I’ve long since given up on being Catholic. During the time I needed it, I would sneak into church and sit in the back pews during morning mass and it was so comforting and important to me to hear human voices rise up together in prayer and love and to know that my voice was a part of something. I taught myself the different prayers, said the rosary at night, alone. But taking comfort the whole time. Knowing that out there, somewhere, there were others praying the rosary too. And so we were together.
As much as I needed Catholicism then, I eventually walked away from it. And found my home in Buddhism, where I go to temple rather than church and I am happy with that.
But when times are tough or complicated, I invariably find myself mumbling those Catholic prayers under my breath, most often the Our Father or Hail Mary.
These days, I’ve been mostly saying the Hail Mary.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are you amongst women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death, Amen.
All those years ago, when I regularly attended church, I said this prayer without thinking too deeply about the words. I said them, I understood them. But I understood them through the eyes of the male priests or the babysitter with the Virgin on her wall–a desire to be submissive. A desire to be more like this holiest of submissive women. The woman who was so holy, God chose her to be impregnate. A vessel. For God.
But I’m older now and I have learned so much since then.
Like: the definition of ‘virgin’: a free woman, one not betrothed, not bound to, not possessed by any man. It meant a female who is sexually and hence socially her own person.
Like: the definition of ‘compassion’: to suffer with.
Like: Mary was an unmarried teenager when she had Jesus, and a woman when he died. She was with him when he died.
Like: Joseph was the man Mary was set to marry when she turned up pregnant, and had to be visited by an angel before he was convinced to marry her despite her pregnancy. He was not with Jesus when he died.
I found out all these things over the course of years. And they all sit with me now, as I go through ritualized mourning. And they help.
Because the thing is, knowing that Mary really actually was a virgin in the sense she was unbound to any man and thus capable of making her own choices, makes me think that Mary was less of the ‘vessel’ so many have made her out to be and much more of a real human being who made an active choice with God to create something beautiful and world changing. She didn’t have to consider the needs of a ‘headship,’ she didn’t need to worry about other children or family honor. She was free. And she made the decision to trust herself and her faith and ‘go with God.’
Thinking about Mary’s free choice as an older woman, and that she chose to follow Jesus through to his death, says that she wasn’t just a vessel used by God–but that she was a real human being, one who made rational decisions, had an active faith, and who could love. Staying by the side of a man struggling through his conflicted relationship with God, the terrible violence inflicted upon him, and then his death are not easy things to bear. Joseph was not with Jesus or his group during this time. Joseph was not at the cross when Jesus died. Scholars speculate Joseph was dead–I speculate that men have left their families throughout all of history over much smaller things than having a child born of God or seeing a child murdered.
Men see the devotion of women and mothers and assume it is just ‘normal.’ That it is biological. That there’s something biologically wrong with a woman when she’s not a complete martyr that sacrifices everything from food to safety to keep her child happy and well. Some of this is sort of true, those who birth get the hormones that are supposed to bond mother to child. But. There is no hormone strong enough to overturn a human being’s decision once they’ve made up their own mind. And barring societal threats (like marriage or prison), when women are free and supported and show devotion to a child or family, it’s because they’ve made the choice to. Women are not mindless vessels. Men insist that devotion must be biological because they sense the choice underneath. The choice they can’t control. Insisting that devotion be biological is just a way of manipulating the choice they can’t control.
Women are not vessels.
And neither was Mary. She was an active participant in her own life. And her life included seeing her own son murdered (and be reborn, if you believe). This is not a weak mindless woman or the simpering snowflake Mary is often presented as. Mary stayed even during the worst of times. She made the choice to suffer with Jesus when she could’ve walked away, like Joseph and many others did. I imagine her hands to be calloused, her handshake to be firm. I imagine Mary had a direct gaze, firm but not unkind. But a gaze that intimidated many anyway. I imagine that Mary knew before Jesus did that he would be betrayed. Intelligent. Fierce. A fighter.
It was Mary who said I can’t carry the burden you carry for you, but I can help you bear it. Compassion. Not because she was a martyr, but because she knew her shoulders were broad and strong enough to help. Solidarity, rather than martyr.
Which is why even tho I am now a Buddhist (or perhaps because I am Buddhist, we are very big on compassion), I now say the Hail Mary with a whole new sense of awe, a whole new sense of wonder. And a whole new sense of comfort.
It’s not just that my voice rises in prayer alongside others at Mass or with others across the world who are saying their Rosary. It’s that those who pray are suffering, the same as I am. And we are together praying to a woman who is willing to suffer with us. Who is willing to bear the burden of suffering with us. We suffer together and pray for relief from suffering. Together.
We are not alone.
Holy Mary mother of God,
Help us to bear this crap now, and when the shit hits the fan, too.
