Determined to Survive on This Shore

This is the fifth time I have spent September 2 in this city, on this side of the Atlantic, so far from home. Or, this is the fifth time I have spent September 2 at home, so far from home.

Expatriatism is difficult. You are never entirely happy where you are, because there is always somewhere else that part of you wants to inhabit. You always must leave those you love behind and go home, only to know that in time you must leave that home as well. Everywhere and no where is home.

I have lived here so long that much of my daily practical life before I moved has become hazy, dreamlike. I have begun to mythologize it, fill in the gaps with fanciful imaginings of what might have been. I cannot completely imagine a life other than what now fills my days - the transport, the sounds, the systems, and most of all the sights. It thrilled me once to see the pound sign printed on price tags, excited me to see 'Royal Mail' stamped on my letters. Now I can't imagine living in a time and place where Britain was not the backdrop for my days, and I certainly laugh that I ever glamorized living here. Of all the things London may be, exoticizable and Other it is not.

Sometiems it is hard for me to remember that everyone I know is still living the life I partly remember. To many of them, my life here is dreamlike, exotic, strange. I find this ridiculous, but I know it's true.

I am not sure I entirely understand the larger meaning in it all - both the reasons why I came here, and the feelings and experiences of so many people moved, removed, replaced, and displaced. What does it mean to immigrate back to a country your ancestors emigrated from? Did they choose to leave? Did I?

It has not been easy, being here. But being there was not easy either. I think this was the harder choice. I have wept, I have raged, I hae pleaded to go home. But in the end, I made it through, and I am still here. I am not who I once was. I am forceful. I am wordly. I have made it through months of serious financial insecurity and worry and homesickness and loneliness. I drink more, fear more, wait more, trust myself more. Overall, I am pleased.

I think about what I would tell myself five years ago, as we landed at Heathrow. It was such a scary and awful day, and all I wanted was for someone to tell me what to do. At most points during the last four years I would have told that girl to turn around and go home, to reconsider, to give up, that this was someone else's dream.

Today, five years on, I would tell her this: there is something here you must do. You will make it. This will be hard, harder than anything you have ever done before. You will be sad, you will be scared, you will be lonely. The sadness and fear and loneliness will abate but they will never go away. But you will make it through, because you must. Otherwise you will not become who you are meant to become, and becoming yourself is not optional in this life.

I do not know where I will be five years from today, but wherever I am, I think I'll be telling myself the same thing.

Manifestas for my Sisters

Years ago (8, to be precise) I started a writing project I called 'Manifestas for my Sisters: A revolution in letters'. Like most things in my life, it got off to a smashing start, and then I put it aside for a while. Every now and then, something comes up and I add a letter to the collection. Recently I've been thinking about the project and trying to add to it some as part of my 'doing things that makes me happy' campaign. Here, for your reading pleasure (?) and my likely embarrassment, are three. Two are from the original set of letters, and one is a recent one, which is not finished, but I wanted to put it up as-is for now.

I am under no illusions that they are great writing, but they are, in their own ways, resistance.

1. manifesta for my grandmama, and other good girls grown.

in 1938 good girls didn't go to the prom alone.
you did.
in 1941 good girls didn't leave the state to elope.
you did.
in 1946 good girls didn't get their ears pierced.
you did.

good girls didn't have sisters that went mad.
good girls didn't complain when their brothers
were allowed to play in the school marching band.
good girls didn't marry someone from a lower class.
you did.

good mothers don't join bowling leagues.
good mothers don't smoke in the house.
good mothers don't buy their children's clothes ready-made.
good mothers don't swear, or drive fast, or make vulgar jokes.
you did.

good grandmothers don't understand 'the 90s'.
good grandmothers don't accept their queer grandchildren.
good grandmothers don't buy purple Harleys, or red convertibles,
or understand what you've been doing all along is resistance.
you did.


