in reality this is an aberration and instead of raging I should be happy that things have changed so much since the our forces arrived there. But I don’t think so.

No. I think that there really is a gulf between us that, perhaps, cannot be broached. How can you reconcile helping a society that keeps women in compounds for their entire lives—and does not seem to see any problem with that? And how do you reconcile helping men who keep harming girls who go to school? How do you reconcile helping people whose people blow up their people who are eating and praying and celebrating and mourning? I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. There are things that are just wrong. And I don’t care if that father and son dynamic duo and the flogger-in-chief think that they are doing good deeds—they are not. I’d like to look into the eyes of those men and see if there is life within. I’d like to see if they really are people, because I don’t think that they are. Twisting one’s mind to think that evil is good and honorable serves a maker that I don’t recognize and that must be visible.

Yes, I know, I have a master’s degree in Conflict Studies, so I should be more understanding and accepting of these people’s “narrative.” But I am not. There is a point when one cannot contort one’s mind to accept or even give credence to such depravity. What else is it? Does someone’s holy book and God really call for maiming young girls?

And what kind of mother can these girls become? These aren’t soccer moms or even hovering helicopter moms-to-be. These are women who continue in too long of a line of women who are not nurtured for the value of their hearts and minds; women who are, at the core of their society, discounted. Isn’t that the basis of a healthy society: women who are healthy and raise their children to be healthy citizens?  

Do the wrongs of that society show what happens when women are discounted? It is, to all intents and purposes, an all-male society, with women ostensibly servants. No education. No rights. No liberties. No voice. Bleak and harsh.

Could it be that this society cannot be fixed until it accepts its women—mothers, wives, sisters, daughters—as worthy and valuable, and not just a thing to use to pay off one’s debt. Isn’t this really a statewide form of child prostitution and slavery?
It is a shame that whatever introspection occurred did not lead to righting this violation. Sure, they could look and see women in our society using their bodies to sell products. And they can read rape and assault statistics. But I wonder if in the dark of night these floggers and beaters long for love and warmth and comfort? How hard it must be to live an entire life imprisoned in a cold harshness. Would that drive you to make everyone else in your life suffer as you suffer; or would it make you feel a little better to know that someone suffers more than you?

Instead of an army of soldiers, perhaps they need an army of mothers. And if that’s not in the Pentagon’s plans, I say “Bring ‘Em Home.”

Women, Hugs and Friendships

The other night was the last night of Hebrew School. I now have my Tuesday and Wednesday evenings back. I said goodbye to the sixth graders and the “big kids” (the middle and high schoolers) the previous night, but there were no dramatic pronouncements. When I said goodbye to the third graders, it was much different. I will sorely miss them. Before they bolted out of the classroom (with the boy who had been one of the rowdiest as the line leader because he had gained my trust that he would not lead them to whoop and holler down the hall), I told them how much I enjoyed being their teacher and how wonderful it was to spend the year learning with such a great group of kids—and I meant every word I said. There is something truly special about third graders. I haven’t studied enough child development to know why, but their blossoming and openness and giddiness is just a wonder of nature.

And then I did dismissal, otherwise known as ushering kids into the right cars and not letting parents who already have their darlings in their cars run over someone else’s kids, because what do they care—their kids are safely ensconced within.

Then one of my closest synagogue work friends left. The night before she joked that she wouldn’t give me a goodbye hug that night, but at the last moment—she didn’t want to get sentimental. We finally hugged; it was an uncertain hug because she’s not sure if she’ll be back to teach next year. We talked about getting together over the summer and I thanked her for being such a good role model to my daughter who helped her teach some of her classes for part of the year. And we broke the space rules as we stood there and intensified the feeling of friendship that had been steadily growing over the year.

Then I went inside and said goodbye to my other good synagogue friend. When we realized that I won’t be back until the end of the summer, we hugged. This is the woman with whom an amazing amount of ground was leaped over to develop a solid friendship once we both realized that we had been married to crazy Israelis. Now she’s married to a mere mortal who is a lovely and kind and gentle man. I love catching up with her in those few lull-like moments when we can act on our friendship.

