We Can Control Ourselves*

Revolutionary (Angela Davis) 1972, Wadsworth Jarrell at Soul of a Nation
The Broad Museum, Los Angeles

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

Angela Davis 

It's a rainy Sunday morning in Los Angeles, and I'm listening to Erik Satie because it goes well with rain, with melancholy and gentleness. Last night, Carl and I went out with our friends Jason and Leah. Jason is the co-host of our podcast Who Lives Like This?! and given the intimate conversations we've had together and with the wide array of guests on the show, I feel as if I have known him and his wife for far longer than two years. We met downtown at the Broad Museum to see Soul of a Nation, the work of 60 artists that explores "the historical and cultural influences that define their unique approaches to Black art both as a vehicle for change and an expression of self-exploration." (Artnet.com) It was a thrilling exhibit with a wealth of female artists, most of whom were new to me.

Carolyn Mims Lawrence, Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free

What a weird week of near paralyzing stupidity from the southern states and the Republican party and the religious right. I'm repelled, for once, by the snark of memes, by jokes and satire, my ordinary easy and dogged sense of humor replaced by rage. There's no hilarity in cruelty and oppression, in the stripping of women's rights, in the muscle of the white patriarchy and gross subversion of what it means to honor and protect life. Oliver donated to a woman's reproductive health clinic, unprompted by me. Henry said that he was thinking of volunteering as an escort at a health clinic, but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to control his own anger.

The word channel. Channel your anger, I told him, even as I have to channel my own.

Donate HERE.

* I imagine I have readers who agree with what's going on, and I have no conciliatory words for you. The following words are from an ultrasound technologist, though, a confirmed source -- perhaps you will be moved in your tiny minds.

Abortion issues

So here’s the thing:

This Alabama abortion ban is a big deal, in a very bad way. Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky… I’m looking at you too, but we’re going to focus on Alabama. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me catch you up. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey just signed a total abortion ban into law, the most restrictive law in the United States. The law will ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy for every reason.

This is not OK, not reasonable, and definitely not acceptable.

If you don’t know me well, maybe you don’t know what I do for a living. I’m an ultrasound technologist. My colleagues and I look at babies in every stage of pregnancy every day. I also work in a high risk unit. My unit and I look at babies and mothers in varying states of mental and physical health. If you think an abortion ban sounds good, then I am a good person to ask about why it isn’t.

So, let me tell you:

• About the woman whose baby developed with no skull, and the brain just floating around. Her baby still had a heartbeat, and she would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose baby has a rare chromosomal condition called T13. Her baby’s organs grew outside its body, and had a cleft palate so bad that there was no nose. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose blood pressure is spiking so high that she passes out and is likely to stroke out before her baby is born. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman with such a severe form of hemophilia that giving birth will probably be fatal to both her and the baby. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the 13-year-old whose school isn’t allowed to teach her science-based sex-education, so she didn’t know how to prevent pregnancy or STIs, but whose body is not developed enough to carry to term without being damaged. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who was raped by a "friend" who wanted to “make sure she got home safely.” She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who has PCOS, so only has periods every 3-4 months and can’t find a birth control that works for her. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose abusive partner removed the condom without telling her (it’s called stealthing, and it happens more frequently than you’d think). She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman with the cornual ectopic pregnancy that isn’t reliably in the uterus, and could grow to a size that will kill her. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman who has two kids she can barely feed already, and whose birth control just increased in price. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the 18-year-old who just started college and is going to be the first graduate of the family if she can just stay in school. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the woman whose IUD slipped slightly, and is now endangering both her and the pregnancy it was designed to prevent. She would not be able to access abortion.

• About the many, many, many women who just don’t want to be pregnant for reasons that are their own. Health issues, abusive relationships, financial issues, social issues. They would not be able to access abortion.

Some of these might sound like reasonable exceptions to you. And you would be correct. But no one should get to decide what happens with another person’s body, not even to save a life. You need written permission from a corpse before life-saving organs can be taken from them. You cannot be forced to donate blood, no matter how dire the situation. And no one else should get to decide what a woman does with her body -- end of story.