2. manifesta for the white girls, who knew it was wrong even then.

the new kid in a small west texas town
the blond pre-teen queen favored me
until the day she was playing tetherball
with a Black girl
taller than her, with a name like a river.
the girl beat her
and miss pre-teen america called her 'n***er'.
i was up next at tetherball
and pounded the hard yellow leather
into her freckled turned-up nose.
it bled.
'don't be racist' i said calmly
and walked inside for a drink of water.

3. manifesta for the mamas I'll never meet for real.

You brave women,
you have no idea
you are my oxygen. you are hope pixelated in a series of tubes.

Decisive Element

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. -Goethe


I went to Spain last week with Mouse and Mouse's little sister (let's call her Sister Outlaw). The sights were nice, the weather was lovely, but most importantly I had some time-out-of-time with some of my favorite people. The few weeks before we went away were really rough in our house - lots of emotional turmoil and drama for no good reason. It got to the point where I thought seriously about leaving a couple of times. I said out loud more than once that if things weren't better by the time we got home from Spain, I was taking my cat and striking out on my own.

And lo, somewhere between home and home again, I came to the realization that I have the choice to make myself happy or to make myself completely miserable. I can look at other people's lives and be filled with regret and sadness for myself, or I can figure out what I genuinely want for myself and begin to transform my life into a reflection of that. I can make life happen, or I can let life happen to me. This seems ridiculously simple, especially for someone who is all 'create your own day'/treasure mapping/setting intentions/etc. But it's hard to always put those things into practice when you're faced with a hard dose of sadness, confusion, and self-doubt.

Somewhere along the Autovia del Andalucía, I realized that my life isn't that bad. I have a Mouse who likes me quite a bit, and would like me a fair bit more if I weren't such an obnoxious cow about him not being with me every.single.second. I have the luxury of occasional (verging on frequent) evenings alone in my lovely house to do whatever I please. I have a job I don't mind, a sewing machine that works, a garden full of life, dear sweet friends, and a good education. Nothing horrible has happened to me and, most likely, nothing will. My life will be what it will be. I can dread it, fear it, mourn what it's not, or I can cherish it, welcome it, and further manifest what I want it to be.

I came home from Spain and things have been different around here. I bought a leotard and tights. I took my first ballet class in 10 years at a slightly weird Russian ballet school in the neighborhood. I was horrible, everything hurt, but I remembered that in The Past, I did things by myself. I did things because I wanted to do them, when I wanted to do them. I did things just because I could. My life was there for the choosing. Fascinating. I expect these revelations to continue, each one simpler and more shocking than the last.

I credit Sister Outlaw for unwittingly instigating some of this post-holiday life acceptance. Over the past few years, she's gone from being a passionate artistic teenager to being, well, a passionate artistic adult. But she does what she wants, and works very hard to figure out just what that is. She does things that I think are scary and reckless, like moving to a central American country alone for a few months or giving up steady paid employment to live and work on a Zen farm. Sister Outlaw has dedicated herself to Buddhism and wakes up early each day to meditate with her sangha - not a mean feat for someone who inspires fear in anyone who dares to wake her before noon. I feel lucky to have someone like her in my life, and doubly lucky that she's in my family.

So I am here to say, once again, I have found a point of starting over. Since this is a theme that I can't get away from, I've decided to go with it. Feminist Wannabe Housewife appears to be a story of renewal and regeneration - for the days when housework isn't the answer, perhaps beginning again is.

Homemaking for One?

It's very hard to be a housewife to someone who doesn't really want you to be a housewife. It's also very hard to homemake for yourself. These may be some of the central flaws of traditional wifery and homemaking, even when (supposedly) done with an eye towards camp and mimicry*. There has to be an object for the whole thing to stand up against.

Mouse has been out of the house a lot recently seeing Miss Lady Friend. When he isn't at home, no bread gets baked, no projects get completed, no scented candles get lit. Home is not made. I just cannot be motivated to make home for myself even if QB is around. I do some sewing and spend a lot of time on the internet enviously reading about other people's excellent family lives, which in reality are probably less shiny than they are in blog land.

