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.

I decided to try drugs, ’cause the elves are not working.

Alright, i’ve gone from being “self-diagnosed” to ‘big ‘p’ professional’ diagnosed” over the last six months. For the last few weeks, i’ve been dutifully taking medication for ADHD.

It’s freaking me out.

These drugs are amphetamines, fer cryin’ out loud! So i’ve been off coffee too. That’s weird. I don’t like it. this is harm reduction, i guess. the problem is the world, it’s my response to the world, i can’t change the world, I have to capitulate — for now — i was getting all panicky and sleepless.

Now, as far as psychiatric diagnosis go, this one isn’t nearly as stigamtized as, well, fucking near everything else–bi-polar, schizo-affective; schizophrenia; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Post-traumatic stress disorder (what’s ‘post’ about the trauma, by the way?); oh, you know, on and on and on, the range of labels for ‘freak’ could fill a book.

oh, hang on, they DO fill a book! It’s the DSM lV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders. It’s a big weighty thing and there’s something for everyone in it. Really and truly. I remember, way way back when i was in my first or second year of university, and the professor of the psych course i was taking (everyone had to take some science courses and some arts courses, whether we were ‘wired’  that way or not–the uni called them “breadth requirements”. I took quite a few psychology classes), at the end of the semester, when we were all a bit sleep-deprived and pretty squirrely in various ways, read us the entry for schizophrenia from the DSM.

“if the patient presents with four or more of the following symptoms,” the professor read, ” they may be diagnosed a schizophrenic”. Then he read out a long list of symptoms.  It was an amusing yet uncomfortable moment. We all kinda squirmed and looked around the room.  When he was done, he closed the book, and he said, “psychiatrists don’t really know, you know. They just have to sell drugs.” Did he say that? really? or is it just what I wish he had said?

The DSM 5 is due to appear within the next year or two. it’s rumoured to be bigger and better than ever. Pretty soon, nothing in the range of human behaviour needs ever be considered “normal”. I resisted for years and years. I’m still not sure, at all, about this whole ADD thing. I KNOW it’s not me, I KNOW it’s the world–we are bombarded with information and calls to action and this that and the other thing to attend to ALL the time. all the time. It’s exhausting. How does one woman attend to it all? And keep up with the laundry and dishes and all the christly e-mails every day, and then of course there’s the whole PhD thing, coding and analyzing and marking and writing  and trying to find work to pay tuition and call Mom and  remember to write and work out and….good lord. meanwhile, the piles in my apartment are growing, and the dust is accumulating and i’m seeing moths flying around now, and there’s no surface on which to write, or prepare food and i keep on top of the bathroom, mostly, but it’s just all sifting inward and from my computer screen i see the Inquiry into the Missing women lurching along, and all the lawyer boys puffing out their chests at each other pretending to be ‘experts’ about women’s lives.

and of course there’s the ongoing Occupation going on everywhere (on already occupied land). And I haven’t stepped foot in that protest yet–

I feel like i’m in the middle of everything but missing it all.

What the fuck are these drugs supposed to do, anyway? Help me focus. but on WHAT? Oh never mind.

maybe they are working. The path from my door to my desk is a bit wider now. I don’t wake up at 4 am anxious about everything anymore (just at 5 or 6, and only anxious about one or two things). A few weeks ago, i finished an assignment for my professor two days before deadline. and when i met her about it, she suggested a few tasks i could do to help me plan my next things, and I have done a couple of them. Not all, but some.

And i don’t feel all panicky anymore. well, not as much, anyway. Maybe it’s the drastic drop in caffeine consumption.

But the doctor said i’d be able to finish my dissertation, and it’s not done yet. Patience. this is thirty+ years of prevaricating that i’m trying to deal with here, and it’s gonna take more than drugs, and even if the elves DO bloody well turn up, i obviously can’t count on them. So I will have to change some things. Many things. The world and my responses to the world.

It’s weird being medicated for a “disorder”. My judgments about mental illness are becoming apparent. I find myself censoring myself about revealing that i’m on these drugs. I feel no such reluctance when i talk bout my asthma meds, or having mild COPD.

There ya go. it’s all learning. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

stuck

I’m stuck. I don’t k now what to write, don’t have an idea in my foggy brain. Haven’t blogged for days and days, haven’t even written in my journal, even if my life is big and full and there are lots of things going on. I just kinda feel muffled.

is it the ADHD drugs i’m on? Is it the lack of caffeine?

is it seasonal? season changes are hard on people, most people, I think.

I don’t know.

thought i’d just share that with you all.

I’m going to the gym now, maybe that’ll help me shake this off…