On 2016

Although I find myself struggling to feel terribly hopeful about the coming year, it is with little sadness that I bid 2016 adieu. 

This year started off so well- a new home, a joyous 40th birthday, a great family trip, and the liberating realization that as I've come into myself and my age, I have far fewer fucks left to give than I ever imagined possible. That, my friends, is a win!

My family is happy and healthy, I have so many good friends, Percy is snug as a bug with Suzanne who dotes on him with mad love, my sister’s TV show was purchased by Netflix and will begin airing in America in March (stay tuned), and my father will retire in the relatively near future after working endless-hour days for decades.

I am so grateful for everything, and yet this year also took so much, so wantonly. My heart is both light and heavy; it is full in all meanings of the word.

The loss of so many talented people has been stunning. David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, George Michael, Gene Wilder, Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, Phife Dawg, Gary Shandling, Morley Safer, Elie Wiesel, Edward Albee, Leonard Cohen, Gwen Ifill, Muhammad Ali, Shimon Peres, Janet Reno, Florence Henderson, John Glenn, Pat Summitt, Patty Duke, Pat Conroy...the list goes on. So many of those folks fought to make this world better. Through their words, work, humor, music, journalism, films, and political tenures, they pushed boundaries, opened our eyes and minds, challenged us to be better, made us laugh.

Thank god the "Save Betty White From 2016" campaign seems to have worked. Knock on wood.

I learned that I couldn’t outrun my own limits; that ignoring all warning signs of exhaustion and overwhelm doesn’t mean they’ll fizzle out and disappear. I fell, hard. It was and remains a tough but valuable lesson, even when I wish limits weren’t so. As I sometimes tell the boys now when their demands are many and simultaneous, “I am one woman with but two hands. I can only do so much.”

I was reminded that we have a long way to go in not only raising our daughters more like sons but also, as the indomitable Gloria Steinem said, in raising our sons more like daughters.

Yesterday, in the midst of buying a new car to replace my 12-year-old Honda -whose trunk leaked rainwater, whose backseat light long ago quit, whose tires needed refilling on a regular basis, and who’d begun playing an awfully staccatic song on all left turns- I realized that neither of my children had ever known a different car. The material change meant nothing to me or Jack, but my sensitive Oliver, sitting on my lap after five long hours at the dealership, began to cry. He becomes attached to things in which he's made memories, and I love his sentimentality.

“I love all my stickers on my side of the car, and remember the time the windows were shot out [at our old house] but my window didn’t crumble because of my stickers? And we never have trouble finding the car because of all the stickers? And I have played in the trunk so many times….”

I hugged him tight, softening into the sweet moment. The man helping us complete the paperwork said, “In my country, men don’t cry. Come on now. Men don’t cry.”

I stiffened, but didn’t say anything. I hoped Oliver didn’t hear. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go there, I guess. But then he said it again. “Men don’t cry.” And I looked at him, with both softness and steel, and said “In my family, men absolutely can and do cry. It is OK.”

When we are all willing to give up the gendered ghosts that haunt society’s very soul, that peg and judge and shush and intimidate, we will all be better. I believe that we’ll see healthy displays of emotion rather than forceful explosions that burst from cracks because the pressure is too great to stay put anymore.

When we publicly denounce the judgment of men for being emotionally attuned and the judgment of women for being strong and unapologetic, we will also stop excusing locker room as nothing more than “boys will be boys.” When we publicly uphold the dignity and worth of ALL bodies, as well as the total value of the word “NO,” we will shut down men who feel it’s okay to assault women, to demean them, to harm them. We will not allow proven rapists and child molesters to keep their positions because they are talented swimmers and effective coaches. Perhaps, even, we won’t allow a man who mocked the disabled and bragged about sexually assaulting women, to become president.

Breaking down those ages-old walls will take persistent efforts at speaking up and out. As will refusing to normalize Trump's behavior, wholly unpresidential mien, ignorance, and complete lack of qualifications for the office to which he will soon ascend. As will righting our dangerously listing ship of state.