As I walked out of the synagogue on my way to my car, I realized that those two women despise each other. There had been a scene in the middle of the year; there had been harsh words slung especially in one directions (of course, this was from one of the players, so the slinging was probably mutual); and there had been an unsuccessful “let’s all just get along” session lead by the director. How is it that I am close to both of them? Close as in get along in the comfortable fleeting friendship way that develops because you effortlessly click with someone. There have been no coffees together, or lunches out, or even shopping soirees (how women shop together is beyond me, but I know that it happens because two women in the department at school are forever wearing the same Ann Taylor outfits and shoes), simply a few minutes once or twice a week to exchange a hello, an update that all is well and if all is not well, to give and receive heartfelt compassion.

How is it that two women who I get along with so effortlessly so dislike each other? It punctures my whole “friends of friends” theory that says we can generally befriend a friend’s friend because we are on the same wavelength. Kumbaya and all that.

Friends of friends. Maybe we need to earn each and every one of our friends and friendships—and none can or should be taken for granted. And, perhaps, I should value each of those friendships more than I do because they are not doled out as easily as I had thought. And just perhaps I should value my ability to make friends and keep them, and not assume that it is the other person who is so friendly. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I am a good friend and not an incidental conversationalist. 

Those hugs. They were from me and they were for me. They were a testament to something—something that I need to embrace and not merely walk through as so much air. 

Grandpa's Chess Set

Please visit JC's blog, StoryRhyme, where she posted my latest story, "Grandpa's Chess Set." It's too painful for me to post it here.

PMS, who needs it

I’d like to know why when I am PMSing I have to have doubts of self-worth? Why can’t I get annoyed at everyone else and curse at the bad drivers on the road who cut me off and who don’t know how to signal? Why, why can’t I satisfy the hormones within by looking at the unsavory behaviors of others? Why can’t I rage at them instead of turning on myself? This surely can’t be some kind of self-preservation instinct because it just tears at my self.

In my younger years I don’t remember feeling this way once a month. In my much younger years there was the agony of one-day cramps. In my young motherhood years there were barely any reactions. In the past few years there has been a pre-headache, but now, now there is far too much self-dissection that I could surely do without that accompanies the headaches. It’s lovely that my body is still functioning as a woman’s should even though I have no intention of becoming a mumsey again and surely no man seems to find my womanly curves of any interest, so why do I have to succumb to a monthly session with the toughest therapist around—my own inner angst unleashed? It’s an agony to be consumed with so much doubt; have I lived 48 years, building to a generally confident woman, only to be most efficiently mocked at by myself? I don’t really need the monthly readjustment phase because it doesn’t readjust so efficiently, there’s always a lingering to that uncomfortable, unknowing teen that I was when I first started PMSing. Could there be any reason for this? Do I need to think about how bad I am as a person on such a harsh schedule?

Why can’t I be unsettlingly satisfied with myself once a month? Would that be a bad thing—to glow and gloat? Wouldn’t that serve a better purpose than to think about my uselessness? Do we get the PMS we deserve? Is this an eternal voice that I need to battle, constantly, so that I will not let myself subtly be submerged but will, instead, ultimately emerge chrysalis-like to the mindset that I have been growing into? Is this the last vestige of the self-doubt that I have harbored within for so very long? Will I finally conquer self-doubt when I don’t let myself be waylaid by a monthly hormonal imbalance? Can that be done? Can I be stronger than myself?

I guess I have another month to see. Maybe I should mark my calendar so that I won’t be blindsided but will be prepared to fight back and conquer those doubts that I don’t need invading my confidence.

Feminism, Still Alive and Pertinent to Me. WooHoo!

I think I will be perceived as just another bitter woman, but so be it. If I can’t change perceptions, I might as well go with them.

• I’m sick of the male/female ratio of songs played on the radio with so many more boys than girls you would think that men are the vast majority of the population.

• I’m sick of the male/female ratio of DJs on the radio. Except for a couple of afternoon shows and the ubiquitous side-kick, it’s rare to hear a woman’s voice. 

• I’m sick of the male/female ratio on the news. Is that why I have stopped watching the news? Or is it the news itself? Or is there some connection between the two?

• I’m sick of the male/female ratio in government. I know, I know, nothing new about old white guys, but for goodness’ sakes, can’t they just stop thinking that they should decide everything for the rest of us and people agreeing by voting for them.

