foundations

In the summer, i’m going to teach another Education course. This time, it’ll be a three week course on the social foundations of education.  Five days a week, 2.5 hours a day. It’s the same number of hours as the other courses I’ve taught (all two of them), but in a configuration that’s MUCH more challenging, I think.  i dunno. I’m more than a bit jittery about teaching. But this is much better than  cold-sweats-heart-palpitations-terrified. So, you know, things are improving.

social foundations of education. three weeks–I think it’ll be one of the final courses for them before they go and get teaching jobs (or try to). My students will be high school art teachers. I don’t know jack about art. i expect we’ll get along.

I also got the evaluations from my fall class. 42% of ‘em filled one out.  That’s 13 out of 32 people better than the course before. One person mentioned that sometimes the discussions became a bit defeatist.  Yea. That’s one of the problems, eh. I have great respect and admiration for teachers–it’s one of the most important jobs ever. Right up there with parenting, health care and radical feminist activism.

But the education system? not so much. it’s constraining, conservative, rigid and dehumanizing. Like ALL the institutions of power–Medicine, Law, Religion–designed to keep the power in the hands of the powerful, and maintain the dominated at the bottom–a raw resource for the human services industry.  Big “E” Education is designed to reproduce systems of inequality–to reinforce racism, sexism and classism. To reward mediocrity and stifle creativity. And all the good intentions of those beautiful people in my classes, they’re not gonna amount to a hill of beans when faced with that big ol’ machine.

Or will they?

Why am i doing this, then, if I don’t think things will change?

Hah! Busted!

Of  COURSE things are changing. Though the changes are glacial, they are indeed changing. Lookit, I’m an obvious lesbian from a working-class (not poor) background. I’m not supposed to be teaching university classes. I’m not supposed to be talking to future teachers about sexist harassment in schools. But I am, and I do, and I have started to talk to future teachers about sexist harassment in schools..

Speaking of which, you know what, NO ONE talks about sexual harassment by boys, of girls. There’s lots of stuff about generic bullying, and quite a lot about homophobia, and there is research too about racist bullying–(but it’s not called racism–it’s called “ethnoculturally-based bullying”). In fact, you’d be hard pressed, as you dig through the research, to find anyone who calls attention to the systems of domination (you know, patriarchy, for example) that are socially approved and reinforced in myriad ways. These systems, within which we all operate, provide the permissions and methods by which children (and adults) bully, harass and intimidate.

There’s this campaign to combat bullying, right–all the ‘good’ kids wear pink, to signal their commitment to end homophobia.Pink is  the colour for the campaign because only girls and gay boys wear pink. Boys are not supposed to wear that colour because that means they’re faggots. Girls ARE supposed to wear that colour because, well–that’s all there is for girls to wear, isn’t it? No one is bullied fro wearing olive green, or navy blue.  Girls who  decide to wear khaki and blue and black, like boys, they’re not gonna be bullied because girls who dress like that can kick yer ass. But boys who wear pink, now, fair game.

Because they are like girls.

And girls are weak. and disposable. or at least interchangeable–when we’re all in pink, we all look alike.

When i was young, i remember saying, and hearing, that ‘older men are set in their ways, they don’t understand that women are liberated now’. We let our dads and our grandpas off the hook because they grew up during a time when there were different expectations, sexism was stronger.

Well, now, you know what, i hear women say that exact same thing about men MY age! “oh, my dad, he’s just that way because that’s all he knows”.

No, no it is NOT all he knows! He was rewarded with all this power and room to move because he was male. All the women in his life, all those women who tried to tell him that WE are human, too, and he has to make room for us — we are just so many gnats buzzing in his ear. The call of the patriarchy is much louder and more compelling than the quiet determined resistance of the women. So he learns how to keep that power.

The ‘bad guys’ will physically intimidate and attack women who dare to question them. There are relatively few of them. But the ‘nice guys’ who would never dream of hurting women, they don’t stand up to the bad guys. they don’t sanction them. They might keep their distance from the bad guys, but they’re not likely to confront them, and tell them to stop. They’re not likely to step in between a man who is a bully and the woman who is his target.

I was at a dinner party once, a long time ago now. It was a gathering of artsy type folk, we had done some theatre together. One of the women who was starring in a play the next week, she was there with her husband. I was there with my lover. I wore a t-shirt from a take back the night march a few years earlier. The husband guy, he said to me, with a smile, “so, you want to kill all men, do you?”

I was taken aback. and i took the bait. I said, “of course not, what are you talking about?” and then realized he was referring to my t-shirt. It’s a great shirt. All these women, and female gods and historical figures are rushing together over a hill that is glowing yellow like the moon and stars in the sky. There are no male figures in the picture.

I guess that bugged him. He kept on me and on me, telling me that feminists hated men, and wanted to kill them or enslave them. I don’t remember now if i replied, “oh, like men do to women now?” I doubt it. I should have. I remember his wife beside him, looking down, looking uncomfortable. I remember our friend, Francine, trying to argue with him, too, trying to pull him off me (metaphorically). I remember feeling as if he was terrible knight in black armour, thrusting at me with his sword, swinging at me with his mace, and i had no defense. i was inarticulate in the face of his frightened rage.

And the men all moved to another side of the room. The nice men all stayed silent and pretended to talk about something else.

Later, Doug told me, “he had no right to attack you like that. He was totally unreasonable”.

“Why didn’t you help me?” I asked him, “He might have listened to you. Or at least backed off.”

I don’t remember Doug’s answer.

But that’s how the individual bully props up systemic sexism.  The bully is left alone. No one confronts him in the moment, and later his actions are decontextualized as just some mean things he does. Or maybe his behaviour is pathologized–and we hear that all the time, too. “he’s a sick man”. No he’s not. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Were he truly ill, or disordered in some way, his choice of target would not be nearly so predictable. He went after the women. He targeted me. His wife. our friend Francine. And the men let him. The system stayed in place, his position of dominance, the one wearing the boots, the boots placed on our necks, everything in its place.

This took place a long time ago, and we were all of us in our late twenties and early thirties at the time. “Things are much better for women now”, we said, “men understand better now than they did”, we said. All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Things have changed. At least now it’s NOT okay to say out loud (if you are a man) that you expect your wife to have dinner ready for you every night when you come home. At least it is not okay to growl at your wife, “One-a dese days, Alice, one-a dese days….Pow! Right in da kisser!” as Ralph Kramden said to his wife Alice 1950s sit-com “The Honeymooners”.  In some places, it’s not okay to post pornographic pictures on the lunchroom walls, either.Things have changed.

ah, but it is glacial. Women are still routinely harassed and dismissed in non-traditional jobs (i rode my bike past a construction site last week, and the one woman working on the site wore a bright pink hardhat. I was so angry…); everywhere you look, women and girls are stuffed into pink (more and more, i’m pretty sure) and boys are draped in khaki. Women are invisible in public. Movies, radio, tv shows, art galleries, music, business, science–even when there are more women than men in the science programs and the PhD programs and business schools, it is overwhelmingly men in the good-paying jobs, the seats of power, the heads of state. And of course, pornography STILL proliferates–in lunch rooms (maybe not as many, now–but too many, all the same), on TV, in store window displays, billboards, the internet, everywhereeverywhereeverywhere….