Because we know that you made the choice. To stay with the suffering until they are able to rise again.
Thank you.
It’s not everything. Saying Hail Marys two times or 200 doesn’t make the pain just suddenly go away. But it does help. There are others out there that suffer like you do, like I do. Who have no place else to turn, who don’t know what to do, who are facing the worst moments of their lives, the scariest, the most unknowing. And they are raising their voices too. In prayer. That you and I–all of us sinners together–will find relief.
You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Yes, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of heaven dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but each one of you be alone—even as the strings of a lute are alone though the quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not in each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the Cyprus grow not in each other’s shadows
The Threshold Choirhonors the ancient tradition of women singing at the bedsides of people who are struggling, some with living, some with dying. The voice, as the original human instrument, is a true and gracious vehicle for compassion and comfort. When invited – and without charge – we visit in small groups, welcoming families and caregivers to join us in song or simply to be quietly present.
To not die alone, to die surrounded by singing love, seems to be one of the greatest gifts the universe can bestow upon an individual. But in today’s world, where we’ve seen such incredible violence, that clearly doesn’t happen for all of us. I wonder what peace it can bring families and even the spirit of the one who died, to have singing at funerals/wakes/memorials–singing that lifts the spirit into a new world.
I’ve never been much of a fan of roses. Mostly it’s the smell. Growing up the late 70s meant babysitters and aunts dragged me along to one Avon party or another, and rose candles, perfume, lipstick or nail polish were plastered on me to the delighted coos of the women in the room. Isn’t she adorable? Isn’t she sweet? Meanwhile, I’d see the fingernails that I couldn’t bite or feel the oppressive sweet smell that reminded me of funerals, even at that age.
Rose is a heavy scent. One that stays in the room long after the person wearing it has left. I don’t find the flowers very pretty and the expense of a dozen roses never seemed reasonable or a romantic show of affection.
But when you are a good herbalist, you learn about the plants that are around you. The ones that are plentiful and won’t harm the ecosystem if you remove a handful. Why would you pay the expense, hurt the environment, and possibly take healing resources away from one community, if you have an herb in your own community that will do the same job?
So I decided to work with wild roses, as they are fairly common in my area. To my amazement, it was like they were waiting for me to finally pay them attention. Everywhere I turned, I found myself surrounded by roses, for weeks and weeks. Wild roses in the back of the car after clipping some on a walk. Wild roses in the mail after a friend heard I was interested in them. Wild roses in salves, wild roses in lotion, wild roses in the brandy I had left over from a party. I even noticed for the first time that the massive bush in my neighbors yard was a wild rose bush. I’d always paid attention to the birds rather the branches they sat on.
I don’t know what brought these flowers into my life after I had worked so hard to avoid them. But once they got in, I finally realized why herbalists especially love them.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a hard time taking a deep breath. I’ve been tested for heart attacks, asthma, pneumonia, allergic reactions, I even had a frustrated doctor give me an inhaler and told me if it worked he’d give me a refill. Unstated: now get out and leave me alone.
Needless to say, the tight breathless feeling never went away. It got easier to deal with, it got to the point I hardly noticed it sometimes. But then for some reason it’d be back, and I couldn’t take a deep breath and my chest felt like a vice.
As wild roses spent more time in my life, that weird heavy tight chest seemed to ease a little. I barely noticed at first. But then for unrelated reasons, I started taking a tincture of rose. And almost immediately, within about 30 minutes, the chest thing was gone. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I could take a long lovely deep quiet breath.
I talked with an elder herbalist about how weird this experience was and what it could possibly mean and they shared with me that rose is a wonderful herb for anxiety and stress, which I knew. What I didn’t know, was that rose is great for moving ‘stuck’ anxiety/stress/emotions. So, for example, that stressor that you were too young to have words for? Like, say, a scary or abusive parent or bullying that you couldn’t tell anybody about? The stress from that very often stays stuck in your body if you don’t have other ways to deal with it. Those of us who have grown up in high-stress environments can carry that ‘stuck’ energy around with us not really knowing that there’s any different way to feel or be. It’s just normal.
The only reason I had any idea that not being able to take a deep breath might not be a good thing was because I had seen heart attacks on TV and worried I might be having one. When the doctors gave the all clear and I didn’t drop dead, I assumed it must be asthma or any of the other explanations doctors gave me. But what was more likely going on was that I was having panic attacks that had no place to go except inward. A typical ‘good girl’ response to stress. Keep swallowing it all down until it’s too big to hold anymore.
Taking the rose has not only cleared up this ‘panic attack’ feeling, but has also helped to release just regular old tension from work days or sitting on the computer too long. It helps me to live more in the moment–when I’m stressed and need to cry or yell or ‘speak’ what I’m feeling into existence, instead of stuffing those feelings, I feel them, and then let them go. It’s ok.
