We rise again.

Incredulous.  That is the look people would give me after I responded to their asking me if I was wearing my boyfriend's university jacket.  The jacket is black leather and has the University of Waterloo crest on the front and big white letters spelling out University of Waterloo on the back.  On one arm is 90 which signified the year I finished (and planned to...the choosing of this year for the sleeve was a bit dicey since that meant a commitment to finishing the program on time or looking foolish for the year/years that you hung around afterwards).  The other sleeve says HONS MATH.  The Honours Math thing makes me chuckle even now.  I picked this generic sleeve label since I switched programs within the Math Faculty about a dozen times before settling on the program that I actually completed which was an Honours Mathematic degree Operations Research major with a Computer Science minor.

I proudly wore that jacket and enjoyed the incredulity on people's faces when I would say, um, no it is not my boyfriend's jacket it is my own and why would you think otherwise?  These questions always came from people not on the University of Waterloo campus since I am happy to say that there were quite a few of us women sporting these jackets on campus in the late 80s.

Other than these first glimmerings of cultural bias against women (a woman studying math in university?  whoa) I lived in a cocoon throughout my youth.  My mother raised me on Michele Landsberg, Marlo Thomas and Our Bodies Ourselves and I believed that the hard work of early 20th century women had paved the way for equality for my mother and my own generation.   I neglected to listen to the stories my mother told of inequality because I felt she was just angry and perceiving sexism where basically it did not really exist.  I mean, even those questions about my jacket were kind of quaint in a redneck way, right?

It wasn't until I became a mother that I started to see how awry our world was.  Once I turned into a breeder the whole world got turned upside down for me.  I perceived everything differently.  And giving birth to a daughter made me recognize how connected all of us with wombs are.  The day I gave birth to my daughter I visualized the literal extending of the womb back behind me throughout my maternal ancestors.  Generations of women giving birth had led me to the birth of my own daughter.  I was connected to these women.  Permanently.

It was powerful imagery that remains with me almost over seventeen years later.  For the first time I had tapped into the strength of my feminine power and my blood memory was activated.  I could no longer think any sexist action was quaint or excusable.  Sexist against men or women but far too often it is directed against women.  Women with no voice.  Women with no choice.

As an exercise in hope during these darker regressive days for women I now invite you to play the below song while perusing the following hashtags on twitter (you don't need to belong to twitter to do this...that is the beauty of twitter).  While doing this I ask you to also think about the image of all of us descending from a womb and the chain of wombs behind you that allowed you to walk this planet right this very minute:  #IDidNotReport #MissRep #SlutWalk.  It is time to Rise Again.  Enough it enough.

The Blink of An Eye

I wrote this as a facebook note in August 2010.  It received many positive comments.  I attended a mini-high school reunion the other night and this person's name came up.  I thought I'd re-post this writing to my blog since it reflects an early attempt at the narrative non-fiction genre I'm taking a stab at here :)  I'm also pleased to report that nowadays I rarely feel that ugly stuff I talk about towards the end and I'm wondering if I've crested some sort of marker of maturity since I'm about to turn 45 :)


----


I went to visit a high school friend’s grave this week. 

I have been meaning to do this for awhile now. My boyfriend lives very near the graveyard she is buried in and I see the signs for the graveyard every time I come out to his house in the suburbs near where I grew up. 

I was surprised to find that I found her plaque, amidst hundreds of grave markers, within 10 minutes of arriving. The last time I was there was over two decades ago.

She has been gone nearly 25 years exactly. And the time has passed, as the expression goes, in the blink of an eye.

I didn’t expect the visit to be so emotionally charged for me. She and I were never really good friends but we were in school together since grade school and we ended up hanging out with the same gang at the end of high school. We were both quite scholastic and involved in our high school - her with sports and me with nearly everything else (band, drama, student council).

When they announced her name for valedictorian in grade 12 I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I was crushed. I felt the honour of valedictorian was my due for having nearly top marks AND my uber-involvement in school activities. I felt discriminated against since I was not a sports person (I was rather clutzy actually). My mother, who worked at the school in an administrative capacity, informed me that I was not chosen due to my former involvement with a non-academic but very popular boyfriend (this popularity earned him the position of student council president). I was a little bitter but was somewhat vindicated when my average that same year was higher than hers and earned me a scholarship for the last year of high school.

