As I sit staring out my kitchen window, the world is blanketed in pure, glistening white. Seven inches fell two nights ago. Seven inches of snow near the 21st of March, one day after celebrating Spring Equinox. The beauty and stillness of snow is lauded: framed in poems, background to poignant classical melodies, a sign of foreshadowing in mystery novels. But there are two sides to every snow story.
Two snow days are called, meaning no school or school-based activities. Hence, two days of lost wages, but two days to fill with memories or feel nature's pain. When my daughter was young, and later a teenager, our yearly snow vacation brought joy...the chance to remain in the womb of home, the chance with a friend to build snow people and the Tower of Mordor with the roving eye. I loved snow then, but slowly, I have come to enjoy its glory less and less.
This storm brings destruction: up to a thousand trees lose their lives. The first afternoon, I carefully make my way through the semi-cleared, semi-slick streets. I discover it is best to walk in the middle of the street. Snow's advantage is keeping cars parked in driveways. My heart is wrenched as I view the neighborhood's flowering plum trees. The weight of the snow has broken branches, split trunks, felled whole trees. It is these blossoming creatures which herald the coming of spring's brightness and the thawing of winter's gloom. It is biting cold as I pull down my hat, put my gloved hands in my coat pockets and stamp the snow from my rain boots. But the trees keep whispering to me and I keep walking. Farther up the block these trees are safe. I sigh relief.
I named my daughter, Aspen, after a tree. It was not a “hippie” choice, but an unconscious, dare I say spiritual, nudge. I was minding my own business, meditating under a grove of Aspens, when a soft voice spoke: “And her name shall be Aspen.” This was fourteen years before I would give birth to my tall, slender and strong like a tree beauty. The world has continually been a marvelous mystery to me and my daughter's arrival and growing up has been the most incredible miracle of all.
Over eight thousand people in and around Eugene are without power (some for several days) due to this storm. The snow caused a huge limb from one of our giant backyard cedars to fall upon our electrical service line. This pulled our electrical pole down parallel to our deck, ripping the whole fascia and gutter off of the back of the house. But we are lucky. We never lose power except for a few hours while a new pole is being put in. And in a few weeks we will have new gutters. I bow in awe and gratitude to nature's powers. I cannot fully breathe unless I am outside to observe her surrounding gifts, but I know she is not continually giving. She also takes. I think of Katrina. I think of Haiti. I think of -- What we are experiencing here in Oregon is but a minor nuisance.
Snow unites us. Everywhere I go, all over the Internet, people are talking about the storm. Everyone has their story from the grocery clerk to the neighborhood preschool owner. She tells me how the storm gives a young Haitian adoptee a recurrence of earthquake trauma. His pain is real and the skilled preschool teacher leads him back to the safety of his present time. His story reminds me in my life thus far how safe I am and to remember to help those who are not. A friend huddles with her dogs by her wood stove waiting for her lights and heat to be turned back on. She lives on several acres out by Fern Ridge Reservoir and tells of hearing the crack and groan of the trees throughout the night. Neighbors walk over to comfort and be with her. Her story speaks of how comfort and communication come in many forms.
Trees have fallen across highways; trees have fallen upon a few cars. Is nature telling us to wake up, to be more caring and compassionate about our environment, about each other? I know we have no control over the weather, but we do have control over how we treat our air, our soil, our plants, our animals, this precious mother earth we have been loaned for our living.
Our complaints here in Oregon of this spring snow's inconvenience are hallow compared with the current world's human on human destruction. Though I am deeply saddened by the loss of our trees, I continue to be devastated by our irrational, ongoing, ever recurring turn to wars as the solutions to our political and greed induced problems. But perhaps I am slipping and sliding off into another universe of thought.
As I return home from my walk, passing the blossomed branches piled high, passing the blooms blowing down the streets, I breathe in the cleaner, warmer air and notice the liquid flowing pavement. Over the next few days with the melting of the snow, spring returns and turns on her charm. Daffodils have survived; newly planted peas and over winter broccoli reach for the sun. Soon it is as if this snow storm has never been.
I am winding up my home teaching, getting ready for spring break and a visit from my college daughter. But this snow story holds on a little longer. My neighbor repairs his front camellia bush, but decides to cut down another blossoming camellia which I see every morning out my side window. Last year he took down a cherry tree because the neighbor on the other side complained about the falling pits and squashed cherries carried by the birds. I looked to this flowering tree as one of my heralds of spring. My husband says I am a Druid, and I take this as a compliment. I will miss the camellia; I will miss the flowering plums; I miss my neighbor's cherry tree.
I know I am supposed to accept change; I know I am suppose to accept the stark realities of this modern world: the devastating realities of unexpected climatic events and the brutal realities of deliberate human destruction. But I am having a difficult time. Snow is both a beautiful, miraculous phenomenon and a dangerous, slippery precipice. How true of my walk through life. I seem to eternally be caught between joyous, childlike excitement and serious, grown up contemplation. And sometimes the two even melt into one glorious appreciation of being alive, being the overly sensitive woman I am at this time and in this place.
© 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Domestic Bliss
“I fear oblivion,” states Augustus Waters in my new favorite book by John Green, The Fault in Our Stars. What I fear is meaninglessness. Last week after I washed a load of laundry and put it in the dryer, I discovered that our dear dryer wasn't drying. I could hear a whirling noise when I pushed the ON button, but the tumbler wasn't tumbling. Being gender-traditional as far as fixing mechanical things goes, I deferred to my husband Dan, who immediately guessed he would have to replace the belt. So when the weekend arrived and with a new belt secured, Dan started in on this current “home project.” Our weekends are often devoted to grocery shopping, errands and general puttering. In the middle of doing such activities I feel blissfully peaceful, but afterwards, I sometimes wonder where the time went.
The wet clothes in the washer were ripening, so during the week our neighbors were generous enough to let us use their dryer. The old fashioned custom of borrowing a cup of sugar comes to mind and this is, I believe, what builds closer ties and community. Knowing Dan's home projects inevitably take longer than expected, I turned to a bit of spring cleaning and then later worked the ground-cover clover into my raised beds. I also spent a ridiculous amount of time surfing John Green and his brother Hank's video/blog site: www.youtube.vlogbrothers.com. Besides being a teacher of adolescents, I am one of those over-sixty people who enjoys keeping a finger on the pulse of our youth, our future adult generation.
Sitting at the kitchen table, viewing my lap top screen, I feel a hum circulating through our house. It is the hum of simply being in the moment contentment. The light intermittently with the darkening rain flickers through our many windows, our aging dog Lacey breathes loudly lying on the living room rug and my adorable cat, Lissa, slumbers on the kitchen table near my keyboard. Then I hear the scraping and clanking of metal and the releasing of curse words coming from our “mud room.” Dan has the dryer away from its back wall and its parts strewn on the floor like a gutted animal. He is a very methodical handyman, researching each task with step-by-step instructions through the Internet, though often it requires several “takes” to get it right. And this becomes true for the dryer procedure.