We have our place. We’ve learned where we belong. We learned it in school. We learned it from each other, from our teachers, from our families, from the world around us. But we can un-learn it, too. and we can make something else instead. When i teach “Social Foundations of Education”, I want us to figure out together how that foundation was laid, and what we might do to use it as a base for liberation rather than complacent acquiescence.

So. Sexism and sexual harassment is one thing we’ll focus on. The other thing will be the teachers strike. here in BC, public school teachers have been on strike for the whole school year.  They all go to work every day, they just don’t do anything extra. No  report cards, no recess supervision, no after-school sports. It’s frustrating for everyone. the Education Ministry has been chipping away at the BC teacher’s federation since 2001, when the Liberals were first elected. They declared teaching an essential service, effectively limiting teachers ability to legally strike or engage in job actions that would have an impact; they passed bills that removed class sizes, class composition, specialist support (‘educational assistants’, or other support staff), and hours of work from the teachers collective agreement. In April of 2011, the BC Supreme court found these limits (Bill 27 and Bill 28) violate teachers charter rights to bargain collectively. And now they’re trying to impose a contract that would see teachers salaries essentially frozen (The state calls it “net-zero”– it means i think, increases of 1% each year for three years or something like that).

We could have some interesting times dissecting labour relations, educational and union politics, sexism in the hallowed halls…three weeks. I’m a bit nervous about it. But it’s exciting, too. we can do a lot together, meeting every day like that. just have to have a plan…

anyway, I started this post about three weeks ago, and it’s time to move on.

Someone’s little brother

So, when i went home to Red Deer, in December, I looked up my old friend Simone*.  She and I were BEST friends in Junior High. I loved Simone.  She lived really close to the school, like, a block, and it was an “inner city” neighbourhood. Red Deer was barely a city then, but still, they were close to the main drag in the middle of town–a couple of mean bars close by, the Park Hotel and the Windsor within walking distance. Mind you, the school, two or three churches and a couple of pharmacies were as well. All the Institutions of Power within spitting distance of the house where my friend lived.  No power themselves, but surrounded. Like most of us, eh.

her parents were commissionaires. Which meant they worked for the city,  and took payment for parking at the lot by the post office, or walked around and ticketed cars parked by expired meters and other stuff of that nature. Not exciting work, and i don’t think it paid all that well, either.

In Simone’s house lived:  Simone, her two older brothers,  her younger sister and brother  and her mom and dad. This was a tiny house, and pretty rugged-looking. A rental in a constant state of dubious repair. I think the two big boys slept in roughed out rooms in the basement (which I remember as having a dirt floor–but i could be wrong. It was DARK down there).  Simone and her sister slept in bunk beds on the main floor, I can’t remember where the youngest brother slept. There was also an assortment of cats and a bunch of gin bottles.

Simone and I hung out all the time, especially in Grade nine. we would sit in her room and listen to Black Sabbath and other stuff like that. Until she became a born again christian, then she got rid of all her Black Sabbath records.  She wouldn’t give them to me, either, ’cause they were satanic. I didn’t care about that, I liked the music (i have NO IDEA why, looking back now). But she wanted to protect me from that stuff, I guess.

One weekend, my family went to Jasper for a long weekend.  I invited Simone to come too.  I wanted her to come live with us, because her house was so cramped and she was always working to take care of things, cooking, cleaning, trying to take care of her younger siblings…her parents were, well, neglectful at best. Mom said Simone could come, but she would have to tell her parents where she was. I don’t know why we didn’t do that. But she did come for that weekend with us. We rode horses one day, and hiked around. Dad built a big fire every evening and we roasted marshmallows.  It was a lot of fun. We were relaxed with each other.  We were like sisters.

When we started high school, she tried to set me  up with her boyfriends cousin. We liked each other alright, but there was no spark at all. For our first date, he picked me up in his truck, I think Simone and her boyfriend were with us, too, and we went down to the school parking lot and spun donuts in the snow for a while. That was in the days before speed bumps and concrete barriers.  that’s what kids did on Friday nights. I’d often borrow my mom’s car and go there with some friends to do exactly the same thing.  Then we went to some late-might diner and had french fries and hot chocolate.  Or maybe we went to Tim Horton’s for the other kind of donuts.

Anyway, it was a nice night, but he and I didn’t match up. Turned out, he and Simone took a shine to each other. By and by she became pregnant. She didn’t finish grade ten. She made her own wedding dress, it had a medieval looking bodice and sleeves that were tight at the shoulder and upper arm, and flared out below the elbow. Really pretty, if you go in for that kinda thing. She had her first son that summer, and moved with Stu to a trailer near Blackfalds, I think. We tried to keep in touch, but our lives were just so different now. I was a high school girl and she was a married woman and mother.

A couple of years ago, Stu found me on facebook. I was SO happy! My old friend! Now when I go home, I try to get together with her at least once. The first time, she and Stu came over to Mom’s place.  I never have had Simone all to myself like when we were girls, I wish that she would come to see me on her own sometimes. But I don’t know how to ask for that without hurting her feelings, or Stu’s.  Ah, never mind. we see each other once a year, maybe twice. If we were regulars in each others’ lives, I would ask to see her alone, but not now.

Anyway, the first time they came to see me, that time at Mom’s place, Simone told me that her youngest brother had decided he was really a woman. He’d gone to Montreal to get the operations done, and health care had paid for it. Stu grumbled, “I can’t have a machine to help me at night with my sleep apnea, but he can go get this done for free.” And little brothers’ surgeries amounted to about 10 times Stu’s sleep apnea machine.

Simone and Stu take a dim view of little brother’s decision to “transition”. He asked her younger sister for tips on how to “dress like a woman”. Simone laughed and said, “neither she or I have much to tell him,” and gestured vaguely toward her over-sized sweat shirt and jeans. Of course, being women, they dress like women, but for sure not in the impractical pocketless stuff so relentlessly marketed at us.  They are neither of them “ideal women” the kind their brother is supposed to be (according to the doctors who are “helping” him).  He was supposed to live as a woman for two years before heading off to Montreal to get surgery. That meant, I guess, wearing crippling shoes, sitting down to pee, shaping his eyebrows, pitching his voice high, wearing dresses, and taking short, maybe even mincing, steps to get where he wanted to go. If either Simone or I had to “live as women”, we wouldn’t be able to manage it, i’m pretty sure.

I asked Simone why he wanted to become a woman, and she didn’t know. She is disdainful of his decision and he has written her off as not supportive because she’s too religious. Which is a bit too simple, I think. She is religious, yes, but even though I think the religion she follows would take a dim view of me, her lesbian atheist friend–she hasn’t expressed her disagreement or turned her back on me. If her disdain for his decision was only about doing what her religion dictates, she would turn away from all of us. But she has not.

