SCOTUS hears Prop 8 and DOMA cases

People camped out to get a seat to hear the oral arguments before the SCOTUS on Tues and Wed.

If you want to consider the history of same sex marriage in the US, you have to go back in time pretty much to the founding of the country. (Fun fact: The only known conviction for lesbianism in American History happened in 1649 in Plymouth Colony- Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon were prosecuted for "lewd behavior with each other upon a bed". Sweet!!!)

You have to go back at least to the early 1900's when suffragettes fought for and earned the right to vote (a few of them were making sweet whoopy with each other while they got it done).  You have to go back to the 50's and 60s and 70's: The eras of "Pinko commie" McCarthyism and the sexual revolution and long-haired-hippy anarchy.

You'd have to go back to the 80's: when gay men were dying all over the place.  HIV and AIDS decimated the community and then parents and relatives (many of whom had rejected their gay sons) would come in and take possessions and property that was left behind.  Such emotional and devastating circumstances of course had been a regular part of the lives of gay and lesbian couples in every time and century.  But the magnitude of the AIDS crisis and the way it required a community to mobilize into activism to literally stay alive and protect each other at the last moments of life changed something in the collective psyche of LGBT Americans.
 
That was the real beginning of marriage equality in my mind... Because as most married people will tell you, you don't need marriage benefits to get to feel the passion or the love, for the joy of the dance, to experience the fineness of wine or the deliciousness of cake.  You don't need marriage, for the age of Aquarius... You need it for what happens after happily ever after.

You need marriage for when your lover has died in your arms after a year of declining health that culminated with him shitting his insides out in the bed you used to have carefree sex in; and his parents want to know when you will be moving out.
You need marriage when they prohibit the only people who know and love you from visiting your ICU room.
You need marriage for when they try to deport the woman you love.
You need marriage for when some bullshit happens one day and two skyscrapers crumble to the ground and your kid's other dad (the one who brought home the bacon) disappears in a cloud of filthy dust.
You need marriage for when someone becomes disabled, or slips a disc, or gets cancer or the gay plague. 

Marriage is what allows you access to 1138 federal rights, benefits, and protections.  (And I'm not even including the stupid, helpful ones like getting a "family membership rate" at a gym or health club.)

Someone once told me, "Marriage is not so much about who you want to be with for the rest of your life, but who you don't want to be without..."

When Katy and I first met in the fall of 1999, the state of Vermont was 3 months away from allowing same sex couples to enter into a Marriage-like contract called a civil union.  So, even for us- the lucky ones- the ones that never doubted our self-worth and never experienced rejection by our family or friends- when we met, the idea that we might get married and/or be a (legal) family, that was a construct that did not exist.  That was something we would have to "fake" and/or "make up".

On May 17, 2004 (Four months and 1 day before we had a non-legal church wedding with 150 guests) the commonwealth of MA started allowing couples of the same gender to marry.
It wasn't a "civil union" like Vermont had made famous.  It was the actual, M-F'ing thing!!!

Except there was a problem... in 1991 (before I even knew I was gay)  3 same sex Hawaiian couples sued the dept of public health to be allowed to marry.  The case went all the way to the state's supreme court who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs- it ruled that the prohibition of gay marriage was unconstitutional.  And all manner of backlash followed.  Hawaii changed it's constitution to prevent marriage equality.  And the federal government passed a law that essentially said, "If a state passes a law allowing gays to get married, the federal government will NOT recognize those marriages."
The ironically named "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA)  had 117 co-sponsors and only 81 "no" votes out of 508 votes cast in the house and senate.  Bill Clinton signed without hesitation.  That is to say this was about as bipartisan a bill as we get to see these days...

Hindsight is 20/20.  I don't know how long people thought it would take for
1) A state to legalize same sex marriage and
2) For a legal challenge to DOMA to reach the SCOTUS, but that day is here (16 years, 6 months and 5 days later).

The remarkable thing, though, is not the 16-250 years it took to get us here.  The remarkable thing is what has happened in the last 4- 6 months.  You should know, as someone who's life will be directly impacted by what the Supreme court decides related to prop 8 and DOMA, I was nervous when they announced last fall they would be hearing the case this year.  I just thought, "It might be too soon."

History will be on our side, but if SCOTUS rules that prop 8 should stand or that DOMA is constitutional, it will be a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to undo that nonsense.  In November, the voters of four different states voted either to enact marriage equality or to defeat a prohibition of it... That had NEVER happened before in the US.  Though several states had legalized same sex marriage, they did it either through the courts or through the legislatures.  Before the 2012 election, voters had been asked to vote on same sex marriage 30 times in 30 states and NOT ONE TIME until last November did the majority vote for marriage equality.  There are many who think that equal rights should not be put to a popular vote (include me in those numbers) BUT it is significant (understatement) that support for marriage equality is starting to become the majority opinion...

My wife and I got married in 2004 (non-legal, non binding church wedding).
We got a civil union, the first day we were legally able October 1, 2005.
And 5 years later, marriage equality was enacted in CT.  At that point our civil union passively converted into a (ta-da!) marriage.

10 states have enacted marriage equality since 2004 (CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, WA).
The sitting president of the United States has come out in favor of marriage equality; and the Democratic National Party added marriage equality to it's platform. And literally in the last month, the scales have tipped and public opinion polls are showing for the first time, a MAJORITY of Americans believe that SS couples should be treated equal under the law.

And tomorrow... the SCOTUS hears oral arguments.  People have been waiting in line since Thursday morning to get a seat.  Families like ours are crossing our hearts, holding our breaths and whispering prayers (while still trying to take care of our homes and our kids, like everyone else that doesn't have to consider their legal standing as a family on a daily basis.)

At issue:
1) The Prop 8 case - Is is legal to vote on civil right as related to marriage equality? if not, does that apply to only the California case? or does it apply to all states that have put these rights to a vote via ballot measure? 

2) The DOMA challenge - Is DOMA constitutional? Shouldn't federal and state governments have to treat all married couples equally?  Specifically, should the federal govt have penalized 83 year old Edith Windsor $360,000 in estate/inheritance tax when her wife, Thea died. (if Thea was her husband, that tax would not have been levied).  If DOMA is unconstitutional, does that apply only to the federal government? or do states that have their own DOMA laws also have to rectify the problem?

[A handy schematic]

I'm known to get a little fired up about marriage equality...
You should see what we have to do to get our taxes done (and by "WE" i mean "Katy").
- We have to prepare a federal joint tax return so that we can use that to file a joint state tax return.
- Then we have to prepare a "married filing jointly" state tax return.
- Then we have to imagine how our finances would look if we were not a couple, not a family and create a "fake" financial picture to complete our TWO "actual" federal "single" tax return filings.

So, yeah, I'm "excited" and fired up that this might be the last time we have to do "that" (and by that I mean LIE ON A FEDERAL FORM AND SAY I AM SINGLE, MOM, HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD WHO IS LIVING WITH [BUT NOT MARRIED TO] ANOTHER SINGLE, UNWED MOM...
WHEN I AM ACTUALLY A MARRIED WOMAN LIVING WITH MY WIFE AND OUR CHILDREN...)