I want to help, so I close out YouTube, grab the small brush and dustpan and crawl/squeeze behind the dryer to clean out the dust bunnies and wash the floor and wall grime . Dan has figured out what he has been doing wrong and I feel happily blessed to be by his side doing something useful. Most often when he is undertaking a “home project” I leave him alone to groan and grunt. But then there are these “magical” times when we work side by side and the repair puzzle all comes together as if it is meant to be and we are meant to be.
Home is where the heart is and my heart is my home. Lately, cleaning has become less of a chore for me and more of a purifying ritual. Dan struggles to stretch the belt, but finally gets it on just as I finish up my scrubbing. For the fun of it, after getting a cheap lunch out, we decide to peruse new washers and dryers. I add up the years and realize we bought our used washer twenty-eight years ago from a high school kid repairing washers on the side in his garage. And this is only the second used dryer we have had in as many years. We try not to be consumers but we have been slowly and steadily remaking our empty nest with new furniture, fixtures and drapes. Maybe it is time to purchase a new washer/dryer set for the mud room. But now that the dryer is fixed, we almost gleefully want to see how long it will last.
After oohing and aahing in the Maytag store, we head to our local Jerry's home improvement store. Don't ask me why, but I love roaming these nuts and bolts store aisles with Dan. I even love when we go to the outside yard for our project lumber. I know it's mundane, but clothes, garden or food shopping, looking, gathering construction materials, having lunch, dreaming, conversing are all tasks bringing me joy when I am with Dan.
What I realized that Saturday and have always known, is my relationship with Dan has never been trivial. He keeps my heart pounding loudly and no matter what we do together it turns out to be the most meaningful moments I could ever undertake with someone. We have had our obstacles; we have had our challenges. Over the years we have taken ourselves apart and put ourselves back together again; we have replaced belts; we have continued to fix the leaks. Our relationship hasn't always been blissful, but we have no desire for a newer model. Like our washer and dryer we joyfully want to see how long we will last. And with over thirty years in, I think we're going to make it another thirty at least.
© 2012
The wet clothes in the washer were ripening, so during the week our neighbors were generous enough to let us use their dryer. The old fashioned custom of borrowing a cup of sugar comes to mind and this is, I believe, what builds closer ties and community. Knowing Dan's home projects inevitably take longer than expected, I turned to a bit of spring cleaning and then later worked the ground-cover clover into my raised beds. I also spent a ridiculous amount of time surfing John Green and his brother Hank's video/blog site: www.youtube.vlogbrothers.com. Besides being a teacher of adolescents, I am one of those over-sixty people who enjoys keeping a finger on the pulse of our youth, our future adult generation.
Sitting at the kitchen table, viewing my lap top screen, I feel a hum circulating through our house. It is the hum of simply being in the moment contentment. The light intermittently with the darkening rain flickers through our many windows, our aging dog Lacey breathes loudly lying on the living room rug and my adorable cat, Lissa, slumbers on the kitchen table near my keyboard. Then I hear the scraping and clanking of metal and the releasing of curse words coming from our “mud room.” Dan has the dryer away from its back wall and its parts strewn on the floor like a gutted animal. He is a very methodical handyman, researching each task with step-by-step instructions through the Internet, though often it requires several “takes” to get it right. And this becomes true for the dryer procedure.
I want to help, so I close out YouTube, grab the small brush and dustpan and crawl/squeeze behind the dryer to clean out the dust bunnies and wash the floor and wall grime . Dan has figured out what he has been doing wrong and I feel happily blessed to be by his side doing something useful. Most often when he is undertaking a “home project” I leave him alone to groan and grunt. But then there are these “magical” times when we work side by side and the repair puzzle all comes together as if it is meant to be and we are meant to be.
Home is where the heart is and my heart is my home. Lately, cleaning has become less of a chore for me and more of a purifying ritual. Dan struggles to stretch the belt, but finally gets it on just as I finish up my scrubbing. For the fun of it, after getting a cheap lunch out, we decide to peruse new washers and dryers. I add up the years and realize we bought our used washer twenty-eight years ago from a high school kid repairing washers on the side in his garage. And this is only the second used dryer we have had in as many years. We try not to be consumers but we have been slowly and steadily remaking our empty nest with new furniture, fixtures and drapes. Maybe it is time to purchase a new washer/dryer set for the mud room. But now that the dryer is fixed, we almost gleefully want to see how long it will last.
After oohing and aahing in the Maytag store, we head to our local Jerry's home improvement store. Don't ask me why, but I love roaming these nuts and bolts store aisles with Dan. I even love when we go to the outside yard for our project lumber. I know it's mundane, but clothes, garden or food shopping, looking, gathering construction materials, having lunch, dreaming, conversing are all tasks bringing me joy when I am with Dan.
What I realized that Saturday and have always known, is my relationship with Dan has never been trivial. He keeps my heart pounding loudly and no matter what we do together it turns out to be the most meaningful moments I could ever undertake with someone. We have had our obstacles; we have had our challenges. Over the years we have taken ourselves apart and put ourselves back together again; we have replaced belts; we have continued to fix the leaks. Our relationship hasn't always been blissful, but we have no desire for a newer model. Like our washer and dryer we joyfully want to see how long we will last. And with over thirty years in, I think we're going to make it another thirty at least.
© 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
From My Journal: Seeing and Being Seen
March 2, 2012: “The universe wants to be noticed.” (The Fault in Our Stars)
The lessons of seeing keep being in the forefront these past few weeks. I decide to check out new frames before my eye appointment this coming Monday morning. I park at my usual spot near the Bijou Theater and walk to Rainbow Optics. I hear the echo of John Green's words about seeing the universe as I stroll the sidewalks. The air is clean, the sun is desperately trying to break through the cloud cover, young college students are striding more swiftly than I to their classes or sitting with that last minute cup of coffee. But then, there at the corner up ahead is a short in statue, older, silver haired woman in this luscious purple jacket. I am not the only senior citizen who loves coming to the university area. I pass her by and head into Rainbow Optics.
I have the whole place to myself and this super young gal, Brittany, ingratiates herself by offering to assist me. She is overly eager in her helping and she finally leaves while I try on pair after pair of glasses. She has steered me to the value section after she mentions the $200 and above cost of the designer frames. While I'm trying on frames, I see once again how much I have aged. I never feel as old as I look until I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. It seems that every mirror outside my own home makes me look twice as old.
