What it costs to believe

My mother said

she

believes

me.

It costs

her nothing

now to say

she would have

given up the church

that helped keep

her alive

if I had told

and the church

had not

believed me

then.  When she said that,

I believed

my mother. 

I

believed

my mother

until we talked, and I

discovered that

my mother

does not believe

a woman coming

forward now with

nothing to gain and

everything to lose,

a grown woman

telling now,

when it costs

this woman

something

(maybe everything). 

Believing this woman

would cost

my mother something

that she is not willing

to pay, and I wonder

if my mother really

would

believe

me

if it cost

her something,

and I find

I don't know

if I believe

she would.

This is a well-written, short prose piece from Rachael Denhollander on the same topic.  I highly recommend it.

Dear family member

Dear family member,

I know that, to you, this situation is wholly political, that in your mind, there is no way this person could be telling the truth.  I know that’s where it starts and stops for you.  I know that you cannot imagine that any of the controversy is NOT political, that any of the anger and sadness is genuine, real, and not motivated by anything related to party lines.  I know that your party would rather have you believe in a conspiracy that seems rather incredible than believe that someone would see it as their duty to tell the truth about someone who is being considered for a position with one of the highest levels of power in our country.  I know that your party has convinced you that no one, after years of silence, could possibly choose out of a sense of duty as a citizen to speak up about their pain, knowing that

• they would face harassment, doubt, and  judgment outside a court of law
• their life would be at risk
• they would never be safe again wherever they went
• they were giving up the normal-seeming life they had pulled together over the years

unless it was part of conspiracy formulated by the other party.  (I fail to see that she has anything to gain here except more pain made extremely public, but you seem unable to even consider this.)  I also know that you are not trying to hurt people, that you are merely trying to clearly state your opinion on a very fraught topic.

I suspect that there may be a sudden silence about this issue among the female friends who have agreed politically with you on everything in the last few years; I suspect you don’t know what that means.  You seem so blinded by party politics that you don’t see the situation with anything approaching openness or compassion, that you don’t understand how personal it is for people who have been through the same thing.  (I’m pretty sure you have not been through the same thing because I would find it hard to believe that anyone who had would be able to be this blind just because of political affiliation.  I’m sorry if I’m wrong about that and am assuming too much.)

I know that it’s likely you are unaware of the psychology of sexual assault victims / survivors*.  I suspect you have never sought to educate yourself about it. I even suspect that no one has ever personally confided in you their story of their own sexual assault.  My reason for believing this is that you can still react in a way that asks the question: "Why speak out now?  Why not when it happened?"

(CONSIDER SKIPPING THIS GRAPHIC IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED SEXUAL ASSAULT)

You posted this on Facebook today, without awareness or irony, and, as far as I can tell, without any shred of understanding or empathy.  It is an answer to the question, "Why don’t victims speak out?"

Family member that I thankfully only see once a year, YOU are part of the problem, part of the reason why victims don’t speak out.  This kind of blind, politically-driven opinion is a slightly different (and much more repugnant) flavor of the same old story that leads to only a fraction of assaults being reported.  When you say what you said above, what people who have survived or will survive sexual assault hear is, "It's safer not to tell the truth.  Even when it matters.  Especially when it matters."

I can now add your view as expressed in this Facebook post to my list as a perfect example of why I would never disbelieve someone’s assault story simply because they didn’t file a police report at the time.

Here’s another list, for you, of some of the reasons why I didn’t report it when I was sexually assaulted

• I was in 6th grade.
• We grew up together in a smallish town and attended the same church and church school, a place where we were never taught anything about sex or consent or anything even vaguely related to the two, and my dad and his dad were friends and my sister and his sister were friends.
• I was mortified and disgusted and had no idea how to deal with the overwhelming feelings and confusion. 
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure, though no one would TALK to me about it) dying at the time.The principal hated me and had shown clearly that the consequence of me reporting observing anything having to do with inappropriate sexual stuff was for her to scream at me in her office for what seemed like hours, accusing me of being a liar, troublemaker, and all-around evil human being who was just successful at hiding behind a good girl mask. 
• My father had expressed that old-school sentiment of, "What did she expect when she _______? (She had it coming)" when we heard about some poor girl being assaulted after drinking or being alone on the sidewalk at night or wearing makeup and a short skirt.
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure from objective physical evidence, though no one would TALK to me about it because I was only in 6th grade) dying at the time.
• I didn’t even know I had other options.  (See: "I was in 6th grade")

I know it’s not exactly fair to put you on that list of why I didn’t report as a 6th grader because I didn’t know then that you held such a poisonous view, and I know that this present, particular instance is surrounded by a political cloud due to the nature of the situation and the players and seems somewhat exceptional (or was until 2 other people stepped forward to also volunteer to have their normal lives destroyed), but that’s honestly chaff to me at this point. 