And oddly enough, as I’ve worked more with rose, I’ve grown to enjoy the smell much more. When I smell rose now, I anticipate the wave of relaxation that always comes within minutes, sometimes seconds. Life, where oppressive death used to be.
As I continue my time of Mourning, I take just a few drops of rose tincture daily, as a reminder that to mourn, you need to care for and replenish yourself. And also to gently move whatever hurt, whatever loss, whatever tension I’ve been gripping too tightly along. It’s ok to let go. It’s ok.
The other day I heard a gossip show host declare that one of Glenn Frey’s friends ‘still wasn’t over Glenn’s death.’ As the over-exaggerated shock of headline gossip news dripped from the host’s voice, I knew I was supposed to be feeling shock, maybe sympathy. But mostly shock. How could this man still be mourning for Frey? After all this time? I was not supposed to remember that Glenn Frey only died in January.
This idea that death goes away, that it stops hurting after awhile, that it is supposed to stop hurting, is pervasive in US culture. When a (not very close) relative died, my job at the time graciously gave me three days off. By the time the funeral and burial and wake and family dinner (and subsequent family fight) finally all wrapped up, I needed to take two more days off just to recover from it all. I wondered what people do when close family like parents or a spouse dies. How do you bury a loved one in three days? Do you need to take vacation days if you can’t squeeze dying into three days? What happens if you don’t have any vacation days left?
A dear friend of mine died five years ago this past April. She was the same age when she died that I am now. In our last conversation, she tried to tell me that she was dying and that it wouldn’t be much longer. But I had never had to look death in the eyes before, so I had no idea what she was trying to do. She said she was sick again, I said well thank God they found it before it was out of control, she paused, I said I love you, she said she had to go. My body flinches whenever I think about it. How I wish I could’ve been there for her. How I wish.
Death doesn’t go away. You just learn to live with your regrets. And somehow manage to go on living in a world where your loved one isn’t there.
***
What would your Prince tribute concert look like? What would you wear? What would your stage look like? What songs would you play? Who would be on stage with you?
The answers to these questions work their way out slowly. Friends and I share a thought here, a concept there. We build on each other’s musings. A friend says her outfit would be filmy, ethereal. Like what she know’s Prince is wearing in heaven. I follow up later that he’d be like the goddess Athena, with a bow and arrow to protect and defend musicians from unscrupulous music corporations. Neither of us is sure who says that the arrow would be shaped in his symbol. But we both know it is the plain truth. Prince is in heaven, and he has a bow and arrow. And his arrow is the Prince symbol.
We laugh a lot contemplating our tribute stage. We finally decide there’s no one perfect tribute outfit–we’d have to have multiple costume changes, just as Prince did in his performances.
Because there is no one look that encapsulates Prince. No one single style that pulls together almost 40 years of artistic theorizing, creativity, and work. People have tried to force Prince to be one single thing. Madonna is, sadly, not the only artist that tried to get away with some tired Purple Rain homage. It’s easy to understand that people have their personal favorite Prince era and it’s easy to understand why Purple Rain is the favorite era of so many.
But at the same time, what responsibility do we have to Prince as an artist? What responsibility do we have to 40 years worth of work? What responsibility do we have to a worker that may have sacrificed his body’s well being in the name of his work?
***
When Prince’s death was confirmed, I immediately pulled up his music, began listening and crying, crying and listening. Remembering. It was what I needed at the time.
But one friend felt overwhelmed by the flood of ‘remembrances’ when she’d only just begun to grasp that Prince was gone. She said she needed everything to slow down. Half of her tears came from being unable to accept what everybody else seemed to accept so easily.
Another friend said they loved seeing all of Prince’s music played on MTV, but that it was also painful. Once people got ‘over’ the shocking news, you’d never hear his music on the radio or tv again. The music would be gone, this friend said.
I couldn’t imagine that my friend’s words could possibly be true. There’s no way that Prince’s music would stop being played. Didn’t his death just prove how much we all loved him? How we couldn’t live without his music? I knew his music wouldn’t be played on a 24 hour loop, but to not be played at all? Unimaginable.
But my friend was right. There was a week of non-stop Prince…and then he was gone. And now you’re lucky to get Red Corvette on the oldies station. MTV has gone back to 16 and Pregnant reruns and eternal commercials.
But now is the time I need to hear those songs. Now, as the shock has worn off and I am finally getting used to the idea that Prince has moved on. Now is the time I need to talk to others. To sit with his music, to reflect on his artistry and skill. Honor his work through theoretical analysis. Reckon with his legacy.
Prince knew and talked about how music corporations took advantage of and even destroyed the careers of black musicians. What I know as a woman of color writer is that pop culture critics and academics have killed just as many careers by refusing to engage with the work of black artists or artists of color.
