Alecto's Ophelia

Elizabeth in Tel Aviv and other things you should probably know

I've deleted two drafts about Elizabeth's trip to Tel Aviv. Too angry about too many things in the world and missing the point for sure. Elizabeth has done nothing wrong and she has handled her situation remarkably well. I would have sent them home. 

Here she is with my dear, dear friend, Lior whom I have not seen in fifteen years. She is on the rooftop with his family and there is that photo as well but this is the very best.

She would never have been this brave at home and yet she had already resolved at least one accuse issue all by herself.

Elizabeth's time in Tel Aviv was invaluable for many reasons. Maybe I'll write about it later.

On Thursday she will get on a bus full of American students bound for Jerusalem. Or she will not. 

To get to Jerusalem you have more or less two choices, both of them dicey if the god of war is grumbling.

It is grumbling. Publicly.

Driving the long way around puts you on the border of Lebanon for a couple of hours. You are trapped between the Lebanese border and the other side of the West Bank which is the problem just now.

Driving on Route 1 over the land bridge which is the road called Israel which bisects the two largest chunks of the West Bank IS dicey when there is an actual scheduled anti-american protest between the 24th and the 26th. I want her to muzzle her two traveling companions until they clear the area, no matter what happens or doesn't happen. 

On the afternoon of the 27th she will make a choice. Do I talk to other people about it? Yes, if you want but I wouldn't do anything like yelling fire in a movie theater. Your traveling companions need to be sent home but Jerusalem is used to them showing up in droves. Tel Aviv, not so much. Tel Aviv expects to to pay attention and not be a dick inasmuch as you can manage to not be a dick by accident now and then. Kinda like me,last week, mentioning that it had been four years since the people responsible for bringing that plane down in Ukrainian airspace were captured.

Dead silence. And then, only because we have a relationship built on mutual trust and care, Slava said, so, so quietly, everyone makes mistakes.

Ah Fuck! I forgot it was. Shit. I'm sorry, Slava, everyone makes mistakes. Look at our current president.

I'll stop here or I'll never get this photo published and it is the thing I most wanted to happen for her, and for Lior and his family.

I hope it's ok on Thursday, I really do. But I'll be watching the news (which will not be broadcast over here because we don't like to talk about it) and I guess the last card I've got to play is Lior who will probably say, don't go, Elizabeth. Stay on the kibbutz. Come back and go another time. And bring your mother.

We were born before the wind

I spent a considerable amount of time this morning working with this photograph to bring the signature forward. C. Romanelli, of which there are many, but not quite right. I don't know why it was so important to locate a photographer from the greater new york city area who photographed my dad in 1944 or 45 but not much later.

Maybe I wanted to see if there were more, if there were descendants of one C. Romanelli still making portraits. This photograph sat on my grandmother's dresser, probably from the moment she had it framed to the moment she no longer had a dresser, or a dresser no longer had her. I never really understood why this photograph was always there when there were so many others to choose from. Something about it prodded me, left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable with no good reason why.

I know why now. 

C. Romanelli saw the boy as he was before he fell into the great and unknown world. Before he entered the wild and became a piece of this and a part of that, informed by the nature of his life. Here is a boy on the cusp of the end of the age of discovery, undamaged and whole. 

My stomach knots at the vulnerability and sweetness and I have solved, for the most part, I think, the incongruity of the man who was partially responsible for leveling me, stripping my skin in the harsh embrace of parental control, and the dominance inflicted on all women, one way or another, of the patriarchy. I fought against him and then I ran and fought some more, coming to my knees over and over again until I could no longer breathe in his presence.

He is surely not responsible for all of this, just to be clear. And he is surely not guilty of intentional abuse. Our actions as adults, as parents are significantly informed by our past, often indirectly.

What couldn't be reconciled, this thing that knotted my stomach and clawed at my heart was this evidence of vulnerability and sweetness that I passed through or was held in one way or another throughout my life. My Daddy, the man I looked for behind the words and actions of the man I battled. 

When I was four years old, I climbed to the top of a dome jungle gym and then, of course, I could not work out how to get myself back down. I think, as I was climbing that he told me if I wanted to keep going, I was going to have to get myself out. I went to the top. Of course I did; it was scary and exciting and those things outweighed the need to be safe. A four year old is at the beginning of the age of discovery when we are willing to reach and when we can still hear and see.

When I got to the top and asked for help, he said, no, you have to get yourself out of what you've got into. I can still hear the tenor of his serious but not angry voice which is frightening and reassuring and safe all at that irreconcilable same time. 

He was not being abusive. He was teaching his daughter to think and to be strong. So he fucked that up. These things happen. I can and I cannot hold him accountable for what happened next.

I looked behind me and tried to set my foot on the bar below but the dome is at an angle and I couldn't work out the geography of it so I just kept climbing until I got to the very top where I sat, legs dangling, tears and snot running in my hair, onto my dress.

No. I am not going to get you down.

In my head, with whatever outraged words I had, I said to him silently:

Alright, fucker. So this is how we're going to play it. I'll see your cruelty and raise you whatever I've got. 

I remember glaring through the tears. I turned around and lowered myself through the bars. I hung from the top bar over the ground for more than a second and I believe I'd given up on any sort of help. I just had to work up the courage to do what had to be done.

I dropped like a 32 pound rock and hit the ground hard. It probably wasn't a terrible drop and maybe I could have broken something, I don't really know. Maybe he didn't believe I'd do it but I did it over and over again throughout my life until I stopped asking for help entirely. I remember the look on my mother's face when he brought me home bloody and bruised; pissed off like a wet cat. 

That experience was the shovel in the face that opened the tear in my universe. I can only see this backward but oddly enough, that memory is indelible and has always been in the forefront. That and the peanut butter sandwich event which happened at roughly the same time with mixed results; mostly anger and fear, but also the belief that I could indeed handle anything if I had to.