He was her little brother. She cared for him while he was growing up. She tried to protect him and she comforted him when he was afraid, and she made sure that he made it to adulthood. I’m pretty sure that she was as much, or more, a parent to him than their parents were.  We all grew up in a small city on the Canadian Prairies. It’s not easy to be gay there, even now. Maybe that’s part of it. He’s gay, and he’s from poverty; his brothers are rugged and masculine–his sisters too, kind of–(though Simone’s younger sister does amazing things with nail polish–manicures, I mean).   There was no place for him to fit–youngest kid, always at the end of the line. Growing up gay in the middle of the prairies surrounded by combine pilots and bikers–maybe he didn’t see anyone around him who had what he wanted. Maybe some grown-up man sexually abused him. It’s too common a story to be dismissed as a possibility.

He is suffering. And he sees this as a solution to his feelings of discomfort, dislocation, dis-ease. it’s not. It’s a drastic, individualized answer to a big social and political problem. It is not a solution. and it won’t get him closer to comfort, ease, or inclusion.  Ah, damn. it’s too bad. He needs his big sister now as much as he ever did, but he can’t have her. He sure as hell can’t BE her, either.

I hope he finds solace somewhere. I hope he comes back.

*i’m not using real names here, of course.

What’s YOUR favourite decade?

I think the 70s is my favourite decade. Feminism was HOT then–the 70s was when women started rape crisis centres and transition houses–and they were meant to be hubs of feminist political activity. Some became that, too. Take Back the Night, for example, was invented by anti-male-violence feminists. Radical feminists. That didn’t last long, unfortunately, by the 80s, battered and raped women were labeled  “sick”, and rape crisis workers were (big “P”) Professionals. the gap between them and us widened, even though there is no gap. The Man imposed it. Saw that we were serious, and gaining strength–and took measures, both subtle and drastic, to slow the movement of women.

“oh, those plucky girls, look how hard they’re working! How serious and earnest they are!”  The Man didn’t realize what a threat we were at first, and for a while there was a little room for women to move. Move into a bit of power. And those that did, made room for other women. And found money for each other. Soon the centres, the resource centres,  transition houses and rape crisis lines were funded. Under funded, mind you, but still. A wedge. But that wedge, that little bit of money that kept the lines and doors open, it came at a cost. The State began to ask for statistics, credentials, proof that this was necessary, and proof that ordinary women were the women to do this work.

“Aren’t you girls over-reacting just a bit?”

No. We are not. 40 years ago we were not overreacting, either.

Some women’s groups capitulated. slowly, slowly, though. It became important to hire women with University degrees. It became important to talk to women about “the cycle of violence” and the variety of syndromes and disorders that they might have: Post-traumatic stress disorder; battered wife syndrome; false memory syndrome; borderline personality disorder; pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder; Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy; obsessive compulsive disorder; etcetera etcetera, ad nauseum, syndrome disorder ad infinitum. At first women just told The Man what he wanted to hear, so he would keep tossing us crumbs of cash.

But some of us started to believe it. And some women started making money. Capitalism is Patriarchy’s best friend. Money does talk. And it drowns out women’s voices, even when women are the only ones speaking. We started placating the man, trying to get around him, but still keep the money flowing to the women who needed it, but gradually we had to work harder and harder to get the money, and it started to eat into the time we had to connect with other ordinary women–the women in trouble;  the women The Man had an even greater stranglehold on.

Take Back the Night prevailed, though, in some places. It was an exciting, vibrant, strident gathering of angry loving hopeful enraged impatient women. No men. Not at the back of the march, not in it–women only. Do you remember? Maybe we were mad at each other, maybe we had disagreements about how things should be done, and maybe we were making mistakes all over the place, but those nights, those raucous gatherings mended us together. We raised our voices together into the night, and we took it together. Protecting each other, standing shoulder to shoulder marching through the city streets, we said with one voice, “Enough!”

Though there were often many, there were never enough of us, not really. But wow, they were grand events. We would sing and chant and shout and clap our hands and raise a right ruckus–the sounds of women’s rage was amplified by the tall buildings. We’d spray paint on porn shops and sidewalks,  while other women in the march covered us. Women at work would stand at the doors of their shops and restaurants and wave their fists in solidarity, jump for joy. Some would join us.

but now it’s become a frail and fussy distant relative, whimpering about ‘violence’ as if it’s a mysterious virus that can be inoculated against. there are men in the marches now, a lot of them. They are no longer part of the women’s liberation movement.

sigh.

But they were the tactic of another time.  And maybe they will be of a future time. Maybe we will revive Take Back the Night. We will be Women Occupying. Not Women Occupied.  been there, done that.

ah. Today I worked at the transition house in the morning. Women talked about the violence men have done to them. the controlling, the manipulations, the withholding of money and kindness. Women said, “I am glad there’s a place like this. I’m glad to be here.”

In the 1970s, my mom applied for a credit card. There was a section where her husband was to sign.  She said, “He’s not applying for a credit card, I am.” the person taking her application told her that she had to get him to sign it. She said, “why?”

There was, of course, no answer that satisfied her. She walked away. She decided she didn’t need a credit card after all.

Capitalism is Patriarchy’s best friend.  Credit cards are evil anyway. But women need access to our own money, for sure we do, ’cause we live in capitalism. and patriarchy.

is having a credit card like telling ‘the man’ what he wants to hear? “sure honey, i’ll pay you back…”

so many contradictions….

anyhow. i’m running outta steam here. The 70s, though. Favourite decade. the rising of the second wave. Thrilling.

I was a child then, though, I didn’t pay the enormous price those early feminists did.  They opened a path.

You know who you are.

Thank you.

Releasing Shannon to the river

I gave Shannon to the river today. It’s January 2nd, 2012. Forty-two years ago today she was born. She died on September 21st, 2007. I have had her ashes in my cupboard, in a box from Wonderbucks. Her mother, Leta, gave me some of her ashes when she got them. I always meant to take them to the Red Deer River and release them there. I was going to do that in the winter of 2007, I think. Or maybe it was spring of ’08. I don’t remember. But I never remember to take them when i go home. Anyway, that was never one of her rivers. Grand Forks, perhaps, there’s a river or two there, that would do. Or a river in Manitoba, near where her parents are from. Clandeboye. It’s near a giant lake, there are oceans of rivers there. But not the Red Deer River. That’s my river, not Shannon’s. So I picked the Capilano River. I don’t know if that’s the river she meant when she scribbled “take my ashes to the river” on the letter she left for us the night she died, but it’s one she enjoyed, I know that much.