• I’m tired of everyone I know having a “big boss” who is a man.

I know none of this is groundbreaking or insightful, but so be it. Sometimes the tried and true just really can get you down.

• And I’m tired that people think it’s tiring that this needs to be continually revisited.

• And, as noted at She Writes about Publishers Weekly’s compendium of the ten best books of 2009: I'm tired that so often those who are acknowledged in certain fields, writing, are men. All of the top ten books are by men talking about sort-of men-things. Really? No women wrote great books in 2009? Oops. Maybe they wrote them but didn’t get them published?  Just another bitter thought with no basis in any research—just life.

• And I’m annoyed that my younger daughter thinks I’m a crazy woman for thinking these things. Wait. Maybe I shouldn’t be annoyed at that. Perhaps it’s a sign that the next generation has truly changed and things will change. Or. Or that generation just doesn’t care and will take society as it is.

• And I’m pissed that the healthcare bill lets men continue to receive Viagra so they can control themselves, but us women are being denied the same thing—to have control over our own bodies.

 I guess the time for being tired, annoyed and pissed is far from being over, unfortunately.

I Have Nothing to Wear: Rethinking the Thong

For some reason the conversation of ten women and one man (what part of Girls Night Out did that achingly close, not yet married couple not get?) in a bar turned to undergarments. One Scandinavian woman is dissatisfied with the width of the thongs that are available in this godforsaken country; but it turns out that she is really longing for g-strings (which, to those of you who don’t know the difference—as I didn’t, is the string up you-know-what as opposed to an inch-wide swath of fabric up that same place). When I told the Scandinavian woman next to me that I don’t wear thongs or g-strings, but I cover it all up, she shook her head and said, “No, you must embrace your curves. Try it, you will feel marvelous.” She then said something about men who will love to see me jiggle. I’m not sure, but I thought the undergarments were for me and my hygiene. But no, she was quite sure that a g-string or a thong was all that I needed to get my love life out of the thought department. And with that a six-foot tall, blond, blue-eyed, slender Danish woman managed to invade the cotton comfort of my life.

But it wasn’t just about thongs. No, her statement “embrace your curves” sounded so much better than my mental disparagement of “you need to lose weight” or “look how fat your face is.” Embrace my curves. She said it in a much nicer and more respectable way than the man who never made it past a phone call because he said he liked my curves and then seemed to be disappointed that I didn’t carry the conversation into dirty-talking territory. I told her that I know I should accept who I am, for goodness sakes I’ve been down this thought-vein for years and it hasn’t brought me any happiness or dietary success. She smiled at me and said something about her not having any curves, which I ignored.

Today I was thinking about symbolism and carried the curves thought to my hair, which is as full of ringlets as Shirley Temple’s ever was. Those surely are curves that I am proud of, after all, I never flatten them with an iron or blow them away with a hair blower. No, I proudly toss my curliques from side to side. Maybe I am meant to be curvy, all over. It’s not that I am a glutton, but my body has found its place. It is not where I would like it to be. I do not have most of my friends’ bodies. But I guess they don’t have mine either.

I’m not sure if I’ll follow through on the thong/g-string connection to feeling good about myself, but I think I finally heard what I needed to hear, or else I was finally ready to just let down my guard of pretending that someday I could be someone else and accept myself—curves and all. I must admit, I’m getting awfully tired of being disappointed in myself. It’s hard to always be critical and always finding fault. I am who I am.

In Hebrew, the word hineni means I am here. Maybe I need to just start saying that to myself: hineni. I am here. This is me, curves and curliques and all.

Friday Night, Alone

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, there was no fourteen-year-old who greeted me by closing the door to her bedroom but then popping out a few minutes later to ask what’s to eat, nor was there a Maltese named Poops who jumped up and danced on his hind legs when he saw me. There was only the dining room table with its self-created collection of piles to greet me. It's his weekend with them both.

I unpacked the bag of groceries that I bought for my evening at home, trying to ignore the silence by turning on the radio. I put away the frozen pizza and the two bottles of beer. After I responded to some emails, I went into my daughter’s room, piled her clothes on a chair as I had done when I was her age instead of the floor mounds that she prefers, arranged her five pillows on her bed, lay down, and lifted up the remote for what would be hours of unending numbness. It’s not that my job is so hard that I need to unwind so intensely, perhaps it’s because I don’t watch tv other than those Friday nights (okay, the occasional Saturday night if I’ve been grading or on the computer for too long—I think I need a “life”) but it is time that enables me to detach from my mind. Perhaps this is how I meditate. Sometimes it gets hard to think and be aware.