What happened to that boy? What shattered moments made him the dad who loved his girl through the lens of his own falsely identified fear?

It matters and also it does not matter. We are 55 and nearly 80 and his time is close. Not from bad or hard living but from an unfortunate card in his deck. We all have those cards in our decks, but they don't always come to the top. 

At the top of my deck, right now, is the face of my father below the layers. And it is beautiful.

 

The First Time

The first time ever you travel alone, the first time you truly venture from home, the world transforms around you and you are transformed by the world.

On the way to the Tel Kabri excavations for three weeks.

Do you see it, hear it, feel it, adjust and blend, and do you understand? Do you lose, or put aside, a piece of your Self in the process? Do you create that space to let it in? 

It is scary. The moment it stops being scary, or is not scary at all, is the moment you are no longer there; the moment you have placed your whole self back in your own communal circle. As an aside, this sort of scary is not the same scary that shoots you full of adrenaline, fight or flight, brain awash in cortisol... the drawbridge is up and the archers are on the wall. Not the same at all. 

It is vulnerability that scares us all; bringing the serotonin and dopamine second wind. When we let it.

On the way to JFK yesterday, routed and rerouted through the outskirts of City Island, parking only a few minutes shy of three hours early, she said, not for the first time: I have never done this by myself. I have never been unchaperoned. There is no one here to tell me where to go and when to go or how to behave or even find the way. I have been to five different countries, but I have never been alone. 

You are not alone. There are two girls from your school waiting for you before even checking in. 

I don't know them.

They don't know you or each other even. You are going to help each other, apparently. You will be OK, there is always a way. Just pay attention.

I could not even pass through the gate to the checkin counter. I was stopped right outside the barriers and watched them dig through their bags for things they hadn't thought to have ready. She had everything in an envelop and her passport out. I may have over mothered her or she may have done most of that for herself. Regardless, I was not permitted through the gate. We weren't even within eyesight of security. I stood up straight, tightened all my muscles and allowed myself to shake. My face was a river. 

A passenger pushing a lifetime of luggage toward the gate patted my arm and said, It's ok, Mami, it's ok. Los bebés vienen a casa (I think). Babies come home. 

My heart twisted itself once, stood up and announced to the world that THIS IS NOW OUT OF YOUR HANDS, Mami. Let it go.

What am I afraid of? Not what you think, I don't think. I believe she will get herself where she needs to go no matter what. I believe that even though she is the youngest person on this trip, she will lead because she will believe it is a necessity. I hear her speaking to her traveling companions in the morning from Ben Gurion, "No, you need that! It's your visa and you should carry it at all times. Here. Put it in your wallet. Do NOT lose that." 

Momma, my friends are really, really scared about customs.

Why? What is in their luggage? The only thing I'd be really worried about are drugs and weapons. I'd say ditch the drugs right this minute if it's not too late and if there are weapons, run like hell. Away. Away from danger.

Nothing is in their luggage I don't think. It's just that we don't know how to get to customs and we could walk out the door right now.

Then you have already cleared customs. 

When?! 

When you picked up your luggage you walked through an open space or a wide hallway and you were watched but you were not pulled aside. You have officially cleared customs if you can walk right out the door right now.

What?!

You have cleared customs but you will not have cleared El Al security until you are no longer on airport property. 

What?!

You are OK. Also, it is Shabbat so it's probably quiet in there. Mostly empty.

Yes it is. 

Then find a place to sit with your luggage and wait for your ride.

OK. I love you. This is very exciting and very beautiful.

Yes. All that yellow stone. So beautiful. My friend Lior was asking for you. He wants to know if you will come to Tel Aviv and I said you wanted to drink Prosecco in Tel Aviv because you could. Lior is a VERY good friend and also his wife Orit. That's Lee-or and Or-eet. 

OK, thank you.

I said you could not travel alone if you were under 21 but that an entire group of you hired a bus to go to Jerusalem. I said that you only needed one friend to figure out how to get to Tel Aviv and then, as long as you come back to the dig in time for work, you can go anywhere you like.

OK, thank you.

(what is all this, ok thank you?)

Elizabeth, go to the museum part of the airport after you've rested. You have a three hour wait. Two of you can go at a time but you know you can never leave your luggage unattended.

YES, Mom.

OK, good.

Later I sent a text message because I hadn't thought to send it, I'd only realized I'd forgotten to say it at the airport.

Also: for what it’s worth, you are a diplomatic representation of the United States of America. Remember that, because the world will.

THAT is what had my heart twist around itself and then stand up.

Wherever we go, we represent who we are and where we come from. Don't be an Ugly American, I told her in the car. She asked how not to be an Ugly American. Isn't that a great question? So many answers and no time to teach what I haven't already taught. But.

Elizabeth, remember that you are not at home, not in any way. You are in someone else's home. Be how you would be when you visited someone else's home at home. Listen six times as much as you speak, and then speak into the context of where you are. The Kibbutz where you'll stay is entirely unlike Tel Aviv. Jerusalem is a whole other world; many worlds all in one ancient place. This is why you need the long skirt and the long sleeve shirt when you go there. You need it because the people from George Washington University wish you to represent your country by being aware and respectful. You may wear that outfit to Jerusalem and see many American tourists dressed as they are at home or in the city. It is expected but not appreciated. It says: I don't really know where I am. It is about stepping INTO the community as part of the community. You know how to do this, just don't forget. 

Elizabeth, Americans are assholes when we step out of our own space. We aren't just assholes when we leave the country, we're assholes when we leave our community. We are hugely disrespectful by way of being hugely unaware. I promise you, most people do not mean to or want to be assholes. 

Elizabeth, most of the world thinks we are freaking idiots right now. They think our country as a whole is bleeding insane. They are laughing at us while we are judging them. 

Elizabeth, represent your country as its very best self. The self we all have when we aren't terrified of being wrong or bad.