But the surprising thing is, I'm really quite emotional about it.  (Read: Choked up)
I'm really quite hopeful (and only a little scared) that this court will support our rights as a couple and a family and parents.  It's hard to describe and explain because I swear to you I know in my heart that I am every bit as worthy as any other citizen, but after a good long ten years of the public debate of whether or not you have the right to exist as a family, it does get tired and hurtful and if this could possibly be the END of that???  I'd just be happy to consume myself with other, more mundane things.
In the last 10 years, the haters have had a lot of opportunity to gloat.
The courts keep ruling against them, but trust me when I tell you this is nerve-wracking.  The cases will be made tomorrow and Wednesday; the decisions won't come down before June.  But tomorrow, we will be figuratively standing there, forcing them to look us in the eyes and say it...
Go ahead, say it... 
Are we equal? Or are we 2nd class? 
Are we still too "yucky" to get access to Cobra and Social security and Military survivor-ship benefits? 
Will we have to wait another 16 to 20 years carefully explaining to our kids some convoluted version of the truth- that it's okay to trust and serve a society and a government that allows discrimination and bullying to be enshrined into state constitutions and federal regulations?

Or will it somehow (as if by magic) be decreed that we can move on to other fights, other debates.
That equal is equal.
That our relationships are worthy of that legal acknowledgment that comes only with "marriage"?

Hold your breath, this is going to be one of the big ones...

A real woman

I think about gender a lot. I think it about it when I parent. I think about it when I write. I think about it when I make new friends. I think about it (a lot) when I work. I think about it when it deems my marriage unequal. I think about it when I walk alone down a city street. 

Gender, just for clarity, is how we define ourselves, not necessarily what we're born with. Gender expression is what we do with our internal understanding of ourselves in order to present it to the rest of the world. For most of us, what genitals we have and the hormones we produce match how we would define ourselves to the outside world. Whether we have one or two X chromosomes drives a lot of what happens in our development. For the most part we're all the same embryologically until those chromosomes start telling us to differentiate: XX and suddenly everything is more emotional and you get paid less, XY and boom! you get to rule the world.

The reason this is on my mind right now is the issue of whether Smith College, my beloved alma mater, was discriminating against a transwoman when it rejected her application. There has been an incredible backlash online both to the woman and to the college, often in infuriatingly angry and knee-jerk ways. Is she a woman? Does Smith discriminate? Do trans people belong at Smith or women's colleges in general? Is the current policy sufficient? But what I think every one of the articles and blog posts I've read has missed completely is this: What is a woman?

Whether you're a man or a woman, you have some baseline definition for this, but you probably don't think about it specifically on a regular basis. How do you know I'm a woman? When I speak I use no qualifiers that would tip you as to what gender I am, at least when I'm speaking in English. But. I have long hair. Long eye lashes. Low, pudgy cheek bones. I have curves. I have a relatively high pitched voice. I giggle. I wear dresses. I cry at romantic comedies (no seriously, every time). I wear lipstick. I have never registered to be drafted for war. I attended a preeminent women's college. How many attributes do I need before you think I'm a woman? Until you believe I'm a woman?

Because I'm also tall. I play a lot of different sports and truly enjoy watching them. I'm competitive. I like whiskey. I know how to drive a fire truck. I'm particularly good at math and science. I curse like a truck driver (sorry, Dad). If these were the only things you knew about me, would you think me a man?

By and large, we don't walk around looking at people's genitals in order to determine their gender. We rely on these traits, feminine and masculine, to determine how we will relate to the person we're interacting with. How many feminine traits must I have before I am automatically labeled female? And what's more important: what I say I am or what I was handed by chromosomal command? Does that change if I medically or surgically alter what structures I have or hormones I make? And if I have exactly the same number of feminine and masculine traits does that make me something other than male or female? Do physical traits trump personality traits? Do I decide or do the people around me decide? And, to make it more complex, how do we define gender institutionally? You might not want it to matter, but it does. It matters in all kinds of ways: it changes how things get funded, it helps ensure some measure of equality, it drives what kind of health issues you'll be at screened for, whether or not you'll be involuntarily sent to war, it directs you to a type of bathroom, and in this case, determines whether you'll be allowed to enter an all female college.

We have a reflexive drive for the binary. We don't like in between. I was reminded of this in the recent New Yorker article about kids who are transgender. At least one person suggested that because being transgender is becoming more common (or at least more visible) that it is, essentially, OVER-accepted and we're starting to label children transgender when they're not in an effort to be ultra-inclusive. To me that's not an issue of whether or not the kid is transgender; that's an issue with us continuing to insist that we all pick a category rather than getting comfortable with the middle ground. I can understand wanting to know right this second with no questions and no exceptions. How easy would that be? But, like so many things in life, that's not really how personal identity or identity expression goes. It's nuanced. It changes. It morphs. It refines. And then, just when you think you know someone (or yourself), it changes again.

On the subject of stereotypes: stereotypes exist because they're often true. They are, frankly, incredibly useful most of the time. But they can be damaging if used to pigeon hole or assume or discriminate. The cost of usefulness is having to self-monitor more often to avoid missing the real person. A skill we could all use to practice more often.

Sometimes the binary system is useful. It gives us a sense of belonging. We are on a team, just by the virtue of our genitals or gender expression. As humans, especially in this culture, we operate largely on comparison, on competition. It's a motivator as well as a measure of success. The thing about drawing a line in the sand, though, is that it creates an us vs. them mentality. Which, if you brave the divide, can evoke a sense of betrayal, of severe otherness. The discordance between how comfortable you are in your own body and the exogenous expectations of those around you is a steep cliff.

No one really understands why some people cannot tolerate their biological sex as their gender. I'll leave the scientific theories for my lectures, but suffice it to say that gender dysphoria absolutely exists. Something happens that makes the hormonal effects of your biological sex intolerable for some people. From changes in how you dress and wear your hair to hormone therapy to surgical procedures, there are ways to make this discordance less severe and in some cases resolve it completely. We're in the middle of cultural conversation about which of these changes constitutes the transition from one to the other (a conversation that would be obsolete if we were more comfortable outside a binary code).

So what makes me a real woman? Am I defined by my ability to conform to enough of the cultural expectations that delineate a "real" woman? Am I defined by the absence (most of the time) of more masculine characteristics? Am I defined by my insatiable use of the letter F on forms that require gender or sex? (Maybe I'm more accurately defined by my frequent use of the word that begins with F).

I don't know if Smith is in the right or wrong here. I don't know what the actual thinking was behind the decision. I do know that in our society you must belong to one or the other and there isn't a lot of tolerance for the in between, the transition. I think it's incredible that transgender adolescents and their families have the strength to make these changes. If you identify as female when you apply for college, then you should be given the same chance for admission to a women's college as anyone born with female genitalia. But as a culture the issue lies with how we decide who is female or male. In this particular case at least one of the issues is that the state of CT defines it based on genital structure, whether that be natural born or surgical. I don't agree with it, and it's part of my work to get that changed, but for right now that's what it is. From another perspective, though, we are significantly more progressive in that we allow a change at all, which is not true in many many states. DMV documents and passports can also be changed without surgical procedures. These changes are painfully slow for those who are transitioning or have transitioned. It's awful to be the leader of the pack when the pack is small, outnumbered, and going against one of the fundamental identifiers of everyone everywhere.

