At the hint of criticism directed toward anyone I care about, I turn into a mommy lion with hot pink aviator glasses. It’s not that I ignore faults; it’s that everything has an explainable flip side. It all depends on seeing things from my perspective. Perhaps people think I’m delusional, but that’s okay, I have to live with the games my mind plays.

Surprisingly, this defensive stance has, to some degree, extended to my ex-husband. Even at his most heinous, when I needed to talk about what he had done so that I could hear people tell me how horrible he was, and how strong and right I am, there was always a soupçon of the wife supporting her husband, or, more accurately, a woman supporting the woman who fell in love with the wrong man, or, more accurately, the man who turned out not to be the man with whom she had fallen in love.

I am ashamed that I am divorced, not because of a stigma attached to divorce, since I see the divorce itself as positive: I got out of a bad situation as opposed to staying in it because I had a ring on it. No, I’m ashamed because it is a cudgel to my self-esteem. I made a monstrous mistake in judging my ex-husband, and in judging my ability to judge a person. Though I am positive that the man I met in 1982 was not the man I divorced in 2007 (and the man he has become since then), it is still a burden to bear. But the man behind the bear, the original man, that is who I defend. (Or is it the woman who fell in love with that man?)

Perhaps my defense of him comes from a sorrow as deep as love, one whose origin is emotional rather than logical. Logic: I am sorry that he did not remain the man I thought he was. Emotional: I am sorry that he did not become the man he thought he was. If he had gone on with his life, to a new job and a new wife, rather than an unknown mental state and an impoverished state at that, there would have been no psychic need for me to transfer hate and fear to pity and blame. Is this survivor’s guilt? Does it show that I am healthy or unhealthy?

It would be nice to relegate the past to the past, but it is not a set place or time, it infiltrates. There is no pure present. Is this what it means to be middle-aged? This is when you realize that you are unable to cut yourself off from the past because it is your fiber, but you can critique it so that, ultimately, you transform it. Analysis as transformation. Failed relationships are leavened by the air of time and thought.

Perceptions and emotions come back in ways that enable us to accept who we were within past relationships, not to define us, but to refine ourselves. The past is not set, it is discovery. And that defensiveness is not a wall but a permeable barrier between selves, enabling me to live with who I was and who I am, and to accept both—all.

Poops

It’s not as if I walk around naked all the time (though I could since the cemetery across the way is full of lonely people and its neighboring church seems to advocate extremely part-time practice) nor do I only have empties (of potato chip bags, that is) in the garbage, but not worrying about how someone else views my habits or needing to mesh mine with someone else’s has become my definition of contentment. Sure, I miss the opportunity to flesh out the anxieties of the day with someone and I miss seeing someone light up when I come home, but my mother, who lives in Florida, can usually listen for a few minutes before going back to herself, and Poops exuberantly welcomes me home, every single time I walk through the door. So I have backup.

It’s been about a year and a half since younger daughter went to college, which began my living alone stage that initially felt far more lonely than lovely. Before that there was home with mother, father, brother; then there were roommates in various configurations; and then there was husband and daughters; then, five and a half years ago (two years after the divorce) the house finally sold and older daughter went to college, so there was younger daughter on her custody schedule; then daughter and boyfriend; then daughter full-time since another great romantic story didn’t work out and boyfriend left, and my ex disappeared; and now there’s me. Well, me and Poops. It took a while to overcome the feeling that I should be tending to someone, that I am a failure for having failed at all my important relationships (when you’re down, your daughters going far far away to college reflects on you negatively), and to finally settle down into me and not being apologetic or ashamed of that. What is a “should” home configuration anyway?

At work my days are spent tending to others. I calculated that each work day I interact with at least 100 people, where some pay attention to every single thing I say, and others only notice the oh-no’s that slip when you talk for a living. That’s a lot of watching my mind-mouth interaction. And what I read in my spare time is generally about how abysmal our world is and has been, or about the people who try to make sense of that abysmal world record, or about the people who try to make it less abysmal, so I’ve got a weight on me that never leaves.

What does it mean to be alone? It doesn’t mean lonely because I don’t feel isolated (except on Saturday nights when I’m in bed by nine and fully awake at midnight, and maybe, too, on Sunday mornings when I would love to eat breakfast at a diner but even I will not expose myself that much because what could possibly say lonely more than eating breakfast alone while all around you are couples and families?). It does mean that I have the opportunity to live in the undulating rhythm of my mind and needs. It means that I can care about what I care about. But it also means that I have no one to blame for not accomplishing what I thought I should accomplish. There is no blame-game safety net. That isn’t such a bad thing because it also means that I force myself to whittle down into realistic goals, both lofty and nappy (as in napping).

To be alone is not to be without people because that is a decision to be made on an on-going basis, but it does mean that I need to be satisfied with myself since I cannot fill my mind with the la-la-la-la of other people’s doings and thinkings. No meals to anticipate other people wanting. No soothing of disjointed egos and moods. No driving to be done. No coordinating and planning and scheduling. It is to live in the moment gauging only what I need, and that is liberating and unnerving because there is still a part of me that finds fulfillment in being a carpet to walk upon.

Alone. It means to recognize another aspect of my identity. I am a woman, mother, writer, teacher: I am Jewish, a New Yorker, Virginian, American, Israeli; I am alone.

It has taken a while, but I feel strength in that designation. It is a sign of being a cope-er.

Alone is a plateau. One that stretches in an undulating path of self-directed wanderings.

Palm Springs, Thanksgiving 2014

While the country roils from murderous racism and white impunity, and around the world anti-Semitism becomes de rigueur for the open-hearted and those who would cut out those open hearts from the core of their own murderous racism, and as increasingly thicker catalogs for clothes and make-up arrive for younger daughter, I’m spending my time in high-chat mode. Since no one’s calling my friends and me to solve the problems of the world, we might as well contemplate the meaning of our little lives.

One friend wonders what will fulfill her now that her sons are heading off to college and she’s heading into far too many years at the same organization; another friend grasps out and in for tools to make her and her fiancé’s relationship a success rather than a contentious prequel to divorce two; another friend has begun to resemble Don Quixote as she battles to be recognized beyond the gates of nepotism; while another is within the gates, but battling the whiny wall of bureaucracy and the entitled student.

Amidst that cacophony there are the illnesses that have crept in. There is the friend, the woman who less than a year ago I envied for her large, lovely home; successful, devoted husband; adoring sons still at home; international travel with family and friends; a retirement full of purpose; who has been laid very, very low by cancer. There is the woman who told me that her husband, the successful engineer, now spends his time at home unable to make a cup of coffee, with a Keurig, because of early on-set Alzheimer’s. And there is the student whose depression has created a hollow-seeming child.

Oh, woe woe woe.

But woe is not me in the sense that I suffer within my situational pain, rather woe is within my chain of connection, and that is an essential link in the chain of self, especially since I have uncovered that within my singleness there is the almost teenage connection to friends, but I am in a post-boy phase and so can focus on what is being told without demanding to be heard.

Is there always a cycle of pain, where we each have our turn at the wheel while others wait patiently for their turn?

It’s a sad thing to know that the prick is always felt by someone.

I am not an “it’s for a reason” or an “it will make you stronger” person. There is no flip side, rather there is the undulating movement of lives that rise and fall. There is no repose, there is the appreciation of what was, what is, what will be, never knowing what is better or best, just going through the cycle of self because that is the story to be lived.

Amidst the essential pain within each small life, the violent tragedies that stun and subdue appear so purposeless, so petty. How can hate be of more value than a morning kiss? Why does one person’s mind get to conquer another’s body? Why does the arrogance that quells get the upper hand on the respect that fosters?

Questions that have no answer in history, which, I guess, is the answer.

Pebbles of compassion.

Who I am and who I am and who I am needs to push past the never-ending truth of a world built on greed and power, and simply commit to its own spiral that threads together concern for and encouragement of friends, and that spark of dignity that drills beneath the layers of resentment and commits to believing in the undergirding of humanity wherein my circle is limitless and where my powerlessness is a power. The power of living a life pretending that it is more than mine, that it is part of an “ours” that can change the trajectory of imposed tragedies. A real life of pretend, where the illusion is that no one is irrelevant, and the message is that despair is solitary while empathy is communal.

Sitting around the table talking our little talks will not quell the seeping hatred, but it will quiet the fear that I huddle alone in my horror and dismay, and that is no insignificant feat. Within that comfort is the power to resist passivity and to propel my pebble of self into the ocean, creating the barest of ripples, which, at the most basic level, is a barrier. As a barrier protects, it also pushes against. These friendships are a force on the tiniest of scales and the most impactful. There is nothing small about talk that protects and emboldens.  

August Sky 

“I’m alone. I’m alone,” I cried out the moment after I fell. The apparentness of that statement made my helplessness even starker. That’s also when I realized that I’ll live and that I peed on myself. Which makes sense, since I had been walking to the bathroom in the 10 o’clock hallway darkness when the very open washing machine door (instead of the slightly open door) tripped me, causing me to lose my balance (which the two beers I drank didn’t help), sending me smashing onto the hardwood floor—left shoulder first.

It is two days later and I am still in pain and with very limited left arm movement. I didn’t go to the emergency room because when I went two months ago after having been prodded by concerned friends that my double vision could be a brain tumor and must be looked at immediately, I realized that there isn’t much to be done there unless it’s a dramatic emergency with blood and gore and excruciating pain, and the tiny leakage surely didn’t count. So I’m doing the weekend dance of waiting out pain and worry. (The double vision turned out to be a muscle in my right eye which, surprise, is generally an age thing. It has gotten back to normal with no intervention.)

