Like many people across the world, yesterday I took note of Senator Wendy Davis as she fillibustered Texas SB5. I checked several times. Yes, it is 2013 America. And, our brothers and sisters in Texas get to fight a battle from another century, from the deep, dark past, yet again. Oy vay. I grow weary of the patriarchy. All over the globe the rage against our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, and the sick, fucking notion that they are chattle, flows on and on and on.
Mrs. G offers her take on attempts to legislate the vagina here. I left the following comment and wanted to record it here, because not speaking out against sexism and attempts to legislate women's bodies is a grave mistake:
"Love you Mrs. G. As I watched Senator Davis yesterday, all I could think
was how desperately I wished our beloved Molly Ivins was here to offer
her hilarious and lucid commentary on the Texas lege. Texas is home to
so many great feminists. In the land where the swinging micro-dicks
shout down anyone without a big checkbook, women like Ann Richards,
Senator Davis, Barbara Jordan, Spinster Aunt Twisty Faster, and Molly
are too often the only rational voices of humanity in a screaming
mantastrophe of rage against women. Thank you for raising your voice in
defense of all the rights of all the pussies. I've reclaimed all the
words - quim, cooch, nunny, cunt, beaver, fanny, muff. Freud had it
wrong. The essential issue seems to me to be VAGINA-envy."
I know my Mama won't be happy about the swearing. She is an elegant, gentle woman. She is also my greatest role model, my touchstone, and an ardent, life-long feminist. She raised me to speak my mind. So, for fuck's sake, I am exasperated by impotent old men and their frightened bed-fellows trying to drag humanity back centuries. These people fear women and they are afraid to be held accountable for their own bullshit misogyny. I'm over it. And, of course, I'm not over it. Because, like that sneaky pile of dog shit your kid trailed into the house, the stench of sexism and the fear of the almighty vagina continues to stink and must be scrubbed clean and washed out-even if you have to do it over and over and over again.
I just turned 50 in December. It is so very fine to be 50, especially when the alternative is to not be anything except, if you are lucky, a memory.
I write the following with no sense of morbidity. The first time my father almost died, I joked with him about what our obituaries or tombstones would say as he was recovering (some people might think that is a bit insensitive or odd, but it worked for us).
My mother and I have also talked a few times about what makes a great obituary. I have read a few that I loved. Mrs. G posted a wonderful obituary to her blog and this reminded me that I had been determined to make a start on my own.
It is a tremendously difficult task to create a portrait in words contained in just a few paragraphs. I do think it is a task worth undertaking when I think it may be the only "knowing" of us that a descendant may have.
Here is my first shot at it:
Kelly is eternally grateful for the great sex, delicious food,
music, books, and most ardently for her family especially her wise and
beautiful children.
Her life goals included:
becoming half as good a woman as her mama
sharing the bleak Irish humor she inherited from her grandfather John Kelly with those she loved at the most importunate times
eating all the cake
being an O.K. - enough human being to merit the love of her many fine canine companions
keeping her teeth and hair
practicing patience and kindness and ecstatic mental yoga
being loud
Depending
upon which of her friends or family you speak to, she was either a
great success or an abject failure at achieving her goals. All will
agree that she was trying.
The Beatles were the soundtrack of my childhood. I can remember being 4 or 5 years old and spinning around our home in Juneau to their Sergeant Pepper album.
I miss John Lennon. I wonder what music he would have made. I love how he and Yoko almost leap into a kiss at the end ofthis.
I just heard the news of her death. I am sad for her children. Instantly I thought of how angry I was at John Edwards. I used to adore him (in a purely political way) and then he proved to be all too human and I loathed him and judged him for his supreme lack of decency.
Only a couple of people know what goes on in a marriage.
Life beats the shit out of us all.
I am so sad for Elizabeth's daughters and son. No mama. That she had to survive the death of her own child and the loss of her husband to his own ego and a ridiculous tart seems too much.
Even for her estranged and unfaithful husband I feel grief.