I often feel grateful that I feel comfortable in my body. The physical changes that have happened to me over the years, from puberty to child-bearing, have not felt like a betrayal. I don't have to think about what I'm doing when I check "female" on forms, whether someone somewhere might think I'm lying, or, worse, not a real woman. Because of the way I look I almost never have to convince anyone that I am, in fact, female. Maybe the mitzvah for being comfortable in your own skin is to be open to the conversation, to be looking for ways to ensure that policies and institutions adapt to the ways that we are changing as humans and as a society. To not be afraid to talk openly and constructively about this in mixed company. To take a thoughtful approach to the transition, if you will, of society and institutions. To be part of the conversation and not part of the stone-throwing.

DST= I'm so tired

Daylight savings time is like that hot, undercover cop who comes to your high school to "deal with the drug" problem but then she ruins the life of the valedictorian because he's sweet on her and she asks him if he knows how to get her some drugs...

And by that i mean, it's nice to get that extra daylight and all, but really- the time shift 4 days ago has  messed up these kids' sleep cycles.  I don't know how or why it happens.  It doesn't make any logical sense, but everyone is all coo-coo for coco puffs at bed time and all night long... And getting out of the house on time in the morning is a joke.

Keeping me on my game

The other day, I'm buckling Jake into the car seat (seriously, every other kindergartner we know can buckle themselves in) and he holds up his hands in a full shrug:

"So, what's a 'Husband' anyway?"

I can't help feeling like I'm walking into a trap.  I know he knows what a "husband" is, after all.
I think he's pretty much asking me why we don't have one, but I don't want to over-blow it.
I take a deep breath, knowing I have 15 seconds to figure out how to play this and I lead with my inner goof-ball.

"You KNOW what a HUSBAND is?!?" I say in my best, exaggerated, game-show host voice.

"No," he says with a convincing earnestness.

"A husband," I say matter of factly, "Is a man who is married.  If a man is married, he's a husband.  If a woman is married, she's a wife."

Jake contemplates his fingernails, while I continue, "When a man and a women get married, they are a husband and a wife." I employ a sillier voice at this point, "HUSBANDS and wives. Husbands AND wives.  Husbands and WIVES...  But SOMETIMES, there's a..." I pause for dramatic effect "WIFE and a WIFE..."

"Like in our house!" We say it in unison and he smiles.

I let it hang in the air like a "Ta-Da!!!"

"And SOMETIMES," my voice is full of drama and mischief, "There is a HUSBAND and a HUSBAND...  But USUALLY..." I borrow the cadence of that dog food commercial from the 80's.  "Usually... it's husbands and wives, husbands and wives, husbands and wives." (Kibbles and bits, Kibbles and bits, kibbles and bits).

Jake all but yawns.  "Yeah," he says completely unimpressed with the theatrics, "I guess you just have to decide who you love..."

(sigh.)

Yeah...

Things that go boom

You guys. It turns out you can SEE SONIC BOOMS.

I've been entirely fascinated since the meteorite slammed into the atmosphere over Siberia last week. What is a sonic boom? Why so loud? Why so late? Wait, you can see it?! Hold. The. Phone.

So, of course, I had to go look it up. What is a sonic boom and how does it relate to sound? Turns out that the sound waves created by an object at a stand still make this perfect ripple, a la pebbles in a puddle. But, if the object starts moving, the waves start to bunch up ahead of the object, and lengthen behind it. Then if it gets going really fast, the waves ahead of the object are essentially all one: hello, speed of sound. Then, if the object goes faster than those waves, it creates a pressure differential that makes an audible craaaaack. But, get this: the change in pressure is no more than that when you're in an elevator going down 3 floors, except that it happens in a much shorter period of time. I know, I know. WTF. I feel like Taylor Swift here: totally bubbly and excited then totally confused then sort of understanding then just back to bubbly. People say all the time that things seem to "go against the laws of physics". What they don't realize is that we just don't know shit about the laws of physics. It's like the world of physics is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and we've totally figured out his left pinky toe. But I think we often understand physics on a cellular rather than academic level. Well, at least I hope that's true, 'cause I needed simple pictures to understand this stuff.

What really blows my mind, though, is how those waves get translated to thoughts and emotions. When that sonic boom shattered windows it didn't just register as noise: it registered as fear, confusion, and amazement. It's not something anyone that heard it will forget anytime soon.

They say that digestion starts with the mouth (you know, teeth, saliva, that whole bit). In the same way, hearing starts with the outer ear which collects and amplifies sound from around us. It then travels to the tympanic membrane, which looks much like a piece of plastic wrap. When the pressure around you changes or you get an infection, that membrane is what is causing a lot of the discomfort as it gets pushed past its tensile strength. Once through the eardrum the sound is transmitted to the ossicles. Three points if you can name the three bones of the ear without using a search engine. That's right: bones. I imagine them like a team of Morse code experts tapping messages into the inner ear. From the inner ear the sounds are transmitted to the auditory nerve for interpretation by the brain. Thus, in order to hear you have to be able to move the vibrations and the nerve has to fire messages to the brain. My 5 year old son, Jake, has had issues with his Eustachian tubes since about 4 months old. Specifically, those suckers just do NOT want to work well enough to drain the fluid that collects in the middle ear around the ossicles. As a result, at 6-9 month intervals he can't hear for shit. He hears through a thick wall of jello-like fluid that stays there until our dear ENT surgeon goes in and gets it out. He does a nice job of understanding the world even though he's hearing under water, but the difference when they remove that fluid is astounding. Interestingly, when the audiologists do his hearing tests they always do the cochlear nerve stimulation just to make sure he doesn't suddenly also have a nerve issue, and it is truly astounding to watch this kid go from hearing almost nothing and to having no issue at all. By bypassing the system and going straight to the nerve, he recognize sounds. It's no match for the amplifying, coaxing, and translating done by the outer ear and ossicles, but it works.

This all sounds pretty simple, except that it's totally not. Think about the range of sounds you hear in a day, and how they affect you differently. Seemingly similar sounds are made exceedingly specific by both the physical characteristics of the sound and how it interacts with the ear, and how we interpret it. Think about a child's cry: almost any parent can pick out their own child's cry out of cacophony of screaming children in seconds. Think about a rock concert: in a wall of sound you can still hear the pieces coming through. Think about a whisper: in the middle of the night I can hear my kids breathing two rooms away. Part of this discernment is based on actual physical waves of sound that match sounds of waves we've heard before or what we're anticipating hearing in that moment. But a lot of it is dependent on what was happening during that time, and how we felt. We make an imprint of the sound in our minds. Sound means nothing unless it's translated.

I had a conversation with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author last year during which we were discussing the usefulness (or not) of things that are exact. She posited that a symphony is by definition prescribed and predictable because the notes are immoveable, and that it is the job of the players to play those notes. At the time I was taken aback by the brashness of her answer and my retort got stuck in a stutter. It has stuck with me since and so here is my counter-argument: a symphony is not, in fact, a prescribed collection of notes and rhythms. It is at its core an interpretation, a magnificent show of collective expression in which all the pieces of the orchestra have to simultaneously attempt perfection and avoid it at all costs. Without the give and take of the individual musicians and the sections of instruments, the lift of the conductor, the sigh here, the strike there, there is nothing. The song is robotic without all those minute human errors and corrections. And, to be honest, the most astounding part is that our brains know the difference.