My key concern at this point is putting on a bra. School starts in two weeks and I cannot be the dangly, droopy teacher. I need some improvement so that I can put a bra on. Luckily, I bought two button-up shirts the other day, but that’s only part of the battle. I’m thinking that I could hook the bra and then try to get into it, but I’m really hoping for vast improvement. A sports bra could do the trick, but they’re so hard to get into and out of that I’m not sure they’re the answer.

For the first time since younger daughter decided to stay near college for most of this summer and summers into the future, and after she told me that during winter break she would come for a week (I screeched and she added a week), I thought about renting out her room, which is the master suite with a walk-in closet and large bathroom. It makes sense monetarily, but it could offer up someone who could help hook a bra in time of need.

Now in a very fast review of relationships, checking if I made a mistake somewhere and I could have a wonderful in-crisis-time man by my side right now who would be only too happy to hook, and unhook, my bra, leaves me solidly in my aloneness. The man whose insults still visit me when I look in the mirror? The man who tried to strangle his wife in front of his kids? The man who tried to make me think that he’s a better deal than my daughters?

I used to joke about a Golden Girls scenario when I retire, but I see that it could be worthwhile to try it sooner.

A friend who knows about my injury, is hurting too, but her injury is far more “worthwhile” than mine since the source of her pain can be traced to a hot Bikram yoga class, and not having to go to the bathroom to pee and to take off her undies so she could be comfy in just her shorts. Oh, the consequences.

She is also a single woman.

Do they have first aid classes for singles?

She knew to wrap her foot and take an Advil. I used frozen blueberries and then an ice pack only to be told by my younger daughter (older daughter still hasn’t called me after two calls and a text) that the blueberries were better because they fit to the shape of my body.

The bath with the muscle soothing bath salts from the Dead Sea was relaxing in the sense that I no longer smell and my hair doesn’t feel like autumn leaves. I also saw how difficult it is to undress: getting out of my tee shirt felt like a challenge for Mensa candidates. I am now wearing a zip front shirt.

Where do I go from here?

I keep pushing my arm in my clueless array of physical therapy moves and I realize that I seem to have reached a before/after time of life.  

When my mother was here last week she talked about a friend who had always been a fearless women. But now, fear of falling (is this what happens after we conquer our fear of flying?) has confined her to her bed.

My mother is also afraid of falling, but she is more afraid to atrophy so she coddles herself and then pushes herself out.

My sister-in-law says she is always in pain, but she is also always on the move.

A friend twisted her ankle turning around to talk to someone.

A friend broke her neck and has been in pain since, but she works with that moment, she has not let it defeat her.

Coming to terms with the physical dangers of just putting one foot in front of the other is sobering. But so, too, is the realization that I need to take advantage of the glory of (generally) pain-free movement while I can enjoy it. For someone who usually lives in the mind, I see how limited my capabilities are when the body takes a break. It’s hard to concentrate when your mind is focused only on the pain, thus anecdotally proving that there is no such thing as multi-tasking.

So I drove to the store for some Advil of my very own, droopy breasts and all. And I managed to take down the recyclables appreciating the coordination between right and left arms.

I have long thought that our lives are made of moments, but now I realize that they are also made up of what we do with those moments.  

There was a moment earlier in the summer when I thought, Oh, how lovely, romance is here. A kind, interesting, intelligent, stable man who wants to hold my hand—and I want to hold his hand. Time to delete my OK Cupid profile. That was until The Conversation.

No, it wasn’t about guns or abortion (although now I realize that those might also have led to The Conversation). It wasn’t even that I was investigating where he stood on the subject, because it didn’t occur to me that he didn’t think the way I thought on the topic. As a sign to how blindsided I was, I wasn’t aware that it was even an issue. Ah, the illusions we have that other people are as sane as we are.

As we sat on a bench opposite a pond, the sky transitioning from late afternoon’s solemn blue to dusk’s soft gray, and after our meandering walk along a stream, the word “evolution” popped up. Leaning back, he said, “You mean Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man”—followed by a laugh—a laugh! “No, I don’t believe in them.”

Without any conscious thought, I leaned to the right, away from him, and forward. “You don’t believe in them?” I asked, looking back at him.

“No. I do believe in micro-evolution.” (Apparently you get to create your own phrases that seemingly make you seem less ignorant if your ideas are preposterous.)

“So what, you believe that we popped up on the sixth day?”

“I have to.”

He then went on to continue digging his very own hole in my mind—and, probably, build a glorious mountain to his scholarship in his mind—by explaining the difference between Judaism and Christianity; this from the man who said he had never dated a Jewish woman before, and, I assume, doesn’t know any other Jews. But hey, he was on a roll.

--- 

A few months ago I had another date that ended with a thought bomb. At least with that guy I didn’t build up the illusion that this was going well in five dates before the big reveal. No. Date One needed no follow-up.

This gentleman, in response to my saying something about having lived in Israel, stated that he has no interest in visiting there. Okay. That’s fine, don’t go. But there was no stopping the honesty of his thoughts. He then said, “They need to repent.”

Not thinking that I was hearing him correctly, I asked, “You mean the world?” I’m channeling the Holocaust; he was going further back.

“For killing God.”

Whoa. That was quite the statement. I tried to explain some history to him, but he was having none of it. He doubled down and said, “You believe what you believe and I believe what I believe.”

Shockingly, he was surprised that I didn’t want to go out dancing with him after that.

--- 

Both of these men made me realize that I have been living under the illusion that I should have blinders on regarding the type of men I can date: I thought that if I was open and accepting, my great big net would enable me to find the right guy. Now I know that I have left myself open to bigots of assorted backgrounds. I’m still trying to figure out why one South American guy assumed that I had converted to Judaism. Does he assume all people start out Catholic?

So I’ve backed off my “all created equal” policy in connection to dating, which means that I now stereotype (with a bit of shame but no regrets, I think). More accurately, I have narrowed my possibilities down to those men who are the boy version of me.

Can I return the anticipatory red-lace undies to Victoria’s Secret?

This is cross posted at Daily Kos: This Week in the War on Women.

SCOTUS, Hobby Lobby, and the Push for “Not My Boss’s Business” Act

Senators Mark Udall and Patty Murray's bill, “The Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act,” clarifies that the law the Supreme Court based their decision on — The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) — cannot be used to allow for-profit corporations to limit any legal health care service.”

“The men and women who went to work for Hobby Lobby signed up to work at a craft store, not a religious organization,” Udall said.”

http://www.coloradoindependent.com/148213/udall-talks-not-my-bosss-business-act

Senators Speak Out: Now Let’s Hope There’s Action

“It is a horrible decision,” Reid said, adding that he was “disappointed” in Chief Justice John Roberts and felt the justice had “misdirected” senators during his confirmation hearings about whether he supported constitutional privacy rights.”

“As the author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I can say with absolute certainty the Supreme Court got the Hobby Lobby case dead wrong,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). The point of the law was to protect the religious freedoms of individuals from government interference, Schumer said, and people who are born into or convert to a religion are nothing like for-profit corporations that form voluntarily and benefit from the marketplace under U.S. laws.”

“Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called Hobby Lobby a “direct violation” of the right to privacy granted by the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which struck down laws prohibiting the sale of birth control.”

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/07/10/reid-hobby-lobby-bill-taken-next-week/

All You Wish You Didn’t Need to Know about the Hobby Lobby Case

Think about It: “Until Hobby Lobby, religious liberty was a shield, not a sword. It protected minority religious practices from majority tyranny. Hobby Lobby, however, has opened the door to companies opting out of all kinds of laws: anti-discrimination laws, the Affordable Care Act, you name it.”

http://lilith.org/blog/2014/07/your-guide-to-the-hobby-lobby-case-and-its-crushing-consequences/

A HL Quote Roundup

Including: "Since the Supreme Court decided it will not protect women's access to health care, I will." -- Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on the elegantly referred to “Not My Boss’s Business” Act

http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?abbr=daily2_&page=NewsArticle&id=45005

They’re Not Done: Next Term the Boys of SCOTUS Will Decide how Pregnant Women Work

“The Court will consider the case of Peggy Young, a part-time delivery driver for UPS whose discrimination claim puts a spotlight on the vulnerabilities many workers face if they become pregnant.”

“Three-quarters of women entering the labor force will be pregnant on the job at some point in their lives, and issues of workplace accommodations for pregnant workers increasingly affect low-wage women workers. So this is a big case, and one that no matter the ruling will have a wide reach. It’s also a case that wades into issues of gender stereotyping, gender-neutral leave policies, and cultural assumptions about mothers’ and fathers’ “differential attachments to the labor force” including the way a cultural reverence for pregnancy and new mothers contributes to instances of pregnancy discrimination. These are murky waters for the conservatives on the Roberts Court.”

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/07/07/roberts-court-takes-issue-accommodating-pregnant-workers/

ENDA (Employment Protection Bill) Suffers from Right’s Rights to more Rights

“A number of high profile LGBT rights groups have announced they cannot support the current version of the employment protection bill known as ENDA. Why are they doing this, and where do we go from here?”

“The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force was among the first groups to announce it was formally dropping its support for the bill. ENDA (the Employment Non Discrimination Act) was originally was designed to end anti-LGBT discrimination in the workplace. ENDA legislation passed the US Senate in November last year but it came with a major compromise. Chiefly, the language appears to allow broad religious exemptions that would mean businesses who claim to have sincerely held religious beliefs could still discriminate against LGBT employees and make hiring, firing and promotion decisions solely on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“Many groups had already raised serious concerns about this aspect of the legislation, and then came the Supreme Court “Hobby Lobby” decision. While that case dealt narrowly with an exemption based upon religious beliefs, the Religious Right has seized upon it as a window of opportunity for carving out exemptions from LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination laws and ordinances. The Task Force seems to think the ENDA loophole, teamed with this appetite to undermine civil rights laws, creates a similarly dangerous precedent.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/lgbt-groups-are-turning-their-backs-on-enda-but-why.html#ixzz37GO1M3k0

Can Bubble Zones Protect a Woman’s Right to Healthcare?