Such a high price to pay. Eventually we all have to pay it. As my obnoxious father says, "Life is a fatal sexually transmitted disease." For some of us life is a bargain. For others it costs so dearly. Most of us have the relative peace of obscurity in which to conduct our messy journeys and take our leave. Elizabeth had to buck up and move on with her life splayed before a world free to scrutinize her as if her days and losses were no more than simple tidbits of juicy gossip. She kept her chin up - the southern belle with a spine of steel. That she did.
This is not about Johnny Depp or John Waters despite my undying devotion to both
Hello Dear Reader. Let me set the scene for you. Just past 6PM on a Saturday night in PDX. Everyone else is downtown getting ready for the Starlight Parade. Yours truly is obsessed with stitching Natalie Chanin's rosebud stitch and decides, after a long day's work at her own retail job, to head to Fabric Depot -hereafter (and occasionally prior to) known as Fabric Creepo.
My beloved Mill End is already closed for the day and it is a sewing emergency. I need buttonhole thread.
As usual, Fabric Creepo, you do not have what I need, but I find a few things I want. It is me, about 4 other customers and 15 staff members in the gigantic store. I pick out some stretch denim for a skirt I want to make and embroider. I just need a yard or two.
There is one customer at the huge 4 sided cutting station. Normally there is a line at each corner with 2 employees on each side cutting for 8 customers. Tonight, praise the Rose Festival Princesses, it's just little old me waiting for the sole employee who is assisting the customer ahead of me.
As I wait calmly for a few minutes I am approached by two different employees. Do these employees want to offer to cut my fabric? Hell no! Each of them has decided I need to be herded like the stupid sheep I am.
The first says, "You need to stand at the corner of the cutting tables." She then walks away. O.K. I move to the corner. Then moments later another employee sees me standing with the bolt of fabric in my arms by myself, still the sole customer waiting at the cutting station. She also decides I need to be moved and tells me " Please move closer to the sign with the arrow." Oh, the sign a foot to my left? That one? O.K.
A minute or so later the employee who has been helping the other customer wanders my way to tell me, "You need to be standing behind the sign."
O.K. ladies, throughout each of these encounters I have moved exactly where I have been directed. I have not made a single sound or strange facial expression. I have merely complied with your need to assert your dominance over me your obviously highly annoying customer.
However, I feel at this juncture that its my turn to give some directions. So I say, "I have now been asked to move 3 times by 3 different employees and still no one will cut my fabric." That's all. Said in a friendly, if somewhat ironic way.
The employee looks at me ( in a rather self-satisfied manner imho but I am trying to spare embellishment for the sake of absolute clarity here) and says, "Well, if you won't stand whereyou are TOLD to, we will think you are being helped and we will ignore you." Then she smiles nastily, walks away, and does just that.
Bitch please! Have I mentioned that I also work retail? It is a tough gig. I know. There is no glory, only guts and not always your own. I give tremendous latitude to retail workers because we see some pretty atrocious human behavior on a regular basis. I have been at no time during this visit unkind or, up until my first exchange with the 3rd clerk, verbal at all. Now I am rendered speechless.
I stood there for a few moments just stunned and heart sick that someone felt so small they need to wound a stranger. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I was immobilized by such a sense of grief.
She wandered back, took my bolt, and said "How much?" Still in a state of disbelief I simply said, "Two yards please." She cut it and I moved quickly to the bank of cashiers. No waiting there. No directions for location changes either.
However, as I tried to pay with my credit card, the cashier kept scrutinizing my signature and then looking up at me with a very puzzled expression (which probably matched my own). Then she said, "I'm going to need to see some ID please." " Going to need to" not "please may I."
O.K. no big deal. It is good to be careful about credit cards. And admittedly, a $9 dollar fabric purchase is probably the perfect crime. So, I hand her my license.
She takes a good long look at it and then, apparently horrified, a good long look at me. She does this not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. THREE DOUBLE TAKES AT ME!!!
O.K. yes, my license picture could be better. I look a bit like a serial killer in the photo and at the time it was snapped I had long hair which was today curled up in two buns on either side of the back of my head. But lets take a moment to return to reality. A $9 dollar charge that has been authorized by the credit issuing bank. A woman wearing a blue linen jumper and birkenstocks (for the love of dog!) with a wallet full of id splayed before you, and your thoughts turn to what? Robbery?
Finally, I snapped.