So there I was, on a hot pink sheet for hours watching Say Yes to the Dress and House Hunters International. The thought of why it is always those two programs that I return to kept trying to break into my mindlessness. Is it because I like to see people so happy, so ready to step into another phase of their lives, that I want to become a voyeur? Is it that I wish that for myself and so I live vicariously through them? Maybe it’s a bit of both; maybe I’m anticipating more change. But it’s also that there is nothing else that I can settle my mind onto. I cannot watch the news or opinion shows because I’m tired of listening to people open and close their mouths repeatedly without saying anything. (I don’t ignore the news, I still read mine.) I know, I know, I’m sure some of my students say that about me [especially the ones who wrote “I hate this class” on my “What I Want to Do This Year” sign on the backboard before I ripped it off in a moment that combined hurt and bitchiness (no one was there to witness this act)]. And I can’t watch scripted programs because everything is so fake and contrived that I don’t see how I could ever have been compelled to watch so much falsity in writing and acting.

How bare can I make my life? Is that why I need to watch tv every once in a while? How much can my life, a life, revolve around one’s actions and thoughts and the people one encounters? Is that why we read and watch? Is that how we expand our circle if we need it to be larger than it is in reality? Or do we need to incorporate ideas and people and images that don’t always challenge us and demand attention from us on a personal level? Do I need the numbness because there are so many people I need to care about everyday that I need to just stop sometimes? In a week I have about 185 students, each is an individual who I need—want—to understand and reach, and who I care about. Maybe it is about the job. Maybe it’s more draining than I realized. I get up in front of my classes three times a day and on religious school days, four or six times a day. And each time I’m on stage; I need to sense the audience and project, and thrust my personality out so that it meshes with the instruction. Is that why I don’t watch dramas? Not because of the corny stories and plasticine acting, but because I have too many lives to care about that I cannot expand my heart anymore?

Is this about self-preservation? Do I need to return my thoughts and cares to myself instead of always extending them and sharing them? Do I need to come back to myself at the end of the week because if I didn’t there wouldn’t be anything to share the next week? When I walk, I think. When I read, I think. When I watch, I detach. Maybe it’s not as much of a time-waster as I thought.

Where’s the remote?

Random Thoughts on a Sunny Sunday

 • How is it that we are supposed to help a country, Iraq, if so many people there find that killing each other is better than learning to live with each other? Yes, it’s only a few who are terrorists. Yes, the terrorists might not even be from there. Yes, maybe the terrorists became terrorists after the US-invasion and occupation. But still, it’s hard to keep caring about people who keep blowing themselves up. Blowing each other up at weddings, while shopping, while looking for a job, while working, and worst of all, while mourning a loss at a funeral. Isn’t there a purpose to life other than another person’s death?

• Why do wealthy people register for gifts when they get married? Really? People need to buy gifts for Ivanka Trump and her new husband, who are both from real estate empire families. Can’t a person ever say enough? Why not a gift registry of organizations to donate to if they feel that they always deserve something? They should be ashamed of themselves.

• I wonder what happens in a teen’s mind that enables him to transition from writing essays that are merely lists in paragraph form to writing essays that analyze? Now I know why I’m happy to be teaching 12th graders and not just 9th graders: there are the occasional thoughts swirling around.

• Helicopter parents are not the only helicopters around, this morning I observed a helicopter wife. Really? He can’t put his own food into the microwave and spread the butter on his own bagel? He can hold the door for you but he can’t carry his cup of coffee? Are thoughts like these a reason why I am unattached?

• There is a man out there with whom I will find comfort, but I don’t know if we will find each other.

• Being a three-quarter empty-nester is better than being a complete empty-nester, but my, how I miss being on-duty all of the time. I’m pleased that both of my daughters are independent, and that I am independent of them, but it’s still hard to have a few dishes that reflects my eating and snacking habits.