But I forgot to say this part, the part about being a diplomatic representation of where we come from. Diplomacy, we are all responsible simply because diplomacy is a grass roots sort of thing. 

When I see a Confederate Flag in a truck window with southern plates, roaring its way through the streets of the northeast, I want to scream. When the Northeast goes South with its passion and anger, the South DOES scream. When we go outward in any direction, we run the risk of offending the shit out of the communities we step on. With or without knowledge.

When we go outward in any direction, most of the time, unless the culture shock is extreme, we go in battle gear, defending our beliefs and actions. And we miss it all. 

The First Time we venture beyond the final sandbar, informs and often solidifies how we will experience, or not experience, the rest of the world for the rest of our lives.

Unless someone shakes the shit out of us. But I haven't known that to be particularly effective most of the time.  

I sent her a song. Listen to it on the bus to Tel Kabri. You will need it then. 

I think this thing as I shake off Weston, and take on Chappaqua, leaving my predispositions behind as best I know how. Even 30 miles and 50 minutes away, I am in a whole other place. 

 

Tel Kabri excavations

House closed

House closed. Nailed the letter from Chase canceling the debt to the kitchen wall. Jack took pictures. I said I'd scan it but he wanted the photos of the two pages front and back nailed to the wall.

I should use a bigger nail, probably.

You should use a railroad spike.

He's right, actually, it does deserve a railroad spike and I happen to have an entire box of them thanks to my grandpa who was given a railman's box full of them. Monogramed. He was an attorney for the St Louis Railroad and they named a tugboat after him: The Frank Albert Johnson. I'm sure it's long in the graveyard by now. Anyway, the monogrammed box of spikes is in my living room. It's far more fucking impressive than the boat. 

However, I really do care very much for my land people and I care very much for the condition of this cottage, so I won't be driving a spike through the wall anytime soon. 

Maybe a tree. 

No longer my problem. None of it at all. 

Next!

editorial comments

I got nuthin.

I did not shake her hand and I did not take her picture but I watched Elizabeth's friend's mother shock the shit out of herself when she only meant to get a photograph of the lady shaking hands, so close, so real, and suddenly she was right there. 

It was hard to keep sight of her. The bobbing white head towers above the secret service a lot of the time, but the much smaller dark blond head is hard to see unless you make an effort or she does. 

I did not know about the parade. How could you not know about the parade? asked over and over most of the afternoon and I don't know about the parade because I do not know about these things. Unless my kid is blowing his French Horn with that marching band, I am not getting anywhere near those lunatics and I do not much care for floats. My friend below in the big farm house came running around the back to tell us the parade was about to start, but we were already in the street because Brianna called. I stood by my friend in the shade of her lower garden for a while and she invited my friends to come to the shade but I said, thank you, that's lovely (and it would have been) but I think I'm going to follow the parade today. 

Later, someone's mother: you want to go all the way to the train station? If that's where it ends, that's where I'm going and it's half a mile last I checked? But this hill! You'll have to come back up this hill. I'm OK with that.

People ran alongside the parade, became part of the parade, I literally saw no living person snarl or make an uncomfortable face except the protesters and that's the point of this country, isn't it? The right to speak your truth. A woman standing next to me asked, somewhat confused, but I thought she was cleared of those charges? 

I don't know if she was cleared or if she was not cleared but I'm leaning toward cleared if I recall what I've read in the past but mostly I find it irrelevant. We are terribly hypocritical. Did you vote for her? Oh Yes! At this point I'd be hard pressed to vote for a man for any public position but that's just my terror and outrage speaking, like theirs across the street. 

And the one lone man with the bloody fetus abortion sign. I'd have walked up and shook his hand but I don't have it in me anymore. You want a war? OK. Let's have a war. I don't honestly care about your opinion anymore. But, I told the woman, I don't know whether I'm crying about what those signs read, starting with the big word FAGGOT in red over there to the left or crying because we actually can still do this. 

And no one was bothering them. Not ever, I don't think. 

Milling about in the street, waiting for the pipers to start because I intend to follow them to the very end. Milling about in the street and a very tall man says, excuse me, ma'am, I'm going to be backing this vehicle out of here and I stared no shit with my mouth open. Are you OK, ma'am? I am OK. I have never been within forty miles of secret service for anything and you're taking my breath away right now. 

Are you afraid?

Of you?

No, are you afraid that something might happen? 

No. I'm not at all, actually. 

Good. Then you'll get used to this.

I will?

You live here, don't you?

How do you know that? 

Because you were standing up there with Mrs. M like you were her favorite neighbor.

Oh! Well, she's mine, that's for sure. I live in the cottage attached to the house.

Good. Then you'll get used to this. You're not going to ask for my autograph, are you?

People do that?!

(deep sigh), ma'am, you just would not believe. Have a great day though and enjoy the parade. This is a real nice town.

And it is. 

I met so many people. I do NOT meet people, I mill through the crowd anonymously. I met a woman from a chapter of DAR a little further north who told me stories about WWII and Korea and Vietnam and her brothers who were sent to Nagasaki and how much death occurred later, back at home. She talked about the Vietnam veterans who were sent away and sent back to humiliation. I thought about how and why we do these things. Babies, they were, I said. Oh, they're always babies. 

A woman asked if I was part of Moms in Chappaqua yet and another asked if I was part of the Women's Advocacy Group and handed me a card. We need you, she told me and I'm thinking, what have I told you?

I was beyond grubby. Right out of the garden and I realized I was shaking clean hands and hugging very carefully dressed clean bodies and decided it probably didn't much matter. Except the other DAR woman from the local chapter. My friend, the tiny woman from further north grabbed my hand and pulled me into another crowd. Talk to this woman! (I command thee?)

Why?

Because she wants to talk to you about DAR.

Why?

(me) Why do you think?

Ohhhh... you want to know more about us.