It was a cool grey day today, but it didn’t rain until late afternoon. I was in the gym by then, and noticed the pavement was wet and people were rushing around covering their heads with paper to try to keep dry. But when i went to the river it was not raining. I took a co-op car from the Mount Pleasant community centre. That was a good idea. I meant to get there at 9 and work out, but i didn’t. I slept until about 8:30 more or less, and then i had some breakfast and i didn’t go to the gym. I thought i wanted to write to Shannon. So that’s what I did. I put some laundry in the wash machine, called Suzanne, Shannon’s older sister whom she only met over the phone and e-mail, and sat down to write a letter to my dead friend.

Suzanne had called me yesterday to wish me a good new year and to tell me that she was thinking of me, and that she was really glad that i had told her my plan to send Shannon’s ashes away today. She cried a little bit on the phone as she left the message. I saved it. Because that’s what I do. And I like Suzanne. I like her because she heard about me from Leta and thought, “this is a significant friend” so she looked me up. She read a part of my thesis and found my e-mail address and sent me this beautiful letter. How do you write to a stranger who knew the sister you had never met? I don’t know. All of this is completely outside of my experience. But she took the risk, and sent me that brave letter. So I sent her one back that very night. I was in Ottawa, at the Women’s Worlds conference, and rooming with a couple of comrades. They were delightful roommates, but one of ‘em tends to snore. i was glad i wasn’t in the same room, but only in the same residence suite. it was kinda shitty, but it was comfortable enough, we enjoyed each other, and we were never there. there was so much to do, so much to do. So many women. and the debate about prostitution was HOT. Well, it was pretty congenial, actually. The pro sex-work lobby was not much in attendance, so that was good. And the abolitionists came out of the woodwork from every corner of the globe! You would think we were winning to have seen and heard us all!

And in the midst of all of that, all those women, all that politic, all that excitement, there was this letter in my inbox. “You won’t recognize who this is from” she said, and told me a bit of her story. In August we met for a couple of hours. We just met at Lonsdale Quay close to where she was staying with her family before heading off to Whistler for some vacation adventures. We sat together in the sunshine and she read a letter i’d written to her about Shannon and my friendship together. I told her as much as I could put together. It was five or six pages long, and included everything i could think of. The working together, the drinking, the short romance, the fights, the times we stood beside each other, the betrayals. I said, “some of this will be hard to read.” She said, when she read that part, “I’m so glad you wrote this. No one has told me any of this before.” Leta doesn’t know most of it, I don’t think, and her brothers would not approve. They hate me anyway because I said ‘fuck’ in the funeral service. I loved Shannon.

I wanted to keep her ashes with me, at least some of them. Find a medicine bag and wear it around my neck sometimes, just a small piece of her. But Rita, who is Aboriginal herself, from the Prairies, (like Shannon’s mom’s family, not the same people, but Prairies anyway), told me once, she said, “you can do that if you want, but if she asked for her ashes to be given to the river, you should probably do that.”

The peace i felt when i was doing it, and after, was amazing. I went to the Capilano River Park, and parked close to the fish hatchery. I walked to some pools right off the parking lot, and then started to the falls lookout. I didn’t know where to go or what to do exactly. I just kept walking. I walked along the Coho loop, then to the Chinook trail, and finally found a path to the river. Narrow and steep, it was not good for people with children or dogs to use, so I went down there. There was a great expanse of big smooth rocks between the bank and the river rapids. To the right of me and ahead was a quiet pool; alongside the path a brief little creek heading down to the water, it filtered through the field of rocks and toward the rapids ahead to the left of me. I went almost to the river, picking my way along the wet rocks, the hem of my jeans and my boots getting wet and muddy. I was cautious. I found a flat rock and sat on my rain jacket.

Shannon had given me a beautiful pottery dish, shaped like an oyster shell complete with barnacles on the outside and a glaze like the ocean. It broke last summer, in July. I’d put it in a stupid place, and a friend jostled the table it was on and it fell and broke into four or five pieces. I haven’t glued it together yet, but I took the biggest fragment and a box of matches and a bit of sweetgrass a friend had given me last year. I took the box of ashes. I pulled out the bowl, and put the sweetgrass in it. Then i took some of the ashes and mixed them with the herb. Ashes from human remains don’t really look like ashes. They look like dust and gravel. There were small shards that looked like slate, and others that looked like hard sponges or bits of coral. It didn’t look at all like Shannon. It didn’t feel like her either. There was nothing of Shannon in the air, or in the dust or rocks.

It didn’t matter, though. As I walked, watching for a good spot, I muttered to her under my breath, even though i didn’t feel her near. I said to her that I’m sorry i let her down. I told her that she was right about Melinda. I talked to her a bit about what the day was like, and told her she was a pain in the ass sometimes, but so was i, and she stood by me when it counted. I did for her too, mostly. But I abandoned her at the end. I didn’t visit her enough when she was in the hospital. I didn’t call her when i knew she was getting out soon. Her depression frightened me. I didn’t understand.

I lit a match and set it to the sweetgrass and ash. I took off my glasses and my rings and scooped the smoke over my head, to my eyes and ears and mouth, and to my heart–as i had seen Elders do in the ceremonies in the Downtown Eastside and the sweats on the North Shore that Shannon had taken me to a few times. I emptied the bowl into the quiet water near the rock. Then i remembered the letter. I crumpled it up and put it into the bowl. I sprinkled some more of Shannon’s ashes on to it, then set fire to it, When it was ashes, I added it to the bag of Shannon’s ashes. I’d brought a bit of egg-and-bacon pie that Mom had sent with me when I left home. So I added some of that to the ashes, an offering of nourishment for my friend’s final journey. I mixed it all up, and then picked my way toward the river. The rocks were slippery, but the water in which they rested was not deep. I crouched on a big rock right where the pool fed into the rapids.

Six handfuls. There were six handfuls of Shannon’s old place, the body she inhabited–and now they are in the Capilano river. With each handful, I said “Goodbye, Shannon, I love you.” I folded the ziplock and lurched from rock to rock back to my bag. Then i walked back to the car and drove into town.

I felt completely at peace. It was the right thing to do. I will always miss my friend, and there was so much I should have done when she was alive–but there was also a lot I did do, and that we did together. We saved each other from drowning and we walked together for a few years, keeping one another from falling off the edge. In the end, she took her own life because she didn’t know how to belong to the world of the living with all of it’s capriciousness and meanness. All of her suffering, and the suffering of others, became too much to bear. She couldn’t remember that she didn’t need to bear it alone.

Ah, Shannon. My darling friend. Sweet Dreams.

 

Statement about “gender identity”

I-dentity (aka trans) politics is fundamentally LIBERTARIAN and individualistic. It is ahistorical and acontextual. It essentializes sex stereotypes by renaming them consensual “gender identities.” It legitimizes and makes invisible  power structures that give rise to female oppression. It is anti-feminist.