The desire to understand, the desire to interpret and integrate a piece of artistic work within the realm of ‘culture,’ the desire to ‘frame’ a person/their work so that they might be understood by future generations…this is part of what keeps an artist and their work alive, even after death. It is also what gives artistic work ‘merit’ or ‘value’ in a capitalistic world. If people don’t respect your work, you don’t get paid for it. And what shows more respect than interacting with and deeply thinking about an artist’s work?
A legacy is a “thing handed down by a predecessor.” There is a reason, a purpose, for the lack of critical interaction with the work of black artists and artists of color by the thinkers of pop culture. If no black children or children of color are ‘handed’ the legacy of black artists like Prince, how will they know they must and can take on corporations and to protect their name and work at all costs? How will they know brilliance started with them? How will they know they can do it too?
There is so much work to do in death. And when you’re in shock, it’s hard to face doing that work or even know which work needs to be done. By the time you’ve moved into acceptance and are ready to dig in, everybody else has moved on. Or worse yet, declared you ‘irrelevant.’
It took Eliza Hamilton the rest of her life–fifty years–to compile all of her husband’s letters and testimonies from friends/coworkers and finally get it turned into an analysis that could be handed down. A legacy. Fifty years for a legacy. Fifty years of work. Fifty years of work on Eliza’s part alone that informed the musical about Hamilton. 210 years of work by historians.
What does it mean then, that we’ve moved on from Prince after less than two months?
What does it mean when so few are willing to put in 50 years of work plus 210 years of work for black artists and artists of color?
***
My friend tends towards Prince’s ‘naked fairy on a flower‘ look for her tribute concert outfits. I tend toward his penchant for bold colors. The throbbing red accent on an otherwise drab stage. The burst of orange of the perfectly tailored suit at the Super Bowl. The color that makes you see and appreciate everything else all around it.
I love the quality of contrast of his outfits, the fine minimalist lines the contrast creates. But I love more that in the contrast of bold choices, you see the choice. You see that Prince made the choices that lead to the moment of orange bursting through rainstorms and television. You see that he made the choice to draw attention to himself without disrespecting the person he played with.
When the choices are visible, so to becomes the person who made them. I imagine Prince to be thoughtful. Playful. I see the way the red of his hat perfectly accents the red of the stage behind him, and I imagine he was probably a diva, like many stars are. Insisting on perfection. But I also imagine that he had a sense of purity about that perfection. A desire to make something beautiful, if only for a set worth of music. Perfection so that others can experience beauty. Because even everyday people have the right to experience beauty.
His early outfits where he shows off his glorious butt cheeks amid laced yellow, or where he accents his scantily clad nether regions with a diamond dew drop chain show the same thing. Even amid what was surely a desire to shock, to cause fear (a man that is willing to dress like we expect women to?), there is the playfulness, the beauty. A willingness to care about the details.
It’s easy to go for the shock and not care if people say they hate your shit. Our culture thrives on shock. The person creating the shock doesn’t need to actually care about his work because the work isn’t the point. The shock is.
But when you care about the details, you show care for what you are working on. You show it’s the work that’s the point. When you care about the the work, it’s then taking a chance to put your work out there for others to see and have opinions on. It’s taking a chance that nobody will like what you made the choice to create.
And it’s even harder to take a chance and put your work out there when you can get blasted as a ‘fag’ or ‘disgusting’ or ‘indecent’ or ‘pussy’ or any other of the multitudes of names we have for men who wear dew drop diamonds lightly embedded in the fringe of their pubic hair.
What risks Prince took. What choices he made. Over and over and over again for 40 years.
Fearless.
***
Death doesn’t just go away.
Another friend of mine was killed in a car crash two years ago. She was the sort of person that noticed the choices people make. She was the only one who noticed when I started wearing dresses. I was going through midlife exploration of Self and wanted to try something different. So I bought a few cute spring dresses at Target and did my hair up and sucked myself up into some Spanx. I felt uncomfortable and awkward more often than not, but I didn’t think anybody really noticed what I was doing, so I kept experimenting. But one day my friend told me that my entire aura had changed, and I was walking around looking sexy as hell in these dresses she’d never seen me wear. It got easier for me after that, to wear those dresses.
I never got to tell her how much I appreciated her words. I never got to tell her goodbye either. She was hit by a guy who was driving and texting one day, and I never got to see her after that. I’ve learned to live with those regrets. But I still struggle to live in a world where she is not here.
Big things, like the anniversary of her death, bring tears. But more often, it’s the little moments like when you hear a song. Or somebody posts a forgotten video or picture of her they found while cleaning out storage space. Or when you’re eating a grape and you remember the day you laughed for a solid 20 minutes over a joke about grapes with her.