“In many states and municipalities court challenges are being initiated against the zones, but in others the cities themselves have made the decision just to fend off potential lawsuits. That isn’t working, however, and the mass of litigation, even where it is unnecessary, and the threats of even more lawsuits in the face of new proposals makes it clear that with one victory behind them, anti-abortion activists intend to use their clout as a group to ensure no new protections are put in place.”

“The reason for both of these facts are the same. Religious Right legal teams that step forward to offer to represent the states that pass unconstitutional bills also represent the anti-abortion activists that challenge what few protections patients do receive when they try to access a clinic. By virtue of their endless legal battles, they essentially frighten challengers out of litigation with the threat of crippling legal costs.”

“In other words, the end of abortion access may just come about not via overturning Roe v. Wade, but at the hands of hundreds of expensive lawsuits.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/how-abortion-opponents-plan-to-stop-new-buffer-zones.html#ixzz37G4pW0yZ

“Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, protesters stepping into the buffer zones may already be scaring patients away from their appointments. Since the ruling, one Planned Parenthood clinic in Massachusetts told the Los Angeles Times that the clinic had "more no-shows for the week than usual."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/09/abortion-clinic-buffer-zo_n_5571516.html

Women as Built-in Healthcare Providers

“At the beginning of July, 26-year-old Mallory Loyola gave birth to a baby girl. Two days later, the state of Tennessee charged her with assault. Loyola is the first woman to be arrested under a new law in Tennessee that allows the state to criminally charge mothers for potentially causing harm to their fetuses by using drugs.”

“This view of pregnant women essentially means that as soon as you’re carrying a fertilized egg, you’ve lost your medical privacy and your right to make medical decisions,” Paltrow pointed out. “But all matters concerning pregnancy are health care matters. Pregnancy, like other health issues, should be addressed through the public health system and not through the criminal punishment system or the civil child welfare system.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/tennessee-arrests-first-mother-under-its-new-pregnancy-criminalization-law.html#ixzz37GHTUTpN

State’s Rights?

“A new law just took effect in Georgia that bans coverage of abortion in health plans purchased in the state health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These health insurance policies can now only cover abortion "in the case of medical emergency,"but not in cases of incest or rape.”

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=15075

Retro while Pretending to Be Hip

“Tech behemoth Apple has had a few run-ins with casual sexism over the past few years. After Siri was introduced, it soon became clear that the software had trouble finding abortion clinics, but was very capable of finding escort services. A writer at Jezebel noted that her iPhone will not autocorrect a misspelling of "vagina," no matter how clear it is that that’s the word she intended. Now it’s come to light that Apple will not engrave the words “clit” or “vagina” on their products. (But don’t worry, bros. “Dick” and “penis” are still A-OK.)”

“Apple’s policy against engraving “vagina” and “clit” but it’s apparent ease with words like “dick” and “penis” are an extension of this attitude. The lesson here is that men’s sexuality is normal and should be celebrated while women’s sexuality is abnormal and shameful. Apple’s engraving policy may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a symptom of one of the biggest battles we have to fight.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/apples-vagina-ban-is-a-bigger-deal-than-you-think.html#ixzz37Fp5a6uB

Rape: For Goodness’s Sake, Teach Your Sons to Just Say NO!

A Young Victim of Drugging and Rape Speaks Out

Enough already with the drugging of girls and raping them. What the heck is going on. Is it so hard to raise a boy to be respectful of women? I don’t know what is a starker example of the War on Women than the drugging, raping, and media-harassing of young women. What a pitiful group of people we have in our midst.

“In an incident that shares several elements with the infamous Steubenville rape case that made national headlines last year, a 16-year-old girl from Texas says that photos of her unconscious body went viral online after she was drugged and raped at a party with her fellow high schoolers. But the victim isn’t backing down. She’s speaking out about what happened to her, telling her story to local press and asking to be identified as Jada.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/10/3458564/rape-viral-social-media-jada/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/online-trolls-target-alleged-rape-victim-jada-by-copying-how-she-appeared-in-video-of-attack-9601525.html

Schools and Colleges: Let’s Make them Safe Places

I don’t have many memories of high school (I’ve blocked out the isolation and boredom), but I do remember a history teacher saying, during class, that he would like to have sex with me, on a pretty regular basis. I didn’t say anything to anyone at school or to my parents. Who expected anyone to do anything back in the day? But that day really needs to come to an end.  

“The American Association of University Women had already documented the problem of harassment for teens. Fifty six percent of middle- and high-school female teens were sexual harassed during the previous year, found a 2011 report by the Washington-based group. In an earlier study it found that 83 percent of female teens faced harassment throughout their teen years at school and only 9 percent of young women reported harassment to school faculty.”

“More than half of students surveyed in the American Association of University Women's 2011 report want a system put in place where they can report sexual harassment incidents anonymously, the study also found.”

“Most students are afraid to report sexual harassment because they fear that they will experience further bullying, said Narcisse in a phone interview. "Most people think their life is going to be in danger. People that get harassed by kids in school think that if they say something they're going to get bullied or beat up."

http://womensenews.org/story/education/140708/teens-say-school-sex-harassment-goes-unpunished#.U8EzgpRdWSo

Harvard Stands Up for Women, Sort of

“Harvard should be praised for its new sexual assault policy. Released last week, the policy stands as the death knell of the Campus SaVE Act, a federal law enacted last year that weakens Title IX, the 1970s law that guarantees women safe and equal access to education.”

“Harvard will apply a "preponderance of the evidence" standard when determining whether an incident occurred. In the past, students reporting sexual assault faced a much more demanding standard of "clear and convincing evidence," which devalued women's worth on campus by declaring a credible victim's word inherently insufficient to merit sanctions against an offender. Under the new rule, the word of a woman will properly be accorded the same value as that of any student reporting or defending against any type of civil rights violence or harassment on campus.”

“Harvard will also define violence against women in accordance with civil rights laws that use terms such as "unwelcome" and "offensive."

The question now is, which school will do Harvard one-step better? Which school will be bold enough to assume bragging rights as the first school in the nation to embrace an iron-clad prohibition on violence against women with explicit directives guaranteeing fully equitable substantive AND procedural redress of gender-based civil-rights violations – at the exact same table of justice with victims of civil rights violations based on race and national origin? It's a once in a lifetime opportunity for a lower-tiered school to truthfully declare itself a "better" school than Harvard. Let the bragging-rights war begin!

http://womensenews.org/story/law/140708/sexual-assault-harvard-takes-big-step-forward#.U8Ezh5RdWSo

The Cycle of Invisibility Continues

“The nominees for the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards were announced on Thursday and women were 26 percent of the nominees. Out of a total 1406 nominated across 72 non-performance categories, women were nominated 369 times, while men were nominated 1037 times.”

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/blog/entry/women-make-up-only-26-of-nominees-for-66th-primetime-emmy-awards

But, Laverne Cox was the first openly-transgender actress to be nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black.

http://samuel-warde.com/2014/07/laverne-cox-first-openly-transgender-actress-nominated-emmy/

Pushing Back: Saying No to Our Bosses

Planned Parenthood Action

I dissent. Religious freedom means that every person should be allowed to follow her own conscience, whether she owns a company or works for an hourly wage. Women earn health care coverage the same way they earn a paycheck -- and they shouldn't have it taken away because of the personal views of their employers.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/

Mom’s Rising: Tell Congress to Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference! 

http://action.momsrising.org/sign/HobbyLobbyFix/?akid=5604.2023200.y6dLpV&rd=1&t=4

And, most critically: VOTE IN NOVEMBER! Let’s bring government to the people and not keep handing it to the corporations. 

Beautiful Branches

There’s one thread of thought for the over 40 set that says I should be liberated from even noticing that my upper arms have gotten thicker and looser; and there’s another thread that says I should be empowered to make life changes, which should include committing to perfecting my body—challenging the way time colludes with gravity. Unfortunately, I have found a dangling thread that I can’t pull out even if I twist it repeatedly around my finger. This thread brings with it clarity: I can clearly see my arms for what they are, and I can clearly see that I’m not going to do anything about it because I value my time contemplating my arms more than I do the time it would take to do something about my arms.

While I have progressed through my life with its unique combination of life markers, one aspect of self that has remained steadfast is my disaffection with my body paired with a disinclination to do anything about it. It seems that I live a feminist contradiction: to care about my body and not to care my body; to care about my image and not to care about my image. Am I honest? Or is it disappointment? Does my not acting on my self-critique mean that I am strong or that I am weak? Do I rise above societal expectations for how I should look, or am I mired in them, sinking with a silent rebellion that is more inertia than anything else?

It’s hard for a woman to live clearly in a world that filters through our protective gauze of ego. But isn’t that our responsibility: to distinguish between here and there, me and the universal you. Is this where our women’s intuition comes in, to push against the narrative that pummels us and, instead, seek truth, the truth of what it feels like to be with and within my skin. A challenge. A challenge to unfurl the layer that has not protected me, but has inhibited me.

Does anyone care if I wear a tank top, exposing my grandma arms (mimicking solid and pendulous Grandma E. straight from Russia) to the sweet, sweaty sun of summer or the stale, stuffy air of my classroom? It is time to live beyond the contradictions and become one person, committed to filtering into her own reality. So thank you for a lifetime of grooming and clothing suggestions, I’ll take it from here. 