How we interpret those sounds are, in large part, emotional. All those nerve firings that help us understand the information coming toward us are connected to the parts of our brains that control emotions. On some level this has always made sense to me: music has been a way of understanding the world since I was a kid. On first listen to a song I can be moved to dance, feel the swell of emotion, or just cry. There are songs that so perfectly match my line of thought that all I can do is look around wondering, "Is anyone else hearing this?! This is it!" There are songs that make my fingers ache for the piano. Songs that make me sing at the top of my lungs while turning over the theme in my head over and over and over. There are songs that inexplicably unnerve me, and yet I keep coming back to them. There are songs that transport me back to childhood hearing my dad sing me to sleep. Songs where the sound of silence after the last note was sung by 100 campers is as palpable as it was 20+ years ago.  


*"Thrift Shop" is an awful, dirty song. NSFW. And still it makes me move.

So, it turns out you can't actually see the sonic boom unless there's enough moisture to bring it to life. But perhaps it is seeing to hear it, to feel it rock your world. To feel the pause before the roar. To internalize the force of energy. Whether it be something as overwhelming as a sonic boom, or hearing the intake of air, or all the songs in between, here's to listening past the speed of sound.

(Nearly) Midnight Ramblings

It's 11:30 pm and I should have gone to bed 2 hours ago with Katy.

I'm totally wiped out.  Watching BS television and working on work emails and schedules that I can't get to during the day.  There is a lot of stuff in me that I want to wiggle it's way out - onto the pages of this blog and/or some other writing space.  But there are so many attention and time demands.

I'm working too hard at work to feel this behind the 8 ball.  It's just a 60 hour job that I'm trying to do in 45-50 hours a week.  and the time with the kids... it is so short and fleeting (except the middle of the night crying jags that we have been blessed with on and off these last few weeks- those don't seem so short)

These boys are so cute and happy and loved.
Jake is reading and learning about space in kindergarten.  He's gotten really good at drawing and coloring.  He likes wrestling and story-telling (or having stories told to him).  Jake is solid and occasionally anxious.  He likes patterns and predictability, but still asks me at night to "Sing me a song I've never heard before").  He vacillates between stoicism and complete intolerance of discomfort and hyperbolic expression of pain.  Tonight, he banged his shins and when i told him it would be okay and he would feel better soon, he told me "I WILL NOT BE OKAY...THEY WILL NEVER FEEL BETTER... "  After his bath when I absentmindedly pointed out to him that his underwear were ripping in the backside's seam, he burst into tears: "THEY'RE MY FAVORITE PAIR!" He wailed. I tried to express empathy for my softhearted, exhausted boy. But when it went on too long I had to walk away before I did something that would incite him. (Like try not to laugh hysterically while ripping the underwear in half.)

I notice him yawning when asked to recite prayers and songs or poems that I know he has memorized.  The yawns are so predictable that I've come to recognize them as a form of avoidance and/or nervousness.  The top 2 reasons he receives a reprimand these days are: for "talking baby-talk" (also usually happens when he knows he's doing something he shouldn't be or when he's afraid he might be wrong or in trouble - ie "nervousness") and not heeding the warning: "Be nice to your brother."

Milo is about 2 weeks off the binki (a story about that to follow) and still the happiest of us all.  He will give you every version of toddler "F.U." if you try to get him to do something he doesn't want to, but oh, the laugh on that kid.  as much as he gets labeled our "frat boy", Milo is also a sensitive soul.  Usually rushing to us (and always his brother) to see if we're okay.  Today, he took off his underwear, balled them up, handed them to me and said, "Here, smell these and you'll get a big surprise!!!"
Milo, hates hats and gloves and going to bed.  He wants to go potty and wants a drink of water and ine more kiss and a song and a song and a song, and then he will place a tiny protective arm around the neck of the parent putting him to bed and give a pleading whine: "I want you."  He is our little musician and tonight, he whipped through about 6 different songs that are in our bedtime ritual, but we've never really heard him sing before.  He knew EVERY WORD. it was touching and startling in an "other worldly" kind of way. It turns out (as Katy pointed out) he ACTUALLY IS... a good listener.

They are my heart.  My love.  My pride and joy.  These boys make me wish for more hours in the day, week, year.

Falling asleep... more to come

El Poder

I spent the better part of last Monday into Tuesday at the Connecticut State Capital listening to testimony at the Connecticut Gun Violence Prevention Public hearing. I went because it was convenient: I didn't have to work that day. I went because I made a promise to myself to start actually standing up for what I believe, and not just liking pages on Facebook. I went because I was lucky enough to have help with the kids. I went because I don't love guns.

I stayed because I couldn't look away. I stayed because I couldn't believe how many more people were there to lobby for weapons than people trying to decrease violence. I stayed because of the vehemence coming from the gun proponents. I stayed because I needed to be heard.

Everyone marked themselves for the hearing. Those wearing yellow stickers were "responsible gun owners". Those wearing white stickers were "against gun violence". Nearly everyone was wearing a green ribbon for Sandy Hook. And nearly everyone stuck to the script: the yellow stickers railed against any additional legislation limiting guns or ammunition. The white stickers asked for limits on ammunition. I've thought a lot about what was said that day. The lilt of the three minute testimony has played like a bad 80s song on repeat in my head (probably a function of the fatigue, the disbelief, and the 14 long hours I was exposed to the rhetoric). I keep trying to simmer down the testimony into a concise summary and the outcome is always the same: the right to guns is more important than people.

The "right" I think they are demanding, though, is not necessarily the right to guns. I think it's the right to exert power over another. Isn't that, ultimately, what having a gun is? You can kill someone, sure, but almost more importantly, you can threaten to kill someone. Power exists everywhere: between people, among groups, even within ourselves. We use power to convince, to defy, to gain, and to change. We use words, and body position. We exploit information and emotional attachment to change the behavior of other people. From the threat of time out to a 3 year old, to physical violence against one another, we can make change.

The constant refrain from those wearing yellow stickers was that they are powerless without guns. Specifically, they are powerless without high capacity clips. They cannot protect their family without the guns. They could have stopped the violence at any number of mass killings. Despite the data suggesting that it is more likely there will be a gun injury in homes with a gun, the guns are fundamental to their safety.

It was, frankly, hard to listen to.

It can be frightening to have power. Maybe even more so to use that power. But it can be exhilarating. And it's that perceived exhilaration tangled with fear that opens the door to violence. As I've espoused before, I don't mind having some control, which usually means having power over something or someone. It usually scares the hell out of me though. What if I use it poorly? What if I'm responsible for how it all turns out? I can tell you right now I would never survive accidentally hurting or killing someone with a gun. Never. How we garner power, how we negotiate it, how we exert our power over others, these are things that define us. To assume that you will always be rational in a moment of danger, that you will always choose to use your weapon "responsibly", that you are the good guy, is a conceit beyond understanding.