OK, we can start there but let's assume I know plenty about you. Not you specifically but about DAR and SAR, I know plenty. But this is a new county and a new state and I'm rather stunned by the fact that a community event actually smells and feels like a community event. Because of my experience here I thought I should probably talk to you.

So you want to know more about us.

Sure. 

Can I smack her over the nose with my rolled up application (you know, the one I didn't actually fill out because there weren't really any blanks when I got it - hint, hint, Alecto, please turn this in at your local chapter - Noooooooo)? 

No. I cannot. That's rude. We can compare who is WASPier than whom later. I disengaged myself and went to meet the woman with the dress of faces, all the women's faces running for something right now. She gave me a big sticker that looked just like the dress. Pretty much guaranteed our differences of opinion would pop up as soon as we stopped talking about the current outrage. 

I threw up the day I read about it... literally apropos of nothing she tells me this and I'm not sure which it she's referring to. I don't ask. I nod and tell her a great many of us are feeling pretty much the same. 

The famous people did not speak. They sat in the inner circle of town leaders and veterans and they watched. Later, Elizabeth asked me why they didn't speak.

Why should they? Do they have to? They are here in the middle of us. Isn't that enough?

I didn't get jack shit done this weekend. 

(not even remotely true but my list is epic)

 

and in the end, the Pipers I followed up South Bedford and all the way down King St to the green, played Amazing Grace and I sat down in the grass and cried. Happy Memorial Day.

New York Plates

They are one digit apart. That is just the freakiest thing I've seen on a set of plates. I know it's had to have happened before, but only if you walk into a DMV to register two vehicles at the same counter at the same time. This is not something I've any experience with and I should actually photograph the evidence of how difficult it was to get both sets of plates off. Mine in particular because I went at it with the power drill (uh, yes, the correct pieces part inserted in the correct location) but not in reverse. 

Think about this.

They were already stripped and I finished them off. The plates are from the original RAV4; the green one I totaled on 84 just outside  Hartford in January or February, 2015. 

The plates were totaled too but I wanted them anyway. Portnoy ran over the front plate which was nearly bent in half until it was mostly flat and those were slapped onto the new RAV4 by the same people that sold me the first. I loved that plate; it had the BEST nemonic ever. So easy. Even better than 700 Willy which was 700 WILY. I could have kept that when I traded in David's BMW but I thought a fresh start would be best.

 

3AEVT8

 

Ailish Elizabeth Vomits Tacks

(and I think I'd rather be 38 than 83)

 

So, you know that sort of humor should not be a surprise and if I've managed to shock and or appall anyone...

 

YAY, ME!!!!!

 

I am really not happy about losing that nemonic but I think we have two matching that are almost as good.

Elizabeth, how are you going to remember your plates?

I have no fucking idea.

Don't say fucking in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Storefront (with the wide open doors and big ass grinning recruiter). 

Why not?

Bad ju ju. 

Oh. 

So how are you going to remember your plates and fucking won't work because F isn't the second letter.

I have NO idea, Mother.

OK, ready? 

Yup.

Wait.

Why???

Because. Because people.

Uh...

OK (in the middle of the street) Jesus H Christ!

Ohhhhh JHC.

Yay!

What about the numbers?

I'm working on that but see they're almost the same?

Hey! I want 12! 

You get 12 but you don't actually have a choice in the matter. 12 is for the Prius, 13 is for the RAV4.

What about the other two numbers?

You can't just remember two numbers?

Doubtful.

OK. Here it is: 67, which is how old I'll be before I can even THINK about retiring. 

White noise coming out of the blond head....

Later.

Who was born in 1967? Mom? Who was born in 1967?

No one. Absolutely no one was born in 1967.

That's not possible (SO Gullible, actually contemplating this).

No one I know was born in 1967 (also not the truth but she's catching on).

I call BULLSHIT, Mom.

Whhhhyyyyyyyy.....?

Because you remember exactly seven birthdays. Well, maybe ten but I'm not giving you credit for those until you prove it. You remember when you and uncle Jack were born down to the minute. You remember when I was born but NO ONE WAS LOOKING AT THE CLOCK SO WHO THE HELL REALLY KNOWS?!

Elizabeth, I know you were born in 2000, isn't that enough?

It's a start. Who was born in 1967?

I DON'T KNOW!!!! I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHO WAS BORN IN 1967!

1968? 

Not exactly but a lot of people died. 

1969?

No, but a bunch of people almost died.

1970?

I moved to Connecticut. Aren't we losing the point?

Not really. You're going to remember 1967.

Why?

It's the year absolutely nothing happened. 

Nothing happened in 1965 either.

Stop it.

Self diagnosis

Naturally Steampunky. 

"Phoropter is a common name for an ophthalmic testing device, also called a refractor. It is commonly used by eye care professionals during an eye examination, and contains different lenses used for refraction of the eye during sight testing, to measure an individual's refractive error and determine his or her eyeglass prescription.^[1] It also is used to measure the patients' phorias and ductions, which are characteristics of binocularity." From the Phoropter wiki.

I've been visiting Dr. Nemser in Stamford since 1997. Before that it was hit or miss; I saw my first optometrist at 25 because my husband assured me that the street signs were NOT that dirty and when he told me to tell him when I could clearly read a highway overpass sign. Whoosh! Now, I see it now! We'd just passed under a very large, very clear sign for a major interchange. 

That one was new, Alecto, you're going to an eye doctor asap. Fine. 

But 1997 was when the concept of vision and vision correction became interesting. Maybe it had something to do with Dr. Nemser's personality He was and still is utterly disengaged with anything other than my eyes which left me free to examine everything in that room, most specifically the phoropter since that is what hangs in front of my face. 

What does it do, exactly, I asked him. He looked annoyed (he always looks vaguely annoyed as if he'd be far happier if people would just send in their eyeballs) for a minute and then

It is a phoropter. 

