It's high tide. Not full high, up under the deck, but high enough that the anchor buoys are way off shore, and the sun that's barely shining through high clouds makes the sea glint full and billowy. Beau is upstairs napping, and I'm sitting outside while the sky drizzles and spits and then lifts into a bright high cloud cover. An eagle is shrieking across the cove from the high trees on Lena Point.
I've been "home" for just under a week, I'm leaving tomorrow, and as usual I'm not ready. This isn't really home in any sense of the word -- I grew up seven hundred miles north of here, and my base is over two thousand miles east. But my parents have settled here, perched between mountainside and water, and so I've come for a week of rest, of introducing Beau to the family, of settling into a different kind of routine for a while. Spring tides are often extreme, and last week was a full moon which makes them even more so. We've been watching the water come almost to the deck, then suck itself way out into the cove. In the evenings, after dinner when sunset turns the ocean pink and purplegrey, we've gone down in search of the fountains of water spurting up between the rocks, and dug huge clams which spit at us and close themselves quickly at our approach. They're in a bucket now, but we'll put them back before we leave since the chance of red tide makes them too dangerous to eat.
I've been so overjoyed and ecstatic this week. I've had so many moments of pure exhilaration, of love and warmth and rightness. Today I've felt out of sorts and a bit on edge, a little myself and mostly with Beau. It makes sense -- it feels like we just got here, and now there's another transition, and I don't know for sure the next time I'll be here.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Reproductive Justice!
I spent much of this weekend attending workshops and plenaries at the 30th annual CLPP Reproductive Justice Conference.
Training and Being an Abortion Doula, Empowering Birth, and Reframing and Empowering Parenting and Mothering. It was powerful to be in a completely pro-choice space, where all choices -- abortion, adoption, parenting as a young woman of color or an older transman or anyone at all -- are affirmed and supported.
When I think about my own hopes for birth and parenting, it's so tied up with all kinds of complications because I'm queer. I want to give birth to my children (at least some of them). It took me a long time to own that feeling without guilt: guilt for not wanting to adopt "when there are so many children who need homes," (although I have more complicated feelings about adoption now, but that's a different post). Guilt for not being enthusiastic about sharing childbearing with a female partner -- it feels selfish, because I want it so much. Confusion about how I could be so queer, but still want to be "the mom."
One night in college, I stayed up really late with my friends in our co-op, sitting on the floor drinking red wine out of mason jars and talking about our futures. As you do. I got very emotional about my dilemma and said something along the lines of, "I love women -- I love dating them, sleeping with them, being with them -- but I want to have kids, and I just want to be the MOM!" My wise friend looked at me and said, "You don't want to be the mom -- you want to be the parent your kids like best." Which was of course completely true. I want to have the kind of relationship with my kids that I have with my own mom, but that is independent of my partner's gender. And of course, the older I get the less I want to be the parent my kids like best -- I wouldn't want them to have favorites. I just want to have a great, fun, honest relationship with them, and hopefully my partner will too.
That said, one of the things that is so wonderful and...relaxing, somehow, about being with my genderqueer beau, is that in our relationship, I know that I would be the pregnant one -- Beau isn't interested. It's one of the many ways that being with Beau makes me more comfortable in my own skin, in my own desires. We started dating very shortly after I ended a two and a half year, long distance, emotionally abusive relationship in which I felt very judged as not queer enough, and not radical enough, particularly in my desires to have one committed partner and to raise children with that person. Lots of things have given me some perspective on how fucked up that was (time, distance, therapy, friends, a relationship with someone who isn't, as Michelle Tea put it "a queer douchebag"). It's actually amazing to me how much more settled I feel now that I can begin to envision a future for myself, with someone I love, without feeling judged for it. But of course, that shouldn't be amazing at all.
And....somehow I managed to write an entire post that was going to be about the CLPP conference, and turned into something else all together. I'll try to put more thoughts about the conference down later, but they're still all swirling around in my head.
Training and Being an Abortion Doula, Empowering Birth, and Reframing and Empowering Parenting and Mothering. It was powerful to be in a completely pro-choice space, where all choices -- abortion, adoption, parenting as a young woman of color or an older transman or anyone at all -- are affirmed and supported.
When I think about my own hopes for birth and parenting, it's so tied up with all kinds of complications because I'm queer. I want to give birth to my children (at least some of them). It took me a long time to own that feeling without guilt: guilt for not wanting to adopt "when there are so many children who need homes," (although I have more complicated feelings about adoption now, but that's a different post). Guilt for not being enthusiastic about sharing childbearing with a female partner -- it feels selfish, because I want it so much. Confusion about how I could be so queer, but still want to be "the mom."
One night in college, I stayed up really late with my friends in our co-op, sitting on the floor drinking red wine out of mason jars and talking about our futures. As you do. I got very emotional about my dilemma and said something along the lines of, "I love women -- I love dating them, sleeping with them, being with them -- but I want to have kids, and I just want to be the MOM!" My wise friend looked at me and said, "You don't want to be the mom -- you want to be the parent your kids like best." Which was of course completely true. I want to have the kind of relationship with my kids that I have with my own mom, but that is independent of my partner's gender. And of course, the older I get the less I want to be the parent my kids like best -- I wouldn't want them to have favorites. I just want to have a great, fun, honest relationship with them, and hopefully my partner will too.
That said, one of the things that is so wonderful and...relaxing, somehow, about being with my genderqueer beau, is that in our relationship, I know that I would be the pregnant one -- Beau isn't interested. It's one of the many ways that being with Beau makes me more comfortable in my own skin, in my own desires. We started dating very shortly after I ended a two and a half year, long distance, emotionally abusive relationship in which I felt very judged as not queer enough, and not radical enough, particularly in my desires to have one committed partner and to raise children with that person. Lots of things have given me some perspective on how fucked up that was (time, distance, therapy, friends, a relationship with someone who isn't, as Michelle Tea put it "a queer douchebag"). It's actually amazing to me how much more settled I feel now that I can begin to envision a future for myself, with someone I love, without feeling judged for it. But of course, that shouldn't be amazing at all.