Mouse has been very clear over the years that he is generally weirded out by women (and men, I suppose, but we've usually been talking about women) who have no independent life outside of their primary relationship. I suppose this is a consequence of having a radical feminist partner which is both a blessing and a curse. Part of my brain understands his squeamishness(the reasonable, well-educated, 'old'-me part), but the rest of me mourns for the simple life of singular domestic focus that I'm missing out on - to the point where I'm no longer sure whether what I do every day is motivated by a desire to challenge and shake up society or just for a desire for the very thing I thought I was queering. But is my very desire for this life - and any ways in which I highlight the interdependent nature of women's work - a very queer project itself?

Now I've confused my pretty head. I just want to go vacuum and bake a pie. Seriously.

*As a side note - light a candle and read some theory for Eve Sedgwick, y'all. She was cool.

Zat Ees Difficult!

Two initial disclaimers:
1) I still haven't figured out the mission/purpose/whatever of this blog, so I haven't been writing and probably won't terribly frequently. The family blog gets a lot more action, but almost none of it is about queerness/feminism/babymaking, and I'm not sure if it ever will be.
2) My feelings about Paris have nothing to do with my feelings towards the doctor in this story, or towards any other French people. By the end of Paris, I was almost liking it.


Yesterday I started on what I thought was the first real step towards a medicalized conception. Those of you who know me well know that this isn't really my bag, and I'm coming at this whole overmedicalization thing with some resignation. It's going to take some medical interventions to get me pregnant, so that's what I'm going to do. But after that, no more medicine. Just nice normal pregnancy and birth.

So I take myself to the doctor's surgery at the end of my road to have some blood work done (tests the clinics need - Hepatitis, Rhesus factor, etc) and to get a referral letter to Kings College Hospital Assisted Fertility Unit. Fairly straighforward, right? Aha. See, you thought so too.

The kindly receptionists check me in and tell me, a bit airily, that I can see Dr. R--- right away for the referral. The doctor I like (there's two in the practice) won't be in till much later. Since I only had so much time off work, I agreed to see Dr. R---.

Dr. R--- is very French. Not in a chic fashionable way, or even in an obnoxious spoiled-teenager thug way. He's French in an old-man, slightly batty, rural-childhood-with-farm-chemicals sort of way. He's probably a really great guy. I have no idea, because I cannot understand a single word he says, but I'm sure he's very nice.

So I walk in and sit down. NHS doctor visits are very different than American doctor visits. For one, the doctor is waiting for you when you come in. You don't get seen in by a nurse who takes some basic stats about you and why you're there. You just waltz on in and sit down on a chair near the doctor's desk, and awkwardly start trying to explain your ailment while feeling like you've intruded on his/her work. It's unsettling. So, I walk in and sit down, trying to seem as cheery as possible since I'm not sick. Dr. R--- does not smile. He only asks, 'Vhat eez ze problem?' while looking at his computer.

'Oh, there's no problem,' I say, still cheerful, 'I just need some bloodwork done and a referral to Kings College Hospital's fertility unit as a fee paying patient. I'm trying to get pregnant.' Dr. R--- does not acknowledge that he hears me, or that I've just said something very exciting. He clicks around on his computer a bit.

'Vhat eez zis Citalopram? You are depwessed?'

Apparently he's been reading my files on the computer rather than listening to me.

'No, I don't have depression. The Citalopram is for anxiety, and I want to talk to you about stopping it, because I'm trying to get pregnant [you know, the reason I came in here]. Can you add it to my records that I'd like to stop taking it? That way the fertility unit will have my correct information [hint, hint].'

'Have you seen ze counsellor? Zis medicine is safe for ze pregnancie.'

Um, no, it's not, dude. And...what pregnancy? I need to get referred first, remember? I kindly point out to the Good Doctor that Citalopram is indeed contraindicated for pregnancy, that I have done a fair amount of research before coming to him for this referral (remember? the referral?), and I want to stop taking it anyways. He pulls out the Materia Medica (or whatever allopathic practitioners use) and confirms that yup, Citalopram is dangerous stuff. He changes my computer record to say that I'm stopping taking it.