For whatever reason, you don’t want to look or listen, you don’t want to see or hear this person’s claims, and you say you want to see their life further destroyed simply because it is politically inconvenient for you that they are talking here and now, that they are saying that someone your political party chose sexually assaulted them.  When you post things like this on Facebook, when you express these sentiments in real life in person, you are encouraging others, especially the young women in your life, not to tell you or report to anyone, and you are hurting people who didn’t report at the time.  People like me.  Your relative.  It may seem simply political to you, but to me it’s personal.  And because you are related to me and likely by blood or friendship to others who have also been or will someday be sexually assaulted, it really is personal to you, too.  Please keep that in mind.





*Today, right before I saw your post, I learned that "being triggered" doesn’t just mean being offended by a difference of opinion from this one.  It’s a physiological reaction, not a difference of opinion.  It’s surprisingly related to a lot of the current research on chronic pain that I’ve been looking through.

the difference between

I have been thinking about 

the difference between

thinking you are the puzzle

and 

thinking you are a piece, 

thinking you are the tapestry

and 

thinking you are a thread, 

thinking you are the body

and 

thinking you are a member of it.

Prevention

The son, who had recently started school for the first time said, "Um, my favorite color is pink."  He hesitated.  "Is that okay?"

"That is just fine, baby," his mother said.  "People are allowed to like whatever colors they want.  No one can tell you that you are wrong for liking a color.  People can have different opinions about colors, but just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean yours is wrong." 

Perpetuation

The son, dressed in a white, wife-beater t-shirt and ragged, cutoff jean shorts (and neon orange tennis shoes) exactly like his father (whose tennis shoes were white), brought the son to the desserts and told him he could pick whatever cupcake he wanted.  His son looked up from the corner of his eyes to be sure his dad meant it, half-flinching in the way of too many sons who want nothing more than to avoid angering their fathers, and then he pointed to a neon pink frosted cupcake.  His father nearly shouted, "No!  Not pink!"  The boy flinched and curled in on himself, and the father grabbed a yellow cupcake and then dragged his son by his wrist back to their place at the picnic table. 

Later I hear that the orange shoes were a compromise because they were the closest to pink his father would allow.

You can't spoil them at this age (4 weeks)

.
Because I held
the baby too much,
my shoulder is
sore from keeping him
on top of me (because
he is a flopper), and
my back and hip ache
from rocking him
(because he likes
to be held as you walk,
but I can't
hold him
safely
that way, so I
must become a
perpetual motion machine
as I sit, arms held up
with pillows).  I
have taken ibuprofin
several times, yet
still I ache
because I
could not
possibly
hold him
enough.
.

sharing

.

we take turns

rocking him

from one sleep 

to the next

as gently 

as we can

.

useful insomnia

Whoever said baby breathing
is a soothing, comforting sound
never held a 4-week-old still
twitchy and erratic and only rarely
breathing regularly, like a tiny,
slightly wheezy bellows felt
through the collarbone more than
heard, nor felt those sudden, startling
stiffenings that last for three seconds
of baby nightmare and then are gone,
replaced by even more labored
and erratic breathing, so you can't
tell if he's asleep because he's facing
away from you, so his daddy has
to check before he takes him away
to bed, and you can go back to yours.

spring haiku

cherry trees are like
family you only get
to see once a year

baby pictures

An old acquaintance posted a picture of his friends and their baby with anencephaly during his brief life.  The photo angles were careful not to show the missing parts of the baby's skull and brain, and I cried again for my friend and her husband, and I prayed they would have the chance to take beautiful, heartbreaking pictures like those, and I remembered my sister's baby who she never got to hold, dead before it was born, and I couldn't even cry.

Did I ever post this? Because it's a couple years old . . .

I was so proud of myself.  When I left to go visit my family over the holidays, I dropped off a notice that my chronically-clogging drain was clogged again.  This time, I remembered to put away all laundry that was hanging on the rack on the back of my bathroom door.  This way, I did not have to return to my apartment and be mortified when I picked up the note the plumbing man left to say that he'd been there and fixed it and then realized that he had had to walk past all my bras to get into the tiny bathroom. 

Sometimes it's the little triumphs in life that make us happy.

What we learned visiting family this Christmas

.