In the normal way of things (meaning if I were still married), my daughters wouldn’t know me nearly as well as they know me in my single state.

In a text exchange the other day with my younger daughter, I told her that I changed the notification sound for her texts to a bird chirping.

“You gotta know when I’m texting you so you can avoid it ASAP,” she texted.

To which I replied, jokingly, “You know me so well.”

“I like to think so,” she responded.

Her comment made me think about how much she and her sister do know me and how much that’s because I am a single mother, not because I am their mother/friend. If I had still been married to their father, he would have been my sounding board (of course, his inability to be my sounding board is one reason we’re no longer married), which would have enabled me to expose far fewer vulnerabilities. My daughters would not have seen me falter and then push against their father. If I had remained deflated by his controlling ways and words, they probably would have kept their distance from me because why should they seek support from someone who can’t stand up for herself?

They would not have seen me fall in and then out of love with another man. I would have remained an example of someone settled into the sway of long-married life. They would not have seen me wonder if my new relationship had veered into settling territory, or if it was loving but not in a way that was nurturing for me. I lost my ability to be an icon to look up to and, perhaps, emulate; instead, I have become an example (a warning?) of how love and the desire for it can play havoc with us at any age and stage.

Even the financial realities of being a teacher (purpose over paycheck) would have been shielded from them by the power of two salaries and a closed door for parents-only to deal with money matters. My determination to prevent their monetary ignorance, as I had been, might not have been there if I had been cushioned by their father’s, at one time, substantial salary. Then, again, I wouldn’t have had the same struggles, but at least they see what it means to make it on their own—in or out of a relationship. My older daughter is in a relationship with a financially secure man, but she understands the need to be independent even within dependence.

Surely the time that might have been spent propping up and soothing their father’s ego (or another man’s) went to them. And the time that might have been spent cuddling, goes to them. But it’s not only time that I gave and give to them, it’s about having been unable to hide the realities of my life and my personality from within the huddle of a relationship, and so I gave them bare me. It’s also about decisions and opinions that didn’t need to be tempered by being the fruit of consensus, so, again, they got bare me. Amid whatever anxieties I have about being alone night after night, it bolsters me knowing that in this scenario I have not remained hidden from them.

And they know that this is their mother. The good, the bad, the grumpy, and the devoted.

And I have secured an honesty from them that would not have been forthcoming in a world guided by “Don’t tell, Dad.”

Life, it seems, is a continual coming to terms with the past so that the present is a breathing space that remains unclogged by regrets and guilt and tears.

Their respecting me for who I am, who we each has become, is the gift that makes breathing easy. 

Look! No snow.

Last night, on the first second date I’ve had in a long time, I experienced time travel. How my 13-year-old self entered my body the moment his tongue sought its way into my mouth is a wonder. But there I was, mother of two, uncertain how to react. It was odd to have someone searching his way into my mouth, making me understand that French kissing is a skill that one does forget. As I broke off kiss one and just as we were going into kiss two, it occurred to me that I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to. And so I stopped kiss two before it really began (right as that tongue came back in and I realized that I need to send mine out on a return foraging trip), said an awkward good night with an awkward hug, and got into my car.

All of which made me realize that the fumbler I had been in my younger years was not because I needed experience to kiss and make love like a mature woman, rather I needed passion beyond the lust, and that still holds true. It was a relief to realize that before I had the chance to ridicule myself for ineptitude, rather than listening to my tongue’s blunt signal.

When people ask the hypothetical: If you could, would you live your life all over again? I generally respond with a resounding Yes. Who wouldn’t want a chance for a great big REDO? (Except for my daughters, of course!) But now I wonder. That kiss made me comprehend, in a way that I hadn’t before, that I have neither the desire nor the energy to relive those endlessly demoralizing battles of self vs. norms vs. expectations vs. boys ever again.

I can remember a sixth-grade kiss in the playground in front of the apartment building where I grew up that pummeled me with doubt. Why did he kiss me? What else would he expect from me? What should I do? Was this okay? Did I want this? And, embarrassingly, what was his name? This set into motion a steady stream of uncertainties that ran in the back of my head far too often in the years to come. (Sadly, that was not the last time I entertained the name question.) The fact that those questions didn’t run in the back of my head when I met my ex-husband has made me even warier. What’s a woman to do who eventually thought that her intuition was trustworthy only to be confronted with its extreme fallibility?

With gratitude, in the minutes after I drove away from my potential paramour, I channeled back my 53-year-old self, the woman who has lived through her life and recognizes that the voice in her head is not the voice of frustrated hopes nor is it the whispered desires of men, but her own voice: a voice that knows that the only question to entertain is Do I want this—with this man? Because in those brief moments, I knew that I wanted it, as in romance and passion, but I wanted to feel my way into it, not think about it.

When I told a recently-divorced friend who is not dating that there would be no date three, she responded, “But you are trying and that is good.” I’m not sure if I agree with that; if anything, I have come to see that the more I date, the more skeptical I become. It’s so much harder to open up to someone once you don’t need anything and it is only a question of desires. Because once it’s about a desire, it’s also about being satisfied without.

And so I will go to bed alone, unable to even imagine what it would look or feel like to have someone beside me, but at least I’m not trampled by the implications of that knowledge, because there aren’t any.

Or maybe the implication is that I live in a state of contentment and possibility; kind of like opening the door on Passover for Elijah the Prophet to come in and have a sip of wine at your Seder. If he doesn’t come, you knew it wasn’t real any way; but just in case, there’s always next year.

Almost buried by the snow

It’s another snowy Monday up here in the tundras of Virginia, so school is closed and the roads are slick, which means that I’m home. After a weekend of already having been home alone, I have reached my procrastination threshold. I did just hang (crooked) the picture that fell off the wall on Friday morning, and I graded enough papers on Saturday and Sunday to have put a significant dent in the pile, but I can’t bear to finish because I need a break from reading the work of 14-year-olds as I have reached my frustration limit with their willful ignorance of the comma, their adorably literal take on poetry, and their breezy familiarity with the Holocaust after doing a few hours of research. So it is time to finally sit down and think, or space out, or, as is too often the case, consider what I will eat and when.

In a sad display of where my mind travels, I already know that today I will have frozen pizza (probably the whole thing between lunch and dinner), finish the apple crumble that I made on Thursday for my book club (four women said they were coming when I planned the menu, but only one showed up), probably snack on trail mix, and maybe finish the chips and salsa (also purchased for the book club no-shows; otherwise, I would have stocked up on potato chips when the snow forecast came in). It’s probably not horrible that I think too much about what I will eat, but what bothers me is that I feel bad about it. I feel bad about eating, that somehow just the fact of planning what I will eat indicates that I am a weak person. Of course, I have to lose weight, but as I tell myself, I still shop in the regular women’s department and not in the Women’s department with all of its euphemisms for Xs, so it’s not too bad.

Why should I think that I’m not deserving of food? I am not a 15-year-old girl with an eating disorder, I am a healthy 52-year-old woman with a modicum of self-confidence in both my self and my looks; and since I wouldn’t consider wearing yoga pants in public, what’s with this perpetual disdain? Perhaps it’s because I think that I should be doing something important with every moment of my day. (I should be improving the world. I should be learning a foreign language. I should be making more money. I should be training for a marathon. I should be doing anything, everything, other than just living a life, my life). What makes a person value herself enough not to pry into her confidence?

But perhaps it’s not so dramatic a cause; perhaps it comes down to a way of breaking up the aloneness and the sameness of an ordinary life. “What will I have for lunch” is a way of breaking out of the daily struggle to come up with ways to enliven teenagers so that they do care about semi-colons and do wonder about the figurative meaning of a bagel rolling down a street. Perhaps this is my antidote to burrowing in and resigning myself to ordinary being dull as opposed to interesting. Every meal (except breakfast, don’t toy with my bagel and butter) can reveal something else about the world and can be a moment of enjoyment that the tedium does not offer. It is wrong to relegate food to the calories wasted as opposed to the flavors captured.

Still. I wonder what I can say to truly convince myself that I am not shallowly wasting thinking time.

Can I admit that I don’t generally have fun? Reading political articles and books about the Holocaust, while I choose them, don’t bring on a joyful laugh, rather they enforce the perception of the tragedy inherent in our humanity. The interlude of feasting, then, even if it is opposite the computer screen watching a documentary, gives me a moment to appreciate my life, life. It is a way to keep me balanced, just as long as I keep off the scale. It is a way, then, to be human in an experiential way and not a thoughtful way. It is being, so why begrudge myself? Maybe if I lightened up on myself, I would lighten up, too, on this nagging perception that I must be worthy every moment of every day, and lift this burden of purpose from me, and admit that I have value, regardless of what I do, and deserve to be alive—to be happy just because. 

March snow

Sometimes I feel like one of those spinster poetesses who farmed the terrarium of her solitary life for meaning. This connection has come to me now that I live alone, with no responsibilities beyond my job, and no entanglements beyond the occasional phone call or text to my daughters and the daily phone call to my mother. The part of me that still believes that there should be action and gloss to life for it to be worthwhile rejects this abstentious life, but within my soleness I perceive that this quiet life is as true as a cloudless day.

Or, perhaps I have finally come to understand that it is true for me.

Or, perhaps I have the life that fits my purpose, which is, in essence, to be as those spinster poetesses: examining the basics of life.

Which is how I have finally come to appreciate the still activities of home.

If I cannot appreciate the outlines of my life, then what have the preceding 52 years been about? How long can a person rage against the system and the self? (Generally) dropping the tension of world-wide betrayal has, not surprisingly, enabled me to shift my focus from what I should be thinking about if I were a serious writer and person to the stunningly adequate thoughts that flit in and out. How have I let myself stand critiqued so harshly by myself? To what end? Is there anything more than a good life? Can there be a better life? Judged by whom?