• It’s beautiful outside. It’s time to put a bra on and go pick up my daughter from her weekend. She will probably say “okay” and turn away when I ask her how her weekend was. But we will be together on this beautifully sunny afternoon for at least a little while and I will be relieved from the pressure of thinking about myself and the world we live in. Enjoy the day.

The Symbolism of a Downed Tree

Yesterday when I was driving home I found the way blocked by a tree that had fallen across the street that I take to get home. There was no way to get around the tree: it spread its trunk and branches from curb to curb. I drove into the parking lot next to it, thinking that I could get back to the street, but I couldn’t so I did an inelegant 3-point turn. When I got to the stop sign at the top of the street where I was planning to turn left, there were two cars in front of me, the first one seemed to be driven by a new driver because s/he was not moving even when there was time to go. So I turned to the right, thinking I’d make a u-turn at the next opening. Of course, there was a “no u-turn sign” there, and since I’m not into breaking obvious road laws, I took a left into the street and did another inelegant 3-point turn to get back to where I needed to be. I made my right. At the light where I needed to make my left turn to the street that would lead me to my street, I temporarily became disoriented by the dusk and the rain and turned into the left side of the street—as in the side where three lanes of cars were coming right at me with their white lights shining—right into my eyes. Luckily, at that moment my temporary road-rule amnesia left me and I did yet another inelegant 3-point turn. Everyone waited for me to turn around, that is except one asshole who was, I guess, aggravated by me and my unfamiliarity with the rules, who drove around me in the middle of my turn. No compassion from him. I bet HE (I am sure it’s a he, sorry guys) was going someplace really important that he couldn’t wait for someone who was obviously in distress or distraught to correct her error. Everyone else waited for me to finish my turn, thankfully, and then at the light, I made a U-turn to my street because there wasn’t a “no u-turn” sign there. I was also afraid what would happen if I needed to go down another street and make another 3-point turn. I needed to get off the road, I felt lucky to still be driving.

The rest of the drive home, all seventy seconds of it, were uneventful.

Those roadblocks and mistakes made me think that the drive home might be symbolic of the meeting I just had, and what it might mean for the future—and what it might represent for the past. I had come from meeting a woman in response to her Craig’s List ad (no, I’ve not so completely given up on men) to start up a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group and this woman, as we learned through our emails and our first meeting, is the Palestinian-American version of me. It wasn’t odd at all to hear how the trajectories of our lives were so similar, rather it felt right—the embodiment of people connecting as people and not being the representatives of any side or cause. We moved to Israel and the West Bank at around the same age. She married a Palestinian and I married an Israeli. We both suffered from their words. We both had to deal with “dealing with him” with the children and in bitter divorces. And we both came back to the states. We both worked on getting our careers on-track, for ourselves and our children. And we both want to do something about abuse and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And we laughed and enjoyed telling the stories of our lives to each other.

I thought that the roadblocks on the way home represent the roadblocks that we may face to create whatever group or program we have yet to envision (we’re at the brainstorming phase). They could also represent the immense and intense roadblocks that Israelis and Palestinians have placed between themselves so that in Israel we never would have met. I lived in Israel for seventeen years and the two-hour conversation that I had yesterday was more than I had spoken with any Palestinian in all of that time, unless you add the time I spent ordering meals from Palestinian waiters.

In the three years I spent studying for my master’s degree in conflict studies I never met anyone with whom to have a dialogue. Most of the people were, from my perspective, so anti-Israeli that they couldn’t do the most basic thing the field demands of people--to see those on the other side as people, as individuals, and not as representatives of a side. So there we were, two women—mothers and ex-wives—meeting as women do, by sharing their stories and seeing how they can work together to make the world a better place. A more peaceful place for their children—for everyone’s children. 

It’s raining and dreary outside, but I feel a warmth that I haven’t felt for a while.

Yes, That's Me at JWIBLOG.ORG

For two days (today and yesterday) I am the featured woman at Jewish Women International's blog during October's Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Please go over and check out my pieces (excerpts from my book, Get Your Words Off Me) as well as those testimonies by other women--women who have also suffered and survived domestic abuse.

October is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For that there is a pink ribbon. We need to curl the purple Domestic Abuse Awareness ribbon next to it, to indicate another way that women are being struck down--some surviving, and some, sadly, not.