• We like our house cold.
• We should not walk on the treadmill in our winter boots.
• The apple corer we received for Christmas will definitely be sharp enough to cut apple flesh, too.
• We should not walk on a treadmill in bare feet.
• We love to stay in the warm cave of blankets in a cold house even if we are not sleeping.
• We are still susceptible to developing contact allergic reactions to adhesives on bandages.
• Taxi drivers are not all honest people, and we should just take the bus, no matter how much longer it takes to get home.
• We should not limp.
• Family can be nice in small doses.

.

not mother's day

My sweet and amazing friend is pregnant
with a baby without a brain
that will die at birth or soon after.

"Although some individuals
with anencephaly may be born
with a main brain stem, the lack
of a functioning cerebrum
permanently rules out the possibility
of ever gaining consciousness."

I wrote the due date
in my calendar.
May 13th is
Mother's Day, and I
hate that this is so.  Why
couldn't the doctors know that
and pick some random other
not-Mother's Day day?  It's not
as if the exact date matters.  So
why that day of all days?

"There is no cure
or standard treatment
for anencephaly and
the prognosis for patients
is death."

They have decided to carry it to term
and they will love their little incomplete
baby until the day it dies.

"If the infant is not
stillborn, then he
or she will usually
die within a few hours
or days after birth
from cardiorespiratory arrest."

There will be a lot of
broken hearts over this.

"Reflex actions
such as breathing and
responses to sound or touch
occur."

I'm not sure if I wish
the child to be stillborn
to save them
from their little one
responding
brainlessly

to the sound of
mother's voice or the touch
of father's hand.

I'm not sure
they would want
to be saved
from that.




Fair warning I didn't get: the images are disturbing; quotes taken from here.

A productive weekend by the numbers

I had a nice holiday weekend.  I really like the sound of that.  I got paid for not being at work.  It's kind of novel, and I plan to enjoy how much laundry I was able to 1) get done and 2) afford to do.  It's the simple things in life.

Also this weekend:

• 0 mosquito bites
• 1 dead computer resurrected but broken in the process
• 1 afternoon in a pool floating around doing absolutely nothing (okay, maybe talking a bit of literature, but that was it)
• 1 ouchie on my elbow from the edge of the pool (which = 0 short sleeved shirts for the next couple of weeks, somehow)
• 1 eagle spotted from the car
• 1 reorganized house plan
• 1 blue screen of death
• 1 baby who did not get sick after being around me
• 1 good friend who just moved to the area to kibbitz with
• 2 new charities I can afford to give to so far
• 2 lovely, sprawling gardens to rest in
• 2 kind families who invited me over for a day even though they don't know me from Adam
• 3 discs of MacGyver season one playing in the background while I worked on my budget and tried to catch up on weeks of dead computer email
• 3 essay ideas I'm drafting
• 4 episodes of Chuck playing in the background while I cleaned and organized things
• 5 more clearance items on ridiculous sale, hopefully fulfilling my shopping quotient for the next couple of years
• 5 hours driving in the car
• 6 ancient pairs of shoes I will give to charity because I can't wear them with my smashed foot ('04)
• 7 pairs of shoes that died years ago (some back in the early 90s) that I hung onto for sentimental reasons despite the holes and my inability to wear them because of my smashed foot 
• 8 books read (all manga)
• X loads of laundry (I should go get that last one out before I forget)
• (approximately) 25 times I almost drove off the road due to gawking at the landscape
• 1 partridge in a pear tree (not really)

Ahhhhh, refreshing.

Why you should give Tiny Art Director a moment of your time

I know this is book-related and should thus be on my reading and writing blog, but Tiny Art Director is also a blog, so it counts.  And it also led me to a great idea for a blog or a journal (Things I finished: To help myself remember how I felt about various things that I finished).

So Tiny Art Director is hilarious and cute.  Bill Zeman is the father (an artist) who takes "commissions" from his daughter (The Tiny Art Director [TAD]) who then accepts or rejects them often with commentary.  Sometimes highly amusing commentary that could only come from the toddler dimension . . .

The book is taken from earlier blog posts when Zeman's daughter (now 5) was 2.  It amused me that there were so many requests for blood and death and violence, but it also worried me.  Apparently, Mr. Zeman was worried, too, because he put in a note where he talks about it and about how he found out that such bloodthirstiness is perfectly normal in kids.  No less disturbing, I must admit, but apparently normal.

Why this is a better-than-average blog-to-book collection: We need more tenderness in the world, and there's something very tender about this unique way of spending time getting to know your child as she grows up.  The blog and book are not simply gimmicks but are amusing and touching in an honest way.  I think Tiny Art Director is worth your time.  (So does this famous guy at this famous site.)