Great, what does it do, exactly?

It provides a considerable amount of information about your eyes.

More than just how far I can or can't see?

There's a lot more to vision than the first line you can read on that chart. Now put your chin there, please.

I put my chin there and used the quiet to look at the poster of the working parts of an eyeball that predates me until he redirected my view. 

I took the wiki definition, by the way, because it has many helpful links to information the general public mostly disregards. Every last definition can and should be used as a series of metaphors for how an animal views the world. We're included in the definition of animal on that wiki page and I suppose it's a good reminder. 

In your head, did you just say, 'that's not true' or 'thats not true about me'? Please read or reread refractive error and binocularity specifically. 

I've been thinking lately that I'm due for an exam and also, what it would be like to stand on the other side looking in at my own eyes. You know, sort of like a self breast exam. You might not want to find what you might find doing that thing once a month but, you'd like it far less if somebody found it for you a year or two or even more into when it had metastasized from stage zero to stage four. 

As an aside, if testicular cancer were more prevalent than it is, the funding would be astonishing. We've heard that one probably one time past its effectiveness but it makes me think that if testicular cancer were as, or close to as breast cancer, that a very high percentage of men would be prodding the goods more than monthly. A prostate exam is another thing entirely and I'll stop there. 

One time I commented on a post of a man I only know from the contra world. He's a musician and he's a regular cranky pants so when he extended the formal Facebook request for Facebook Friendship, I was a little confused. At the top of the contra line, on more than one occasion, I was the dancer clapping during a Petronella Twirl. And on more than one occasion he snarled at me. I gave him my best cat smile in return. Always. He seems like an old time Republican Farmer and crotchety too, I thought. How interesting, I thought, from inside my world view. Turns out he's a relatively staid man but when he retired and spent a year in Sweden learning to play something I've forgotten entirely, he because interesting. When his generally neutral and staid (that word again) posts periodically went off the deep end over particular hot spots in the hotbed of the political climate, he became more interesting.

Mostly I just followed the posts and sometimes read the comments. He has a mixed bag of friends and he's generally pretty good at moderating the conversation.

So got brave one day, mostly because I was so damn upset about the topic, and I wrote the highlights of my professional career in terms of discrimination and harassment focused primarily on how I handled it. I was very good at saying, it's OK, I can handle him. And I did. As a side note, the very last time I made that statement was at a Connecticut contra dance when a notorious predator who seemed to be off his meds behaved very, very badly with me. Eventually I hit him. In the line. I hit him.

WHAT is THAT shit all about? How is it possible that it should come to this? And worse, how is it possible that it would be OK for another man to handle it for me? And for the love of god, how is it possible that our president, a woman of a certain age, who SHOULD have removed him, had an obligation to remove him, protected him fiercely. 'He deserves one more chance. I'm going to give him one more chance. I'll have a little talk with him.'

But he squeezed her breast during that last dance and the only reason I know this is because I found her sobbing in the ladies room and SHE THINKS IT'S HER FAULT! AND THERE GOES ONE MORE NEW DANCER, BY THE WAY.

I walked out during the break, after that conversation and I never went back. He pranced around the room as I was leaving, with an escort to the parking lot (in a part of town with a significantly low crime rate). Said escort was male, of course. He pranced and he leered and he followed me to the door and when my foot crossed the threshold, he cackled gleefully and whispered...

I win.

No shit. 

And later at another dance a man said, that's just the way it is, sometimes you have to put up with that shit.

My comment was driven by my history of saying, It's OK, I can deal with him, and how so not OK that was and is.

I hit the highlights, beginning with my mother in the 70s having her ass grabbed and skirt lifted as a matter of course by her peers, those other programmers who stuck together.

I moved up the chain noting things that had happened and how it was getting better but that we still had a long way to go.

The response was scathing. It shocked the shit out of me, knocked the wind out of me, and left me feeling like a chastised little girl. Had the response come from a man, as it has in the past, I would have pulled his spine through his mouth and left him flopping on the floor. I talked about this yesterday with Adam, this voice in my head saying, I can handle him, and the fact that I can handle him but that a woman's voice leaves me withered and quiet - with my spine pulled from my mouth, left flopping on the floor.

It is a betrayal, he said.

Yes. It feels like the rug's been pulled out from the lot of us by someone who's been benefiting by that rug.

My father: If you want to be treated like an equal and you still get pissy about a man not opening a door for you, then you need to have a look at what you really want. You cannot have it both ways.

Memes I see today by women younger than me: the definition of a gentleman...the rules for dating my daughter... I gag. 

So, she told me with a great deal of authority that she was sorry those things had happened to me and asked, as an aside what I wore and how I interacted. Her post read as if her jaw was clenched and the words hissed through her teeth. 

The killing blow: I worked in that same world for many years and never once saw or experienced anything like it. 

Which brings me to today's point and I've probably written this elsewhere already and probably been hanged for it. And blocked it. So here we go again.

Stop blaming the Old White Men. They aren't old (except a small handful) and they aren't all men. OK, maybe they're men in drag. Bad joke. I do everything to lighten this truth.

It is about control. All of this business we're talking about today is about control. It has always been about control. This one thing, right here, is probably what makes collective Christianity anathema for a large enough percentage of the population to turn and attempt to tear it to shreds. The control of women, one way or another. 

Control has been going on and being battled since the dawn of written history. In the twentieth century alone there have been more significant breakthroughs and milestones than any other documented century and we, in the United States, have been the laggers. Leftover Puritanical principle? Maybe. Or maybe just large enough to have perpetual chaos.

Some highlights:

Marie Curie - in 1903, recognized for her work with her husband, who received the Noble award for Physics - BUT - in 1911 won it for Chemistry on her own, in recognition for her work in radioactivity which she discovered in 1898. Not an American, but she counts.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory - in 1911, 123 women and 23 men were burned to death (or suffocated or jumped out of the building). They were locked in and the fire set. Do your own research on that one; however, it is the root of more than a few civil rights laws specifically relating to women. 