My high school mate chose to take an early university entrance program so she left us in our Grade 13 year. We saw her at holiday breaks and she was thriving and totally enjoying her new found independence at a university away from our hometown. Her university was in the same town as where I was hoping to attend and once my acceptance letter was sent she gave me tips and advice about this town and we were looking forward to socializing there.

In my frosh week I was approached by one of my high school comrades who had also chosen the same university as me. He lived across campus in a different residence so to see him was a bit surprising given how jam packed frosh week activities are. He was quite pale and looked a bit sick. He informed me, with a quivering voice, that our mutual friend had been killed the previous evening in a tragic frosh week pub crawl accident. She was crushed by a crowd trying to get onto a bus. Even today, almost 25 years later, the resonance and power of those words bring tears to my eyes. Such a bloody waste. Such a tragedy. Such promise. Such potential. 

Gone. In the blink of an eye.

Her passing has never been far from my mind. This week’s visitation to her plaque brought forth so many thoughts and yes, tears, for my now middle aged understanding and experience of life. One that I have been allowed to achieve and she was not. 

I walked throughout the graveyard that afternoon contemplating the fleetingness of life and the futility of my long dead jealousy for her. This mindful meandering also led to musings about other high school comrades - those that have also since passed - and others that I know of (thanks facebook).

And there it was again. Jealousy. After 43 years of life I still find the energy to feel that most futile of emotions. High school is a festering playground for childish emotions and as a full grown adult I can still drum up comparisons that leave me less than and wanting. Ick.

So right then and there a personal resolution was made. If jealousy rears it’s ugly head again I will forcefully show it the door. I have no desire to further entertain an emotion that has never served me well. 

At the dawn of my entrance to middle age I see that there are lots of dust bunnies clouding my being. I hope to see this life stage out -  so it’s time for spring cleaning...always being mindful that in the blink of an eye this chance could be taken from me.

Apples and Snakes

I am not religious.  Not anymore.  I had a good long three decade run at it with most of it being a willing and consenting participant (i.e. as an infant/small child I had no choice).  My certificate of annulment from my brief mid-twenties marriage attests to the purity of faith I once had as well as to the success of the brainwashing efforts.  As does the certificate of baptism that my daughter has.  As a teenager I used to go to Saturday evening masses with my best friend when neither of my parents had darkened the church doorstep for months.  My relationship with the church fizzled out before my daughter's recollected memory starts so she has bypassed the brainwashing track and for that I am truly grateful....as is she.

However, I do miss the comfort of the ritual.  I was part of many church choirs and I miss the music.  I went to a catholic funeral a year ago and belting out the hymns was marvelous.  I didn't participate fully in this mass due to knowing that the partaking of the sacraments is a personal witnessing for christ ritual that holds no meaning to me anymore. But I was fascinated to see friends participate even though I knew they hadn't partaken of any sacrament in years and according to the 'rules' as I know them the body of christ portion of the ceremony should have been off limits to them.  All of these friends were in their second or third marriages without annulments and I'm pretty sure their new relationships weren't chaste.  So they are 'living in sin' and not regularly obtaining the sacrament of reconciliation to clear that blemish in order to partake of communion.  In fact, I'm not sure when the last time any of them had been to church (probably a first communion or confirmation service).  Their participation made it clear to me that in today's secular world most people regard church ceremony as more pomp and less - or no - circumstance.

Setting aside the pomp versus circumstances debate, I don't regret for a single minute the time I spent with mother church.  It gave me early insights into the history of humanity that I don't think I would have obtained since I was pigeon holed at an early age into the mathematics/science fields.  My knowledge of humanities subject matter remains an autodidactic journey which is enormously pleasurable albeit a bit frustrating when the next gap is forged open, yet again.

That knowledge of humanities' history becomes handy when seeing clear affronts to morality. Like this kind of shyte.  Knowing that the core of humanity can be boiled down to the Adam and Eve Garden of Eden parable delivered concisely in the first book of the bible helps to frame these affronts.  Let's recap that shall we?  Snakes are tricky. Apples are tasty. Some humans can't resist.  Consequences can be profound and innocent bystanders are affected also. But at least we can blame someone (the starting line of most christ centred religions). 