The laughter that twists into a painful ache. Sometimes it lands in the throat. Sometimes in the chest. Then there are the tears that I can’t breath through.
I haven’t deleted the emails of my first friend. But I also haven’t read any of those emails since the day she died. Sometimes I search for unrelated email and an email from her pops up on my screen. Her name slices into me and I can’t breath until I scroll her name off the screen.
Maybe it’s less that you learn to go on living without your loved one, and more you learn to stay alive through grief.
***
Fearless.
It’s what I long to be. But it has taken me a long time, decades, to finally figure out that the fearless I admire is complex. There is the fearlessness of knowing you’re too powerful to fail, like Superman. And then there is the bold burst of color against a drab rainy night. The dew drop diamond against wet skin. The choices you make even though you know you can and probably will fail. Or that even if you don’t fail, nobody will support you and many will make fun of you.
When you make the choice to do it anyway, even when you are filled with fear.
Prince was that kind of fearless. My friends were too. It is what drew me to them, what made me want to be their friend. I still admire the hell out of all of their choices. Their fearless choices that brought out the best in others.
As my friend and I continue to imagine what our Prince tribute concert would look like, we start imagining what fearless choice making would look like in our own lives. Then like newborn kittens with weak heads and barely functioning eyes, we dip that first toe into the milk. We’ve both been taught to not make choices. We’ve both had our choices beaten out of us. Choices can bring devastating consequences in this world.
But to make choices is to become who you want to be. To make choices is to construct your ‘self.’ It is to be human. To be fearless making those choices is to be the best of humanity.
We’re both terrified. But we try anyway.
Fearless.
Fear.
Less.
***
I’ve been writing this essay for a long time. Weeks. Every time I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to say, another person dies. Then another. Then another. And then the mass murder in Orlando.
As I struggled through the day after, I spent a lot of time being appalled at what horrific human beings white supremacy creates. I cried and was angry, cried and was angry some more. I cried and got angry at the same time. By the time I watched the Tonys that night, I was a mess. I cried through most of the broadcast. But something was different. The opening number especially had me crying so hard I was choking on snot and couldn’t get words around the hard knot in my throat.
That could be me,
that could be me,
and that could be a lot of fun.
I went to sleep feeling more soothed, not realizing the soothing came from a cycle broken.
When I woke up the next day, I started to fall right back into that cycle. Crying, anger, crying anger cryinganger. But then I saw it for what it was. A cycle. A cycle imposed upon us all. I remembered the days after 911, the days when we were all so stunned and shaking and crying…and then George Bush told us to get over it. Go shopping. I remember how outraged we all were. What kind of a dick tells grieving people to get over it? To…go shopping??
Of course the answer is everybody. Everybody tells grieving people to move on.
there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it will
shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.
affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.
I took a breath.
And then we were at war, and then another war, and things never slowed down again. More war, more bombings, more shootings, more shopping shopping shopping. And then we were just used to it and forgot the olden days when we needed and expected time. Time to go to church and mourn and pray and cry. Time to be with friends. To light candles and build alters. We forgot that it used to be normal to mourn. To be soft. For many of us, we were forced to forget our mourning rituals long before 911. Centuries before. For others, 911 was the slap in the face that kept us down.
But now here we all are. No matter how we got here. We find out horrific news, we cry, we get angry. We demand something ‘be done.’ And then we move on. Even though it doesn’t feel quite right…Even if we didn’t get to spend enough time loving.
The music stops playing.
And we pretend not to notice.
In honor of the victims of murder, terror, white supremacy, toxic masculinity. I notice. In honor of a black man who made 40 years of fearless choices, I notice.
And I choose to take back my mourning, my grief, from war mongers and white supremacists.
I choose to become who I have forgotten to be.
And I do it with the help of my elders, who remind me that loving in the war years isn’t easy.
Loving in the war years.
We are at war. And I chose to love.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.
It’s been a long exasperating life I’ve lead for the past few weeks.
Chronic illness has really kicked my butt. There are days I can hardly move, but most days amount to just enough energy to get my work done and then come home and collapse. It’s been really frustrating for me, as I’ve really seen big improvement on the quality of ‘normal’ I live. To have ‘normal’ downgraded, well it’s been discouraging to say the least.
This time of struggling with chronic illness has coincided with a discouraging time professionally. I got asked to write an article on Flint recently, and I agreed. It was a complete thrill, I’ve long tried to break into the paid writing world. This would be a nice easy step. It wouldn’t be a difficult article. It wouldn’t be theoretical or making an argument. Just a short essay that explained the latest updates on the Flint water crisis for people who knew of situation but weren’t deeply involved. Easy peasy.
Easy peasy. Except–after I wrote my very best article and got the edits back, every single solitary thing I wrote except the opening paragraph was struck out.
