There’s nothing virtual about writer’s block
All day, I’ve been wadding up the cyber paper into cyber balls and cyber launching them into the cyber wire wastebasket across the room. It’s now overflowing onto the floor but I think I finally have something I can keep.
It’s never too early to have self-esteem
I’ve been a little overwhelmed here lately, which is part of the reason it’s been so tumbleweedy in these parts. Overwhelmed, and also quite a bit sick of myself. Aren’t all of you sick of myself, too? I certainly wouldn’t blame you. Nevertheless, I’m pushing past it.
And so: A story.
Ruby had her first hair cut on Friday the 13th. I don’t know what the big deal is with that date; I always have such great Friday the 13ths. Sure, this one was a particularly bad one if you were Tim Russert. But lucky for me, I wasn’t and I’m not and so my Friday the 13th, 2008 was lovelier than any other day of the week leading up to it.
So there we were in the hair salon where Amber, my stylist, sat Ruby atop two stacked bundles of towels and tipped her head back into the u-shaped lip of the sink. Ruby rolled with it like an old pro, not saying a word—just giving into it—while Amber began to wet and then wash her hair, massaging first the shampoo and then conditioner into her scalp. I think this kid will be quite at home in the salons of the world.
I stood to the side while Amber used her knuckles to knead Ruby’s head. Her curls—stretched long and drenched in bubbles—spiraled with the running water and stuck to the sides of the sink bowl, fanning out behind her in rippling waves. Each blink of her eyelids slowed until she was nearly catatonic. From my hovering view, Ruby looked as though her eyes were closed but with her head tilted slightly to the right, she was peering down her nose, watching everything in the mirrored wall across the room.
She was quiet except for when I moved to kiss her and blocked her line of sight. She scolded me and waved me away with a fling of her right arm and returned to staring at herself, taking big, silent breaths, her nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly. Then, without moving her eyes from herself, she exhaled to the rhythm of Amber’s handiwork and said, “I’m beaUUUtiful, Mama.” The nearly-whispered words floated on her sigh in such a delicate way as to make me wonder if they’d actually been spoken. But they had been. And they captured perfectly the ecstasy I feel when I stare at her lovely face.
“That’s right, baby,” I said. “You are beautiful. And don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
PROMPTuesday: Exercise #2
(This is my 150-word inspirational speech, written in under 10 minutes.)
(Oh, and it’s for my friend, Katie.)
You’re always saying, I’m not a photographer or How can I be a good photographer or Really, you’re a better photographer than I am. And to this I say: Grrrrrrl! Have you seen the photos you’ve taken lately?
Look, I know I’m no one to say but I’m saying it anyway. You. Are. Talented. Your shit’s hangin’ on my dining room wall, for Chrissake, right above a hair grease stain that rubbed off when Ruby was having a time out a while back and she cried with her head against the wall and begged to see “the children!” Of course, she’s referring to the children you snapped in Uganda that now hang on my dining room wall. Of course, her wails were compelling.
But I said, No you may not see the children, you’re having a time out.
So there. If you don’t believe me, believe my two year old.
I *heart* choice
Following the release last week of new statistics supporting a decline in U.S. abortion rates—statistics that both pro-life and pro-choice advocates claim favor their stance—I decided to link on over to the Guttmacher Institute website to see what I could see with my own eyes.
The Guttmacher Institute is the nonprofit organization focused (hallelujah!) on reproductive issues whose research concluded that abortions had declined 25 percent since peaking in 1990 (the data covers only through 2005). Reasons for the steady decline are debatable, but wherever your ideology lands you on the choice spectrum, a decline in abortion is unarguably a good thing.
What is perhaps of equal importance, though, is for every child to be a wanted child and not a resentment born to a woman who had no other choice. In reducing the need for abortions, it might be useful to determine why women choose to have abortions in the first place.
The researchers at Guttmacher obviously had this in mind and published the results of a survey in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Family Issues. According to “‘I Would Want to Give My Child, Like, Everything in the World:’ How Issues of Motherhood Influence Women Who Have Abortions” by senior researcher Rachel Jones and her colleagues, women’s “sense of responsibility for their existing and future children influences their decision to seek an abortion.”
Dr. Jones’ survey found that 61 percent of women who have abortions in this country already have children, and it is out of a sense of wanting to provide a stable life for their existing kids that they choose abortion. Many of the women in the survey, including those without kids, expressed the desire for an “ideal” situation for becoming mothers.
Gee. I don’t know what they’re talking about.
When I was 19, despite my responsible and unfailing use of contraception, I became pregnant. I was on a full scholarship to college and was completely unprepared—emotionally, psychologically or financially—to have and/or raise a child. I knew my capabilities. And I knew my choices. I chose to have an abortion.
It was a personal decision, one I made with the support of my then-boyfriend, my doctor and my mother. It was without question the right decision for me at the time and still is now. I do not regret it, nor do I make apologies for, harbor shame about or—as some on the pro-life intimidation squadron would suggest—suffer lifelong emotional trauma from it.
Now I’m raising a daughter who was adopted. She is here on this mad planet and (fortunately) in my life because her birthmother made a different choice. Like me, she had the freedom to choose abortion, but unlike me, she opted for the more difficult path; some might say she is the braver woman, and I wouldn’t begin to argue. She chose to carry her baby to term, chose my husband and me to raise her child, chose to relinquish Ruby with the hope that she would have a life better than what she felt she was capable of providing.