But it’s not the end of the story, is it? Because here’s the kicker: If you consider abortion to be a murder (and some people genuinely believe that!) then miscarriage can be second degree murder. And this is already happening all over the world -- El Salvador, Ecuador, and the U.S. Women are being jailed for miscarriages and stillbirths because they "might have done something to cause it." If you start down this path of jailing women and doctors for making healthcare decisions that affect no one but themselves, then you get women who don’t go to a doctor for a safe procedure, and instead order pills online or use whatever metal instruments they can find to end their own pregnancies. Women who are honestly experiencing a miscarriage (which is medically called a "spontaneous abortion," just FYI) will not go to their doctor for help. They will bleed out on their bathroom floors or die of septic shock. And I haven’t even talked about how this will disproportionately affect women of color, LGBTQA+ women, or trans men. This isn’t about the “sanctity of life” anymore. It’s about controlling women.

We can control ourselves.

Microchimerism

Chimera by Gustave Moreau
1867

I'm not sure what it means to be resilient, but when I emerge into light it has seemingly been without effort and I'm hard put to explain why, exactly, I feel better and why, exactly, things were so hard. The word grace. 





I had a dream the other night (oh no, please no) that I was sitting on a toilet and shit, crap, you know (I have a hard time writing the words) kept coming out of me. It just kept coming. If that's too much information (TMI) for you to stomach (no pun intended), it wasn't in real life. There's something about the body, about bodily functions, or there's something about the body (!) that's difficult to express. When I write about the body, from my body, I am claiming it. How extraordinary that words lie in the tips of the fingers tapped out on the screen.




There's something about the body, bodily functions. There are those who would control my body (and yours) and those who have controlled your body (and ours). 




I've had people ask me whether I would have had an abortion if I'd known Sophie would develop seizures and have developmental disabilities.


!




I've learned to live with questions (the question).



?




The Chimera from Greek mythology was part serpent, part lion and part goat. Chimerism is the mixing of cells from genetically distinct individuals.


 Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism. This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male "Y" chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy. (Scientific American)


Some males (and females) will grow up to be men who wish to control our (female) bodies.



Micro-chimeric cells are not only found circulating in the blood, they are also embedded in the brain. I've carried and grown three beings in my body. They live in me, still.




A thing that is hoped or wished for, but in fact is illusory and impossible to achieve (chimera)

Weekend Recap

It was a whirlwind of a weekend. Oliver celebrated his 18th birthday. I made a cheesecake, as per his request. It called for 3 1/2 pounds of cream cheese, 5 eggs, 2 cups of sugar and 8 ounces of sour cream. He also asked for Chick fil A for dinner. I know we're not supposed to frequent the food of a company that discriminates against homosexuals, but we sinned.

Child number two arrived home from college for the summer. The house was quite literally transformed in a matter of minutes into the style that we (Oliver, Sophie and I) had forgotten about which one could call laissez faire or perhaps une porcherie. Will we ever see underneath that stuff on his bed? Never mind, as we're glad to have him home.

The almighty Blue Shield of California gave us their "approval" that Sophie receive her IVIG treatments, so she spent much of the days hooked up to an IV. We are coming up for air as well with Saint Mirtha out with a shoulder injury and a new helper, Maria, on board. Maria appears to be headed for sainthood as well -- she's even painted Sophie's fingers and toes in the most beautiful pink. I am grateful for these caregivers. I am beyond grateful, to tell you the truth. They save me.

I woke on Mother's Day in a kind of funk, I guess. Other than honoring my own mother on the special day, I think it's sort of a fake holiday -- well, not sort of -- and I struggle with all the expectations and concomitant resentments every year no matter how much I set my mind against it. Both boys slept in to nearly noon, but they gave me sweet and thoughtful gifts, and Carl went out and bought me a croissant. My sister sent me a lovely card with the most beautiful note in it. I cried, which I guess is appropriate for a weeping willow. Here's the video I made of it:

I also went on a short but steep hike in the Hollywood hills this afternoon with Carl and Oliver. The mustard is just turning from yellow to yellow-green, and the hills are still green from the spring rains, the city skyline lay off in a light hazy distance, Painted Ladies fluttered on every bush and hawks soared above us in the blue sky. I needed to get out and move my body in some way other than up and down the hallway and lifting Sophie, but about halfway up the peak, I started to feel dizzy from the sun and the exertion and my chronic inability to drink enough water, so we walked back down. I need to get back to doing more exercise that is unrelated to caregiving -- I am on the proverbial edge, both mentally and physically, I think. Lord knows why I've remained so healthy for so long despite the stress of it all, but I've got to stop taking it all for granted. With Saint Mirtha down, I am struck by what might transpire should I go down, and it ain't pretty, if I do say so myself.

I'm not going to talk about all the articles I read about the southern states passing these laws against women's right to have abortions, to govern their bodies, to ensure their reproductive freedom.