There is this life. As wild or sedate as it may have been, it has been the right life because no alternatives exist in the way that day has followed day, and decision has followed decision, and the twisting and bending to the winds has always been a factor.

Truth, or the reality of one’s life, does not need embellishments, it only needs acceptance.

Spring is coming.

There is a distinctly world-bite-woman sense that has enveloped me now that my time to hot flash has come just as my home has emptied of my daughters. Am I to be my own hearth now that no one else needs my heat?

My first hot flash came this past Tuesday; all of a sudden a hotness welled up in me, warming me, then heating me like an overworked furnace, and then it was gone. It felt orgasmic in the way that it rolled into me, captivating me with its intense sense of my physical self. This intense focus on sensation was sensual, except for my frantic struggle to rip off my sweater in the middle of talking about the Holocaust to 25 14-year-olds.

But it is not only heat that gathers me into myself: I’m also having cold flashes. Granted, it is a winter’s winter, but it is more than that. The same rolling into me, the same forcing me to notice myself as with the hot flash, but this is cold, so cold that I shiver within and the thickness of sweater has no impact.

This is the season of my seasons. What’s the message? Now that I am too old to begin a life, am I to be a world unto myself? Or am I to notice that I have already become that world? These flashes are more like news flashes than obituaries to my reproductive self, telling me to release expectations and their disappointments, and pushing me from the botany of feverish spring to autumn’s solemn harvest. As my daughters fill with spring’s hopes and fears, I try to shed mine, helped by these flashes that flush out what has lost its usefulness. What should remain? All that I can be, without all that I wished I could be. A recollection of what was and shiver for what still may be, me.

Gray crane and Canadian geese.

In the past week I went to three events that were equally about getting me out of the house and possibly meeting a man of interest. As things go with me, at each event I met a wonderful person, albeit, a woman. It was the same at the event for non-fiction writers, as at the hike across the Potomac River, as at Saturday night bowling. As location location location applies for homes, timing timing timing seems to apply to friendships.

The writers’ event was a dinner with a guest speaker, at one very long table, so your possible chat mates were the people who arrived right before or after you. Both of the nearby men were married and they seemed to be there solely to learn about the writers’ retreat that was being discussed. I hate to admit this, but I didn’t feel like expending talk energy with people who didn’t see me; besides, as soon as the speaker finished answering questions, I started talking to the woman on my left and she was too interesting to abandon for any attempt at equal-opportunity chatting. It wasn’t just that she said she is a psychic and sees the dead, but we clicked in such a way as to enable casual conversation hopping from talking about writing to work to children to places we’ve lived and back around again. There is nothing quite like a free flow of ideas whose essence is pure flow. It reminds you that there are interesting people in the world and that you have a few “interesting” cards up your own sleeves.

The Saturday hike was glorious. It was an April day in February, a break from the polar vortex. The 75 of us who had signed up for the event through a Meet-up were meeting at a point under the Wilson Bridge in Alexandria, Virginia. As usual, I got there early. Three other early-arriving women began talking once we identified that we were part of the group and together we walked to the meeting spot. As more and more people came, women and men, we stayed in our group, joined by a few more single women. It felt comforting to be formed into a group within the group, to no longer be alone, wistfully wishing not to be alone, noticing so profoundly all of the people who arrived in couples, even if they were the minority.

As we began our walk, we paired off, and Nan became my hike partner. How did it work out that the woman I walked with had an ex-husband who was eerily reminiscent of mine, and how is it that she filed for divorced around the same time I did, and how is it that she was here for the same reasons as I was (this one I think I can figure out)? We walked seven miles, over to Maryland and back, with a stop for coffee, tea, and bathroom, with nary a break in the conversation.

That same night I went bowling. When I left the bowling alley to wait in my car because, once again, I was too early, another woman came out of her car and said that she, too, was early for bowling. So together we went back in and talked, and joined up with other people as they came in. For the rest of the night it was as if we were old friends, encouraging each other, as we hit strikes or the gutter.

As much as we are alone in the world, we are not. Who needs six degrees of separation when the person who just happens to come stand next to you, if given the chance, could become a close friend.

Which makes me wonder why it’s so easy to make friends with women, and so hard to find a man with whom I want to sit around a table sipping coffee for more than an hour?

When I meet a woman I have no walls to guard and I am as me as a person is in public. More importantly, I take her for who she is and how she presents herself. I am not critiquing her for transgressions of my own rules. I am not scrutinizing her to catch moral lapses. I am not evaluating her, wondering about her job stability or any stability for that matter, and I am certainly not considering if I could be with this person for longer than the moments of this moment. It is a friendship based on this experience and the honesty that temporary relationships enable.

I used to think that this ease of conversation was because women are better at conversation and making friends, but I think that the error is mine. These are not apples and oranges. How can you compare an interaction with a person for whom you have no expectations to an interaction with a person for whom you have partner-for-life expectations? Imagine getting dressed the same way to meet a man as to meet a female friend. But I wonder if that isn’t what I need to do: stop trying to meet my future and try to engage my present. Perhaps I am the one who is failing in my own expectations, focusing so much on that alternative commentary in my head that I don’t give men a chance.

On Thursday I have a coffee date. I am going to challenge myself not to challenge him, but to meet him as I would a friend. Try to give us each a chance to be, in a sense, girlfriends before bedfellows.

Clothes, I’m thinking that I won’t abandon going for cleavage just yet. 

This is cross-posted at DailyKos.

A WAY WITH WORDS (AND THOUGHTS)

They WON! Rand Paul Version

One of the first things that an English teacher tries to get her students to do when analyzing literature is to have her students understand that characters are not versions of themselves nor are they people to be judged against their/their parent’s moral base so that they can expand their understanding of the world. But, I guess, ophthalmologists don’t need to see into the heart the way, say, a cardiologist would. Thanks to Atticus, in To Kill a Mockingbird, for stating it so eloquently; “‘First of all,’ he said, ‘if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’”

And now Rand Paul on The War on Women: “This whole sort of war on women thing, I’m scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won,” the Tea Party Republican told Meet the Press, according to Think Progress. “You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. Law school, 60% are women. In med school, 55%. My younger sister is an OB-GYN with six kids and doing great. I don’t see so much that women are downtrodden. I see women rising up and doing great things. In fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women are outcompeting the men in our world [...] The women in my family are doing great. That’s what I see in all the statistics coming out. I have, you know, young women in my office that are the leading intellectual lights of our office. So I don’t really see this, that there’s some sort of war on women that’s, you know, keeping women down.”

So there it is, a man who is supposed to represent the men and women of Kentucky, and the men and women of the United States is so insightful (or was that insular?) that he can base all his understanding on those supposedly downtrodden by looking at the wonderfully accomplished women in his family who, surely, had a hell of a time making ends meet and dealing with the snowball of racism. Yup. Rand knows.

But he has more insights, this man who sees so very deeply, in the same interview he “suggested that President Bill Clinton was responsible for the “war on women” because he had an affair with an intern while he was in office during the 1990s.” Thankfully, I can’t really understand this for anything other than grabbing for words that can fill airtime and approximate thought, and to do a “I’m rubber, you’re glue, everything I say sticks to you” kind of deflection. You would think that a man who seems concerned about men violating women would surely have voted for the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) of 2013. Alas, he didn’t.

LIBIDO! LIBIDO! LIBIDO! Send them back to the kitchen. Huckabee Mumbles

I don’t think that we should forget Mr. Huckabee’s quote too quickly because he has now become the momentary Republican frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nominee and he has, apparently, made lots of money by being insulting, paternalistic, and downright thoughtfree—and proud of it. One more time:

"If the Democrats want to insult women by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it," he said. "Let us take this discussion all across America because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be."

Apparently the ladies in red think that this makes sense.

“Wednesday's poll indicated that Republican women weren't bothered by what he said either. With 16 percent support, Huckabee was the top choice among female GOP voters.”

I’m trying to think about when my libido controlled my reproductive system, but I can’t. Oh, I don’t have sex. But wait, even when I did, did having a contraceptive control it? I don’t get it. Maybe I should consult Todd Akins’ Guide to Lady Parts. I really wish these women would reach into the intuition that we ladies are supposed to have and vote with it, and not the act-then-ask response that gentlemen are known for.

It is upsetting to learn that he is making money from being an old-school chauvinist who doesn’t even pretend that we are living in the 21^st century. I guess us ladies really have won the War on Women and are retreating to the bedroom and kitchen, just like we should.

WANTING TO BABYMAKE AND NOT WANTING TO

Surrogacy is Demeaning?

And here I thought that the ability and desire to bring a baby into the world was supposed to be a beautiful thing. Turns out if your parts don’t work right, you should be punished some more, nevermind scientific advances.

This craziness didn’t pass, but the thing about these crazy ideas, they tend to be tried repeatedly until they manage to slip it in. And now, for the latest creativity in monitoring lady parts, oh so publicly, from the forward-thinking state of Kansas: “On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, state senator Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook introduced a bill that would ban surrogacy in the state and had two women get sonograms in front of her fellow legislators.”

The quote of the moment: “Surrogacy undermines the dignity of women, children and human reproduction,” said Jennifer Lahl, a pediatric nurse who is now president of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture. “Consider deeply what is at stake for the dignity of women and what is in truly the best interest of the children.”

I’m sorry. I just don’t get what world these people live in. Is this somehow tied to their perception that only good women get pregnant naturally and that no good could possibly come from a child not raised by biological parents. These throwbacks should not be able to so hypocritally call their institutions names such as “Bioethics and Culture” when they don’t understand ethics and they ain’t got no culture.  