(I’d like to say here that I find it ironic how our society is so quick to vilify the woman who chooses abortion but is equally as loathsome of the woman who makes an adoption plan for her baby. Believe me, I’ve been privy to some very special conversations about the latter, but that tangent will take me well beyond the space provided here. Suffice it to say that, apparently, we’re all just stupid whores for winding up pregnant in the first place.)
Clearly, the reasons behind my choice echo the reasons given by the survey’s respondents. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to speak for Ruby’s birthmother, but I could take a wild guess as to her reasons, were I so inclined. It is nevertheless telling that our choices occurred more than two decades apart from each other, yet the situation is timeless. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Today, religious folk and self-righteous zealots line up outside health clinics to wave their violent, vulgar, larger-than-life images and shout through bullhorns their righteous morality. They proceed to harass, bully, verbally abuse and demoralize women, many of whom already feel demoralized. If they can’t intimidate the women, these extreme activists intimidate the healthcare workers.
In more than 30 states requiring pre-abortion “counseling,” infuriating lies are dispensed as legitimate information, warning with feigned legitimacy that an abortion will increase a woman’s risk for breast cancer or cause post-traumatic stress disorder. In Missouri, physicians who dare dispense RU486—the “abortion pill,” as the pro-lifers have weaseled into American lexicon—are going to be required to transform their offices into full surgical units. And the state of Mississippi has only one abortion provider. One. In the whole state. This is an indicator of what giving the legislative decision to the states would mean.
This kind of ever-dwindling access is occurring right now, under the protection of Roe vs. Wade, legislation designed to ensure access to a safe and legal abortion for all women, even those in Mississippi. It’s likely that the next president will appoint another Supreme Court justice, and depending on how this election shakes down—I shudder to think—this could very well mean the end of Roe. If it’s overturned, women will still want, need and seek abortions.
The educated and privileged will always have the access; the rest of the suckers will bleed to death.
Look, if these right-to-lifers—who are so interested in what happens with a little clump of cells in the uterus of a woman they don’t know—genuinely cared about “the sanctity of life,” they would put their energy into assuring that the fundamental needs of women and children are met.
Instead of picketing Planned Parenthood, they should picket Congress and demand proper healthcare and decent education; they should demand equal pay for women and better family-leave policies in the workplace; they should help set the stage for the ideal parenting circumstances that anyone considering having children desires. The abortion rate might just plummet.
I really hope Roe v. Wade withstands the violent assault it’s cowered under for the past 35 years so that my daughter will be assured privacy, dignity and respect when it comes to her own personal health decisions. And someday, if she becomes a mother, I hope she does it in the comfort of what she herself deems the ideal circumstances.
(As published in today’s issue of CityBeat.)
For all “intensive purposes”
After suffering under the weight of trying to keep mental track of my daily obligations, I finally procured for myself a 2008 weekly engagement calendar (no Crackberry for this girl—I roll old school with ink and pulp). I spent a chunk of Monday night transcribing the scribbles and transferring the scraps from last year’s calendar. It’s a bittersweet ritual: Looking back through an entire year to see my life as a series of bikini waxes, marriage counseling appointments, pediatrician visits and oil changes really underscores my life as a bonafide grown-up. But then there are the celebrations, vacations, birthdays and holidays reminding me of the memories I’ve made and of the times I can let it all go and act like a child.
I have a habit of making quick notes on stickies—jotting down the name of an author I heard interviewed by Terry Gross or a band I heard on Morning Becomes Eclectic—and then slapping them in my calendar with the intention of tossing them once I’ve made my purchase. Somehow, the stickies seem to stick with me. I have one that’s been trailing me since 2006 and I can’t seem to ditch it because I know that this year, I’ll track down those CDs.
Among the stickies and tucked just inside the front and back covers, I found other important-at-one-time bits of information that I weeded through, keeping only the most pertinent leftovers, like, say, a parking ticket from last October. Oops. (And I can’t believe I just wrote that here because Sam reads this and he’s bound to go into a seizure when he does. Sorry, honey. It’s all taken care of now. I swear.) I also came across a gift certificate for a Botox treatment that my hairdresser gave me in December. She gave it to me after confessing she’d had it done. She looked fantastic. Flawless, really, but then she should: She’s 26. That’s another story.
I took the gift certificate from her in a moment of swirly-eyed, euphoric, pseudo-empowerment. Like, Wow, yeah, I should do it. For myself! I’m going to be forty (in two years) and why the fuck not? Sam won’t notice…hell, I won’t even tell him! It will be a little test! Granted, I’d had a couple glasses of wine and my hairdresser was happily egging me on with her convincing there’s-absolutely-nothing-wrong-with-it permission slip. It was all just crazy talk, though, and after I left I totally forgot that I’d slipped the gift certificate into my calendar. Until Monday when it reared it’s ugly but smooth as Joan River’s (fore)head.
Now, I’m philosophically against injecting botulinum toxin into my body but the thought of making the crevasse between my eyebrows go bye-bye is, admittedly, seductive. Especially because it’s free. Free makes the procedure seductive in stilettos, fishnet stockings and a garter belt. It’s ridiculous, I know and Sam balks at the fact that I haven’t torn the gift certificate to pieces. But when he saw it still sitting on the dining room table tonight, stacked on top of our voter guides, he finally capitulated.
“Just go for it, baby. I mean, why not?” he said. “Get your face done, get a labia lift, you’ll be good to go!”
I’m not really sure how to interpret this.