I know how petty, how meaningless it is to spend so much time trying to find a pair of glasses that will “make me appear” a certain way. I think I want to recreate myself. This time it's into “the intellectual” who for years I have tried to spurn. But since participating in the University's Insight Seminars and since creating a “culture club” with a few women I have met there, I know that being intelligent has been part of my make-up my whole life. I had to veer away from it after graduate school because I needed to balance the rational, the mind, with the emotional and the passionate. It took the raising of dear daughter Aspen to bring me that balance. And with the return to the empty nest, I am returning to my deep love of learning and seeing the universe!
I spend nearly an hour trying to choose three frames that Brittany says I can take home before making my final decision. How vain I am when I consider I rarely wear my glasses in the public world, though now that I think about it, I do carry my glasses everywhere. I can't read fine print anymore without them and so perhaps I need to revise the above statement. I do wear my glasses to read menus, to attend lectures, to read handouts, to teach, etc. But really why do I continue to worry about what I look like? John Green says, “We also want the universe to notice us.” And so I do. But I want to be noticed for my writing, my teaching, my compassion, my conversation, my ideas. I suppose our outer appearance is our first window to the world. People don't see our insides until later and some people never see our insides, the whole of who we are. Seeing takes on many forms.
I'm striding back down the sidewalk towards my car and the sun is brighter and I wish I had another errand to do. I could stop for coffee but lately I've been drinking way too much coffee. I continue walking, wondering why I allow so many gaps of time in my life when time is fast running out. Maybe the gaps aren't gaps but open spaces where deeper vision is possible. The mind clutters our seeing. I know this because I can be outside walking and not remember the scenery I have barely passed by. I shake my head and discover I have been walking around inside my brain instead. So having no goal, not necessarily being productive, can be a good thing if the eyes are wide and taking in the surrounding natural landscape and its inhabitants.
I realize another reason for “remaking” myself is because I am tired of the lonely me, the missing my daughter me. I have this whole other life even if I do get up every morning and make breakfast for one. There are more women in my life than ever before and I have recently come to acknowledge that I don't have to accept every woman who comes into my life as a friend. I can pick the ones who bring me joy, who acknowledge me as a valuable person to know, who get me and see me. The creation of the culture group has given me this resolve. Already I feel more excited and inspired by these stimulating, well-rounded, aging-gracefully women than many of my previous relationships.
How I wish I could erase my self-conscious nature. This directly connects to viewing myself in mirrors, worrying about how others see me on the outside and being nervous about the words that flow from my inside. I am socially adept with strangers, less so with the people I care or want to care about. I reach my car and climb into the driver's seat. It is a quick trip home. Lacey our dog is waiting for me and is ready to go out into the backyard. I know in my heart that for all my social nervousness, I can only be myself. And whether this self gets me into trouble or not is simply part of the process of living my life. I admit I do want the universe to see me. But first I have to see me. I have to see I am who I am and that I am a continual work in progress. I don't want to stagnate, but I don't want to make myself over into something I am not. My passionate heart beats steadily, my over alert mind thinks profusely, my written words continue to strive for a clear and renewable vision.
© 2012
The lessons of seeing keep being in the forefront these past few weeks. I decide to check out new frames before my eye appointment this coming Monday morning. I park at my usual spot near the Bijou Theater and walk to Rainbow Optics. I hear the echo of John Green's words about seeing the universe as I stroll the sidewalks. The air is clean, the sun is desperately trying to break through the cloud cover, young college students are striding more swiftly than I to their classes or sitting with that last minute cup of coffee. But then, there at the corner up ahead is a short in statue, older, silver haired woman in this luscious purple jacket. I am not the only senior citizen who loves coming to the university area. I pass her by and head into Rainbow Optics.
I have the whole place to myself and this super young gal, Brittany, ingratiates herself by offering to assist me. She is overly eager in her helping and she finally leaves while I try on pair after pair of glasses. She has steered me to the value section after she mentions the $200 and above cost of the designer frames. While I'm trying on frames, I see once again how much I have aged. I never feel as old as I look until I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. It seems that every mirror outside my own home makes me look twice as old.
I know how petty, how meaningless it is to spend so much time trying to find a pair of glasses that will “make me appear” a certain way. I think I want to recreate myself. This time it's into “the intellectual” who for years I have tried to spurn. But since participating in the University's Insight Seminars and since creating a “culture club” with a few women I have met there, I know that being intelligent has been part of my make-up my whole life. I had to veer away from it after graduate school because I needed to balance the rational, the mind, with the emotional and the passionate. It took the raising of dear daughter Aspen to bring me that balance. And with the return to the empty nest, I am returning to my deep love of learning and seeing the universe!
I spend nearly an hour trying to choose three frames that Brittany says I can take home before making my final decision. How vain I am when I consider I rarely wear my glasses in the public world, though now that I think about it, I do carry my glasses everywhere. I can't read fine print anymore without them and so perhaps I need to revise the above statement. I do wear my glasses to read menus, to attend lectures, to read handouts, to teach, etc. But really why do I continue to worry about what I look like? John Green says, “We also want the universe to notice us.” And so I do. But I want to be noticed for my writing, my teaching, my compassion, my conversation, my ideas. I suppose our outer appearance is our first window to the world. People don't see our insides until later and some people never see our insides, the whole of who we are. Seeing takes on many forms.
I'm striding back down the sidewalk towards my car and the sun is brighter and I wish I had another errand to do. I could stop for coffee but lately I've been drinking way too much coffee. I continue walking, wondering why I allow so many gaps of time in my life when time is fast running out. Maybe the gaps aren't gaps but open spaces where deeper vision is possible. The mind clutters our seeing. I know this because I can be outside walking and not remember the scenery I have barely passed by. I shake my head and discover I have been walking around inside my brain instead. So having no goal, not necessarily being productive, can be a good thing if the eyes are wide and taking in the surrounding natural landscape and its inhabitants.
I realize another reason for “remaking” myself is because I am tired of the lonely me, the missing my daughter me. I have this whole other life even if I do get up every morning and make breakfast for one. There are more women in my life than ever before and I have recently come to acknowledge that I don't have to accept every woman who comes into my life as a friend. I can pick the ones who bring me joy, who acknowledge me as a valuable person to know, who get me and see me. The creation of the culture group has given me this resolve. Already I feel more excited and inspired by these stimulating, well-rounded, aging-gracefully women than many of my previous relationships.
How I wish I could erase my self-conscious nature. This directly connects to viewing myself in mirrors, worrying about how others see me on the outside and being nervous about the words that flow from my inside. I am socially adept with strangers, less so with the people I care or want to care about. I reach my car and climb into the driver's seat. It is a quick trip home. Lacey our dog is waiting for me and is ready to go out into the backyard. I know in my heart that for all my social nervousness, I can only be myself. And whether this self gets me into trouble or not is simply part of the process of living my life. I admit I do want the universe to see me. But first I have to see me. I have to see I am who I am and that I am a continual work in progress. I don't want to stagnate, but I don't want to make myself over into something I am not. My passionate heart beats steadily, my over alert mind thinks profusely, my written words continue to strive for a clear and renewable vision.