Why I love my father

He calls me to say
he's in the car
driving and listening
to a CD, and it reminded him

of the time years ago
when I moved away
to graduate school.
He tells me the album.

"Wow, what an album! We
listened to it when
we were driving through
Wisconsin. Anyway,

it made me think of you,
so I called to say hi
and I love you."

Return of the Sloth

I've been away for a bit of a vacation at my parents' house in another midwestern state where I did my best impression of a sloth for five days. I left the house twice (and saw a deer one of those times) and interacted with exactly one non-family member (okay, three if you include two phone calls about a group I organize). It was lovely. So lovely. Kind of. Well, that aspect of it was lovely. And it was desperately (Do I mean definitely?) inspirational for numerous reasons, both positive and negative, that I may surely explicate in the future when my inner sloth starts moving again. Any time now . . .

Ear-ache buddies, birthdays, family

I'm visiting my parents this week. It's warmer here and less snowy. Tonight, I am promised an ice storm. I hope it's delivered because I love the sound of ice raining down and coating everything, and I love the way everything is transformed into glazed jewelry by a really good ice storm.

My older sister, brother-in-law, and newly minted two-year-old nephew are coming tomorrow, though, so for their sakes I hope things aren't bad. The nephew is very mobile now, like a tiny, short-haired explosion. His recently acquired knowledge of how to smile for cameras (and his huge head and lack of hair) makes him strongly resemble Julius the Monkey, but I am not supposed to tell his parents that.

We're ear-ache buddies. I might have an ear infection right now, but I think he's currently free of that affliction for once. His ear tubes are doing their jobs, so he can hear now and is a hilarious chatterbox. I'm sure someone will bring up the biting incident from his preschool, so I can hear him mispronounce "bit" as "bitch." Adults are so easily entertained.

I'm seriously considering my own doctor's advice to get tubes put in my ears again before my next airplane ride. I'm a thirty-year-old woman, but I guess you never really outgrow a head that's too small. Alas. If you could somehow average my nephew's head and mine, we would both be normal-sized, and our ears would be better for it.

How's your January going so far?

Chemicals your parents won't mind you enjoying

I recently talked to my parents about a job application after exercising, and I think it's the first time that's happened. (The talking after exercising, not the talking or the job application or the exercising. Glad I could clear that up.)

They thought I'd had coffee, which struck me as funny. I can't drink coffee because

• caffeine has the opposite medicinal effect on me (it makes me tired, gives me headaches, and makes my jaw lock up a bit).
• it tastes of motor oil (so there's no way I'd drink decaf).

Good old endorphins are wonderful. They make you feel chipper and cheerful and tired and pleased.

Exercise: the wonder drug that's strong enough to make your 18th hour working on a government job application tolerable.

Do you have any endorphin-induced funny stories? Or stories about conversations with your parents that were unintentionally funny?

Home for the Holidays

Well, unfortunately, the predicted snowpocalypse missed us.  It got too warm, I guess, which is why I am sitting in my apartment in shorts and a t-shirt, sweltering.  In anticipation of Snowmageddon, the apartment staff cranked up the thermostat in the lobby directly below me before leaving to spend the holidays elsewhere. 

It's sleeting/snowing/raining outside, so I can't open my window, and it's night, so I have to have a light on to be able to write, and this makes things even warmer.

I just can't bring myself to turn the AC on during Christmas this far north in the Northern hemisphere.  There are some lines I just can't cross.

Don't worry.  I'm staying hydrated as I sweat and listen to Christmas carols.

I'm thinking of leaving the Christmas tree lights on again tonight since they didn't burn the place down last night (hooray, LED lights), and it was comforting to see them while I was doing my usual not-sleeping routine.  It's not every day you can turn over for the 57th time and see lovely blurry twinkling lights that are also still awake on Christmas Eve.  I'm sure lots of kids thinking about presents were on vigil with us, too.

Hope you had as great a Christmas as I did.  Aside from the excess heat, it was nice.  I was happy not to be working in RetailHades, not to have to talk to anyone (I made an exception for my family), not to have to think about looming economic crises for one day.

It was very nice to see my fully assembled Christmas tree, to get some exercise, to watch the snow, to read a bit, write a bit, think about poetry, eat soup, take a few pictures, listen to music, and actually relax for real.

Tomorrow, I'll get back to job applications, credit wrangling, cleaning, laundry, software installation, submitting for publication, and worry.  Today I wanted to be at peace, and I'm glad to say that things pretty much worked out that way, thanks be to God.

How did you spend your holidays this year?