Power, though, isn't always used diametrically. Sometimes, if we wield it well, it can be used collectively to make positive change, to inspire, and to make better the lives of those around us. Debates such as this one on gun control frequently draw a line in the sand and force people to take sides. The two extremes walk twenty paces in opposite directions and draw their weapons. And the group that gets silenced is the one in the middle. I don't know what the answer to decreasing gun violence is. There are so many factors, including but not limited to, mental illness, poverty, and discrimination. But I think it starts with both sides at the table agreeing that accidental or intentional deaths, especially those of children, are unacceptable. That it's too common. That, whatever the root cause, it needs to change. That as a society, we are unwilling to tolerate power exerted as violence.

We all make decisions about when and how to stand up for what we believe. Sometimes we can't. Sometimes it's more important to stay home. Sometimes it's not safe. But sometimes you just have to get out there. The ministers at our church took a chance one Sunday and did a reading of "For Sweet Honey in the Rock" by Sonia Sanchez. If you've never heard Sonia Sanchez read her own work, it's worth seeking out.

but we kept on organizing we kept on teaching believing
loving doing what was holy moving to a higher ground
even though our hands were full of slaughtered teeth
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace

Hearing our ministers read with fervor and strength was one of those moments when there was no stopping the pinprick of tears behind my eyes. For every person that has stood up and fought for my rights, I gave a silent thank you. And then I resolved to get on the battlefield. I resolved to get on the battlefield with my hands. With my words. With my muscles. With my actions. With my friends.

I will get on the battlefield, but I will choose to go with people instead of guns.

You are what you eat

Milo: We're boys.
Mommy: yes
Milo: Im'ma boy and Jakey. We're boys.
Mommy: (thinking I know I'm a 'girl') What am I?
Milo: You're an ADULT.
Mommy: Yes, you are boys and I'm an adult.
Milo: When I'm an adult, I'm gonna drink lots of things...
Mommy: Like what?
Milo: Like coffee...and tea...
Jake: and beer and wine... And soda
Mommy: yes. It's very exciting. When you get bigger, you can have some drinks that kids don't get to have. But every family is different and rules about what kids can have are different in different families.
Jake: Like what?
Mom: Like in some families the kids can have soda. And in our family, the rule is kids can't have soda. And some families don't eat any meat.
Jake (sounding alarmed): BUT WE EAT MEAT!!!???!!!
Mom: Yes, we eat meat, but in some families, the rule is "We don't eat meat."
Jake: But we do... We're carnivores.

If one more person says, "guns don't kill people..." I'm gonna lose my mind

Six days until Christmas...
I am gifting you with this "anti-gun" rant (though no where in here does it say we should ban all guns) that I crafted to post on someone else's FB page. I am heartbroken and I am mad as hell.

 

I will concede that "people kill people" if the other side concedes that the singular purpose of guns is to extinguish life or create a credible threat that you are willing to extinguish life (Not true about cars, or alcohol, or knives or rocks or fists or even explosives).

I will NOT apologize for wanting to lock up guns before wanting to lock up every person that is or could become mentally unstable.

The youngest and most vulnerable members of our society are unable to protect themselves and/or resist the allure of the gun culture that has been allowed to flourish. 

People are addicted to guns.
People have fallen in love with guns.
People think guns, even MORE guns can fix everything.
We are not learning our lesson, and we are living through the history that we will repeat until we learn that lesson: An unchecked gun-culture results in the unacceptable slaughter of innocents - sometimes en mass, sometimes one or two at a time.

I disagree that this is impossible... "Stopping gun violence is impossible". I completely disagree.

Nothing is impossible...
Seriously.
"Impossible" is just what people say when they don't want to do the work to figure out a tough problem...
"Impossible" is the message that gun manufacturers have spent untold dollars to imprint on our collective psyche.  Whispering into the wind, while shouting from the mountain until a made-up deterrent becomes fact.
Just sit there, 
          No need to stir...
                    This is impossible.

This country undid slavery.
This country reversed the prohibition of a women's right to vote.
This country invented child labor laws, and airplanes, and landed a man on the moon.

Do you think those things seemed possible or even plausible before they happened? Do you think that was easy? No, but there was a moral imperative, a call to action, people brave enough to look like fools for a cause they believed in.

In our lifetimes, drunk driving and smoking in public has become both legally and socially unacceptable. Ask someone in the 50s or 60s or 70s if they thought there would be a socially supported, legal mandate to forbid smoking in bars?!? [And imagine...  Second hand smoke only kills people gradually over a long period of time.]

There is no rational reason for military style semi-automatic weapons to be circulating among the general population. A woman on FB yesterday was writing about how every citizen has the constitutionally protected right to possess enough firepower to overthrow the government. (Ignoring for a moment the counter-argument that starts by pointing out that every white landowner also had the constitutionally protected right to own people of a different race as pets) That is an insane postulation based on the outdated ideology of a group of rebels (our forefathers) that unyoked themselves from the largest EMPIRE of the time.

Currently, WE OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT EVERY FEW YEARS by VOTING and the fact that not a shot gets fired and no one gets murdered is one of the true reasons to get choked up with pride about being an American.

Police officers and soldiers are professionals and they get to keep and use any guns they are provided with to do their jobs. But the argument that the average citizen is safer and can protect his/her family with a gun does not hold true. People who live in homes with guns are more than 4 times more likely to be injured or killed by a gun. And it's not usually the "gun-owner" that gets hurt. But there are countless accidents.

And then there are the incidents of domestic violence that would have been bad but because there was a gun available, turned tragic. People DO die in knife fights and are killed by fists and boots and plates being thrown across the room but it is easier to limp away and survive when guns are not involved.

Also, 30 bullets in a clip??? Nope. I don't care who is holding a gun with 30 bullets. Even a "good guy" is dangerous with that kind of fire power. 30 bullets in clip that can be fired at a rate of 6 shots per second, why should any private citizen have access to that? Why do we think that is a right?!?

I have loaded and fired a single shot musket, it's like 3 shots a minute at most. And the entire time you are reloading that fast, you have to focus a bit and are vulnerable to counter attack. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said about the Bushmaster AR-15,
"Are you people fucking crazy?!?"

We are a nation of 310,000,000 guns. But this is not irreversible or impossible to fix. I am shocked to see people say, "it can't be fixed"... It CAN be fixed. Australia was an island of convicted criminals; a nation overwrought with guns. The govt changed laws, instituted a buy-back and the results included a 40% decline in the murder rate.

We need to decide to do something and we need to FIX this. We can either make our babies bulletproof, or we can fix this.

We can either lock up anyone that is mentally ill or has the potential to crack up (And by the way... You know who I'm most worried about losing their minds right now??? Those surviving teachers, and kids and parents, and first responders from Newtown, CT... please someone make sure they don't have access to guns on some of the cold, lonely nights coming up ahead for them)

or we can FIX this...

Let hunters have their rifles for hunting. And most Americans support handgun ownership with guns that hold 6-10 bullets, but if gun advocates continue to defend ownership of indefensible amounts of firepower:
assault riffles
endless ammo
one person owning dozens of guns that can be bought through the internet with no regulation
gun shows that do not follow the regulatory rules-
I think there will really be a public outcry and backlash...
I hope there will be.