© 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Insight
I am in a restaurant, dining with friends, prior to us all attending the ballet. My eyes become mesmerized by, then squint and flicker with the table's overly bright hanging light. Suddenly there appears a spider like web of black strands in my left eye. Wearing mascara for the first time in years, I think I have gotten some of it in this eye. I brush and rub it lightly. The web remains. I eat and try to ignore my discomfort. Later sitting in our seats, awaiting the ballet performance to begin, I tell my husband about my eye. He encourages me to relax.
When I get home, I pour water in my eye and try to rinse the blackness out. Nothing works, and my anxiety-prone brain kicks in. I treasure my sight...doesn't everyone? But I mean I truly treasure my vision because I love seeing the tallness and greenness of trees, the expanse and blueness of the ocean, the faces of my family and friends, the shoots of flowers peeping through the earth telling me winter will pass. And I love words: both reading them and writing them. How can I describe where I would be without my sight?
I get through the night. My husband goes onto the Internet (our portable encyclopedia and general wonk machine) and we decide what is happening is a phenomenon called “Floaters.” Supposedly, the eye gets dry behind the lens and small fragments of matter can break loose and wander around in the eye. I don't want to be like my mother who in her later years did nothing but talk about her ailments and so I stuff my complaints and concerns. Will this thing last forever? I try to ignore what can't be ignored and decide I'll make an appointment with my optometrist first thing in the morning. Simultaneously, my mind starts going to: what can I learn from this experience?
My optometrist thinks I have been in a fairy world, because I have never heard of “floaters” before. I tell him this makes me feel old, for it is said floaters can be connected to the “aging” of the eyes. But he assures me that every month people in their thirties and forties come in with these concerns, and this benign artistic eye patch usually works itself out in a matter of weeks.
After my exam, I begin to breathe again, and walk down the street wearing sunglasses to temper my blurry, dilated vision. Even with shades on, the world is clearer and brighter and more colorful. With each step, I mumble a repetitive mantra, reminding myself to give thanks for my daily living and seeing. I am in a fog as I teach my students and focus/listen more to what they say. Especially as we humans age, there is always a tendency to become self-absorbed with the “problems” or “obstacles” given and though I only mention my floaters to one student and her grandmother, I intuitively know there are a thousand lessons of “insight” coming my way.
The grandmother tells me about her macular degeneration and my student, whose mother translates books into braille for the blind, tells me about a young elementary kid who is losing his ability to see colors. We nod and acknowledge how difficult it would be to live in a colorless world.
Over the next few weeks I shy away from my usual voracious reading and writing. Am I being encouraged to turn my vision from the outer to the inner realms? To rest my eyes from their narrow outward viewing?
What I have been noticing with my blocked vision is this: everyone appears to be here with a passion or a reason...to draw, to write, to dance, to sing, to mother, to teach, to repair, to create, to be of service. Of course, many of us have a number of these reasons for being. But sometimes we forget these passions/reasons, or at least we think we forget: we stumble, we fall and we scrape ourselves trying to scramble back up to the mountain top where the panorama encompasses our whole world and we finally know what we are supposed be doing.
I have been stumbling. I tend to stumble a lot, of late. I have been allowing the past to pull me backwards for far too long. Once upon a time I was a mother, and my mothering seemed like enough of a reason for being. But it's finally becoming clear to me that this was only a stepping stone. If I have this tendency to melodramatically (for I am a Leo after all) look into a sad, daughterless future, then I must remind myself how the future is only my imaginings and hasn't happened and needed happen so.
I find that when I focus my eyes in a certain way, the floaters disappear. And then I can see clearly what's in front of me. This present, this near vision is all I have to worry about. Each pearl of clarity brings me closer to the object I am trying to see and allows me to understand what my world is all about. These pearls are all that matter...not the past, not the future. Sometimes it is best not to see too much all at once. Sometimes it's best to close and rest one's eyes, to cuddle under the covers of darkness and to simply be with one self and to understand as Virginia Woolf did, that these given insights, “moments of being” are enough.
© 2012
When I get home, I pour water in my eye and try to rinse the blackness out. Nothing works, and my anxiety-prone brain kicks in. I treasure my sight...doesn't everyone? But I mean I truly treasure my vision because I love seeing the tallness and greenness of trees, the expanse and blueness of the ocean, the faces of my family and friends, the shoots of flowers peeping through the earth telling me winter will pass. And I love words: both reading them and writing them. How can I describe where I would be without my sight?
I get through the night. My husband goes onto the Internet (our portable encyclopedia and general wonk machine) and we decide what is happening is a phenomenon called “Floaters.” Supposedly, the eye gets dry behind the lens and small fragments of matter can break loose and wander around in the eye. I don't want to be like my mother who in her later years did nothing but talk about her ailments and so I stuff my complaints and concerns. Will this thing last forever? I try to ignore what can't be ignored and decide I'll make an appointment with my optometrist first thing in the morning. Simultaneously, my mind starts going to: what can I learn from this experience?
My optometrist thinks I have been in a fairy world, because I have never heard of “floaters” before. I tell him this makes me feel old, for it is said floaters can be connected to the “aging” of the eyes. But he assures me that every month people in their thirties and forties come in with these concerns, and this benign artistic eye patch usually works itself out in a matter of weeks.
After my exam, I begin to breathe again, and walk down the street wearing sunglasses to temper my blurry, dilated vision. Even with shades on, the world is clearer and brighter and more colorful. With each step, I mumble a repetitive mantra, reminding myself to give thanks for my daily living and seeing. I am in a fog as I teach my students and focus/listen more to what they say. Especially as we humans age, there is always a tendency to become self-absorbed with the “problems” or “obstacles” given and though I only mention my floaters to one student and her grandmother, I intuitively know there are a thousand lessons of “insight” coming my way.
The grandmother tells me about her macular degeneration and my student, whose mother translates books into braille for the blind, tells me about a young elementary kid who is losing his ability to see colors. We nod and acknowledge how difficult it would be to live in a colorless world.
Over the next few weeks I shy away from my usual voracious reading and writing. Am I being encouraged to turn my vision from the outer to the inner realms? To rest my eyes from their narrow outward viewing?
What I have been noticing with my blocked vision is this: everyone appears to be here with a passion or a reason...to draw, to write, to dance, to sing, to mother, to teach, to repair, to create, to be of service. Of course, many of us have a number of these reasons for being. But sometimes we forget these passions/reasons, or at least we think we forget: we stumble, we fall and we scrape ourselves trying to scramble back up to the mountain top where the panorama encompasses our whole world and we finally know what we are supposed be doing.