I said, "Now I remember why I always vow never to shop here again." And she looked at me like I'd asked for the cash in her register. I asked if she need more forms of ID, a DNA sample, or if she and her fellow clerks would like to take a moment to see if they could possibly cook up any other ways to make me feel more uncomfortable. I started to flash on Jack in 5 Easy Pieces (you know the diner scene) and yet I was barely making any noise at all-still in shock.
The cashier just next to us asked if there was any trouble and the clerk said, "No. She doesn't want me to check her ID."
My head exploded.
Then I detailed calmly and concisely (with, I am certain, an embarrassing crimson red face of mortification) my experience of Fabric Creepo's customer service during my 10 minute visit for this newly interested employee.
She apologized multiple times for my "being made to feel uncomfortable" which was nice of her as she was blameless and yet took one for her ridiculously rude team. She gave me a comment form to send in to the company and a card with the address. So, I am grateful for her attempts to be kind when all around her a sea of retail workers seemed hell bent on making me cry.
I love textiles of all sorts. I think I have mentioned that I am a die-hard Mill End girl. They may not offer 35% off sales often, but they are near my hood and have everything I need when I need it. Their staff is made up of fellow artists who are professional, helpful, and kind.
They close shop before I am finished with my work day. This is an O.K. thing. Apparently, assisting fabric store customers is equivalent to hand to hand combat or bomb disposal. I believe stores should keep human hours and workers should have time to be home for dinner. When forced to work past 6PM on Saturdays, they can not be held accountable for their rage.
I can only visit The Mill End on my days off. I will bear that in mind whenever I am jonesing for buttonhole thread, denim, embroidery floss, or in fact, anything textile related. Mill End and Etsy only from here on out.
I promise you Fabric Creepo I will never darken your door again.
Now I'm gonna go have a good cry and maybe tell Johnny all about it.
I don't know how Heather and Mike have survived this first year without their daughter Madeline. I think it remains a mystery to them as well. How can such a devastating loss not kill you? Throughout this most difficult year they have written about their grief with grace and honesty. Thankfully, there has been great joy for them too with the birth of Maddie's little sister Annabel. But their pain will always remain unfathomable to anyone outside of Maddie's family. As Heather has written, it is the daughter who should be present when the mother breathes her last. Never the other way round.
Despite the worst of all possible losses the Spohr's continue to create a beautiful legacy for Maddie while making a difference for babies and their families. I admire them endlessly and wish them peace and so much love.
Some days I wake up grieving I know not what. There's always plenty to sigh and storm over. So, most often, I don't puzzle on it too much. It is what it is or maybe it is nothing.
And lastly, I recalled this from Kathleen Raine posted by Elspeth on her own blog here:
I BELIEVE NOTHING
I believe nothing – what need
Surrounded as I am with marvels of what is,
This familiar room, books, shabby carpet on the floor,
Autumn yellow jasmine, chrysanthemums, my mother’s flower,
Earth-scent of memories, daily miracles,
Yet media-people ask, “Is there a God?”
What does the word mean
To the fish in his ocean, birds
In his skies, and stars?
I only know that when I turn in sleep
Into the invisible, it seems
I am upheld by love, and what seems is
Inexplicable here and now of joy and sorrow,
This inexhaustible, untidy world -
I would not have it otherwise.
Elspeth had that extraordinary ability to appreciate and nurture the exquisite in the ordinary and untidy. Sometimes extraordinary skills demand an excruciating sensitivity.
So, to make sense of the painful impermanence of the beautiful we can try words, frail though they be.
I like to look at my child's eyes. From his early days to now they are made of sunflowers and blue skies.
click on photo to see the sunflowers up close
They are as miraculous as anything I've known.
What is enough? Enough to convince us to stay. To see things through. To believe that there is something ahead of us or something right now that requires our presence.
Blurry? That's how it looked. I'm now 47. Merry was made. Many Christmas presents were made too! Perhaps we can talk ear flap hats and cowls and snoods and bunting in 2010. Santa arrived. Presently hoping for less blur and more peace in the New Year. Adieu 2009 you were sort of fine. I won't miss you.
I make things, read things, write things, want to travel more, am a mother, a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a terrible girlfriend, and a feminist. I am fortunate and grateful.