I'm not going to talk about it.

I'm not going to talk about it.





These people hate women.








Before I forget, I thought I'd post a hilarious exchange I had with one of my closest friends via text. She's in gray and I'm in blue. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. For clarification, Nonfiction is a new French movie, and the Arclight is a movie theater in my neighborhood.

Humor is everything to me on most days, so if you want to know what "you can do" or what "you can say," tell me something funny. And for god's sake, MEN, step up and help us to fight back with this anti-women, anti-choice clusterf*^kery.

Fixing Chariots

Sophie has a wheelchair that we received after about nine months of wrangling with the various agencies and insurance companies. It cost just under $10,000. All the paperwork is in a file that I labeled Sophie's Chariot.  Yesterday, I spent about thirty minutes trying to thread one of the straps back in so that she could be secure. I used tweezers. I fixed the Chariot.

I had an interesting discussion on Facebook the other day on a thread responding to Florida Senator Rubio's assertion that he wouldn't support abortion for those fetuses affected by the Zika virus. Since I've basically weeded out or hidden all my "friends" that have right-wing viewpoints (in the name of sanity during an election year), the comments were predictably liberal-minded with much derision toward Rubio. Given that the man also believes that a fetus should be carried to term even if the woman has been raped or in cases of incest, I was not surprised by his vehement response.  I should make my own assertion here that I am, of course, utterly "pro-choice" and do not believe anyone has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body, including the fetus, should she become pregnant.

Marco Rubio can go f*&k himself before telling me about the sanctity of life.

Where I get squirmy, though, is the talk about aborting children with microcephaly.

This is a post about some squirmy stuff. I don't want to argue and will just present what I'm thinking about when I hear people talk about Zika and microcephaly and abortion, and before there was even knowledge of Zika, these would have been the same thoughts regarding abortion and any sort of disability.

Again, I am decidedly pro-choice and believe unequivocally that it's the woman's right to make decisions regarding her body and that, should she make the decision to have an abortion for whatever reason, she has full and equal access to the procedure with her doctor.


Here are a couple comments from the Facebook thread:

• So. He's planning on putting through legislation that ensures these children have life-long free medical care, schooling, aides, wheelchairs, dental and all things they will need for the next 50 plus years, RIGHT?
• In that case, little Marco and the so-called "pro-lifers" should adopt, raise, and continue to support indefinitely each and every one of the severely handicapped children that are born of Zika-infected mothers.

My first thought is how everything -- literally everything -- is reduced to economics -- or how should I say it? -- worth and value. These children, born of women infected with the Zika virus, are not just a great burden to their families but also to society. This kind of reasoning reminds me of how people argue against the death penalty by stating that it's "more expensive to kill people than to house them in jail for a lifetime." Again, I'm just throwing out some of my thoughts here. 

What if we shifted the whole paradigm and asserted the primacy of the vulnerable, how the disabled bring a certain light to the world and evoke the best in the rest of us. I'm not implying that there's a reason for suffering, a plan or some sort of divine imperative. I don't believe in God that way. I believe more in chaos and, perhaps, meaning wrought from it.Sophie is not here to teach me through her seizures and silence, but I am here to learn what it is to truly love.



Here's another comment:

Anybody ever tell these 'interventionists' about the kids that won't be born, because the one they compelled to be born will take the time, energy and finances of the potential kids a couple might have had, were they not over-burdened with the deformed child an abortion could have prevented? Seems to me, there are more potential children condemned to "death" than the fetus the anti-abortionists insist on bringing to term.

Cartoon thought bubble:

Hard as it might be to believe, over the last couple of decades, I've had several people ask me whether I would have aborted Sophie had I known she would have refractory epilepsy and severe developmental disabilities. The hard to believe, for me, is the audacity of the asking, not the answer. I have learned to literally live the questions and not the answers. I have no answers. I've said it before, but I hold opposing thoughts and ideas at once. My hands, you know, are large and strong. When I was pregnant with Henry, I declined an amniocentesis because I already knew that we never know. I was thought a fool by those who advised otherwise. Fools never know. When Sophie was diagnosed, I mourned for what seemed like lifetimes. I mourned the loss of the baby that I thought I had carried and then brought into the world. I thought that she had been replaced by a new baby until I realized that she, Sophie, was always who she was, had been so since spark and stardust and love created her. The mourning never stops, but neither does the love.

Remember hands, how much they carry. It is both terrible burden and incredible honor to care for Sophie. I couldn't do it again and I'd do it again, And not but.