I have been stumbling. I tend to stumble a lot, of late. I have been allowing the past to pull me backwards for far too long. Once upon a time I was a mother, and my mothering seemed like enough of a reason for being. But it's finally becoming clear to me that this was only a stepping stone. If I have this tendency to melodramatically (for I am a Leo after all) look into a sad, daughterless future, then I must remind myself how the future is only my imaginings and hasn't happened and needed happen so.
I find that when I focus my eyes in a certain way, the floaters disappear. And then I can see clearly what's in front of me. This present, this near vision is all I have to worry about. Each pearl of clarity brings me closer to the object I am trying to see and allows me to understand what my world is all about. These pearls are all that matter...not the past, not the future. Sometimes it is best not to see too much all at once. Sometimes it's best to close and rest one's eyes, to cuddle under the covers of darkness and to simply be with one self and to understand as Virginia Woolf did, that these given insights, “moments of being” are enough.
© 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
From My Journal: Love Rules
February 10, 2012: My teen mom had “Baby Bentley” this week. I find this student to be a sweet, soulful and extremely vulnerable young woman. Naturally, when I heard of Bentley's arrival, I relished this new beginning of life, yet wondered what sort of childhood he will have. Like her own mother, my teen will be a single mom trying to make it in a world that does not especially embrace those below the hetero/family normal.
She has her mom, she has her grandparents, she has a home teacher and she has a high school ready to support her progress towards graduation. The positive of her pregnancy is that it has motivated this bright youth to put more energy into her school work. I am never sure why it takes the radical act of having a baby to nudge these drifting, at-risk adolescents towards a better education.
These teen births always bring up memories of my own daughter's birth and swift passage through childhood. A sweet pain hits my belly as I am reminded of how so many of my life passages have come and gone. I also flash forward to my Queer adult daughter who every day has to hear or see a critical allusion to why her fundamental identity, who she is, is wrong. If I want an earful of unsubstantiated statements and naïve stereotypes, all I have to do is listen to the the Republican Primary candidates. Thank goodness I can tune them out.
But a prime example of what my daughter lives through comes from a controversy closer to home. Her part-time, college supporting employment is with J.C. Penney's. They have been revamping their ad campaign, getting rid of coupons and continual “sales.” There has been one T.V. spot I absolutely love: women are screaming as they tear up expired coupons, realize they have missed sales deadlines, etc. I e-mailed my daughter that no doubt as a customer service rep she too has felt like screaming. When JCP chose Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson, I was ecstatic. I thought my daughter would be pleased, but she is a “younger Lesbian” who forgets how much Ellen has and is doing for LGBTQ causes and is colored by what she might dub, Ellen's “merely another celebrity” status.
My daughter is not “out” where she works. She does not actively hide who she is, but in all phases of her existence must she shout her difference? And who is it that labels her as different? And why? But I'm getting off the track. I love Ellen. I don't watch her daily show, but I love that she speaks freely about her marriage to Portia, her continual fight for marriage equality and non-discrimination for LGBTQ. The public glimpses of her personal life are to me statements about how similar all families and loving partnerships are. The supportive tide of marriage equality and LGBTQ rights is rising, but the haters are hanging on. With Ellen's JCP spokespersonship has come the Internet founding of a group calling themselves, “The Million Moms.” These moms are rallying to criticize JCP for their choice of Ellen, saying JCP has lost sight of their “traditional values” and urging people not to shop there.
I would not have been aware of this controversy if my daughter hadn't sent me a video clip from The Ellen Show. I'm continually scouting for good LGBTQ news to e-mail my daughter and this week is off to a running start: California's Proposition 8 (anti-marriage equality) has been declared unconstitutional and the state legislature of Washington voted to approve same-sex marriage. In response to my good news, my daughter forwarded me Ellen's public statement to her JCP critics. Ellen spoke with humor and honesty and the tears started streaming down my face (again). JCP is not backing down, and on the Million Moms' Facebook page, replies are flowing in such as “I guess I'll have to shop at JCP now.” My daughter wrote how she feels better working at a place that isn't caving in to such discrimination. And her mother feels better too.
So it's been an eventful week of birth and hope, tears and concern, where I find myself shouting out to my daughter and to others who might listen that love rules! At the end of her talk, Ellen describes herself as honest and compassionate and loving. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all humans were raised to be so, and all babies could grow up in a world of pure love without a thought to race, creed, gender or sexual orientation? Long ago as we formed America's innovative new government, weren't there words written down with the above in mind?
© 2012
She has her mom, she has her grandparents, she has a home teacher and she has a high school ready to support her progress towards graduation. The positive of her pregnancy is that it has motivated this bright youth to put more energy into her school work. I am never sure why it takes the radical act of having a baby to nudge these drifting, at-risk adolescents towards a better education.
These teen births always bring up memories of my own daughter's birth and swift passage through childhood. A sweet pain hits my belly as I am reminded of how so many of my life passages have come and gone. I also flash forward to my Queer adult daughter who every day has to hear or see a critical allusion to why her fundamental identity, who she is, is wrong. If I want an earful of unsubstantiated statements and naïve stereotypes, all I have to do is listen to the the Republican Primary candidates. Thank goodness I can tune them out.
But a prime example of what my daughter lives through comes from a controversy closer to home. Her part-time, college supporting employment is with J.C. Penney's. They have been revamping their ad campaign, getting rid of coupons and continual “sales.” There has been one T.V. spot I absolutely love: women are screaming as they tear up expired coupons, realize they have missed sales deadlines, etc. I e-mailed my daughter that no doubt as a customer service rep she too has felt like screaming. When JCP chose Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson, I was ecstatic. I thought my daughter would be pleased, but she is a “younger Lesbian” who forgets how much Ellen has and is doing for LGBTQ causes and is colored by what she might dub, Ellen's “merely another celebrity” status.
My daughter is not “out” where she works. She does not actively hide who she is, but in all phases of her existence must she shout her difference? And who is it that labels her as different? And why? But I'm getting off the track. I love Ellen. I don't watch her daily show, but I love that she speaks freely about her marriage to Portia, her continual fight for marriage equality and non-discrimination for LGBTQ. The public glimpses of her personal life are to me statements about how similar all families and loving partnerships are. The supportive tide of marriage equality and LGBTQ rights is rising, but the haters are hanging on. With Ellen's JCP spokespersonship has come the Internet founding of a group calling themselves, “The Million Moms.” These moms are rallying to criticize JCP for their choice of Ellen, saying JCP has lost sight of their “traditional values” and urging people not to shop there.