The 19th Amendment - 1920. Good God. We weren't allowed to vote until 99 years ago. 99 years is not that long and up until fairly recently, statistics pointed out that most women voted their husband's direction, regardless of what they may or may not have thought.

The Sheppard-Towner Act - 1921 - Women's Health (more or less, we had a look at it because apparently it was important)

Women are eligible to serve on a jury - 1946. In one state, North Carolina

Abortion is legalized in the Soviet Union - 1955 - unconditionally - holy crap. A governing body which granted very few rights to its citizens granted the right to abortion. Let's think this through. What became more important than control? The Soviet Union already HAD control. 

The Equal Pay Act - 1963 - a little hard to prove and enforce at the time, but a damn good start

Mississippi allows abortion in the case of rape (well ahead of its time) - 1966

White v. Cook - 1966 - women have equal right to serve on juries. No shit? Two years after I was born.

Title X - 1970 - The Family Planning Act. Read about it.United States: Barring women from practicing law was prohibited in the U.S.

Banning women from practicing law in the United States - 1971

Roe v. Wade - 1973 - and I am shaking

Griswold v. Connecticut - 1974 - the right to married couples to obtain and use birth control (*married*) 

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act - 1974 - I think I might actually vomit from fear and rage. Consider the implications. What could we NOT do or have prior to 1974? 

The Women's Educational Equity Act - 1974 - THE RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE FOR FUCK'S SAKE. That's maybe worse than the last two.

In Texas, a woman can sue her doctor for wrongful birth - 1975 - In Texas, it was no longer legal to withhold information regarding the health and well-being (or lack thereof) of a fetus from its mother.

Barnes v. Costle - 1977 - a boss can no longer practice any form of retaliation against an employee for rejecting sexual advances. Do you hear screaming? I hear the woman who responded to my post.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act - 1978 - still not well enforced today a law shattered just as much, by ratio, by women as men in the workplace. I personally, looked at a newly married young woman during an interview in 1999 and wondered if she'd be out on maternity leave within a year, and out of my revenue pool for god knows how long. Holy crap.

Bellotti v. Baird - 1979 - teenagers do not require parental consent to an abortion. Stop right there. Before you get your back up, change the lenses on the Phoropter and consider the circumstances which would require a teenager to bypass her parents. Consider at what point does a young woman have the right to control her own body? The phrases, if there's grass on the field... and if she's old enough to bleed... come to mind. My fourteen year old, screaming in the car at the top of her lungs in 2015: IT'S MY BODY AND I'LL DO WHAT I WANT! Go Elizabeth! But why did she feel the need to scream at the top of her lungs? Seriously. Why? I'm not particularly controlling, especially with this one. It's not me she's afraid of. It's You.

Kirchberg v. Fenestra - 1981 - Legal Subordination of a wife to her husband - HARD STOP. Oh fuck. I was a junior in high school and four years from marriage. 

People v. Liberta - 1984 - the end of legalized marital rape. A married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman. However, this law had significant limitations, you had to prove marital rape. It wasn't until the late 90s that we nailed this down a little better. We can thank Lorena Bobbitt for that, partially.

That's all I have for now; I'm an hour out of time. I've left out a lot. I've left every single one of the United States major achievements by women. I started with Marie Curie because we didn't really catch up until Amelia Earhart in 1937.

Control. 

What has happened in Alabama causes a rush of adrenaline to course through my body, radiating outward from my center.

The right to choose and control. This touches literally every single law that has been passed on that list. It was never about abortion. It never will be about abortion. I listen to people talk about why it's wrong and I want to scream: THEN DON'T HAVE ONE! I listen to judgement and the believed or perceived whys of abortion - this is my favorite: she spreads her legs and just runs out and gets an abortion every time she gets knocked up.

To be clear - I hear this 99% of the time from other women. We have slut shamed since the dawn of time. It gives us a better edge. We think.

Spin the lenses and remember what you are. 

This goes for other judgements as well, by the way. I just don't have the time.

However, if you have not read the Alabama Abortion Law, please do so. Now.  

Unedited. 2571.

No. 104

`

Usually I am moving too fast to notice anything other than, is my car in front? Did she swap the cars when she came home last night? Am I going to be able to get out of here by 6:30? My ass needs to be at that desk at 7 AM, DAMMIT! 

Inevitably and eventually this is followed by, FUCK! Is there actual food in the house? Are we out of peanut butter yet? Does the cat still have another can of food? Did I take my phone off silence and is my badge in my bag? Gah! 

The same series of events happens almost every evening regardless of what time I finally walk through that door or how bad I think I need to pee. Hopefully it is not 9 PM and the cat is beside himself. The cat is always beside himself; it's an issue of degree.

Drop computer by the door and hang purse by the hook on the bakers rack. Greet the cat. Sweep the kitty litter out of the Harry Potter room (because the mat makes zero difference), sweep the Harry Potter room, sweep the rest of the kitchen because it's asking for it, begging for it, every single day and I have no idea why. Shake out the door mat and the rug by the sink. Sweep some more. Sweep it all into one pile, smacking the cat with the broom as he walks back and forth, through the pile as many times as he can. He's anxious about his food. 

Scoop the litter box in the back of the Harry Potter room. The source of the need to sweep and the root of his frustration. By now he is purring raggedly at my back because he knows what's coming. I reach for a can from the self and the mwrrrrowwwwws start. 

He gets exactly three quarters of a can of Whole Cat twice a day because that is the only thing he's managed to keep down and if he eats more than that, up it comes anyway. I rinse the bowl. More cat frustration. I wipe the bowl. Panting, purring, mmrrrrowling at my back.