[via UP; also posted by Cathy Brennan, Gallus Mag, NoAnodyne, Sargasso Sea, Smash, LuckyNkl, satisaudaci, gorilerof4b, saltnpepa10, iameatingblueberries, Allecto]

another gone

George Atcheson died this morning. It’s December 29, 2012. He was 96 years, one month and 18 days old. He had been ready to die for a long time, but it was only recently, within the past three or four years, I suppose, that he was increasingly disabled. In 2005, the year he turned 90, he came to my dad’s last birthday party. I remember that day, because I was home. It was April 20. Dad turned 77. He had fallen some weeks earlier, Dad did, and had broken his knee. So he was in the hospital. We got him a pass for the day, hired a handi-dart, or whatever it’s called here, and brought him home. As I wheeled Dad into the front lobby of their building, I saw a woman watching for us. She scurried away to the big common dining room when she saw us coming, and as we wheeled into the dining area, one woman struck up “Happy Birthday” on the piano. A quaver of elderly women sang the song to Dad, all off key and out of synch, but it was the most beautiful song. there were some men there, too. Fred, Dennis (I think), Merv, and a few others, and George. The men all sat together at a long table, and I sat with them, next to Dad. Mom brought a carrot cake she had made (Dad’s favourite), and all the women came around, fluttering like birds around the men seated like logs washed onto the shore of a river. Dad blew out the candles (I helped I think). And I took a seat beside him. We cut the cake and passed it around, one of the other women poured coffee or tea. The men ate in silence. Each of them took turns looking at Dad. “Happy Birthday, John” one would say, and another, “yep, Happy Birthday”, and Dad would say, “thanks”. Other than that…not much.
Later they stood around in the courtyard as Dennis and one or two others smoked. They talked about how much harder it is to quit now than it was years ago. “I quit forty years ago,” said George, “started on roll-your-owns, not so much junk in them then as there is now”. And Dennis grunted in agreement. George didn’t much like Dennis. Mostly because Dennis swore a lot.
Every year another one dies. Fred died last year sometime, I think. Dennis was two years ago. Last year Sheila, George’s daughter, died. This year it was George’s turn.
At the party, six and a half years ago, he said, “my next birthday, i’ll be 90. That’s long enough.”
Yesterday, Mom and I visited June. She was Auntie Jean’s sister, and Jean was George’s wife. She died at 80 some 16 years or so ago. June said to Mom, “George has been ready to die since Jean’s been gone.”
I think she’s right. Jean was one of my favourite grown-ups. She was elegant, graceful and kind. She painted beautiful pictures of fields and mountains. I liked her prairie scenes the best. She also did ceramics, she poured ceramic into molds and fired them in a clay oven she had in their basement. Then she glazed and painted them. I don’t know the whole process, but she let me make some things with her sometimes. She always took me seriously and was affectionate and attentive with me. With everyone. She made George human, i’m sure she did. without her he was not quite whole. Always politically conservative, he took a dim view of people on welfare, anyone who broke the law, cursing and rudeness in general. He was kind of stiff and detached. But he was a loyal and generous friend to my dad, and he was in love with Jean from the moment they met until the day he died. Which was today.
Mom and I went to see him earlier this week. Boxing day, maybe? Maybe the day after. We brought him Welsh cakes, because Mom always does that, and he loves them. He loves us, too, i know he does, though he did not recognize us at first. He didn’t know who Mom was at first. He put it together when we gave him a Welsh cake from the bag we brought him. When we sat beside him, as he was at the table of the care facility where he lives, he looked at me with his blue eyes, all watery and tired now, he said, “are you Shawn Graham?” I said, “no, i’m his big sister, Erin.” He said, “you look like Shawn Graham.”
I guess my moustache must be a little thicker than I thought. Shawn has worn a moustache since he could grow one.
I told Uncle George that we look alike, my brother and me. We swam in the same gene pool after all and have the same devastatingly handsome parents. He smiled, and Mom laughed a little.
The 25-word story I wrote a while ago, last year, I think, the one that begins, “The tenderness of old men.” That was about George and Dad.
One of the Atcheson kids always calls Mom when something happens. They invite her to the annual family reunion, too, it’s not always about bad news. This morning Colin called. he is one of the twins. Colin and Curtis. They are both older than me, and i think they’re both cops. Retired now. Colin called to say that his father was gone. He called about an hour after Uncle George drew his final breath. “We wanted to make sure you were among the first we called, Edith,” he said to my mom.
Last year, when his big sister Sheila died, he called and I answered, as I did this morning. I passed the phone to Mom, as I did last year.
We should all be so lucky to die as George did. He was surrounded by people who loved him until his dying breath.
He was one of my dad’s best friends. Another gone, another link to my dad gone. That’s how it goes.

paying attention

Dec 26, 2011

Less than a week left in 2011. What a year it’s been. I’m writing this from the tiny computer desk in the spare room of my mom’s condo. This is our 6th Christmas without Dad. We still miss him, but every year it seems his presence recedes a bit more. it’s okay, he’s dead, and the living have so many demands, the dead cannot possibly care or trouble about them. Who knows what the dead are up to? Shawn wishes that Dad would come to him in a dream. But if Shawn is like me, (and he is, like it or not), he does not remember his dreams. So Dad may have come many times, and Shawn does not know it. Do the visits count, then? I wish I would see him again, my dad. I wish i would feel his hand holding mine again, my dad. I wish i would hear him chuckle. He always laughed when I was around. He loved to laugh. Who doesn’t?

It’s been a beautiful day. Another beautiful day. Yesterday Shawn and I walked their dogs together, today i went to the gym. I haven’t been outside at all but for that walk yesterday, and it wasn’t where i wanted to go. I wanted to go to the graveyard, because i love graveyards (my dad is in Regina). I wanted to go by the river, because i love that river. That is my river, the Red Deer river. Many times it held me as I skied along it. Many times it held us as we rode our snowmobiles back and forth, from Great Chief Park to the old gravel pit, from the edge of the golf course to the campsite near Blackfalds. Many times i would walk along Maskapatoon road and climb along the sandstone bank to fold myself into a hollow under a cliff and watch the swallows swoop along the banks of that slow moving river. Now it does not freeze in the winter. Not since they built the dam, where did they build the dam? now the river doesn’t freeze. So then in the spring, it doesn’t break up, and that was always such a drama. People would line the bridge to watch the ice crack and fissure and make way for the water to flow. Now they don’t. No one pays attention, not anymore. The river flows. it’s not as deep as it was, it’s not as fertile at the banks. But i think people still go tubing in the summer.

I love being home, but i’ve been too long inside. I have to get out and walk under the sky. Now i can’t walk along Maskapatoon road and fold myself into the sandstone under the cliff over the bank. In the late summer no kids ride their bikes down that road to pick the Saskatoon berries–eating as they go, but still bringing home enough for jam and a few pies and a a bowl of sugared berries with cream after dinner. There are houses there, now. They’re big houses, in quiet cul-de-sacs and they are built in a horseshoe around a man-made lake. it’s made by men, that lake. The river is made by the river. The river and the sandstone and the poplar trees at the bank are made to move over for the man-made stuff. people gotta live somewhere, i guess.