I am very proud of myself for not sobbing, giving up, or moving on right at that point. Writers are a sensitive lot. Which is a really bad thing when the industry of writing is built on rejection. Most writers can pull out big files of rejection letters and have horror stories of sitting through workshops built on deconstructing everything about their writing. To be a successful writer, you must spend time thickening up your flaky pie crust skin into heavily calloused leather.
So I’ve done a lot of work on on myself. On handling ‘rejection’ in a way that doesn’t completely tear myself down. On taking ‘critique’ and turning it into my next fantastic essay. I was proud of myself when I didn’t break down or freak out or even complain to my W* after getting that heavily edited article back. I went out for a walk and came back feeling refreshed and relaxed. And I got right back to it. Rewriting, reworking, researching. Edit edit edit. Snip, tuck, move, insert.
Then I got another email. After consideration, it was decided the header needed to go too. I felt the doubt trying to find a crack to slip in through, but I pushed it aside and kept writing. Writing my very best. And after a few days, I felt happy with what I had and sent a clean shiny completely new article back in.
I got the edits back a few hours later–and this time, the entire article was struck through. Even the replaced opening paragraph was virtually unreadable under the dark red strikethrough.
This time, I cried. I may or may not have even helplessly fallen on the bed with my swoon handkerchief. I am a writer. I have a Master’s degree in writing. I tweet entire articles about Flint in an hour. I’ve been writing for decades. And yet, here I am, not able to even able to write a simple article giving simple updates about a city I love in a state I adore.
To make matters even worse? This write/send in/get back full strike through article cycle kept going for another week. Finally it was the due date and I couldn’t see straight and I sent in my final copy. I felt a sense of relief that it was finally done and completely convinced that I had worked so hard and so well that I surely would finally get the article/byline that I deserved.
But when I got the final copy, I didn’t even recognize my article. It had virtually been rewritten by editors. All that work, worthless. All that work, just not good enough.
In the middle of this completely demoralizing nonsense, tax season rolled around. My other job, the one that supports me, is contract work. Which means that I have a lot of freedom to do my work, and it’s work that I love. But it’s been one tribulation after another. First, because of bureaucracy, I didn’t get paid for over a year. Then, when I finally did get paid, I was so far behind on things, I prioritized keeping the lights on over paying taxes. A stupid mistake. Because sitting in the middle of chronic illness flare up, completely demoralized as a writer–I found out that I owe thousands in taxes. Thankfully, I was able to set up payments. But I’ll be paying for three years for this simple, stupid mistake that I pretty much didn’t really have a choice but to make.
And then the cherry on the pie of injustice–I’ll be paying for decades for making the simple stupid mistake of going to university. And I know this because yes, during all this drama, the school loan people caught me. And set me up on payments that will last well into my social security years. Which they informed me that if I don’t pay, they will garnish my social security.
****long protracted sigh****
I could say a whole bunch about what it means to be a woman of color business owner that doesn’t come from money, what it means to be chronically ill and dealing with guaranteed money stress for the next 30 years at least, or just being an experienced writer that can’t manage a 500 word ‘update’ article.
But at this point, the whole thing is just so ridiculous, all I can do is laugh. I am an experienced enough writer that I now have a pretty decent rejection story to tell. I didn’t just get my rejection letter like everybody else–I got the same article rejected by the same people countless times. And then they didn’t even print the final copy, but rejected it again and just wrote their own article. Top that one, my writer friends.
The good news is that I’ve been practicing a lot of herbalism during this time as well. Herbalism is the one thing that has helped with my chronic illness when nothing else has. Knowing that there are herbs that can help, that have helped eons of people in before me, makes me feel connected to humanity even if I’m stuck at home in bed. Other people have struggled with what I struggle with. On bad days, I send them prayers. And it helps, it really does.
I’ve also done a lot of reading. Including a fascinating book recommended to me about ‘whiteness’–The History of White People. I am working on an article about white people…an effort to continue developing my decade of work on the subject. I also have an article that I finished a long time ago, but I’ve since revisited and am in the middle of editing. I will make the original article available shortly.
And of course, there’s Prince. And everything I want to say about the artist that had one of the biggest influences on my life.
I am in the upswing. Life hits hard, and then life releases. And you get just a few moments to recover. Sometimes if you’re lucky, you get a few days or even weeks. I am getting better at recovering more quickly.
And I am happy to finally see that this is all I can ask of myself.
We are observers of the world, mostly because there’s nothing better to do. Making friends with loneliness during the day, tucked in by it at night. Unafraid of the melancholy of loneliness.
Daughters.
When we are together, the loneliness eases. She shares a story with me and I pull it into my imagination. I spend days developing a new story, filling up the empty space with vibrant life. I return to her storytelling at night with the eagerness of a hungry tiger. She and I are sisters, learning and growing together.