In recent days on Facebook, I have been called “nuts,” “loony,” “insane,” and told “you make me want to vomit.” Why? Because I thanked President Obama for his dignified, thoughtful leadership. Because I thanked Hillary Clinton for her service to women and children over the past forty years and for showing my sons that women can aspire to great heights. And because I disapproved of Trump’s having bragged of grabbing women’s genitals without permission. For expressing my fear of a world based not on fact but on fake news, I was called vitriolic. I and all men who haven't grabbed women's genitals were also, inexplicably, accused of being gay. A woman said that. I have no idea how to move forward with people like that. Does she think normal men just grab women? I don't.

Ours is a deeply fractured country, cleaved by economic disparity, racism, sexism, and fake news. I wonder about a world like this. I worry about it, too. I have zero faith in the incoming administration or in people who sling ugly insults at others offering simple words of gratitude, but I do find hope in the resistance that began rising on November 9. 

During these last months, I've discovered that inside me burns an activist fire that I either wasn’t totally aware of or had always been too scared to do much with. I have discovered an incredible, fiery band of intelligent others who want only for our country and world to be better. Fairer. More equal. Safe. Who want more people to have more rights and better lives, regardless of their gender, skin color, faith, or sexual orientation, rather than only a select few (too often this means: white, Christian, heterosexual, and male) benefitting at the expense of others. Who believe in fact and the need to combat climate change pronto.

As 2016 draws to a close, I feel determined and strong. I hope you do too, because there is much work to be done. 

I hope your families are safe and warm and feel loved. I hope you encourage the boys and men in your lives to understand and express their emotions in healthy ways and everyone you know to respect their own and others' bodies. I hope you will meet people from different places and with different backgrounds, talk and laugh with them, eat their food, share. I hope you help those in need and accept help when you struggle. I hope you will stand up for peace and justice in all the ways that you can. 

Here's to love and light in the New Year. Be kind!

Tidy emotions

Tonight I would like to talk to you about tidy emotions. 

Tidy emotions are those that make people -mostly others, but could be you too because you've internalized others' and societal expectations- and society comfortable.

They're the "it's for the best" when someone dies. The "it was meant to be" when something crappy happens -a break-up, for example- and you're desperately and painfully trying to make sense of things. The "calm down and relax" when your heart is upset and, oh, maybe your country seems to be dying. The looks of "hmm" and the cacophonous silence when some bravely stand up in the face of injustice juxtaposed with the loud applause for bathing puppies and perfectly wrapped gifts that pepper our landscape with perky regularity.

For so many years, I was admonished for wearing my heart on my sleeve. I was chastised for my emotions. I was made to feel I was an awful burden because I felt things deeply. I was called "too much," and "too intense," and, yes, "a burden" because I worried about so many relationships and issues and because my confidence couldn't find a stud in which to brace itself against the many winds whirling about. I care about the fate of the polar bears. So sue me. I was told that I "seemed to be awfully stressed" when I had a newborn and a just-three-year-old and didn't have a night nurse and nanny like the person who was telling me I was stressed.

I am quite sure that there were times I was too much, that I was too emotional. I did learn to modulate and moderate, to assess context and situation, to respond versus react, and for that I am infinitely grateful. My porous self has certainly made life hard many times over. I have often wished for a sturdier core.

But I have also unlearned some of that muzzling. I've left behind that inner voice that commanded I be of a certain weight and size. I have worked hard to loose the reins on MY voice, and to accept, to HONOR, that it is sensitive and attuned. That although it is sometimes intense or thorny, it is, more often, generous and kind and feeling. And I will tell you that I would choose being all of that any day over privileged and aloof and tidy and small.

Tidy is women a long time ago but also too many of us today. Tidy is something you could once only afford to be. Tidy is something still afforded by class and privilege.

Tidy makes me tired, as my Aunt Da used to say. Tidy is dull and inaccessible and frequently lacks authenticity. 

The opposite of tidy isn't fake or false or vapid. It isn't singular or snotty. No, those things are as improper, in my opinion, as is superficial polish. They are, often, worse, for they are entitled and ugly and out of touch.

The opposite of tidy is real. REAL. Authentic, candid, Self translated. The opposite of tidy is not going gently. The opposite of tidy is, usually, being courageously on the right side of history. 

In today's New York Times, Charles Blow wrote

"I fully understand that elevated outrage is hard to maintain. It’s exhausting. But the alternative is surrender to national nihilism and the welcoming of woe. The next four years could be epochal years in the history of this country. They could test the limits of presidential power and the public’s passivity.
I happen to believe that history will judge kindly those who continued to shout, from the rooftops, through their own weariness and against the corrosive drift of conformity: This is not normal!"