Read more.

Drip Drip Drip Theory of Attempting to Pass Anti-Abortion Laws Pours Forth

Updates from Louisiana, Indiana, Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, South Dakota, North Carolina, and the politics of how anti-abortion you need to be to win office in Wisconsin and Georgia. Just consider this a list of states women of childbearing age might not want to live in. And beating back the drumbeat, Colorado has again defeated a personhood bill that would outlaw all abortions. As my daughter (who is in college in Colorado) said to me a few years ago in her lovely naiveté, “If they don’t want an abortion, they shouldn’t get one.” Ah, if sense and being in someone else’s shoes had a chance to make inroads into these people’s “moral” compass.   

Read more. 

And the Big Boys: HR7 ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion’ Bill Passed

Setting priorities (this was voted on Tuesday): “With action yet to be taken on the long-delayed passage of an agriculture bill or the restoration of emergency unemployment insurance benefits to the 1.3 million out-of-work Americans who lost that lifeline in December, the Republican majority on the House Committee on Rules set the stage on Monday for a Tuesday floor vote on HR 7, a sweeping anti-choice bill packaged—deceptively, say opponents—as a piece of taxpayer-protection legislation.”

In her testimony on Monday, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, asserted that HR 7 is “an obvious step toward banning private health insurance coverage of key women’s health benefits.”

“But, said DeGette and other members of Congress—all Democrats—who testified against the bill, HR 7 goes much further than the Hyde Amendment, by prohibiting anyone who qualifies for a tax credit for purchase of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act from purchasing a plan that covers abortion without forfeiting the subsidy.”

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) “More than six times in this committee I’ve related that when I was in college, three women had botched abortions, and one with a coat hanger. And those deaths of those three college students that I went to school with sear in my memory every time we bring this subject up.” Who’s protecting the sanctity of life?

Read more. 

REALLY? A Picture to Prove that there Is a War on Women

Picture in words: Four White Men in Suits

“Even Fox News host Bret Baier had to admit that choosing four guys to discuss the "war on women" was "not the best booking of this panel."

If you can’t even think of inviting a woman to talk about women, we definitely have a problem. It’s beyond policies that discriminate against women, and it’s beyond the confusing workings of our lady parts and libido, this is about women being discounted and a nasty push to put us back in the kitchen and bedroom. Admittedly, some of us like those two places, but we also think that being in the boardroom and briefing room could add flair to dishes that are served.

Read more. 

So What’s on the President’s Mind: Excerpt from SOTU Address about Women

“You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment.

“Women deserve equal pay for equal work.

“You know, she deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job. A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship. And you know what, a father does too. It is time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a "Mad Men" episode. This year let's all come together, Congress, the White House, businesses from Wall Street to Main Street, to give every woman the opportunity she deserves, because I believe when women succeed, America succeeds.

“Now, women hold a majority of lower-wage jobs, but they're not the only ones stifled by stagnant wages. Americans understand that some people will earn more money than others, and we don't resent those who, by virtue of their efforts, achieve incredible success. That's what America's all about. But Americans overwhelmingly agree that no one who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty.”

I want to hear about opportunities for more women to be visible in their bright suits in the statehouses across the country, and universities, and corporations, and with produced screenplays, and scripts, and directing movies and plays, and with published books, and in interviewers and interviewees seats. I want all the girls in this country to have the opportunities that the president’s daughters will have.

WE MADE IT: GOOD NEWS

Time to Move Back to New York City?

“Now, gender equity in the workplace is one step closer in New York City, as a law has gone into effect that prevents companies from refusing to make accommodations for pregnant workers or workers who have recently given birth. Unless an employer can prove an “undue hardship” by making physical allowances for pregnant or recently pregnant employees, any refusal to make accommodations can leave that employer open to charges of discrimination, just as they would be for discriminating against any employee with a short term or permanent disability.”

“New York City joins the New Jersey, where Republican Governor Chris Christie has signed a similar bill into law, and Maryland, where the act went into effect in October. A federal version hasn’t been passed due to opposition from Republican members of the House, but 90 percent of voters polled have said they would be in favor of a such a bill.”

Read more. 

About Time Initiative: Trying to Protect College Women

My daughter said that her friends in colleges in Virginia, especially the esteemed University of Virginia, felt oppressed by the overwhelming feeling of the potential of sexual violence on their campuses within their first weeks of school.

“Obama planned to sign a presidential memorandum Wednesday creating a task force to protect students from sexual assault, with a new White House report declaring that no one in America is more at risk of being raped or assaulted than college women. The report, "Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action," says that 1 in 5 women have been sexually assaulted at college but that only 12 percent of student victims report the assault.”

It’s the drinking and it’s freedom from parental constraints. But isn’t it ultimately about “boys will be boys”? Let’s hope this initiative will prevent some young women from being haunted throughout their lives from the memory of a college rape.  

Read more. 

A Very Sad Moment of Sanity

“A Texas hospital removed a pregnant brain-dead woman from life support on Sunday in line with a court order obtained by her husband who argued the fetus she was carrying was withering inside her lifeless body, the family's lawyers said.”

I hope that the sanity continues to the hospital bill: stick it to the hospital and stick it to the legislature that passed this horrific law.

May Marlise Munoz rest in peace, and may her family recover from this horrific violation of the sanctity of life and family.

Read more. 

The other day I had my first date in a very long time. The date proved that Einstein knows his stuff and that time, indeed, is relative: an hour is not the same in every Starbucks. It also proved that wood is not all that pliable; otherwise, I would have fallen back and out of my booth because I was pushing so hard against the back of the wooden booth, trying to get as far away as possible from the utterly kind, intelligent gentleman who tested my ability to force interest and a smile while knowing that everything he talked about could be of interest to me. So, basically, he proved to me that as much as I might want to like someone, give someone a chance, there’s no fiddling with the chemistry dials. He also enabled my older daughter to consider me shallow because that is what she called me when I used his pilling blue turtleneck as my iconic image of the date. She let it slide when she conceded that perhaps a hardcore academic is not the man for her mother.

A few weeks ago I battled my couch’s magnetic field and went out contra dancing, which is a kind of Irish square dancing that makes you very very very dizzy. This was after a friend said that she was going ballroom dancing in New York, and I just could not take another night home alone. The good thing about contra dancing is that you don’t stay with a dance partner: you have a partner and you have neighbors, and you just swing and swirl along, smiling as you go. And people ask you to dance, to dance, because that’s what we’re there for; although, some people saw me as a fatal woman.

The second man who asked me to dance was much older than I am, much shorter than I am, much rounder than I am, and more facially-haired than I am, but smile I did because that is what you do when you dance and I looked right at him because I was told to concentrate on a person’s nose or eyes so that I won’t get too dizzy. As I walked away after the dance, gasping for air and water, someone said to me in a hush that he is married. I was offended that I was judged for such non-discriminating taste, and, honestly, I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just a dance for singles. It was also the first time since I was implicated in someone’s divorce that I was perceived as a vixen. Just goes to show there is nothing carefree.

Another man asked me to dance twice and we sat out two dances chatting. In Virginia, having New York Jewish stuff in common is not all that common, so it was a very nice chat. I am a mature woman, which, in my case, is synonymous with being naïve. Yes, I had a nice conversation with a man; yes, I told him that he could contact me; but I did that because I thought we could be friends, I had no desire to sign my dance card over to him. Call me delusional. He emailed me the next day (my email was on the list of people who had signed up for the dance and he was the organizer) to say that he is dating someone and wants to see how it goes with her. Now, besides the fact that I prefer to say no and not be said no to, I was in no way attracted to this man and his assumption, which makes sense, I admit, bothers me. Can’t I make new friends? This might reflect more on him and his attraction to me than on me, but still, I was left feeling disregarded.

It might be that since I have excluded myself from the dating scene, I have forgotten what it feels like to be thought of as anything other than a friend, teacher, mother, daughter. My contacts with people have been restricted to roles that I do well in (don’t ask my daughters or my mother, for that matter) and in which I find comfort.  Comfort zone indeed.

So when I go contra dancing again tonight at different venue, am I to smile or not?

Next evening

I went, I danced one, two, three dances, and I got too too too dizzy to ever contra again. Now I know for sure that I could never have been an astronaut if being twirled around a dance floor is more than my equilibrium can take.

There was no drama, except my fear of spiraling down in a faint onto the prized dance floor. Oh, a man much younger than me, much cuter than me, and more facially haired than me, did ask me to dance, and I said yes, smiling the whole way (dizziness be dam*ed). It is an odd feeling, being smiled at while dancing, because it really does mean nothing, it is one of the moves. But he was so attractive and friendly that I let my mind play its “Oh, he likes me” soundtrack for the moments of the dance. And I did see, briefly, the allure of being a cougar. (It is not about the man, but about how glorious it feels to feel young again because for those moments together you can keep to your no-mirror-nearby illusion that you are still young and vibrant, and the world holds more possibilities than disappointments.)

My two evenings and one afternoon of possibilities came to naught. Well, not exactly nothing because I feel that I am truly okay if I dance (this is metaphorical now) and okay if I don’t. I could be in someone’s arms as we sway from side to side barely dipping, or I could turn off the lights when I am home alone and dance to my sense of abandon. Or I could do both, at different times or not.

Maybe I also understand the attraction of a cougar. It’s not about a mommy figure or how beautiful mature women are; no, it is about a woman who is in control of herself, even when she's in a tizzy (literal and figurative), and knows that that’s pretty darn impressive—alluring even. 

This is cross-posted at DailyKos.