I open the can and take the foil off the remainder from the morning and dump it into the bowl which is when he comes completely unhinged and starts with the little leaps and two legged walking like a dog and I wonder what's keeping him from just leaping up onto the counter. 

I make him sit. Like a dog. Sort of. He has never been permitted to rush the bowl but this is not the same, right? Cat is a Whole Cat junkie. He purrs until he is halfway through and pause. I hear him behind his privacy curtain. Is it the same for cats as it is for dogs and often humans too? Does the consumption of food force your body to wake up  and get rid of what was consumed earlier? I've never seen a cat do this. He won't look at me when he comes out but I don't believe he ever stopped purring. 

If it has been a particularly god awful difficult day and I decide I want an adult beverage, I find an appropriate glass and place it carefully in the freezer.

And THEN I can go upstairs to pee. And hang up my clothing and decide which fuzzy pants suit my needs. Shirt. Long or short? Footwear? flops or fuzzy slippers? Why? Because I'm tired of stepping into cat puddles of which there are few since we discovered the Whole Cat and the correct measurements, but still. God. Please. Just no.

I make my adult beverage which may or may not involve juicing citrus and may or may not want a lemon twist or a maraschino cherry and I pour it into my pre frosted glass and glide toward Elizabeth on the couch.

Hello, love, how are you?

I'm good.

That's good. I'm good too.

You don't look so good.

Well neither do you, but I thought we were going to keep this up and sail blissfully into the Straits of Denial.

Ok, I guess I'm not that bad. I just have that thing you say, what is that word?

Ennui. 

Yes, I am all Ennuiing.

That's not a verb, Love.

It is now. Would you like to hear me conjugate it? I had seven years of French, you know, and even passed the AP exam. 

Actually, what I really want is dinner. Whatdoya got?

Frozen pizza, PB&J, and we have the BEST bread for it at the moment, or, um, that's it. Pick.

Is that vegetable curry I made the other night all gone?

Yep. Lunch and lunch.

OK.

Do you want me to get Thai? I can run down the street and get Thai. 

Not feeling it. Are you sure we don't have any hotdogs?

Nope. You ate those two nights ago. 

Oh. What did you eat? 

Half a box of cereal. I was right here on the couch with you, you told me to put it away and eat something healthy.

Did you?

...mmm no. Aesop's? What about Aesop's? I don't think it's too late.

Yeah, I'm feeling that but I'm not feeling the check.

No apps, no drinks, no desserts?

...mmm no. I'm feeling a frozen pizza. Will you please make Mommy a frozen pizza? 

Yep.

And it has taken twenty minutes to negotiate dinner and I am thankful Annie's Mac & Cheese wasn't on the menu because I'd have been all over that. Meanwhile, my adult beverage has been sitting unnoticed on the coffee table, on a coaster, and it has caused a puddle of condensation because the glass has completely thawed.

I eat whatever's floating in the glass and proceed to consume the contents very, very slowly. I like to be able to stand up at the end of a big girl drink even if possibly no one is looking. 

Elizabeth has a timer in her head and it is almost never off. She cannot, however, remember that her mother cannot consume food without a napkin. We are eating and talking about our days and the days are slipping from our shoulders onto the sofa, and finally they sink into the floorboards and go - somewhere. Wherever days go when you're done with them.

I heard a story when I was very small and I can only remember the tail of it, as if it was a dream, but this is what I think.

I think I recall a story about lost dreams. You have your dream and you wake up and the dream is lost. But what if you want to get it back? And this is what the story was about, the place where lost dreams are kept. I imagine shelves and shelves and shelves and the small person in the story goes to the place where lost dreams are kept because they really want that dream back. They find the dream, and take it off the shelf and there the story ends for me.

Maybe I dreamed it. I don't think so though.

Is this where lost days go? Not days that you honest to God lost because you slept through it or were too sick or too drunk or hungover or anything like that. Days that are lost after having been had because you let them go, off your shoulders, onto the sofa, and into the floorboards. I think they are all stacked up there somewhere, for better or worse. Some you want back, some you want to forget entirely, but for the most part, stacked in those shelves, just like the dreams we remember for the first few seconds after we open our eyes.

But Adam has let me walk into a trap this afternoon. He allows me to notice my isolation and also to notice my not noticing anything other than what is required of me and he lets me think about why. 

And I arrive home. 

In the winter when we signed the lease, I asked if I could plant in the area in front of the cottage and she looked disconcerted and I realized she'd had it landscaped so I apologized and said it really didn't matter. Later she said something that didn't quite land.

She said, if you want to plant, I can have my man take these up and put them somewhere else. 

No, ma'am, you worked hard to get this like it is and I think it ought to stay that way and she laughed and that was that. I thought.

A week or two ago I came home and noticed the earth had been worked around the plants and I thought, Oh crap, I should tell her I don't need this, she shouldn't have it pulled up and moved. But I forgot and then forgot and little by little things started to change and I noticed those things.

I stopped before I went in (further agitating the cat), walked around to the side porch, never any further down the walk because I know how she feels about boundaries. I looked across the yard to the raised beds that had been put in for her. I realized the raised beds were put in and the plants were also put in and the garden was maintained by someone else to some extent. She works out there most days, even the damp and cold days, but she cannot possibly manage all of it. Later I realize she does not cook every night. All those wonderful smells coming up from her kitchen, different every day. I realize this is not her. Someone cooks their evening meal and then I hear the side door slam because I think that is the only way to make it close. Later, she set off her own fire alarm with the steam from boiling water and I think, you do not spend much time in that kitchen anymore. 

Today I sat down on the walkway after walking around and looked at what someone was doing. She has asked Elizabeth if I want to plant because her man is working on something. Elizabeth said, probably not. 