When I look at that repulsive soft drink ad campaign, or in fact at much of our modern culture,  I see lots and lots of snakes. And just because I can blame someone (or something) doesn't mean that anything will change. And even if I ignore them,  the consequences will affect me and my daughter and her generation and the generations to come.   So basically nothing can be done except to try and ignore the tasty apples cleverly profferred by the snakes and concentrate on the bounty elsewhere. Because, despite being extremely tricky, those snakes haven't figured out how to obliterate the bounty overflowing in each and every human being's mind.

P.S.  Try to imagine what our world would now look like if the starting line of the Adam and Eve religions had been placed at recognition of the abundance of our planet and our need to sustain this for all time despite the appearance of tricky snakes with their tasty apples.

You are my fate.

Daughter turns 17 today.  This means that I got to say "my daughter" for the first time 17 years ago.

Language is so powerful.  These two words melted my heart for days, if not weeks after uttering them for the first time.  Even today I can tap into the wonder and marvel of those words and feel my heart melt a little.

There are so many hormones involved in this thing called mothering.

When I went on that farm trip a couple of weeks ago I felt like I was going to 'let down' when they started milking the cow.  It blew my mind that all these years later I could still empathetically release oxytocin by merely watching a cow getting milked (by machine even!).

I was a staunch La Leche League (LLL) member.  Attachment parenting, etc.  My daughter's crib turned out to be a great clothes hamper - i.e. she rarely slept in it..maybe twice - and since she grew by leaps and bounds in that first year a good clothes sorting basket was a handy thing to have (albeit a bit pricy).  Once I start earning a living wage again I intend to put LLL to the top of my donation list.  They are an amazing organization for new parents to turn to for support in all aspects of parenting.

I remember being amazed learning through LLL that some women who adopted could train their breasts/bodies to lactate. With the cooperation of the new born infant.  The miracle of birth is one thing but learning about this marvel of the female body completely gobsmacked me.  Hormones.

Daughter was a real snuggler, well after being weaned,  and really only stopped snuggling with me when she started snuggling with her teenage friends.  They regularly lie all over each other in the school hallways with heads on laps, feet on arms, etc.  There is nothing sexual about it (not overtly) and they are all platonically affectionate with each other.

I find this amazing.  At 17 I was not lying around on anyone's lap that I also wasn't furtively groping on Friday/Saturday nights.  Affection was always regarded as a prelude to something sexual.  And frankly I'm not sure if that was a nature or nurture thing.  I think catholicism and a general prudity of culture lingering in my 1980s suburb world had a lot more to do with it than I would have thought even 10 years ago.

My child, now a young woman, has been raised with the assurance that she is loved.  I know that she is nearly finished putting on her wings and will soon fly away.  That breaks my heart in some ways but I also know that this attachment parenting thing goes well beyond the nursing stage.  Hormonal human bonds transcend biology, as evidenced by the adoptive mothers that trick their bodies.  As daughter herself put it best in one of her notes to me long ago:  "You are my fate".

My grade 7 journal: "My favourite class is shop."

There is nothing like getting down and dirty with some power tools.  I literally hear my adolescent self rejoice.  I spent a few weeks this summer stripping the baseboards and refinishing the oak wood floor in the smallest room of my circa 1930 Toronto house.

And now, each and everytime I walk by the room with the 'new floor' I feel such pride in my accomplishment I expect the goddess herself to smite me for indulging so regularly in one of the seven deadlies.

But,what you don't see in the above photo collage is the sweat.  In Toronto, in August, there was quite a bit of it poured onto the floorboards.  And the tears.  

The tears came as proficiently as the sweat some days.

Tears for a life not lived.  Tears for a body caged by a disease that forbids a full time switch to physical labour of any kind.  Tears for lovers lost.  Childhood endings.  Misguided choices.  Abandoned and neglected friendships.

When rubbing in the oil on the floor after nearly 3 weeks of developing a very intimate relationship with it I felt I was anointing it, for in a peculiar way, the old floor has become my sacrificial lamb.  An offering to the universe of myself.  Stripped raw and then polished and buffed.  

So take me as I am universe.  I am ready, willing, and able for service.