Whether you want to see it or not, America is falling apart. As is our news, our common belief in fact, the binding threads of our communal quilt. Judgment and bigotry and exclusion and restriction are racing back into our public spheres in terrifying ways. We were better than this. I am ashamed that we've decided to put that exceptional goodness on hiatus. We should ALL be ashamed of that.

For those who are, stay loud. Stay strong. Resist. Anger is OK if you don't let it overtake you.

If someone tells you to get over it, or quiet down, or just move on, tell them to shove it. For those of you who only share lightness and animals and happy family pictures, consider why. Usually, the outtake prior to the "perfect" shot was the more real one. If you see someone suffering or struggling or simply in need of a hug, give. 

Be honest. Be real. Do not surrender. 

Injera and lentil wat (and a tiny Shel update)

Quick Shel update: 1) Jack's teacher was as amused by the whole situation as I was which is comforting, to say the least. 2) I have learned more about Shel than I ever expected to know. 3) When in 5th grade, Oliver will not be doing his poetry research project on Shel.
~~

Ok, so as y'all might know, I like to talk to people- friends, strangers, neighbors, whoever. Generally speaking, I'm a social gal. 

Also, I am the mother of sons and have a husband. Because of this, I am an almost-daily regular at the market nearest me. Because, constant, high-quantity eating. 

In any case, I have gotten to know a number of the store's employees and truly enjoy seeing them when I'm there. Last time I got one of my horrid sinus rages, Hiwot reminded me that drinking my body weight in hot water with lemon, ginger, and honey was wise. I ran and got a huge knob of ginger and later that afternoon was grateful for her advice.

The next time I saw her, I thanked her profusely, and we talked some more and then were pals. One week ago yesterday, I was at the store purchasing, among other items, some red lentils because I have been helping a friend test recipes for the cookbook she's writing. Hiwot said, "Are you making lentil soup?"

"Yes!"

"I make lentil wat and always put berbere in it."

"Is that like pili-pili from Kenya?"

"Not the same but it is a red pepper. I bring mine back from Ethiopia. Do you have any?"

"No, sadly. It sounds great."

"I'll bring you some. And my recipe."

"OMG, I will bring you some preserves."

So, we set a date, met in the check-out line at the appointed time, and exchanged goods. I made her a pear, lemon, honey, and ginger preserve (because hello, she and I met because of ginger), and she brought me a generously-filled Ziploc of berbere and her hand-written notes on lentil wat.

Powdered gold.

"Do you like injera?"

"I love it. Do you make yours with teff only or a teff-wheat blend?"

"Only teff, of course. Both black and white. Well, ivory. Have you had both injeras?"

"No, I've only had ivory. This is so cool. I had no idea there was black injera."

"I will make you some. Let's meet back here next week, same time."

People, I was overwhelmed by her generosity.

We met yesterday, and she had the most amazing, yeasty, spongy, full-of-moon-craters injera for me. THAT SHE HAD MADE JUST HOURS BEFORE! You have to have a starter and let it ferment and everything. Truly, I was and remain so deeply touched. And my inner foodie was just off her rocker.

Today for lunch, I made myself Hiwot's red lentil wat. I stood over the stove as oil and onion and berbere melded, as ginger and garlic made everything fragrant, as the lentils went in and I added water by the cupful as if I were making an African risotto. 

While it cooked I called the White House comment line and waited on hold for ten minutes. Democracy in action, y'all. And then I spoke to a lovely woman and told her how desperately worried I felt about our country. I asked her to please tell President Obama that I felt it'd be grand if he would declassify everything pertaining to Russia's hacking of the DNC, DNCC, Hillary, Bernie, everything BEFORE the electors place their final votes on December 19. It won't change the outcome but we all deserve to be as fully informed as possible. 

And she thanked me for calling, and I thanked her for answering, and we hung up and I burst into tears because this country and Trump's buffet of unqualified Cabinet choices and Aleppo. But then the wat was done and Hiwot's injera was waiting, and I had the most magnificent, beautiful lunch I've had in a while.

I sat in silence and gratitude, thinking of all the beautiful difference in this world. Of cuisines and people and names and places of birth, and how so often when we come together in compassionate, generous, curious, lovely ways, we are all strengthened and made better.