But i wish i could walk along that dirt road that ran above the river and past that beautiful neat yellow farmhouse. the people who lived at that farm used to ride their horses down Maskapatoon road into town sometimes. Because it was a small town, a farming community, and you could ride your horses along the river road and into town when you wanted to. It was that kind of place. I don’t remember when i stopped seeing the people from that farm on their horses.

December 31, 2011–

I left home yesterday to fly home. The flight was delayed, so it was dark when we finally took off. The lights of Calgary went forever and ever across the prairie. The moon was a perfect crescent in the clear indigo sky. When i hugged my brother and my mother good bye, i teared up a little. I get impatient with my mom. she forgets things, she repeats herself, sometimes it seems like she’s not paying attention. But that’s not right, it’s me who is not paying attention. I forget how draining it is to live with constant pain, and the threat of more as you take each step…She’s paying attention.  One day she said, “Erin, you need to be more patient!” I said, “Mom! i’m trying to be helpful, and i’m not likely to get more patient, i’m nearly your age finally, and this is as good as it’s likely to get.”

She laughed, but said that it’s never too late to change.

that’s true, eh?

home-not-home

What does home mean? I don’t know. It used to be that little bungalow on Fox Crescent. It was my room, the one that Mom redid all in red, with flocked wall-paper and a red bedspread and a red light shade and a white desk with a red top on it, that summer that i was in the hospital for so long. It was the neighbourhood, too, home was, with Langs down the street, and Munros next door and Strables on the other side, and then beside them there were Prices and then the Morrisons. Except for Mr. Morrison and their two kids, and the Lees who ran the corner store, we were all white. Lees were Chinese, and Mr. Morrison was Black, from the Caribbean. Mrs. Morrison was white. They were both teachers. My brother and Cliff Lang and Anthony Morrison hung out together.

Now Cliff is a prison guard, Anthony is a teacher on the West Coast, and my brother is the quality control guy for a firetruck sales company in Red Deer (he got a new job! yay! the quality of the trucks he now inspects is, he says, far below the ones his plant used to build, but he does what he can. Capitalism is still evil). We’re all sad that Clifford is a prison guard. He’s such a nice man, but doing that will change the most compassionate person, I think. callused soul.

Today Mom was on a roll. She talks all the time when i’m home. She lives alone now, and she is in a lot of pain because of arthritis in her back, and some other things. So getting out is difficult and tiring and she stays in more than she used to. I think she gets lonesome. Anyway, she misses me, and she wants to fill me in on things. Stories of a life. Today she told me about one time when they lived on the Campbell Farm in Swift Current, and that’s when they got electricity. They didn’t have it before then. She was about 11 or 12. Tom had been in the hospital when they moved. I think this is what happened–Tom is her youngest brother, and my favourite uncle. When Grandpa and Grandma went to get Tom, he got all upset because they were going to the wrong place. This was not home, this was the wrong place…He was very young then. Perhaps he was two or three.

Grandma got really sick when Tom was born, and Mom took on a lot of the cooking and other house chores. She wasn’t much good for the outdoor stuff, collecting eggs and milking cows and so on (actually, i don’t know if they had cows to milk, on account of Grandpa worked at the Experimental Farm in Swift Current), because she was asthmatic. So she’d get all wheezy and spotty and drippy. I know what that’s like. But there weren’t the same kind of drugs for her there were for me. She suffered. Anyway, once, Mom made a lemon snow pudding for dessert for supper. She went downstairs to get it (i guess out of the cold room) and she tripped coming back up. Lemon snow pudding EVERYWHERE and the glass bowl broke into smithereens. Mom remembers that Grandma kept saying, “my sugar! my sugar!”

“And she wasn’t talking about me,” Mom said. this was during the Second World War, and sugar was rationed. Uncle Tom could not have been more than four or five, but he still remembers and teases her about it.

They all went to the rink one day, for a family skate festival. Mom’s older brother Eddie was skating, so fierce and graceful around barrels–racing some other boys. He missed a turn, or something went wrong and he slammed into the boards – “I’ll never forget that sound” Mom said- and knocked himself out. Mom said, “Eddie!” and Grandma, who hadn’t seen this, handed Tom to Mom and rushed out to the ice to tend to Ed. As they were leaving, Eddie’s teacher, Miss Janke, went up to Mom and said, “you take care of your brother now!”

“I’ll try, Miss Janke” said Mom, who was also holding another brother in her arms.

“Mom took care of him the best she could, of course. But we didn’t know about concussions in those days. Ed didn’t remember, and doesn’t, or wouldn’t, remember to this day, any of the skating before the crash or going home after.” She said “wouldn’t” because my Uncle Ed, who had one brown eye and one green eye, died in the late summer of 2002. he was 70. He was Mom’s protector, was Ed. Shy like her, but older, he could make a way for her. When she was in grade one, he stayed with her during lunch hours for weeks. they didn’t go into the lunch room with the other kids because Mom was too shy and scared. Finally, he told her to come with him, and brought her into the lunch room. I don’t know if it was because a teacher told them to, or if it was Ed’s judgment that it was time, but he helped his scared little sister find her place with the other kids.

Lots of stories, the present and the past all at once–i think she has to make sure that she passes these stories along so the people she loves, the memories she cherishes will survive her. I hope i will remember.

A few hours now until the new year. 2012 is supposed to be the year the world ends, according to the Mayan calendar.

Make the most of it. Ya never know.

 

A girl that whistles and a hen that crows, makes her way wherever she goes….

My grandma used to say that sometimes, when i would whistle. Sometimes, instead, when my whistling annoyed her, she’d say, “A whistling girl and a crowing hen, will always come to a bad end.” But we both liked the other version better.

*****

When I was a child, I was DETERMINED to become a boy. I knew with absolute certainty that I had been a boy in some past life, and that I would grow up to become a boy in this one.

I kind of did, in a way. I make fart jokes; lift weights, (heavy fuckin’ weights, too, none of this 2lb pink vinyl crap for me);  drive stick shift– and  i’m letting my moustache grow for ‘mo-vember’ (even if i think it’s kinda stupid–mo-vember, not my moustache).

I also go out for walks, alone,  late at night; get into elevators even when the only other occupant is an adult male; list my full name in the phone book; and make eye contact with strangers.

When I was 11, I read in the paper about this guy who got an operation so he could become a woman and play tennis in the women’s league. I thought then that if he could do that, I could get an operation to become a male when i grew up. I told my mom. She didn’t like the idea so much, “oh, don’t do that, you won’t want that when you’re an adult”. I was determined, though, as i said before. I kept at it, insisting that I was going to save up my allowance and become a man.

Well, I’m not sure i said “man” or even thought it, I think i might have said ‘boy’.  Because I also did not really want to grow up.

Anyway, i was so insistent that she started to cry. She was washing my hair at the time. My mom washed my hair for me until i was quite old. It was a trial, my hair. that was another reason to be a boy. Boys took showers and had short hair that didn’t require hot oil treatments and curling irons and barrettes and braids.  My hair was curly and plentiful, but dry and fine.  From the time i was about 10, we tried all kinds of things to get it to lie flat (ish). I don’t know why I couldn’t have it short like my brother’s hair.