I would not have been aware of this controversy if my daughter hadn't sent me a video clip from The Ellen Show. I'm continually scouting for good LGBTQ news to e-mail my daughter and this week is off to a running start: California's Proposition 8 (anti-marriage equality) has been declared unconstitutional and the state legislature of Washington voted to approve same-sex marriage. In response to my good news, my daughter forwarded me Ellen's public statement to her JCP critics. Ellen spoke with humor and honesty and the tears started streaming down my face (again). JCP is not backing down, and on the Million Moms' Facebook page, replies are flowing in such as “I guess I'll have to shop at JCP now.” My daughter wrote how she feels better working at a place that isn't caving in to such discrimination. And her mother feels better too.
So it's been an eventful week of birth and hope, tears and concern, where I find myself shouting out to my daughter and to others who might listen that love rules! At the end of her talk, Ellen describes herself as honest and compassionate and loving. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all humans were raised to be so, and all babies could grow up in a world of pure love without a thought to race, creed, gender or sexual orientation? Long ago as we formed America's innovative new government, weren't there words written down with the above in mind?
© 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
What Lasts
Time waits for no one and flows past us like a rushing river. I look back on my sixty four years and wonder where all the decades went: my dysfunctional childhood, my agonizing youth, my blindly adventurous twenties, my blessed partnership, parent sharing and empty nest revitalization with my partner. This winter seems darker as I try to decipher what positive elements of our human existence outlast and endure the ever widening chasm of humanity's leap towards the earth's destruction. I don't mean to sound bleak, but perhaps the past months' cold, wet gloom has seeped inside my bones and gnawed away at the usual warmth of my heart.
But rather than swim in this frigidity of my mind, I decided to attend a series of seminars at the university. It was during one such seminar on how to listen to the music of J.S. Bach that I found a thawing, and a brighter light. The musicologist professor and cellist is originally from Belgium and has the European pedagogical gift of knowing five languages and being his subject area's walking encyclopedia. Every Saturday morning, I sat in the front row and soaked him in. For, in addition to the musical and academic knowledge he was imparting, what was really going on for me was beyond music theory and history; it was my answer to what rises to the top of our human existential cream and what has lasted and will last past our mortality.
On one of these Saturday mornings, as we were about to study Bach's organ music, several students started asking questions about the properties and origin of the instrument itself. Surprisingly, the organ, even though one of the most complicated instruments, has a long, influential history going all the way back to the time of the Greeks. It predates the piano by centuries. The professor's eyes glistened and his face glowed as he proceeded to expound upon what I gathered was one of his favorite topics. After showing us a series of slides from a recent tour of original and restored 16th/17th century organs in Germany, he mentioned how Bach had repaired and tuned many European organs; that these Bach-tuned and German/Dutch-made organs have thrived for centuries. As he described a Brombaugh organ residing at Eugene's Central Lutheran Church, I intuited these instruments and their music were tangible evidence of lasting human value.
Organs were originally built by monks, and it wasn't until the 15th century that organ building became a profession. John Brombaugh, a noted American organ builder, was commissioned by the Eugene's Central Lutheran congregation to build their organ back in 1973. The organ's entire construction took place in Brombaugh's Germantown, Ohio shop, taking him and his twelve assistants over a year (15,000 hours) to build. What impressed me, from the myriad facts the professor presented, was that the white oak used for the organ's main pipes and casings had to be aged for eighty years. Quality preservation and longevity requires patience! The renowned, recently deceased, organist Gustav Lionhardt stated that the Central Lutheran Church organ is the finest on this continent, and barring a bombing, would easily endure to 2500.
What else, besides the countless faces of music, popped up on my journey to find what will outlast our too-short lives? I am a home teacher working with school district students who for one reason or another cannot attend public school. During a recent home session, the student's mother and I got to talking about family memories and history. She quickly thumbed through a nearby bookcase and brought over to the dining table an album with some ancestral photos taken over fifty years ago. These black and white photos told of proud working class farmers, ranchers and loggers from Oregon's back country. They were (of circumstance and necessity) simple folk who put in a solid day's work, and held family in the highest of esteem.
Studying these photos, I thought about how this city family had chosen the same values as their ancestors: They had built a chicken coop in their backyard, had small raised vegetable beds on the side of their front driveway, baked from scratch, and put their children first. I enjoy working with the teenager from this “urban farm family” even though the family's conservative faith ultimately contradicts my own belief in equality for same-sex couples and families. Staring at the faded photos, I knew that beyond our individual bias is a core connection of similarity that lasts.
Every day, I walk into homes from all socioeconomic strata and from a wide range of faiths, and what will always be important is this connection to family and love. What ultimately lasts is being here on this earth at this time and trying to carve out whatever meaning and beauty we humans can.
After our intense discussion on the origins of the organ and J.S. Bach's prominent place in the survival of organ music, the professor noted: “Nothing has replaced the instrument of the human ears.” This statement pushed me into an even deeper revery. What was he talking about? That music could never have been a possibility without the ears hearing the notes, hearing the rhythms and beats? Also, my inner English major ruminated, without words and written language, the notes might not have made it to the page to be preserved for generations to come. Is it language that lasts? But isn't love and family an intangible feeling that doesn't have to use words? But I fear I am getting caught up in a spiral and if I follow its twists and turns, then I will lose my way. My present clarity is this: what lasts is the need for humans to create both that which concretely endures, like music and musical instruments, and that which is intangible and hard to concretely confine, such as love and family. This love, this sharing, this creation of music, art, literature is what I hope will counterbalance our often-times horrendous, violent deteriorating humanscape.
© 2012
But rather than swim in this frigidity of my mind, I decided to attend a series of seminars at the university. It was during one such seminar on how to listen to the music of J.S. Bach that I found a thawing, and a brighter light. The musicologist professor and cellist is originally from Belgium and has the European pedagogical gift of knowing five languages and being his subject area's walking encyclopedia. Every Saturday morning, I sat in the front row and soaked him in. For, in addition to the musical and academic knowledge he was imparting, what was really going on for me was beyond music theory and history; it was my answer to what rises to the top of our human existential cream and what has lasted and will last past our mortality.
On one of these Saturday mornings, as we were about to study Bach's organ music, several students started asking questions about the properties and origin of the instrument itself. Surprisingly, the organ, even though one of the most complicated instruments, has a long, influential history going all the way back to the time of the Greeks. It predates the piano by centuries. The professor's eyes glistened and his face glowed as he proceeded to expound upon what I gathered was one of his favorite topics. After showing us a series of slides from a recent tour of original and restored 16th/17th century organs in Germany, he mentioned how Bach had repaired and tuned many European organs; that these Bach-tuned and German/Dutch-made organs have thrived for centuries. As he described a Brombaugh organ residing at Eugene's Central Lutheran Church, I intuited these instruments and their music were tangible evidence of lasting human value.