People do not have a right to have whatever they want at the expense of the safety of the general public. At the expense of the health and safety of children. You can't smoke in a TIGFridays, but you can pack heat and carry enough bullets to instantly erase 2 or 3 tables of families if you feel physically threatened?!?

We can fix this. We need to fix this... We should have fixed this already.

First wake

My dad's Uncle George died the day before Thanksgiving (last week).  As I prepared to go to the wake on Sunday, Jake asked where I was going. 

Me: Papa's uncle died and TT and I are going with Gram'ma Bella to the wake.
Jake: What's a wake?
Me: Well, when someone dies, there is usually a wake and a funeral... Or some kind of ceremony where you can go say goodbye, and go hug the family and tell them that you are sorry about losing the person they loved.
Jake: Who did they lose?
Me: Well, Papa's uncle George died.  So Papa's cousins lost their dad, and Papa's aunt lost her husband.  When someone dies, we say we "lost" them.
Jake: Oh.

I absentmindedly asked Jake if he wanted to go.  It wasn't an accident exactly.  He seemed interested and there is something I want to try to teach these boys early on about life being special and about death being a part of life. And about what it means to belong to a clan of people- that you have respect and are generous with your time, and sometimes you stop what you are doing to show up and bare witness at these events. 

Jake: Maybe... I have to think about it.
Me: okay (In my head: "ut oh")

(I never thought he'd agree...
After a few minutes, I thought of a way to deter my 'soft pants' loving boy...)

Me: You know, if you go, you have to put some dress clothes on.
Jake: What do you mean?
Me: I mean, I am going to put work clothes on and you will have to dress up.
J: Like, in what?
Me: Like a sweater, or a shirt and tie, and church pants and shoes.
J: What sweater?
Me: I don't know... like the new one that TT bought you...

(After a few more minutes...)

Jake: I'll wear a tie.

Me: Oh... Okay. (pause)  So, we should talk about what it will be like...  At a wake, there is usually a box called a coffin that the person who has died will be laying in.  And there will be flowers and pictures and his family will be there and we will go through and hug all of his family- Papa's aunts and uncles and cousins.
Jake: Okay.
Me: And at some wakes the coffin is closed and you can't see the person inside but sometimes the coffin is open and you will see the person.
Jake:  LIKE A SKELETON?!?
Me: Oh, no... He will look like he's sleeping.  He will have his clothes on and of course all his hair and his skin... Maybe his eyeglasses...
Jake: (interrupting) HE HAS EYEGLASSES?!?  (The idea that he might see eye glasses seemed as shocking to him as the idea that me might see a skeleton.)
Me: (giggling) I don't know... maybe he does or maybe he doesn't...  The coffin might be closed, but it might be open.  And he will look like he is sleeping, but he won't be sleeping because he isn't alive anymore; remember how we talked about what happens when a person dies?
Jake: Yes.
Me: Their heart doesn't beat anymore, and they don't breathe, and their body is still there, but their spirit isn't inside their body...  ?
Jake: Yes.
Me: Do you still want to go?

Jake: Yeah, but I want to wear the red tie...

Katy likes to tell people that before she met me, she had never been to a wake or funeral.  And now she never stops going to them.  She is gracious about this and says that if it weren't for me, she would have had no idea how to conduct herself at her grandmother's funeral.  I almost skipped Uncle George's wake, but it was at her "it's the right thing to do" urging that I was getting dressed to go.  As a former ICU nurse, I'm more confortable than the average bear with corpses.  I sometimes have to stop and remind myself that these things can upset "lay people".  There are some funerals that children should NOT attend.  Very tragic, unexpected deaths... funerals where the adults are generally falling apart and so grief stricken that they are not able to look out for the emotional well being of kids in the room...

When our friend Liz's husband died leaving her widowed with 4 children (3 of the 4 were grade school age and younger), of all of the things she did that impressed me, none impressed me more than her plan for the kids.  After a brief appearance at the wake, she had them brought back to the house where Katy and I played with them and fed them dinner and got them to bed.  Of course they had to go to their dad's wake, but the emotions were too intense and the line at the funeral home too long to subject them to the entire event.

When my friend John died, I have this stark memory of his nieces a few feet from the coffin only 6 or 7 or 8 years old and my brain was forming the judgemental thought, "What are these parents doing letting their kids just hang around here near the casket all night?!?" when their kiddie conversation came into auditory focus:

Munchkin 1: Do you know why he doesn't look like himself?
Munchkin 2: No?  Do you?
Munchkin 1: I think it's because his soul has left his body
Munchkin 2: Yeah, so it isn't really him anymore... just his body.

I had the urge to stoop down to eye level and grip their shoulders gently and tell them that he didn't look like himself because the mortician in this joint isn't worth shit and has clearly never heard of blush or hair gel... but as I exhaled, the psycho urge passed and I realized that (of course) these children were wiser and more balanced than I.  Truthfully, kids just don't have the baggage that we do.  They don't usually bring their accumulated insecurities and fears into the room; or if they do, their accumulation is miniscule as not to even register.

When my mom saw Jake at the funeral home, she tried to hide from me that she was a little freaked out, asking several times, "Aren't you worried that he will have nightmares?"

And here's the thing.  Jake already has nightmares.  He's just like his freakin' moms.  A few weeks ago he crawled into our bed and told us he dreampt that there was a fire and he was trying to save Milo.  [A FIRE?!?! Seriously?  Where did that fear come from, Disney?!? I promise, we've never talked about fires around the dinner table...]  And last week, he was crying because he dreamed that his grandparents left without saying goodbye.  Some kids have more bad dreams than others.  I've got to try to find some books to see if there's a way to teach or talk your kids out of bad dreams, because I was one of those kids.  At a very early age, I dreamed scary, stressful things.  I still think that is part of the reason I stay up so late- Some of those dreams are sad and exhausting- maybe it's better just to stay awake.

Anyway, I've come to believe that 1) My dreams are not necessarily premonitions.  2) Bad dreams are not something that always happens because of unrest in your conscious life.  It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your perception of safety or security.  I know this because I was a very safe, protected, nurtured, sheltered child.  And so are our boys. 

Jake is a thinker and he reasons things out.  He likes to be prepared.  And even though Milo is comparitively our "spontaneous frat boy"... He also is a thinker, and a dreamer. 

"You are not quite right" is what I've heard in response to the explanation that this first wake was a "dry run" for Jake.  He will have to see some people he loves in coffins in the coming years and decades and this was his first.  I'm sure we will have follow up conversations and clarifications, but he came through the event without a flinch or twitch or question.  This was just an experience to him.  Not positive.  Not negative.  Not even that big of a deal.  Just something to stash away in his mental filing cabinet.

My working theory is sometimes (maybe) the sheltering and protecting that we do for kids is unnecessary. Sometimes (maybe) that "protecting" contributes to anxiety and unsettled emotions.  (Emotions like, "What if I am not good enough? What if I can't handle all that I am asked to handle?") Trying to pad the sharp corners of the world isn't what I want to accomplish as a parent.  Life is full of struggle and sadness, disappointment and grief.  Our job is to teach them how to deal with downsides, show them that they can handle uncomfortable situations.  Create a time and space where they can safely learn to be vulnerable and successful in struggle.  I kind of believe that is the only way to fully appreciate joy and love.