But anyway. My grandma always said to me, “Erin, you should have been a boy.” and I believed her.  For a long time, i believed that I should have been a boy.

When my period came, I was mortified. My mom was all excited. Tears in her eyes again as she gave me the belt and the pad (this was a loooooong time ago). she smiled and cupped my cheek in her hand. When i got the contraption on and called her into my room again, she checked to see if the placement was okay, and said, “Honey, you can tell your dad that you’re a woman now.” and she asked if she could tell her best friend, who lived in the United States now, and was (is) one of my very very favourite grown-ups.

There was NO WAY i was ever going to tell my dad that I was a woman now. It was okay with me if she told Mrs. Lenz. I just wanted the whole thing to go away. It was a disaster every month. all those bulky pads, the cramps, the mess the embarrassment. Everyone would know what those toilet paper-wrapped lumps in the garbage were. I flushed them.

Our septic system backed up.

Mom asked me, in a private moment, to please not flush my pads anymore because they had to call in a  plumber to clear out the pipes. I’m sure it was no picnic for him to fish used pads out of the basement.  I said i wouldn’t. but then I did. I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to use a tampon, but I finally did when i was about 14 or 15, and then the perpetual plumbing problems (alliteration!) cleared up.

And there was the bra thing. Godhelpme, i did NOT want to wear a bra. I didn’t want to wear a shirt, let alone anything under a shirt. You remember how it felt, when your breasts were starting to grow? How tender they were? Oh dear me. And those “training bras”? what the hell were our breasts supposed to learn wrapped in them?  the boys would always go around snapping our bra straps. It hurt, front and back. I was one of the first girls in my class to wear a bra, much as I hated the idea, and I didn’t have any idea of how to resist. I was always trying to keep my back to a wall.

One Friday afternoon, when i was in grade five, i think, our teacher  held a dance for the grade five and six kids. I remember those things as fun. We turned the lights off and put records on and danced together, girls and boys and girls and girls and maybe the boys didn’t really dance much. I don’t know that I danced much, either, I was kind of clumsy and goofy. I was walking over to the front of the room, and my friend Karen noticed my bra strap hanging down, and took hold of it. I didn’t notice and kept walking, and then she let go of it when i was half-way across the room. snap! some of the other kids laughed, mocking me. I was embarrassed.  I left in tears.  why did i have to be a girl? Boys did not suffer such humiliations.

But by that time, I knew that i would be a girl, and not for much longer, either. I was becoming a woman, just as Mom said.

******

High school was pretty fun. But also a torment. It was a big school, and in the centre hallway, near the gymnasium, where everyone had to pass by at some time during the day, there were rows of benches. On the benches, at any time. but especially over lunch, there were sprawled an array of boys, the jocks. The benches in fact, were called “the jock benches”. the boys stomped their feet in the rhythm of the Queen song, “We are the Champions” and threw coins at the pretty girls. Sometimes they threw pennies at the ugly ones, and threw them to hurt. In my first year of high school , they would yell after me, “is that a boy or a girl?”

I used to wear Wrangler boot-cut jeans, a wide belt with what i thought was a beautiful buckle, kind of like stained glass, in all colours, and polyester shirts with pictures of English hunting scenes on them.  Also, often, wide suspenders, mismatched socks and a blue and white striped train engineers cap. Quite the sight.  Grade ten, the first year of high school, was also my first year of having contact lenses. I wore them all day, for far too long. So, you know, I looked like I was high, my eyes all red and teary.

Mom was still doing my hair in the mornings. i don’t know why. Neither of us enjoyed the process. Goddamn curling iron. One day in grade eleven, I think, I decided i wasn’t gonna do anything with it. Just wash it, shake it, and hope for the best. That was a kind of liberation. We didn’t have hair gel or mousse in those days. just hair spray. no way i was gonna use that stuff, either. My hair looked just fine, if a bit wild–fine, soft curls whirling around my head. Nobody cared…

I had a boyfriend in Grade 10, he had been my best friends boyfriend and he only went with me ’cause she broke up with him. i didn’t like him very much, but we were both in love with her, so that kinda bonded us. didn’t last.

I learned how to shave my legs and armpits, and i sometimes plucked my eyebrows.  then i would look surprised.

by the time i was in grade 11, I was wearing women’s clothing sometimes, and my jeans were tight (remember? in the late 70s you had to lie down to be able to zip up your jeans? remember that?). I often wore my dad’s shirts tucked into my too-tight jeans. I didn’t wear underwear, ’cause i didn’t want panty-lines, but my waist was all bunchy anyway, because my dad’s shirt was tucked into my jeans. And then there were the suspenders.  and makeup–oh deargod. I rarely wore makeup, but one day, I tried to hide a zit with a bit of foundation. But then that spot on my face was kinda orange, so I figured i’d better spread it out a bit.  consequently, the orange spot broadened. So I added a bit more foundation., thinking that if I could just blend the edges, it wouldn’t show.

I went to school that day with a distinctly orange face, chin and neck. “hey, Erin, are you wearing makeup?”

“no”.

It was a terrible day.

I could never get the hang of that femininity thing. And i was (am) asthmatic. I always wanted to run and run and leap over tall buildings and do parkour before there was such a thing, and swing from the light posts–but i couldn’t. I tried out for every team, from basketball to volleyball to badminton, and didn’t make a one. When we’d go cross-country running in school, I’d struggle along and come in dead last, hair full of sticks, wheezing and huffing–i got a reputation for being plucky, anyway.

But whatever, i rode my bike or walked the two miles to school every day, most days, and i became all excited about drama. I didn’t have to be a girl in drama class, i could be a mythical creature, a buffoon, an animal or an idea–and i was good at it, the acting stuff. I wasn’t all that comfortable in my body, womanly and wheezy as it was, but i learned how to use it to create art, and I  found a gang to hang with. we were into plays and singing in the hallways, and improvising skits behind the auto shop at lunch time. we did plays together with the drama teacher, Steve, and we sometimes partied with him too. That was kind of a no-no. Cool for us, not so cool of him. But he wasn’t much older than we were. He taught us about dada and noh and commedia d’el arte. we did mask work and improv and entered provincial one-act play contests. We traveled to Lacombe and Innisfail and Calgary, even.

By and by, I started to fit in at school. I wasn’t one of the Beautiful People, I wasn’t a jock or a stoner or a party girl or a nerd–i was one of those drama kids.  my nickname was “maniac” or “spin”, but it was fine with me, i got attention, and i was left alone at the same time.  People liked me, I liked them, and it didn’t matter as much that i was a girl. I didn’t hang with the boys much, except for the two guys who were in my tight little gang. I have a picture of us from that time, we are in a park, the sun lit up our hair, we posed for the camera, Brent dark and brooding, Mark open and friendly, Cathy relaxed and shining, Bonny looks like she’s about to leap into a cartwheel, and i’m in front, on the ground, head thrown back, wearing goofy sunglasses and laughing. I don’t know where any of them are anymore. our paths used to cross from time to time, but not for years now.