Organs were originally built by monks, and it wasn't until the 15th century that organ building became a profession. John Brombaugh, a noted American organ builder, was commissioned by the Eugene's Central Lutheran congregation to build their organ back in 1973. The organ's entire construction took place in Brombaugh's Germantown, Ohio shop, taking him and his twelve assistants over a year (15,000 hours) to build. What impressed me, from the myriad facts the professor presented, was that the white oak used for the organ's main pipes and casings had to be aged for eighty years. Quality preservation and longevity requires patience! The renowned, recently deceased, organist Gustav Lionhardt stated that the Central Lutheran Church organ is the finest on this continent, and barring a bombing, would easily endure to 2500.
What else, besides the countless faces of music, popped up on my journey to find what will outlast our too-short lives? I am a home teacher working with school district students who for one reason or another cannot attend public school. During a recent home session, the student's mother and I got to talking about family memories and history. She quickly thumbed through a nearby bookcase and brought over to the dining table an album with some ancestral photos taken over fifty years ago. These black and white photos told of proud working class farmers, ranchers and loggers from Oregon's back country. They were (of circumstance and necessity) simple folk who put in a solid day's work, and held family in the highest of esteem.
Studying these photos, I thought about how this city family had chosen the same values as their ancestors: They had built a chicken coop in their backyard, had small raised vegetable beds on the side of their front driveway, baked from scratch, and put their children first. I enjoy working with the teenager from this “urban farm family” even though the family's conservative faith ultimately contradicts my own belief in equality for same-sex couples and families. Staring at the faded photos, I knew that beyond our individual bias is a core connection of similarity that lasts.
Every day, I walk into homes from all socioeconomic strata and from a wide range of faiths, and what will always be important is this connection to family and love. What ultimately lasts is being here on this earth at this time and trying to carve out whatever meaning and beauty we humans can.
After our intense discussion on the origins of the organ and J.S. Bach's prominent place in the survival of organ music, the professor noted: “Nothing has replaced the instrument of the human ears.” This statement pushed me into an even deeper revery. What was he talking about? That music could never have been a possibility without the ears hearing the notes, hearing the rhythms and beats? Also, my inner English major ruminated, without words and written language, the notes might not have made it to the page to be preserved for generations to come. Is it language that lasts? But isn't love and family an intangible feeling that doesn't have to use words? But I fear I am getting caught up in a spiral and if I follow its twists and turns, then I will lose my way. My present clarity is this: what lasts is the need for humans to create both that which concretely endures, like music and musical instruments, and that which is intangible and hard to concretely confine, such as love and family. This love, this sharing, this creation of music, art, literature is what I hope will counterbalance our often-times horrendous, violent deteriorating humanscape.
© 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Gift of Queer
Facing one another, we sat on the living room couch. My middle school daughter had just returned from a week-long camp for adolescent girls. Themes of growing into womanhood were woven through art, dream work, ritual, nature meditation, fireside conversation. She had found the solitary forest meditation and the chats with the other girls particularly enriching. Now she was sharing one of those discussions with her mother. “I believe I'm a Lesbian, Mom. Another friend says she is Bisexual.” I wasn't shocked, but I was stunned. Can a person know who she is when she is only fourteen? I absorbed my daughter's message, and intuited she was right. I gave her a tremendous hug and shared one of my visions: “Before you were born, I thought that if you were to be a Lesbian you would have chosen the best possible family.” She smiled and indulged her mother who years ago told her about the awake dreamlike, pre-birth, little girl image I had of her.
There was no question about my total love for my daughter the day of her “coming out.” But as I listened in awe to her maturity, thoughts and questions swirled around inside my brain: What discrimination, limitations, even hate, would she face? Would getting married and raising a family be an option? How could her father and I support who she is and fight if necessary for her rights? Little did I understand then that this journey of my daughter's self-discovery would be my journey to a completer knowledge of what it means to be an authentic, courageous human being. Now, over eight years later, I can definitely say, my daughter's “Queerness” has been and is an incredible gift.
Getting up from the couch, I felt lost, not certain what being Gay might mean. During college I slowly became involved with women's issues and women's consciousness raising groups. Sheltered throughout my childhood and young adulthood, it was my eventual move to Oregon in the late seventies that opened my eyes to Lesbian women. I met and became good friends with a woman who happened to be a Lesbian and together we ended up leading a “Lesbian/Non-Lesbian” group. Our aim was to try and bring Gay/Separatist/Straight women together, despite our differences. During our difficult, often heated meetings, I grew up tenfold.
As part of my graduate school curriculum, I chose to study Women's Literature. The university even had a Queer Studies department, but back then I shied away from the Queer word and from delving into understanding the Queer world. My daughter's coming out that day made everything more personal and more relevant. For me the personal absolutely did turn into the political. I spontaneously met a thirty-years-together Lesbian couple who led me to a local chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians, Gays, Transgender, Bisexual, Intersex and Queer). Through PFLAG I found a weekly Youth Group for Queer and Questioning Youth, which my daughter eagerly and regularly attended. Through PFLAG, I became my daughter's staunchest ally and LGBITQQ supporter/activist. But this story isn't about my parenting, but about a daughter who became her mother's teacher and opened up my naïve, narrow definitions of gender, sexuality and truth.
As a middle school student, my daughter dressed completely in black. She once mentioned she wanted to be invisible, to fade into the background. But I never really connected this statement then with her increasing awareness of her difference. I knew she hung out with the boys rather than the catty girls but I didn't realize how many put-downs she heard between classes, or how isolated she felt by being who she was.
But she had been attending the LGBTQQ Youth Group for years and I credit this group and its adult facilitator for giving my daughter the strength, the bravery and the survival skills for embodying and voicing her truth. She spoke out at PFLAG fundraising dinners about her school experiences and became acquainted with the PFLAG President, Elise. With Elise, she went back to her middle school and spoke to several classes about her growing up experiences as a young Queer student. This daughter didn't blame or shame, but simply wanted to convey the need for tolerance and acceptance so that future Queer middle schoolers wouldn't have to hear the hateful, hallway whisperings.
In high school, she never sought attention around her Queerness, and yet she never wanted to hide herself either. She and her then-senior girlfriend were the only non-heterosexual couple to attend her girl friend's prom. Her girlfriend was of a more activist bent, and organized Day of Silence/Pride rallies. When the girlfriend was asked to be interviewed for the local paper about young adolescents coming out, my daughter went with her and the two were photographed for a city section article, “New Generation, Out and Out Loud.” Through this visible statement, a friend of my daughter's later shared with her that it gave him the courage to come out to his family.