Uncle George's wake was the perfect opportunity for Jake to see death. To see a body that was without it's spirit. Someone that he didn't know. An event that had no personal sadness or confusion attached to it.  He observed a portion of the ritual without experiencing the associated loss/discomfort.

And when a kid that cries in the morning trying to decide what pants to wear (because he sometimes has trouble making decisions). When that kid tells me he wants to put on a tie and come with me to a wake, I'll go ahead and take him at his word.  I won't tell him he can't handle it.  I will stand next to him and let him see one way death can look.  Because I trust Jake.  Even at this young age, he is so trustworthy.

And I trust myself.  I know if we stumble into a room or situation that upsets him, I will be able to talk him through that discomfort.  I know Katy will always help me with that.  I know she and I will resist the urge to remove painful obstacles so that our boys can learn to overcome difficulties (at least a bit) on their own.  It won't always be easy.  Sometimes we will fail by doing too much for them and protecting them too vigilantly and either forgetting to let them struggle or losing our steel when confronted by the reality of their discomfort.  But we're lucky...

These boys already have the minds and hearts of strong, wise men.  I'm so proud of them.

Pre-Election RANT... UPDATED

Every time a friend on FB "likes" Mitt Romney, I have to resist the exceedingly strong urge to DE-Fucking-Friend... and I have to sit on my hands not to write an expletive-laced response

I have a lot to say about Obama and why I think he is the right leader for the country, but in this moment, I'm not in a pro-Obama space or even an anti-Mitt space as much as I'm in a How do you stay close to people who claim to like or love you, but vote against your basic human rights?!?

I agree with Doug Wright:
"I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest. They all say they're voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights. Fine. Then look me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, 'My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights, the sanctity of your marriage, your right to visit an ailing spouse in the hospital, your dignity as a citizen of this country, your healthcare, your right to inherit, the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.' It's like voting for George Wallace during the Civil Rights movements, and apologizing for his racism. You're still complicit. You're still perpetuating anti-gay legislation and cultural homophobia. You don't get to walk away clean, because you say you "disagree" with your candidate on these issues."

I would only add:
It's not close. It's not even close. These candidates are no where near each other on how they intend to treat my family if elected. It isn't abstract. It's very personal to me. With the brush of a pen, he could* reverse the incredible protections Obama has put into place for families like ours. (*Not only COULD but has promised to). Vote for Mitt if you need to, but while you are doing it, remember you are casting a sure vote against Katy and me. Whether it's for your pocketbook, your contempt of unions or environmentalists, your "pro-business" stance, your belief that the deficit will be reduced faster or the employment rate will improve quicker, or that you think we will somehow be viewed as
Stronger throughout the world... There is NO DOUBT that gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans are better off (by a COUNTRY MILE) than they were four years ago. So, it's true, I do sort of wish my "fair minded" Republican friends would read up on this issue and just be honest: "Look, I know this guy wants to fuck with you and your newly won civil-rights, but I don't really care about that. I doubt very much you'll stop being friends with me just because I cast votes for people that vow to De-legitimize your family and legal marriage; it's frankly a risk I'm willing to take."

UPDATED RANT:  I went 9 rounds with a dude on a FB thread after one of my friends re-posted my above rant...  Each time I responded, I said to myself: "That is all, I'm not going to respond again." But I couldn't help myself. And in the end, I decided I just couldn't let him have the last word...
It's a little immature, but yeah, that's the space I was in. Enjoy!

How to honor the dead

I've been following this blog.  WARNING! DO NOT CLICK LINK if you are not in the right frame of mind to read about a five year old with Cancer.  Ty Louis Campbell was born 6 days after our Jake was born.  He lived in another state. We've never met him, and I've only been reading his family's blog for less than 2 weeks. He's been sick with a brain tumor for 2 years.  His family nicknamed him "Super Ty".  And today, he died.

October 17th...

Fifteen years ago today, one of my kindred spirits died.  We were 24 years old when John died.  I've known and loved him since my senior year in HS; and we spent some intense "coming of age" time  in those tender "late teenage/ early 20's" years together...  He's been dead more than twice as long as I knew him as a living soul, but I'd be a liar if I told you I wasn't all messed up about it today.  I think about John every day, but I spent a lot of today beating myself up, and just being sad.  It's just fucking sad that he had to STOP while the rest of us had to keep going and fill the place in the garden where he was growing up near us.

Today, I'm 39 and 1/3 years old and the promise of FORTY looms over me like a laughing ogre.   I really buy into that stuff about people are only as old as we feel or act; but truth be told-

I'm feeling old.

October 17th usually does that to me.  And Stories of kids dying has a similar effect. But it's not just psychological:

My body is creaking... My gray hair is growing in, my abdomen is full and flabby.  My memory is showing signs of fragility.  I've spent a lot of exhausting effort- keeping survivor's guilt at bay, trying to be sure I did a little more than I might have otherwise in the name of he-who-is-no-longer-with-us.  (I'm not sure I've succeeded.)

I spent the early years after John's accident working hard to be sure I did not seal off my heart.  And I still do a lot of meditating on settling into and celebrating the hardships and sometimes disappointments associated with "growing up" and aging.

Feeling the weight and simultaneous levity of every birthday is intentional.  I will not lie about my age.  I will not regret this ticking off of the years.  "I've earned these gray hairs," I like to quip.  And "Not everyone gets to be this age," I repeat at least annually.

John B. Klimaszewski was about as brimming with life as a body could be.  He was about as energetic and full of possibility as any of us has a chance of being.  He was completely human, prone to making mistakes of all sizes.  But with a smile and compassion and generous spirit that makes you want to whimper about only the good dying young.  To be fair, alcohol seems to also play a role in many pre-mature deaths.  But I digress...  I use his full name here because he died in 1997, before Facebook, before Google, before the internet was useful or organized.

If you die when you're a child, or even a young man- how can all that potential be lost???  What happens to it?  What happens to all that people wished for you?!?

If you die before Facebook or Twitter, or even Google existed, did you exist at all? Where is the public record.  Newspapers and stacks of town hall documents are not being transferred to the internet, they are crumbling apart in soon to be extinct metal filing cabinets.

There is the philosophical and there is the emotional.

My heart has broken right open for Super Ty, for his parents and brother... Their story has effected me profoundly.  What will they do now?  How will they handle their grief?  Will they be okay?  My heart still aches for John.  All these years later- what I wouldn't give to be retweeting his hilarious tweets and harassing him via text right now... Comparing notes and stories about our children.

I've been shy about putting posts up about John on this blog- not because there's a huge volume of things I want to write about him, necessarily, but  because it somehow doesn't seem to be "MY" story to tell anymore.  My story contains a different cast of characters.  And I'm not sure whose permission to ask to keep telling John's story (or at least the part of his story that I am privy to).

But I guess at this late stage in the game, I'm happy to have that conversation/debate if someone comes out of the woodwork and says I can't talk about him.  I am desperate for stories about him to be told.  No matter what you believe related to an after life, it seems to me that you can only exist here- in the world- if there is a shared understanding of you- If you stay alive in the memories of others.  If the stories about you are told.