They were my friends. we saved each other in a way. I fell in love with Bonny, but i didn’t know it and couldn’t understand it. Intense. Heartbreaking. I only wanted to be with her, even when we both had boyfriends. Then when i broke up with my boyfriend, she started going out with him. I wasn’t upset about that so much, except it meant that I wouldn’t be able to hang out with Bonny so much, and that was one of the reasons I broke up with him in the first place, i think. But I didn’t know what was going on. I only ached, and I didn’t know why until many years later.

*******

My body, the womanly, asthmatic body that i grew into, was not my friend. I was often hospitalized, and more often after i finished high school, and started smoking cigarettes. It’s common, apparently, for asthmatics to become smokers. Kind of like a pre-emptive thing. I want to be able to have SOME control, if i’m not gonna be able to breathe, it might as well because of something i’m doing deliberately.

I know it doesn’t make sense.

When i was 18, I started lifting weights. I loved it. It was perfect for me, I could sit and wheeze until I recovered and pick up the weight again. I didn’t have to chase across a muddy field or a gymnasium floor after a ball a puck or whatever, tripping and sliding and running the wrong way and letting the team down over and over again.

A few months after that, i got pneumonia. I was smoking and drinking too much at the time, which likely contributed to my respiratory distress. My fiance at the time (a man! Shocking, i know. He played bagpipes, how could i resist?) didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t breathe, I was in big big trouble. My mom came. she took me home. Then to the hospital. I was gravely ill.

I wanted to be a boy. Boys were strong, boys became garbagemen and firemen and acrobats and cowboys they got to be outside, riding horses, driving trucks, pulling, pushing and lifting things. girls became mothers and nurses and teachers. They had to stay inside.

When i got out of the hospital, i was all detoxed and very weak. Beginning again. I went to the gym. I went to the gym A LOT.  My grandparents were worried i would hurt myself, or that i would not be a real woman, maybe i’d become a lesbian or something awful like that. they never said that, but my grandpa especially implied that such pursuits were not alright for girls. that was mans work, that was.

I competed in powerlifting in the 1980s and 90s. I joined the women’s liberation movement in the 1980s, and lifting weights became a way to train for the revolution. There were years in there that i privileged late shifts on the crisis line and demos and dancing after demos over pumping iron, and other years when drinking took precedence, as well. but those are big stories, best left for posts of their own.

I did, in fact, become a lesbian, I’m sure my grandma knew, though i never told her. If I had, I would have said, “you know, Grandma, when you would say I should have been a boy?”–And she would nod or say, “it’s your deal. yes?” Then i would say, “I did better than that, I became a lesbian, how do ya like them apples?” (cause she always used to say that kind of stuff–including that little saying that makes the title of this post).  She would chuckle, I can hear her now; my grandma laughed with her whole body.

She used to say to me, too, “Erin, don’t ever marry an old country man”. She had married my Welsh  grandfather when she was a young widow in the first years of the Great Depression. My beloved grandpa  was a difficult man. Jealous and stubborn. A much better grandfather than he had been a husband, I’m sure. He was not violent, but neither was he loving.  Anyway, she always warned me not to marry a man from the old country (which old country, she never said), so I think the news that I would surely be spared that would have made her happy.

*******

I think this is the end of this post, but i’ll fill in the blanks by and by. There’s stories of a liberation movement here in this story of a girl who whistles in the darkness. Stories of many women who made space and made noise. I’ll get to them by and by, i promise.

It was powerlifting that reconciled me and my wheezy, clumsy body, and it was the women’s movement, it was radical feminism, in fact, that taught me how to be a woman. These two pursuits weave together a way into a movement of women building a world of women, for women.  this movement gave me many examples of womanhood that are not feminine or masculine–and women who were outside,  strong,  loud and taking up space.  Girls that whistle, hens that crow, making our way, wherever we go.

I cannot tell you how relieved I am that there was a still vibrant women’s liberation movement for me to join when i was a young woman.  And I’m really grateful there are women who are carrying on the work of this movements’ continued revival because we are nowhere near free, and we can’t let up until we are.

I didn’t become a boy, after all. I learned to whistle.

Precarious

My brother was laid off his job yesterday. He works, um, worked, at a welding shop in Red Deer. He was their quality control guy. I asked him, i said, “any word on when they’ll need you back? How long is your lay off?” He said, “I’m done. They decided they didn’t need quality control anymore.”
Says somethin’ about capitalism right there, don’t it?
Shawn started in the sheet metal biz more than 25 years ago, being a brake-and-shear guy (whatever that is) at Superior, which built firetrucks. He worked there for twenty years before they shut down and moved to the USA. Not long after he was laid off, he developed blinding headaches. He was unemployed for only a few months before he found this job, but it was enough that his health was compromised.
My brother is a sensitive guy. He’s got integrity, he works hard, he has high standards. And he’s a white man with a trade (though not a journeyman ticket, no credentials like that) and a good reputation. It’s likely he will find a new job soon. But this is worrying. I don’t know jack about his industry in Red Deer, but I do know that for the better part of a year, everyone was working on reduced hours where he was.
My sister-in-law has a good job, and she’s secure there, too, I think.
But my brother is a worrier, and he’s already worried about our mom, who is not doing very well right now–her back is bothering her so much, she’s barely walking and not driving lately. I’m only one province away from them, but it might as well be across the country. what to do?
When my grandmother was ailing and living in a senior’s condo, my mom would drive 8 hours after work on Friday to be with her. Then she would drive home on Sunday to be back at work on Monday. She did this at least twice a month every month for, how long? a year? Would I do that for my mom?
No. not now. I don’t have a job, for one thing, my income is so slender and uncertain. Maybe i should quit school and get a job for a while, start paying back the student loans and going home to help Mom every month for a few days.
Even I know that’s not realistic. And I’m messy, Mom is fastidious like a cat, she’d go mad….
I just talked to Shawn. He’s been unemployed for one day, and he’s worried already. “I don’t know how long Wendy will put up with me if I don’t have a job. She’s been really supportive so far, though,” he said, “But it’s only been a day…”.
“Take some time,” I said, “The answer will come if you stand still and wait for it for a bit.” But he is like me, not patient that way.
He’s a labourer. Not a journeyman, not credentialed, just experienced. How much will that count for? Maybe he can go to school for some retraining, maybe he can pick up a ticket, maybe he can figure out his dreams now, and try to achieve them. Oh, I hope he will limber up a bit and cast his gaze upward, to an expanded horizon of expectations.
“I live paycheque to paycheque,” he said, when i suggested he take some time to relax and figure out something else, “I gotta find something now.”
I nearly cried. I said, “I love you, Shawn.”
He said, “I love you too,” and I heard his voice catch.
capitalism is evil.