She is lonely for different reasons than I am. She is the loved daughter of an older widower who is of the generation that does’t play with their children. She is the loved younger sister of a brother who is growing out of childhood. Her mother is dead.
I am just the daughter. The daughter with a father that works to avoid home. And then comes home and takes his anger out on his family. The daughter of a very much alive mother that has no way or means to avoid home. And so takes her anger out on her family. The sister of an older brother who resists this home by being angry at the one person who can’t retaliate.
I am the daughter that learned to be good is to be quiet. To fold up into yourself. To not exist as much as possible.
Scout and I have little in common outside of our loneliness. But that is all we need.
2. The father
Trust
There was no where to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus’s vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth; his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing. (chpt 13)
Atticus Finch taught me how to father.
For all sorts of reasons, my father could not be who I needed him to be. But most of all, for all sorts of reasons, he didn’t know how to father. I used to resent him for this. Even hate him. But then I became a parent and I saw how hard it really is, and resentment and hate shifted into a question of practicality. How do I do this work? How do I give what I never got?
The first time I read that passage, I pause and reread it. Then I put the book down and think about it. To be that intimate with my father is incomprehensible. To hear his body shifting with his breath. To feel his breath on my skin. To feel the warmth of his skin against mine. To feel the comfort of releasing too adult worries into his adult hands. To feel the comfort of knowing without asking.
He will be there when I land.
For me to move into my father in a way that would lead to a hug or an warm embrace, is to confront the reality I’ve lived with my entire life but have kept hidden under the bed, only pulling it out during the long nights when terrifying dreams stalk my sleep.
He never really wanted you to begin with.
I am not old enough, mature enough, able enough to handle that truth being made visible in broad daylight. Not yet at least. And so I do nothing about the massive empty space between us, except pretend not to notice it.
But I read and reread Scout’s story. I study what having a father means to her like I study a planet I’ve never seen. There is proof it exists, so I know it must be real. But my trust in this proof walks on a tightrope. And soft breeze would be enough to push it off. It is only Scout’s constant reassurances that thickens the tightrope into the stability of a solid sidewalk.
I know it exists. And when I stare the question of practicality in the face, I know where to turn.
—-
My son is talking. I am sitting in a chair at the table and he is talking to other family who sit with me. We are a family of history, we talk often about old battles, ancient policy, the influence of culture on world events. This kid of mine finds ways to weasel into these complicated history conversations between adults, and he is the rare kid that the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ adults in the family don’t elbow out. He holds his own, even with adults.
As he chats back and forth with others about the Holy Roman Empire and Charlemagne’s folly in leaving the empire to his sons, he backs gently onto my lap and pulls my hands around him. Eventually when he grows too tired to keep up with the conversation, he leans into me until he finally falls asleep.
I say nothing, just breath his warmth in.
—
When I talk about it later with my therapist, I tell her that the thing that made me cry after everybody left and we tucked the kids in bed, is how he didn’t even look at me as he slid into my lap. He just assumed I would be there. He didn’t have to look, he didn’t have to double check, he didn’t have to worry. He took it for granted I would be there, and I would welcome him into my lap. He knew without asking that I was there for him.
The therapist didn’t say anything. Just sat next to me as I cried again.
—
…and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
It is incomprehensible to imagine a father like this. But once I read it, I know it exists.
My son crawls into my lap.
I knew it could happen.
And it did.
3. The Sunday Social
Courage
I am sitting at a booth in a small diner. My hands are sweaty, my stomach is a queasy mess. My father is at a different table talking to his friends. I don’t know where to look or what to do.
My father returns to the table, and slides into the seat opposite me. We don’t talk. My hands twist into a tight knot under the table. My father leans over and pulls menus out of the cluster of condiments at the end of the table, hands me one.
I can hardly breath as I take the menu. My mind races as my eyes flick over the different meals. I don’t see the words, I don’t know what I could possibly order that I could choke down anyway.
My father closes his menu, looks back over at the table of friends he was talking to earlier. I feel the familiar sinking in my body. He wishes he were some place else.
Happy birthday, he mumbles. He is still looking at his table of friends.
Thanks, my dry mouth manages to scrape out.
I look out the window.
And wish I was some place else too.
—
People like to focus on Atticus. They like to look at what they call the ‘climax’ of the book. Atticus, the brilliant lawyer, defending Tom, who is black and accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow South. Atticus, the defeated warrior, walking out of the courtroom after the inevitable decision finally returns. All the black people in the segregated balcony standing up as a sign of respect.
White people fetishize this moment. A white man as the hero. A white father as the hero. The Great White Father. And yet…
There is another moment further along in the book. A quiet moment. Scout is at a Sunday ladies social gathering that her aunt put together. Scout, who struggles daily with the strictures of womanhood, is cast by loneliness into a room of creatures as alien to her as a father is to me. Gossiping women.