The room falls silent. I remind him that I'm here for a referral letter and blood tests. He seems pensive.

'Ve must check your pwogester-one. Zis pregnancie? How long have you been trying and not become pregnant?'

Oh dear. I'm not quite sure what to say.

'Yes, we need to do a progesterone test on cycle day 21, which I have in my diary already, and my LH test on the second day of my cycle. And I know I can't get pregnant without medical assistance, because my partner is [biologically] female.'

Dr. R---, still poking about on the computer, doesn't miss a beat.
'Ah, yes, zat ees difficult zen.'

I did not laugh. It took all my faculties, but I did not. For this, I should be commended.

He potters about on the computer for a bit, gets flustered by technology, and tells me to go tell the receptionist what I need. He does kindly reassure me that I'm very young still and there's likely nothing wrong with me, which will probably only remain the case if I stay far from his doctoring skills.

As the old joke goes, what do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of their medical school class?

Doctor.

The Day We Can Believe In

To My Future Children:

This letter to you begins like nearly all my letters to you: with an instruction to look around you, hold your loved ones close, and think back. Just a few moments ago I watched the 44th President of our United States accept his new responsibility. I watched as an African-American man took over as the leader of the free world. I watched from here in London, through the modern technologies that we take for granted these days. I watched, thought of you, and I was proud.

The last several years have been times of intense difficulty and change. You have, I'm sure, read the letter I wrote to you when Bush was elected the first time, when 9/11 happened, and when Bush was re-elected. You know about the sense of betrayal, of fear and of demoralization that so many of us have lived with these last eight years. But this new step forward has given us all hope. America is different. We have moved into an age of hope and responsibility. There is a collective feeling of joy and expectation that has infected even the far reaches of the world. President Obama is a hero of the free world, not just of America.

I write to you today to ask you to think back to a time when a man of color could not lead us into peace, when the country was fraught with disappointment, dejection, and anger, and remember that in those times there were always voices of hope singing of the better days to come. Let you remember this and carry within yourself both the knowledge that today is that better day, but that there are still better days ahead.

This day, and every day, let us have occasion to say: Baruch ata Adonai Elohenu, Melekh ha’olam, shehekianu, v’kimanu, v’higianu lazman hazeh.

With eternal love,
your Mother

The Darkest Night

This year, as you already likely know, the first night of Chanukah and Yule (the winter solstice) were on the same night. In our house, we lit candles for both, since they are both traditional family holidays (Chanukah from Mouse's family history, and Yule from my adolescence) and feel very similar to me.

I was very good this year and didn't give anyone Chanukah presents (ok, I gave Mouse and QB a tiny beeswax tree ornament, but that was it. And a cookie cutter. But still, fairly responsible of me). QB told us a Jewish folktale about King Solomon, who wanted to wear a ring that, when looked upon, made happy people sad and sad people happy. In the end, the minister sent on the ring-finding mission came back to King Solomon with a ring that said gam zeh ya'avor, this too shall pass.

There are things I hope began to pass out of my life as the darkest night passed on. There are other things, though, that I know will pass and leave behind sadness at their passing. I really enjoy our house and I'm sad to know that our time here will pass away. I enjoy living with two people I absolutely adore. I enjoy my cat, even though I have no good reason to. I appreciate so many things about my life. I usually focus on bad things passing, pairing 'this too shall pass' with 'all shall be well' as some sort of perspective on making it through dark nights. This story about Solomon, though, has made me think about how I could remember to carry the spirit of gam zeh ya'avor with me when I am happy and at peace - these things too shall pass, and I should appreciate them with this awareness.

Speaking of things passing - I think this blog in its current incarnation has just about passed. I'm not sure what the focus of it is. I have my family blog for writing the adventures of life and some of the domesticities, and this has ended up being mostly about (reading over the posts) religion, starting over every possible chance, and complaining. That's not really what I set out for. I need a re-think. FWH will be different, but still here. Next week I'm going to revise and, as I am wont to do, begin again.

Shalom aleinu, and gam zeh ya'avor.