Her man has been working on something. He certainly is and he's not nearly done. He is winding ivy just so across the earth and there it will lie until he is ready to do something else with it and I think he must be going somewhere with this. I admire the ivy most of all, even though the roses are what interest me most.I thought they'd just been cut way back but then I remembered there was nothing like that at all when we moved in. The roses are new and deliberate. One is in the center of the garden left and the other is not contained at all. As if by accident, he has put it to the left of the round steps leading from the driveway to the walk. 

He sure does like Hostas, I think, but also, thy are perfect for this light but that is one established Hydrangea and there is something going on to the right. I wonder who put the bit of whimsey on the left at the start of my walkway. I think he has found it somewhere last year, or the year before, and parked it, this bit of gate.

When I am in the kitchen looking out, I am hammered by it. I am living on an island in the middle of a sea of other world. There is a gardner who cares for this property. Not just a landscaper who lays it in and knows how to maintain it once a week, a gardner. A person who cultivates the earth and thinks his art out slowly, week by week, waiting to see what the environment will allow. 

That would be her man.

I wonder if he'd consider marriage? 

I am closer to him then I am to her, demographically speaking, and so the juxtaposition of living in this sort of grace against the backdrop of wanting to know this man who is winding vines across my front garden is disconcerting for a moment. I blink, and it is gone. I want to leave a note where he'll see it but there really isn't any good way. I want to leave a note to tell him how much time I spend in that small patch before I walk through the blue door. I want to leave a note but it is too forward. I have never even seen the man.

I wonder what he'll do next. 

Don't trap the cat

I love this picture and I'll probably have it framed; that or another of her sitting upright on the desk surveying the probability of being accosted should anyone actually see her. 

I think I might have taken this back in January and I think it could not have been much longer before we rarely saw her anywhere other than the dog's bed (with the dog), at the scratching post behind the sofa, or, not really seeing, were painfully aware of her presence in the farthest corner from anyone under my bed. Cat was a very noisy bather. I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of bone and sinew being torn apart under my bed. It took a few of these episodes to come to the conclusion that Ellie sounds like she's tearing something asunder when she decides she needs a good scrubbing.

Anyway, the cat was slowly disappearing and when the dog was gone, she only showed up when the food came out.

Last weekend we opened all the windows, pulled the screens down and pushed the storm glass up and had a cross breeze in every room but Elizabeth's. But still, she had air.

Marty got up on the sill and watched the birds but I don't think he so much as touched the screen. Ellie got up on the sill and watched the birds and the great(ish) outside and threw herself against the screen.

HOLY SHIT SHUT THAT WINDOW THE CAT'S MAKING A BREAK FOR IT!

All windows were closed to just four inches.

HOLY SHIT! THAT FAT CAT HAS GOT HERSELF STUCK BETWEEN THE SCREEN AND THE WINDOW!

All windows were closed to just two inches.

We can't live like this; we're going to boil this summer.

She is literally throwing herself against the screen, she's going to take it out. 

What do we do?

I don't know.

Later that night she sat skulking under the blue table. Without giving it much thought, I walked to the front door which seems like the side door but is not which means it is only ever opened to take out the recycling and the trash. There is a good size covered porch and a table. I pushed the heavy, automatically shut your ass out of the house bolted door and then pushed forward the storm door and stepped onto the porch. 

I stuck my head back and and said... Ellie. Ellie? The door is open.

Still skulking she made her way into the foyer which is as close as she's ever come to showing up on command. I held the door a little wider and whispered, do you want to go out?

She was tentative until she got to the edge of the porch, and sniffing the dark air, she jumped and was gone.

Will she come back tonight?

I doubt that very much.

Will she come back tomorrow?

Entirely possible. 

I called for her just before bed and I called the next and the night after and then I stopped.

What do you think happened to her?

I think she took off into the wild the same way she always did.

This is not the wild.

I know. But. But, do you want to continue to tell a ten year old feral cat that's spent her entire life in a forest that eats most cats and small dogs like scooby snacks, that she is going to spend the rest of her life in a bubble? The dog is gone, there's nothing left for her here.

But, Mom...she might have gotten used to it.

I doubt that very much and I doubt we would have had a single window open more than an inch. Do you want her to have had to force her way out?

No.

Do you know she was going to?

Yes.

Sometimes, sweetie, you have to let the cat go.

But not Marty, right?

Nooooo... never Marty. Kilmousky has way too many needs which mostly involve a great deal of physical attention even if he DID stay alive in those woods for ten years.

Marty is sick.

We are trying to pretend he's suddenly allergic to Friskies or can't handle dry food at all but that's not really what's going on here.

He eats better than I do most days, now. He turned his nose up at the chicken paste I made him (yeah, me too) but the .97 per can stuff from Whole Foods has made him very happy and mostly he seems fine. Mostly. 

But I still find the small orangish puddles and even though there's a kitchen full of cat grass now, his tummy is not good.

I remember what the town vet said when Chuck was dying and later about David's cat. He said there was no reason to put them down if they were taking comfort and interacting. We held onto Chuck until it was clear she was terribly uncomfortable and then we brought her in, heartbroken purple-haired girl clutching an elven year old, mostly outdoor cat in her arms. The girl who later called me at work and said: Mom! I have to take Marty to the vet right now! There is an ENORMOUS hole in his tail and it's going to fall off if we don't do something!

Finally, OK, Lucia, take the cat to the vet. $850 later I saw the clear plastic tube going through the hole in his tail like a pirate's ring.

Lucia. His tail was not going to fall off (probably) and that hole is NOT enormous. Although I'm shocked he got away from whatever had teeth big enough to bite through the tail of a cat, right at his butt, not the end. Lucia. We do not spend $850 on a house cat. I'm sorry. We just don't. Well, I don't. Do you have $850? I do not. Well, I did not and now I definitely do not. 

Yesterday, I did not tell her about his tummy. Yesterday, I did not tell Elizabeth I'd cleaned up another two puddles. For two weeks now, I've held him on the couch at night, exactly the way he likes best, and whispered, please, Kilmousky, not yet.

But soon enough.