Living Organic, 2000 & 2010

I feel positive that this year is going to bring in good things. Mostly because I rearranged my furniture in the living room and it feels RIGHT.  Once finished, my husband and I sat back on the couch, looked around, and he stated, “It feels organic.”   Too bad the organic arrangement took pushing furniture around and around in funny circles for two years.

Still, it is satisfying to sit in the right arrangement.  There’s balance, aesthetics, and convenience. What an accomplishment.

A good omen about this year?  Yep.

I have pushed a lot of goals, desires, and failures around in my life. Sometimes it feels (rightly so) that I am going in circles. But this year, I hope it all falls into some place that feels right. I hope that I can finally forgive myself for not being all those ‘ideas’ I wanted to be at 30. I hope that I can find room to write, time for creativity, space for family, and a vision of a different/good future. New year resolutions for 2010 (Drum roll, please):

1) be less hard on myself.

2) take care.

Comparatively, ten years ago……

I was living in Roseburg, OR.  On New Years Eve I rented Gone With The Wind because I had never seen it and I thought it was a good metaphor (I’m into those, if you couldn’t tell) for the year past.  I couldn’t go out because I was only 20 and my baby son was asleep in the next room.   I, instead, stayed indoors watching the movie and drinking champagne with some nervous/tentative drinkers, i.e. my parents.

It was worth celebrating that year–I had made it. I had turned 20, in my first year of college, living at my parents’, and was raising my son (year 1), alone. Someone, please, poor me a drink!

I’m not sure what my New Years resolution was that year but I can bet you dollars to donuts it had to do with losing weight. Ten years later, I weigh the same amount as I did then, but I’m not down on myself because I have another 1 year old asleep upstairs and I’ve quit smoking.  But, I digress.

I have a picture from that New Years.  I am sitting on the couch with plaid flannel pajama bottoms.  I have short hair and I am holding my sleepy, very grumpy baby in my lap, forcing him to wave at the camera.   I like the photo because I look really young, happy, and optimistic.  I didn’t know it then, but great things would happen in my life. I did finish school and went even further than I imagined.  I did find love, a good good good man, who helps arrange living room furniture, and we did get married.  And now, I have another little person and new family adventures ahead.  There were hard things too, such as, poor love interests, disappointing moves, counterintuative mistakes, parenting no-no’s, and closed doors when I wanted them, more than anything, to open.  I will remember the hard things only to remember the good that came from living through the poor arrangements. Because sometimes, it takes a lot of work to find what looks/feels/is organic.

I wish, whoever you are, a very good new year.

Tags: lifestyle, living, new years, resolution

……..

One to ten and Down again, Meet Elmer, and Windows to Color are the books I’ve been reading and re-reading lately.  Thanks to the baby who loves it when I read, not enough to stick around after the first two pages, but enough to keep coming back for more.  In a few lucid moments that include brain activity, I have been known to read adult books, such as  Mother Daughter Wisdom.  My friend, Annagrace, handed it to me a few weeks ago.  My first thought, three pages in:  I wish I had read this years ago.

It is that kind of book.

Mother Feminist

Remember the old stereotype of the Feminist woman in the workplace: unmarried, childless, and a man-eater to boot.  She burned her bra in a protest, wore pants not nylons, and she didn’t take guff from no man.

Today’s Feminist stereotype chooses both career and motherhood, climbing the workforce ladder and balancing family duties with the dexterity of a tightrope walker.  Here’s a new stereotype for the Feminist woman: she wears a bra with breast feeding panels.

As with all stereotypes, there’s limitations to both these ideas, but it is interesting how they’ve changed over the years.  I, on the other hand, never imagined that I would have children, but here I am with two of them.

When I was a little girl I would pretend that I was all grown up, living in the city, and renting a room from an eccentric family.  The eccentric family wasn’t a hard pretend.  On laundry day I would take my laundry basket into my room, shut the door, and imagine living life on my own terms.  No children. Just houseplants.  Sometimes I even had a boyfriend, but it always ended with me breaking his heart.  I really enjoyed the idea of independence and solitude.

Though it was a dirty word to me in 1999, when I held my son in my arms for the first time, I had become a Feminist. I had found my strength as mother.

I don’t regret having kids at all–even when I had my son at nineteen-years-old and was raising him as a single parent.  Some people called him a mistake, or at least, getting pregnant at nineteen a mistake.  Inside those ideas I found a challenge, and in my attempt not to fulfill a sad expectation, I enrolled in school and set my standards high.

I’ve learned a lot growing up with my son.  As his mother I’ve learned to be less self-destructive, more ambitious, and how to keep centered.  I credit my son for teaching me about the irony in life, how to rest in the gray, how to question what I’ve been told about myself as a woman, and how to find potential in what other’s would say was a “less than ideal situation.”  Let’s be honest; life is usually less than ideal.

Still statistically, we were both screwed.

From a typical viewpoint our future didn’t look promising.  I was most likely to pop out a few more kids, live on welfare for the rest of my life, or at least, take on a passionless job.  I probably wasn’t going to go to college and most likely would marry the first cad who showed me interest.  Statistically, my son was going to be a latch key kid, drop out of high school, struggle with authority, abuse drugs and commit suicide.  The cards were stacked.

I decided that none of these realities were going to happen.  I never wanted him to hear me say that “I would’ve…. if only I hadn’t gotten pregnant.” In turn, motherhood made me a better person.  I’m a far cry from who I was at nineteen.