She wryly notes that her Aunt Alexandra’s invitation for her to stay at the gathering was a part of ‘her campaign to teach me to be a lady.’ And at first, this campaign appears to be an abysmal failure, as Scout, who is stuck sitting next to a vapid gossip, declares that not only does she prefer the company of men, she finds women to be hypocrites.
It’s hard not to agree with Scout’s uncharitable assessment of white womanhood. Because as young as Scout is, she notices that there’s different expectations for her black maid, Calpurnia, than there are for her white aunt, Alexandra. And she notices that while the social club would never dream of inviting ‘white trash’ Mayella Ewell, the woman who accused Tom of raping her, to their meeting, these ‘ladies’ have their own ways of supporting Mayella that are almost as bad as Mayella’s accusation.
One of the women delicately and with much ‘lady-like’ dignity, notices that ‘some good but misguided’ people are ‘riling up’ the black community even though these ‘good but misguided people’ think they’re helping. She goes on and on about how ‘sulky’ some of the ‘darkies’ are getting and then concludes that she would’ve fired her maid if she had kept up her ‘sulking’ one more day.
Scout, not yet wise in the subtle (and often not so subtle) code language of ‘lady speak’ does not really understand that it’s Atticus these women are targeting. But the neighbor lady and family friend, Miss Maudie, does and with a few pointed words, cuts the conversation off. It is the first time that Scout begins to suspect that maybe there’s more going on in women’s socials than meaningless women’s chatter.
And then Atticus comes home and pulls Alexandra, Ms Maudie, Calpurnia and Scout out into the kitchen. He tells them that Tom is dead, killed by prison guards. He has Calpurnia come with him to help break the news to Tom’s family, leaving Alexandra and Miss Maudie and Scout to figure out how to deal with the group of unfriendly white women in the other room that would celebrate this murder with gentle eyebrow lifts and pointed nods. The group of white women that use language to enforce white supremacy.
There is a moment in the 6th Harry Potter book, when the hero Harry is contemplating what it means to fight a battle that is already lost. After 6 books and numerous battles against evil that never quite win the war, he finally figures out that the choice he is facing is not if he can defeat or win against evil, but how he chooses to face the evil. The passage reads:
“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.”
How you choose to deal with the unwinnable fight is the crux of the battle the hero faces on his journey. Luke Skywalker choosing to be killed rather than kill his own father. Simba choosing to return to his tribe. Jean Valjean choosing to let Javert go free. Harry choosing to die rather than allow anybody else to die in his name.
These are all critical moments in the hero journey, moments where the characters transcend the world they are in and symbolically give their lives over to the universe. And in giving their lives over to the universe, they become one with the universe. Eternal.
The problem is, we’re used to that moment of transcendence being dominated by men and boys. We’re used to Harry, Simba, Luke, Jean, Frodo, Neo, etc all being the hero. We’re used to looking at huge male figures like Atticus and assigning him the worship, the glory. We’re used to courtrooms being the arena were battles happen.
What happens when the hero is a lonely little girl? And the arena is a Sunday church social in the front parlor?
It’s no mistake that Scout’s gift is observation. She sees the plethora of choices singing to her almost from the beginning–the choices that somehow even readers often miss. She sees the white girl that falsely accuses a black man of rape. But she also sees her young white teacher imposing her power on the young people of her room and then being comforted by those same young people when she cries. She sees the drug addicted virulently racist old woman conquer her addiction only to die a few days later. She sees the hypocritical white women at the social gathering. She sees the white teacher who defends persecuted Jews to her students and snarls indignant hatred against uppity Negros. She sees the murder of an unarmed black man, murdered in the name of white womanhood.
It’s a battle that probably won’t be won, not in her lifetime and not by her.
But her choice is made.
She fights anyway. If Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.
She is and will be a lady on her own terms. And those terms will unmoor the genteel lady speak of white supremacy.
She stops her shaking. And walks into the arena with her head held high.
A hero. On her journey.
4. Dolor hic tibi proderit olim–This pain will be useful to you.
Grief
There once was a little girl that was so lonely, she would cut herself just to feel something besides loneliness. Nobody ever noticed the burning red wounds. Nobody really ever noticed the girl. She had learned how to be a Good Girl very well. She knew that to be good meant to be quiet. To fold up into herself. To not exist as much as possible.
He crawls into my lap.
I breath in his warmth…
That Good Girl with the queasy stomach and the bleeding arms was on a hero journey. But she didn’t know it, not until she read the story of Scout. Scout, who was kind enough to share everything that little girl on a hero journey would need to survive.
I read about survival. So I knew it existed.
And I did it. I survived.