This morning, while taking my dog for a leisurely half-hour walk, I listened to Weekend Edition on NPR. In that half hour, the only female voice I heard was the show’s host, Linda Wertheimer. Apparently there are no female writers, movie reviewers, or chefs who can talk about books to read over the holidays, new favorite movies to watch, or foods to eat on New Year’s Day to combat the impact of having imbibed too much the previous night. Which brings me to what I perceive as one of the worst things about the War on Women: the insidious nature of women being invisible. If we are not heard, we cannot be listened to, and things will not be changed.

I teach in a high school, and in the almost ten years I have been teaching, there have always been two male assistant principals and two female assistant principals, so why, have the three principals only been male? We can lean in so far that the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks straight, but it is not just on us to break those barriers. The ole boys’ club is not just about country club membership, it’s about being more comfortable with those like you and assumptions that die hard. (Why are tough women still considered Bs?)

The existence of the War on Women impacts all of us, and its end depends on all of us. One of the things that stands out to me in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is that he states that the oppressed are oppressed as well, and that “they [white people] have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.” This is about having a society that gives every one of us a chance, and not a society where we have to prove ourselves to the white men who hold all the keys.  

INVISIBLE WOMEN

Invisible in the Boardroom

For Women, It's Not a Glass Ceiling but a Plugged Pipeline

“The direct, in-your-face gender discrimination of the past has faded, but bias hasn't vanished. It's just gone underground and is growing. Under a veneer of "progress," what we call the new soft war on women is gaining momentum, based on stubborn stereotypes about what women can't do.”

“It's just that the stereotypes we all have in our heads about what men and women can or can't do are incredibly deep-rooted.”

Invisible in Stories about Poverty

As Ruth Rosen notes in her article, “The Republican War on Women”: “So why have women disappeared from a fierce national debate over who deserves food assistance? I’m not actually sure. Perhaps it is because so many adult women, like men, now work in the labour force and are viewed as individuals who should take care of themselves. Perhaps it is because Republicans find women’s appetite, as opposed to that of children, an embarrassment, hinting of sexual desire. Perhaps it is because this is part of the Republican war on women’s reproductive freedom: a single mother with children is somehow guilty of bringing on her own poverty.”

“Republicans may view single mothers as sinful parasites who don’t deserve food assistance. But behind every hungry child, teenager and elderly person is a hungry mother who is exhausted from trying to keep her family together. Women who receive food assistance are neither invisible nor undeserving. They are working-class heroes who work hard -often at several minimal wage jobs - to keep their families nourished and together.” 

Invisible in the Movies—and doing something about it

“The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is the only research-based organization working behind-the scenes in the entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female portrayals for children’s entertainment.”

Invisible in Government—and doing something about it

Emily’s List “envisions a world where women are equally represented at all levels of government, and achieve the highest leadership positions with our legislative and executive bodies; the influence of women office holders leads to the adoption of a host of progressive public policies to ensure that women have equal opportunities at home, in the workplace, and in the public sphere; our community of millions of engaged women and men ensure that the voice of women is heard and their power is celebrated.”

Shout Out to Wendy Davis running for Governor in Texas

PREGNANT LADY OBSESSION:

Wishing We Were Invisible, or Why do they only care about us when we’re pregnant?

Michigan ‘Rape Insurance’ Bill Punishes Women For Being Women

This boggles the mind.

“Last week, the Michigan legislature passed the “Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act” which bans private insurance companies from covering abortion services in the state and will force women to purchase additional insurance if they want abortion care to be covered by their health insurance. The bill contains no exception for cases of rape or incest, and you cannot purchase the rider once you are pregnant. It must be purchased prior to a possible pregnancy.”

“These attacks on abortion rights, whether they are TRAP laws that disguise themselves as protecting women’s safety or misleading fetal pain laws that use junk science to chip away at Roe v. Wade, are at their core about punishing women simply for being women. Laws like this reveal the deep contempt for women and reproductive freedom that underwrites the anti-abortion movement. It isn’t about protecting life; it’s about punishing women.”

Is Religion Really Your Guiding Principal If You Only Care About Pregnant Ladies?

“The lawsuit is similar to one filed in Oklahoma City last year by Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which calls itself a "biblically founded business." That lawsuit also challenges the mandate that employers provide coverage for the morning-after pill and similar drugs. In July, a federal judge granted a temporary exemption to the Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain, a ruling the government has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Fetus vs. Womb

In Texas a fetus has more rights than a woman, oh, I mean, wombn.

“With pregnant wife unresponsive on life support, husband hopes to fulfill her wishes. Keeping a brain dead woman alive against the wishes of her husband and family because, in Texas, the rights of a fetus override all other rights.”

“Marlise was taken to the emergency room at JPS in the early morning of Nov. 26. Later in the day, the family was informed by doctors that they would provide any life-saving measures because she was pregnant. The family was told the hospital was taking that measure because of state law in Texas' Health and Safety Code. "Section 166.049 Pregnant Patients. A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient," the code reads.”

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/tarrant/With-pregnant-wife-unresponsive-on-life-support-husband-hopes-to-fulfil-her-wishes-236654371.html

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/12/23/texas-law-forces-hospital-family-to-keep-pregnant-woman-on-life-support-against-her-will/

So We’re All Just People Living on the Same Planet

“A major problem is the lack of consistent work in the field, a point stressed to me in 2005 – during an earlier outbreak of brain-gender difference stories – by Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, and author of Y: The Descent of Men. "Researching my book, I discovered there was no consensus at all about the science [of gender and brain structure]," he told me. "There were studies that said completely contradictory things about male and female brains. That means you can pick whatever study you like and build a thesis around it. The whole field is like that. It is very subjective. That doesn't mean there are no differences between the brains of the sexes, but we should take care not to exaggerate them."

“This study contains some important data but it has been badly overhyped and the authors must take some of the blame," says Professor Dorothy Bishop, of Oxford University. "They talk as if there is a typical male and a typical female brain – they even provide a diagram – but they ignore the fact that there is a great deal of variation within the sexes in terms of brain structure. You simply cannot say there is a male brain and a female brain.”

“In fact, Verma's results showed that the neuronal connectivity differences between the sexes increased with the age of her subjects. Such a finding is entirely consistent with the idea that cultural factors are driving changes in the brain's wiring. The longer we live, the more our intellectual biases are exaggerated and intensified by our culture, with cumulative effects on our neurons. In other words, the intellectual differences we observe between the sexes are not the result of different genetic birthrights but are a consequence of what we expect a boy or a girl to be.”

Body Image

Can we please stop pitting women against each other as if the world was black and white and that we’re not all walking Venn diagrams with lots and lots of overlapping.

It’s Hard to Stand Up When No One Is there to Help

Why Don't Women Report Their Attackers? “A new study finds that only seven percent of women worldwide report gender-based violence against them.”

While experts agree that, for those working in the field, this information is not surprising, the study’s value cannot be overlooked, for it demonstrates through high-quality research how vastly underreported this crime is. The numbers are compelling, and they lay bare not only how many victims continue to suffer in silence and obscurity, but also the inadequacy of many of the systems meant to protect women from such violence.

“You don’t go to the police until it is a life or death matter, really” she said. “When you think you are literally trying to save your life and the lives of your children.” That is often because formal sources like the police or medical providers can be unsupportive and insensitive to women who come to them for help, experts say. This may explain the extremely low reporting rates in India, lowest of all the countries compared, where less than one percent of women came forward to report violence to any formal source.

“We’ve done a good job now at bringing out the prevalence and incidence and a lot of the health and social and economic impacts that violence has had on women and communities and men,” she said. “But we are really kind of at the beginning of the research on understanding which interventions are most promising.”

Summing up the Year at The Progressive

In short, their top five stories: abortion x 3, rape insurance (surely that’s an oxymoron gone bad), and the one good news story that Obamacare covers birth control without a copay. (I had my annual gynecological exam a few weeks ago and there was no copay. WooHoo!)

May we all have a good new year, and may we all find a way to combat this relentless War on Women so that soon my 18-year-old daughter will be right when she tells me that I’m living in history when I tell her about the inequalities and travesties that women have to deal with just because they are women.

Am I a good daughter if I call my mother daily, but I don’t pay attention to what she says? And when I berate myself, saying that I must listen with love and intention, I still end up criticizing what she says or else I hang up right before I reach my critique-point. If she ends up developing some form of dementia, will I come to regret having wasted valuable conversational time being angry at her pettiness rather than appreciate her attention to detail (every single detail of every single thing said to her and every single thing done by her)?

Technically, I would say that I’m being a good daughter. But, technically, love is not technical, and there is a difference between being a good daughter and a good daughter. Am I supposed to be a board that reflects back to her or an absorbent sponge? Sure, every mother-daughter relationship is different, and, at least in my experience or sense of things, it is generally guided by the mother. Am I trying, now that I have two somewhat adult daughters, to re-determine the flow of our relationship? Can it be done? Am I being unfair to her by changing things midstream, and not to her advantage?

To me, I believe that I am pushing her to be a better friend and person. But I wonder if she didn’t need to be a kinder, less critical person when my father was here because he was the kind buffer, and maybe she didn’t let herself nitpick everyone because getting together with friends was not as central to her existence as it is now that she is widowed and living year-round in a Land of the Retired. Or, perhaps because she had him to soothe and balance her, she didn’t depend on friends in such a way because she could leave them and go back to unload/talk to my father. For whatever reason, now she has an extraordinary amount of time to get together with friends, and time to recount and nitpick to me, and it bothers me that she is this way.

The act of calling may be an act of love, but if I don’t follow it up with a meditator’s focus is it for naught? Am I the problem? Now that I don’t have anyone at home to focus on, to attend to or raise, am I transferring my mothering “skills” to my own mother? What a twisted world I live in. Do I need to step back in my relationship with her as I have had to do with my daughters, letting them be/become their own selves?