Where with my son I was concerned about the future, squeezing through the gaps of misunderstandings, never making excuses, and carving room for us–with my daughter I’m waking up to simplicity.  I am now married and quite a bit older.  I spend a whole lot less time proving myself to the world how capable I am, or how smart.  I can rest in the present; it is delicious if I am awake to it.  Life feels calmer and  nuanced in beauty.  I can stare with her at leaf on the ground, treasure the moments of “nothing” as we read a book, and I feel more at peace with parenting.  Perhaps this is because this is my second time around.  After all, the first kid has turned out rather well.  More than well.  He’s funny, smart, and well adjusted.  And my greatest accomplishment, he’s happy.  How did that happen?  I count my blessings, cross my heart, and hope I do well this time too.

Still the cards are stacked against her.

She is “just a girl.” There’s many stereotypes she’ll have to try on, out grow, and deconstruct.  I hope she’ll never find them constraining, because they are rarely liberating.  Just like the stereotype of the Feminist (both of old and of today) have limitations, she’ll have to weigh what she wants with what she’s willing to sacrifice.  I’ll do my best to encourage her on her path.  Well, as long as it is an edifying path–one where she remains honest and ethical. Even if this means she wants only a houseplant and no kids of her own.

And Isn’t that what we want for our kids–the ability to define their own future?  No matter their gender.  No matter the politics of the day.  No matter how the cards stack and sway.

Tags: christianity, feminism, parenting

Channel Surfing::Click::Click::Click

Late last night I was surfing through television channels when I became overwhelmed with all the sexual exploitation (both thematically and contextually) that was on what seemed like EVERY channel.  I was inundated with these images, such as: a scantily clad woman being beaten, a story about a little girl about to be date raped by an older gentleman, music videos (enough said), the Spanish channel (where there seems to always be some lady with a cleavage avalanche or swooning) and the like.  I was seriously seeking some relief.  That’s when I hit a familiar face on a Christian TV station.

His name: Mark Grungor.  I had seen him before at a marriage seminar my mother paid for all her kids (minus the single one) to attend.  I have to admit that the seminar was more pleasant than I expected and even funny at times. What wasn’t expected was that we watched him on a big screen in my parents’ church sanctuary and the Mark Grungor Foundation (or whatever it is) sent a couple to open and close each session.  We thought we were going to a face-to-face conference and instead were watching a video.  This is how he’s making money hand over fist and I cannot fault him for that genius.

His shtick: to talk about sex in a “church” atmosphere, which means he rarely says it plainly but alludes to much. For example, he uses a chart of a woman’s body and man’s and uses smiley faces to cover their “happy places.”  Good one, Mark. That’s why I stopped at this station.  What is funny Mark going to say, I wondered.  I should have skipped on by–Clicky click clack. Just like that.

Mark was speaking again in his big-toothed, smiling way about how to “motivate” men to do things.  He was again speaking in generic terms about what women feel and what men think, which I can handle for a bit, after all health/talk shows do this too.  What got to me is when he spoke about how men need to be motivated by their wives on a barter system.  He suggests that women tell their husbands that if he does “this” he’ll get “that” (insert smiley face over her happy place).  He said that women don’t like this because it seems like manipulation (it is, Mark).  But men don’t see it that way.   Men see it as motivation.  Ah, no I’m pretty sure my husband would see it as manipulation.  Than again, I have never been so low to try.

Then he went on to explain how the Bible has been using the barter system for men as far back as the Garden of Eden.  God likes to barter with man, according to Mark, because he understands that this is how man works.  Wait up, Mark.  Are you saying that the Bible was written for men?  Indeed, that is exactly what he meant and he said it over and over again. God made the Bible “only this thick” because he knew what a man would read.  God used bartering with man “because he made man to respond this way and knew what it would take.  That’s why He said, if you do abide in my will I will do this for you.  If you follow my commandments I will give you life” etc.  Well that lets me off the hook, because I have a vagina. Meanwhile, the television host slapped his knee heavily and kept saying how right Mark was, and his silent, demur wife, sat there uncomfortably with her legs crossed.  Wonder if someone is getting their happy place touched tonight.

How unkind and sexist of you Mark to say the Bible was written for men, but thank you for finally saying what a lot of women feel. The Bible was written by man for man and therefore has missed the mark in some significant ways when it comes to the “gentler” sex.  Such as, where are the women disciples and prophets and why aren’t they represented? Why was Eve created again, and who keeps mistranslating texts to keep women subordinate to men? And is God a man?  Really?

Anyway, this was followed up with a clip about a ministry about human trafficking and how we need to end the sex trade that is exploiting children and women all over the world.  I was so frustrated.  Couldn’t they see a correlation between their sexism and this ongoing exploitation?  I guess not.

Click.

Tags: channel surfing, christianity, feminism

Bad Boats

They are like women because they sway.
They are like men because they swagger.
They are like lions because they are king here.
They walk on the sea. The drifting
logs are good: they are taking their punishment.
But the bad boats are ready to be bad,
to overturn in water, to demolish the swagger
and the sway. They are bad boats
because they cannot wind their own rope
or guide themselves neatly close to the wharf.
In their egomania they are glad
for the burden of the storm the men are shirking
when they go for their coffee and yawn.
They are bad boats and they hate their anchors.

~Laura Jensen

Tags: poetry

Pro one Eh the other

I may be opening a can of worms (insert popping-the-can-open sound here), but I have had an interesting conversation with my friend Annagrace today that led me to pose this question online. Enough posturing just say it, I murmur to my keyboard-clicking self.

Is it possible to be for one Subordinated group (Women) in the church and leave the cause of another Subordinated group (Homosexuals) for another fight, another time, another person? Or are they connected (What the church thinks about the Homosexual: Men that act like women, and defected women).

Could you stand up for one and not the other?
Do you need to?
Are they related?

Tags: christianity, equality, feminism

“Little Girls in Church”

I worry for the girls.
I once had braids,
and wore lace that made me suffer.
I had not yet done the things
that would need forgiving.

—-Kathleen Norris

Tags: church, feminism, parenting, poetry