Near the end of her high school years, my daughter became the school newspaper's Commentary Editor. She wrote several thoughtful essays about being an “out” LGBTQQ teenager and supporting others who chose to do so. Though earlier a member and semi-leader of the school's Gay/Straight Alliance, it was during her senior year that she created what she called “The Pride Club.” Once a week this group would hang out after school in a favorite teacher's classroom and simply talk about everything and anything. The teacher later confided how joyous it made her to be sponsoring this gathering.
Tears readily surface whenever I write about my incredible daughter. She was a humble, unintentional adolescent activist for equality. I understand completely the courage it took to be her authentic self during the teenage years when no one wants to be different or stand out in any way. She worked through her “black period,” her initial social withdrawal/possible depression and stepped forward into the light. As David Kato, the slain Ugandan Gay Rights Activist stated before he was killed: “If we keep on hiding, they will say we are not here.”
And this is my Queer daughter's treasured gift: She has known who she is all along. She has known that not everyone is born heterosexual, that we are born on a long continuum encompassing degrees of Gayness and Straightness. I would never have had these countless enriching experiences if it were not for my Queer daughter and my joining PFLAG. Befriending a transitioning Transgender woman taught me even more about the expanding definition of gender. The qualities we readily assign to male and female are like the yin and yang of humanity. Each human is not totally male or totally female. We have both the feminine and the masculine available to us. The presence of Queer allows each of us to become more completely and authentically ourselves.
I want so desperately to shout to other mothers who would discriminate against who my daughter is that homosexuals are born, not made and are here for a definitive purpose. They are our gifts to a wider world of loving and living. Diversity is richness; differences are celebrations. I am in deepest debt to my out loud, Queer daughter for an ever expanding circle of “coming out” friends and family, who enrich my existence. I agree with the Native American writer, Sherman Alexie, when he states, “..Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right?”
© 2012
There was no question about my total love for my daughter the day of her “coming out.” But as I listened in awe to her maturity, thoughts and questions swirled around inside my brain: What discrimination, limitations, even hate, would she face? Would getting married and raising a family be an option? How could her father and I support who she is and fight if necessary for her rights? Little did I understand then that this journey of my daughter's self-discovery would be my journey to a completer knowledge of what it means to be an authentic, courageous human being. Now, over eight years later, I can definitely say, my daughter's “Queerness” has been and is an incredible gift.
Getting up from the couch, I felt lost, not certain what being Gay might mean. During college I slowly became involved with women's issues and women's consciousness raising groups. Sheltered throughout my childhood and young adulthood, it was my eventual move to Oregon in the late seventies that opened my eyes to Lesbian women. I met and became good friends with a woman who happened to be a Lesbian and together we ended up leading a “Lesbian/Non-Lesbian” group. Our aim was to try and bring Gay/Separatist/Straight women together, despite our differences. During our difficult, often heated meetings, I grew up tenfold.
As part of my graduate school curriculum, I chose to study Women's Literature. The university even had a Queer Studies department, but back then I shied away from the Queer word and from delving into understanding the Queer world. My daughter's coming out that day made everything more personal and more relevant. For me the personal absolutely did turn into the political. I spontaneously met a thirty-years-together Lesbian couple who led me to a local chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians, Gays, Transgender, Bisexual, Intersex and Queer). Through PFLAG I found a weekly Youth Group for Queer and Questioning Youth, which my daughter eagerly and regularly attended. Through PFLAG, I became my daughter's staunchest ally and LGBITQQ supporter/activist. But this story isn't about my parenting, but about a daughter who became her mother's teacher and opened up my naïve, narrow definitions of gender, sexuality and truth.
As a middle school student, my daughter dressed completely in black. She once mentioned she wanted to be invisible, to fade into the background. But I never really connected this statement then with her increasing awareness of her difference. I knew she hung out with the boys rather than the catty girls but I didn't realize how many put-downs she heard between classes, or how isolated she felt by being who she was.
But she had been attending the LGBTQQ Youth Group for years and I credit this group and its adult facilitator for giving my daughter the strength, the bravery and the survival skills for embodying and voicing her truth. She spoke out at PFLAG fundraising dinners about her school experiences and became acquainted with the PFLAG President, Elise. With Elise, she went back to her middle school and spoke to several classes about her growing up experiences as a young Queer student. This daughter didn't blame or shame, but simply wanted to convey the need for tolerance and acceptance so that future Queer middle schoolers wouldn't have to hear the hateful, hallway whisperings.
In high school, she never sought attention around her Queerness, and yet she never wanted to hide herself either. She and her then-senior girlfriend were the only non-heterosexual couple to attend her girl friend's prom. Her girlfriend was of a more activist bent, and organized Day of Silence/Pride rallies. When the girlfriend was asked to be interviewed for the local paper about young adolescents coming out, my daughter went with her and the two were photographed for a city section article, “New Generation, Out and Out Loud.” Through this visible statement, a friend of my daughter's later shared with her that it gave him the courage to come out to his family.
Near the end of her high school years, my daughter became the school newspaper's Commentary Editor. She wrote several thoughtful essays about being an “out” LGBTQQ teenager and supporting others who chose to do so. Though earlier a member and semi-leader of the school's Gay/Straight Alliance, it was during her senior year that she created what she called “The Pride Club.” Once a week this group would hang out after school in a favorite teacher's classroom and simply talk about everything and anything. The teacher later confided how joyous it made her to be sponsoring this gathering.
Tears readily surface whenever I write about my incredible daughter. She was a humble, unintentional adolescent activist for equality. I understand completely the courage it took to be her authentic self during the teenage years when no one wants to be different or stand out in any way. She worked through her “black period,” her initial social withdrawal/possible depression and stepped forward into the light. As David Kato, the slain Ugandan Gay Rights Activist stated before he was killed: “If we keep on hiding, they will say we are not here.”
And this is my Queer daughter's treasured gift: She has known who she is all along. She has known that not everyone is born heterosexual, that we are born on a long continuum encompassing degrees of Gayness and Straightness. I would never have had these countless enriching experiences if it were not for my Queer daughter and my joining PFLAG. Befriending a transitioning Transgender woman taught me even more about the expanding definition of gender. The qualities we readily assign to male and female are like the yin and yang of humanity. Each human is not totally male or totally female. We have both the feminine and the masculine available to us. The presence of Queer allows each of us to become more completely and authentically ourselves.
I want so desperately to shout to other mothers who would discriminate against who my daughter is that homosexuals are born, not made and are here for a definitive purpose. They are our gifts to a wider world of loving and living. Diversity is richness; differences are celebrations. I am in deepest debt to my out loud, Queer daughter for an ever expanding circle of “coming out” friends and family, who enrich my existence. I agree with the Native American writer, Sherman Alexie, when he states, “..Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right?”
© 2012
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