What am I proving by being a dutiful but obnoxious daughter? The old diet coke and pizza diet, not the wisest diet around.

Since quantity is not adding up to quality, it seems logical that I step back and not call so often. Be less of a dutiful daughter and try to be a good daughter. Of course, since I have started this daughtering method a week or so ago, she has started to call me twice a day. Could it be that she loves me even when I am obnoxious and criticize everything thing she does? Hmmm, maybe it really is a solid mother-daughter relationship. 

Nests in winter

For the past year, a good friend has toyed with the idea of joining an online dating site. The last time that she visited me we went on match.com and looked at other women’s profiles and men’s profiles, and then we composed her profile. Once she got home, though, she looked over the site again and decided that the men all looked old. She figured she’d go dancing instead.

This past week she contacted me about finally doing it. But when she found out that match.com costs $40 a month, she decided against it. A little later she said she’d join a free site. The next day she forwarded to me an article about friends who wrote each other’s profiles and asked if I would do that with her. Why not, I thought in a moment of positivity, feeling protected by the fact that I’m doing this more as a friend than as a woman who feels sidelined from the life of the world by sitting at home alone.  

I must say, our profiles show that we are both women of wit, intelligence, and compassion. They are also, I hope, STOP signs to those 50-year-old men who have not learned that they need to wear their shirts in their profile pictures (even if they still have muscles), or who don’t understand that women don’t want to be revered for being the vessel of their longing, and certainly DEAD END signs to those men who, in the more than 30 years they should have been interacting with women as equals, still don’t get that we are not their mothers and that we don’t want to coddle their egos, we would much rather play snarky-comment ping pong.  

Regardless of what happens on the dating end, her describing me in my profile as being “good at friendship” made this exercise absolutely worthwhile. We know our friends and we know that we remain friends because we have things in common, and we have what to talk about, and we care about each other, but how often do we come out and say it? When I told a friend at work about what my other friend said in my profile, she commented that she’s glad that she doesn’t have to be on dating sites and, “Yes, you are good at friendship.” So I thank her, too. Which leads me to what this exercise has made so clear: the more mature we get, the more content we get, the more we realize that this is because of our friendships. They are not the side-car to our main-car: we are all riding in a van that somehow keeps expanding to add more seats.

All day I watch my students develop their friendships in between my lessons. There is nothing that most of these teens would rather do than talk (or text friends) or do the teen version of snarky-comment ping pong. And while their ability to go to “outside voices” talking within a nanosecond of my turning around to get a handout, I have come to understand that we all desperately need someone to hear us. Love. It can be grand, but it is not the staff of life. No, that is in the pleasure in presence that is captured in getting together for Sunday morning brunch or Shabbat dinner or in calls to California. Friendships are the yard, the garden, the field from which all else can develop be it love or creations or strength.

When I was their age, I overlooked how important friendships were; they were merely there as a backdrop until true love would come galloping in. So silly. So much wasted time misconstruing life.

But back to love. I don’t know if I want love. Or maybe what I don’t want is the version of love that I have lived through. I wonder if my fathoming the importance of friendships will enable me to create a more balanced love when/if it develops in my planter?

Today I was back on my back with my legs up in stirrups, and I didn’t even have to wait a year to get into that enchanting position.

Two weeks ago I had my annual gynecological exam and pap smear. And then, as is generally acceptable, I forgot about it. But at the beginning of last week, while I was at the Sears Auto Center waiting far longer than an hour-hour-and-a-half that I was told it would take to change my front tires before what was supposed to be the first winter storm of the year, I received a call from my gynecologist. When she asked me if I wanted the good news or the bad news first, I decided to be brazen and go from bad to good. I mean, no use going for hope just for it to be immediately dashed. She said that I might have a virus, but heck, the pap smear was fine, and then she invited me back for a follow-up test, as soon as possible.

For the next half hour, I was sort of thankful that I finally got a smart phone and researched all that I could about said virus while sitting in a very bare waiting alcove. When I got to the point where there was nothing else to read except about treating cervical cancer (worst-worst-worst-worst case scenario) or opting for the wait-and-see option, I decided that I really don’t like scare tactics, so I put the phone away and thought about my tires.

*

At least I got to leave work early today for my exam. A silver lining!

When the nurse was walking me to the special procedures room, she ran through the what-to-expects while she simultaneously ran a one-woman pity part for me. Thankfully (at least for a bad news first person), the doctor went for the breezing right along positive approach to talk about the highly unlikely results but it will be fine and we will just need to have more frequent pap smears probably worst case scenario, and did you have sex with someone who might have had sex with other people and it’s such a shame that so many people have the virus but don’t know it so they keep spreading it around. Okay, I get it: it was obvious that at some point I would be punished for having been lascivious. But that is the past, and I do mean past.

*

I have been going to this gynecologist since I moved to Virginia thirteen years ago. She is approximately my age and so, over the years, we have developed a wonderful doctor-patient relationship. She used to get the annual lowlights and, thankfully, now she gets the annual highlights. She even met monstrous ex-husband when she got to remove my left ovary. That, of course, is a story. When ex-husband was still husband, he told me that I couldn’t get my ovary removed by her because she didn’t have enough experience with the procedure. I can unequivocally state that I chose my gynecologist over my husband, and I have no regrets. I mean when I’m in a “whose husband was more controlling” contest, I think I can win a lot of points by claiming that my husband thought he had dibs on decisions about my ovaries.

And then there is her nurse who has worked for her for years, and she, too, is around my age and also has children around the ages of my daughters. She proclaimed that she will hunt me down if I don’t come back for my follow-up pap smear, which, as a woman with no family nearby, feels rather comforting.

So there I lay on my back with my pink shirt all buttoned up and a white paper covering my lady parts, which didn’t feel so lady-like what with different instruments been inserted and swapped about, when the nurse gave me a gentle hold-and-release on my left knee. That tap touched me in the deep place within that needs to be touched and acknowledged in such a basic “here I am and there you are” way for an emotional person. Then we all talked about a drunk driving accident a few days ago in which a college student was killed, and how we were all devastated just thinking about what that girl’s parents must be going through.

There are times when you feel cared for in a physical way, like when I ran into my second cousin the other day after not seeing him for almost a year and he gave me two all-encompassing hugs of happiness; and there are times when you feel cared for in an emotional way, like when I received a thoughtful Hanukkah gift last night from my daughters and my older daughter’s boyfriend. Odd to say it, but at that moment on the examination bed/table, I felt a bit of both. The tap on my knee and the confidence that the ultimate would be done to care for me no matter the result transcended my fault-finding and trepidations. Taken together, those three moments within four days have brought me to a joyous serenity which must translate, simply, into feeling loved. Yes, I am loved.

Now I need to hold onto that as I wait another week for the results. 

Tree outside my bedroom window; losing leaves everyday.

Sometimes you get confirmation that what you are doing is right and you are strong enough to accept that gift for what it’s worth rather than crawl into your alcove of humility.

The other night, together with two people from my new synagogue, we led a creative writing session with some teenagers, all girls, in a transitional group home. We sat around the kitchen table (always the place to be) and did a free write, and read and discussed a poem, and then watched some music videos that they suggested. We also (shocker) snacked.

My confidence in my teaching ability in a classroom setting propelled me into this new setting with the confidence that I could conduct a lesson, but I was unsure if I could connect to the teens there or if I could get them to care about trying to express themselves in words on paper or out loud. I dreaded the curtness of antagonism and dismissiveness. Neither came. They immediately got to the free write that I used to get things started, and they kept at it long after one of the other leaders transitioned to doodles.

The girl who was sitting to my left was called out. She was taken by the police. The other girls got completely still, then they said something about her not having gone to school. 

Unexpectently, they wanted to share their free writes. One girl wanted to show off her rap, but then they all wanted to share. And they wanted us to share, which transitioned us into a group of people stumbling with expression, rather than a hierarchy of us and them.

Then, the girl sitting to my right left suddenly, overwhelmed, it seemed, with remembrances and feelings brought on by the thoughts she expressed in her free write. After that, the girl who had been so full of her own attitude, sat down next to me, where the other girl who had been overcome had been sitting. Such a little thing, such a powerful feeling of honest connectivity—at least that’s how I interpret it, and I’m sticking to that.

Then, as we read the poem, "Still I Rise," by Maya Angelou, I told them to focus on asking questions that the poem raises rather than to charge forward with finding clarity of meaning. One girl related how one of the stanzas perfectly reflected what she had experienced that day in court, having been made to feel that she had been “cut by eyes.” And for another the phrase, “I dance like I've got diamonds/ At the meeting of my thighs?” made her think of sex abuse. I told them how I thought of that line as empowering women. Just goes to show that we are always students of each other’s minds and experiences. It also reminded her of a singer who sings about the abuse she suffered from her father, and so we segued into listening to those songs. We all acknowledged, without acknowledging, that writing is a powerful way to challenge the victim narrative.  

At the end of the session, each girl was eager to receive a journal and a pen. One girl wanted my pen that said “Trust Women,” and I was so happy to give it to her. I had cherished that pen, but now I cherish the thought of her having it—of her using it. Another girl wanted to keep the purple teacher pen that I had given to her because she likes purple. And so do I and we both smiled at the happiness of purple.

Then we left.

I will definitely be back next month. There will be different teens there dealing with the lives that they have been handed and which they have handed to themselves, and it might not be as fulfilling as this first time was, but that is not the point, the point is to keep showing up and trying to be a drop in a bucket. So I guess it is about humility, but a humility that comes from strength and not unease.