I went into my basement... to look for pictures... of him... And found the most amazing thing- a love letter from my wife.  It was written just after we had first fallen for each other.  Her love: sweet and exuberant and described to me in generous, flowery, metaphorical detail; in her own lovely handwriting.
- Way before we imagined how children would enrich our life and exhaust us and deepen our love for each other.
- Way before we could comprehend the hard work required of us by marriage.
- Way before we learned to rely on each other's strengths and encouragement.

I think it's okay to spend a bit of time wallowing in grief as long as you try not to get lost in it.  I think the most important thing we can do for our dead is to acknowledge them, bring them with us, (sometimes slap their pictures up on the internet and tell a few stories about them) while we carrythefuckon... 

RIP Super Ty
RIP Johnny K

I love you Jake and Milo.
I love you, Katy

Baby boy turns 5

We've had a very interesting week that has involved 2 separate trips to the ER for stitches to Milo's face. Everybody is fine (if a little tired) and our babies are troopers!

September is a busy month and I have a lot of stories to tell, but can't... stay... awake... right... now... We are so lucky and have so many reasons to celebrate. 

And we have amazing friends and family...

"Live in the layers, not on the litter"

Transitions have never been my strong suit.

I'm not sure transitions are anyone's strong suit, but I'm particularly bad at them.  When the ground starts to shift underneath me my anxiety quietly but insistently fills in the cracks, expands itself, and eventually threatens to break me apart.  I am particularly adept at ignoring it, and then, when it demands my attention, I shape it into something less than it is.  The reshaping is an attempt to make it less damaging, less severe.  It never works.  Change is not a thing to be denied.  As summer folds into fall, and kids begin school, and birthdays and anniversaries abound, and Yom Kippur approaches, I feel the shift acutely.

We have had a stretch of quintessential fall days of late.  Cool, crisp, clean air dominates.  Pearly light adorns the trees in the morning and again in the evening, the two getting ever closer together.  The evening sky turns that shade of blue with glints of gold, a color reserved, it seems, for this weather, at this time of year.  I love this weather, even as I wistfully admit that the oppressive heat of summer is mostly gone for the time being.  My bones feel alive in the summer.  Every year as I wait excitedly for that blast of hot, insistent, humid air, I can feel the pores of my bones open expectantly.  There is one bar in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata that, after pages of minor key solemnity, shifts into a major key.  That one bar explains everything: a lightening, a weightlessness, a freedom.  By the same token, the cool air that seeps in as the seasons change feels almost threatening.  Or at least that's how my body reacts: protect, gird, prevent.  I can feel my body involuntarily try to buck the change, as if digging in my heels would somehow make a difference. But the coolness always comes, chasing away the heat like an old cantankerous lady with a broom on a cabin porch.  I guess I should be thankful for the warning of fall before the winter exerts its more weighty smack down on me, but I still shudder at the thought of that lady's broom.  Even so, during these cooler days, I am reminded to shift, to settle back in, and begin again.

Fall seems to be the time when things get organized.  And, Lord knows, I love organization.  I like predictability.  I like schedules.  I like to know ahead of time what's about to happen.  It's a set up, of course, because life isn't like that.  By allowing myself to depend on organization I set myself up for the fall.  Sometimes it's just a misstep, sometimes it's like jumping out of the plane without a parachute.  In my very literal, photographic-memory laden brain, I imagine there to be scaffolding all around me.  Every branch of it at perfect right angles, and me, like a monkey, swinging from one to another, always sure of where my fingers should land.  I've built that scaffolding with care for years, rung by rung.

There have been two themes that have been unavoidable the last few days.  They seem to be lurking in broad daylight for me recently.  The first is of naming.  Or, to be more precise, un-naming.  It was the topic of Margaret Edson's keynote address at Power Day (a workshop for nursing and medical students at Yale where the students start to think about what power means in health care) last week.  She is a graduate of Smith College, which endears her to me without hesitation.  What makes her indelible is her personality, her command of words, and her wit.  I write that chuckling because she is the author, of course, of Wit, a Pulitzer Prize winning play, and the reading used for Power Day.  It is an amazing work, one that never fails to unhinge me at the end.  I've read it countless times, and the ending, even though I know full well what's coming, makes me tremble each and every time.  In her address she talked about what it would be like to lose a name.  My immediate reaction, from somewhere deep in my hippie-raised heart, was "Absolutely! What a great idea!"  That enthusiasm lasted about four seconds before I was reflexively grasping for the monkey bars.  What would it mean to not walk out of my house each morning as a mother? a nurse? a wife? a woman? Katy?

Not two days later, Jan Nielsen, senior minister at our church, delivered a jolting sermon using the story of Jacob as a way of approaching atonement for Yom Kippur.  She talked about Jacob wrestling with a man who, by the end of the night, un-names him, and in doing so, frees him from his past of misdeeds and destruction.  She posited that becoming your best self is, at best, a work in progress.  For. Ever.  I groan internally at the thought.  Forever seems like a long time to be comfortable with change.  How many names does one have to lose, exactly?

The second theme that lurks is from Ray Bradbury's All Summer in a Day.  The title itself makes me shudder.  It is the story of the sun, being present for only one hour every so many years, and what happens when you miss it.  It has been referenced in the last two books in a row that I've read.  In both, the theme of that story underscores the narrators worry that happiness is but a fleeting moment, and the opportunity frail.  It's a well placed reference in both, making both stories more acutely devastating in a "don't let this slip away" kind of way.  Like I need help feeling more claustrophobic.

These two themes have been kicking around in my head as I try to figure out where they'll settle in to my being.  This idea that there might not be an absolute, that the names and scaffolding might not be real, unnerves me.  For better or for worse, I am sometimes so literal I actually hurt myself rolling my own eyes.  Never mind the times (frequent) that my fingers slip.  Or get blisters.  Or just miss the bar completely.  I still trust in that framework, and could actually name the bars if asked.  But I think that what the transition of fall, and the naming, and the Ray Bradbury story have been suggesting to me is that perhaps it's in the spaces between the bars that the good stuff resides.  My heart rate increases just thinking about it, but maybe the falling is where the real living happens.  And maybe the bars won't look the same after you let go.  Maybe some things you lose when you let go.  But maybe the sun in those spaces is so bright, so bone-warming, that it's worth the chance.

I'm not sure I will ever convince my body not to fight the coming cold.  I certainly never expect to be fully accepting of transition.  But maybe in these two ideas I can start to remove a finger or two from the rungs, or lose a name, or even (gasp!) be comfortable in uncertainty.  It's daunting to consider, but maybe it's worth the risk.


Reading:
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

Song list:
Words Fail You by Kris Delmhorst

Baby boy turns 3

We are just about 2 hours short of the exact birthday time... a birth story that was elooooooooongated and bloody and nothing short of miraculous for the work that my wife did and the stupendous outcome. He didn't seem to want to come out at all- but then once he got here, Milo broke all our hearts wide open.

I promise, little boy, we will write a newsletter for you soon, but know that we celebrate you EVERY day- your smile and humor, your charm and musicality, your "tiny dog" spirit. Your spectacular hair.

Happy, Happy, Happy birthday!

Mommy and Mama