And....somehow I managed to write an entire post that was going to be about the CLPP conference, and turned into something else all together. I'll try to put more thoughts about the conference down later, but they're still all swirling around in my head.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Butch Lab Symposium #2 Roundup
I was inspired to finally start putting my writing into a blog so that I could participate in the fantastic Butch Lab Symposium. Here's the roundup from Symposim #2: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions -- lots of amazing writers here.
- Ali Oh at Made of Words: Bottoms Up, Thumbs Up
- Madeline Elayne: Butches Don’t Wear Pink (and other fallacies)
- Victoria Oldham at Musings of a Lesbian Writer: Misconceptions
- Wendi Kali at A Stranger in This Place: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions
- RM at Letters from Titan: Butch Isn’t Ugly
- Kyle on Butchtastic: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches and Misconceptions:
- EST at A Lesbian Christian on Butch Stereotypes
- Joliesse Soul at This Side of Changed on Butch Stereotypes
- Laina at The Bookish Butch
- Harrison at How to Be Butch on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions
- Lenore Louhi at twenty pebbles, a piece titled “Smoke”
- Cody on Cowboy Coquet on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions
Down by the river
I have done the dishes -- twice. I've swept the house, folded the laundry, cleaned the cat box, called two friends, listened to a lot of NPR, and made banana bread. Even with all that (productive) procrastination, something inside of me is so afraid of being alone with my own thoughts that I made myself come down by the river to write, where I don't have internet, and even then I've brought a pack of my roommate's clove cigarettes -- and I "don't smoke".
Who is this person who's so uncertain, so wary of a lack of structure, of her own internal world? Where did she come from? I didn't grow up with her. She's been around for a couple of years, I think, lurking in the corners, but it's only more recently that I've noticed her at every turn.
It's when I'm indoors that she sneaks up on me most, catches me off guard and whirls me around. That's probably part of why this winter was so hard -- why living in Alaska again after college was so hard -- because inside I feel stuck and trapped (no matter how homey it is). It calms me down deep to be outside, as long as I'm not shivering.
Maybe if I combine cigarettes with a more rigorous exercise routine, they'll even each other out? This clove is awfully relaxing. I've been trying to step up my exercise, again much easier now that it's a reasonable temperature for human life outside. I've slowly added running to my karate and dance routine, and today I went for a seven mile bike ride -- poking around some neighborhoods near my house, which I just haven't explored yet since I moved in in the fall. I'm terrifically unmotivated and excellent at procrastinating (see above), but I feel so good when my heart is pounding and my ears start to hurt because of the cold air against my hot eardrums. The more I do it, the more I can remember that feeling and the easier it is to motivate next time.
I know what I need to do -- some of it, at least -- it's putting it into practice that's difficult. And that's the thing about depression, isn't it? Wherever it comes from, whatever form it takes at any given time, it's there, making everything just a little bit harder.
When I was biking today, the wind was strong in my face for the first half of the ride. It was chilly against my bare shins and pushed at my eyelids. I pedaled hard into it, willing my body to be stronger, waiting for that moment when I would turn the loop and head home with it at my back. I made that turn, and for a second everything was still and the air hovered around me -- and then it was back in my face as I picked up speed, no longer the external wind blowing against me but the air resistance I created with my own movement. It struck me how all those things that slow us down, that push against us -- they're a combination of what comes at us and what we create, but they never completely go away. I want to learn how to make peace with the wind in my face, to keep going forward into it without it overwhelming me -- but god, it's hard sometimes.
Who is this person who's so uncertain, so wary of a lack of structure, of her own internal world? Where did she come from? I didn't grow up with her. She's been around for a couple of years, I think, lurking in the corners, but it's only more recently that I've noticed her at every turn.
It's when I'm indoors that she sneaks up on me most, catches me off guard and whirls me around. That's probably part of why this winter was so hard -- why living in Alaska again after college was so hard -- because inside I feel stuck and trapped (no matter how homey it is). It calms me down deep to be outside, as long as I'm not shivering.
Maybe if I combine cigarettes with a more rigorous exercise routine, they'll even each other out? This clove is awfully relaxing. I've been trying to step up my exercise, again much easier now that it's a reasonable temperature for human life outside. I've slowly added running to my karate and dance routine, and today I went for a seven mile bike ride -- poking around some neighborhoods near my house, which I just haven't explored yet since I moved in in the fall. I'm terrifically unmotivated and excellent at procrastinating (see above), but I feel so good when my heart is pounding and my ears start to hurt because of the cold air against my hot eardrums. The more I do it, the more I can remember that feeling and the easier it is to motivate next time.
I know what I need to do -- some of it, at least -- it's putting it into practice that's difficult. And that's the thing about depression, isn't it? Wherever it comes from, whatever form it takes at any given time, it's there, making everything just a little bit harder.
When I was biking today, the wind was strong in my face for the first half of the ride. It was chilly against my bare shins and pushed at my eyelids. I pedaled hard into it, willing my body to be stronger, waiting for that moment when I would turn the loop and head home with it at my back. I made that turn, and for a second everything was still and the air hovered around me -- and then it was back in my face as I picked up speed, no longer the external wind blowing against me but the air resistance I created with my own movement. It struck me how all those things that slow us down, that push against us -- they're a combination of what comes at us and what we create, but they never completely go away. I want to learn how to make peace with the wind in my face, to keep going forward into it without it overwhelming me -- but god, it's hard sometimes.
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