Posts from the “Random” Category

“Mom, please?”

Posted on November 3, 2017

The times that I close may laptop or the laundry room door almost always result in something I would have kept putting off until the requests faded to nothing. A couple of weeks ago Sean decided to take us all on a bike ride. Originally it was going to be a quick loop around the neighborhood, but he suggested the bike trail. It was, as I am sure some people reading this are already surmising, an ordeal. Flat tires. Missing bike helmets. Modest interest. Broken water bottle holders. Somehow we made it. Briar stayed home and I borrowed her bike. Avery and Finley were tired about 1 mile into a 7 mile ride. Scattered leaves and pine needles made for a treacherous course, and…

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Categories: Random

I Want To Remember This

Posted on November 2, 2017

The girls and Sean are in a production of Oliver, which opens tomorrow night. I have been in intermittent attendance, lending a hand for load-in and construction, ferrying dinner and forgotten things to rehearsal, and finally tonight to help out with make-up and quick changes. It’s strange to be there, feeling at times like a pronounced outlier but also like I am home—only the home is old memories, different faces. A different theatre and another time. I try to fade to the edges. Briar walked me through what she needed and explained to me what she’d be ok not having enough time to manage. I smiled and quietly nodded as I hooked her cap in my back pocket, set her dress shirt on my…

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Categories: Random

Hope is Like Love, You Can’t force It

Posted on November 1, 2017

  I remember when the scent of a new super ball made me feel like I was on top of the world, or how if I pressed my face to the cracked window and inhaled the gas wafting in as the attendant filled the tank of our car, I felt intensely alive and capable. Back when the call to wrap things up came as the sun set it seemed so easy to find hope, to really feel it. Of course, back then I didn’t call it hope and I didn’t recognize how dearly I depended on those moments of being uplifted. I’ve stopped keeping track of how many weeks and months it’s been since I began living in a reality of bracing for the…

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Categories: Random

The Price of #MeToo (Trigger warning)

Posted on October 17, 2017

I’ve never liked the secret FB meme approach to advocacy. Susan Niebur taught me that the playful nature of standing up for breast cancer was, in fact, a big drag on those battling it. Posting the color of your bra with no explanation is confounding for some, but worse, for the women who no longer have breasts or who don’t shop in a sea of blush colored lace it’s almost mean-spirited. Usually, I just ignored the private message invites and then moved along.    When #MeToo started* I was torn. I began seeing the stark updates:     #MeToo     I nodded my head, remembering the texts and DMs over the years from many of these women. We’d shared the weight of the Cosby story and…

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Our Bodies Aren’t Coatracks for Your Guilt

Posted on October 14, 2017

“Be careful with that neck, it’s dangerous. Men can’t resist a neck like that.” I was 18 and his name was Jesús. I was an exchange student in Spain and had never met him before. He was ten years my senior.   Already I was so conditioned to believe that attention from men was a success—I am good enough —that I struggled to find balance between the programmed response and the way my hair stood on end on the back of my neck. I felt danger. It had only been about a year since a man had raped me in the front seat of his car. The whole time he spoke to me like I’d asked for it, like I was enjoying it. Powerful…

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Categories: Random

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