On the train home from the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation Self Defense Instructors’ Conference, Jender and I were given to reflect on the incomparable Barrett Wilkenson’s workshop “Halting Hate and Harassment.”
We had planned to hit the bar car on the homeward trip—or abscond with a few of the beers thoughtfully left in my dorm room by the preceding occupant (most likely the Resident Advisor of a youth sport camp). In fact sheer exhaustion—and in my case an overwhelming sense of relief to be speeding away from the site of my largest commitment of the past six months—proved to be intoxicating enough. We laughed uncontrollably all the way home, falling into our own inside jokes like teenagers. I feel sure that other passengers moved away from us, and had I been less tired and hysterical I might even have noticed and settled down.
(I’m tempted to say I hadn’t laughed like that in a very long time, but to be honest I laughed just as hard on Tuesday night when a member of the NWMAF Board of Directors offered me a ride back to my dorm and instead took me—and three esteemed conference presenters—on a variation of Toad’s wild ride in a college-issue golf cart. There was a commuter rail platform, and a sheer drop above a two-lane highway with one of my martial arts foremothers muttering “Don’t look down, don’t look down,” and not a few onlookers surprised to discover the perpetrators of the golf-cart getaway joy-ride were, to all appearances, a collection of nice grown-up ladies. So much for appearances.)
Jender confided, “I’ve divested my vocabulary of a lot of biased language, but I have trouble not using the word ‘lame.’”
I had to admit that I have the same difficulty and it’s not only because the disabled member of my household endorses some measure of ablest speech, as when she drives through a parking lot ranting about the absence of “crip spots.” That’s insider talk and, according to Barrett, it’s pretty much ok. It’s not the same as a word synonymous with impaired mobility entering general usage to mean something diminished, unworthy, ineffectual or contemptible.
“John Stewart says ‘lame,’” said Jender. “Rachel Maddow says ‘lame’—a lot.” I know it cost her considerably to admit a flaw in her idol, Dr. Maddow.
Jender and I tried valiantly—in our depleted state—to find a substitution for ‘lame’ that we could both wholeheartedly endorse. We agreed that ‘lame’ is widely considered the unbiased upgrade to ‘queer,’ adopted by those of us who repudiate the equation queer=pathetic. Feminists now use ‘fail’ in the same way but I was a double-major in English and Women’s Studies and I can’t get behind incorrect usage. We’re looking for an adjective here.
Jender and I weren’t able to find a word we liked. For the remainder of our trip we settled for cracking each other up by declaring ourselves, our inability to communicate without the biased term in question, and anyone or thing uncool, pathetic or ineffectual that crossed our minds, “that thing formerly known as lame.” It was riotous in the way your own stupidity always is when you are tired and safe and with someone you really love.
A train ride through a dark night sets the scene for intimate confessions. I let Jender in on my deepest fear around letting go the word. “Maybe the answer is just to be a nicer person, someone who doesn’t need such a disparaging and dismissive term,” I told her. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to be that nice. I really think I still need a word like that.”
A good friend doesn’t let you wallow in such self-doubt for long, and Jender was on-the-spot. “There’s no need to be that nice,” she countered. Plenty of people still deserve the sentiment inaccurately attached to the word ‘lame.’ Us for example. Or people who persist in saying ‘lame.’
In the days since we’ve been home I’ve been astonished to notice the prevalence of ‘lame’ in common parlance. I’ve heard it used by a writer and social justice activist and by an academic and lay-preacher. I’ve seen it in print and heard it in song lyrics. It’s under the radar and in regular usage by nice, smart people who wouldn’t dream of using other biased language.
It seems relevant that one of things I overlooked in planning the SDIC conference was access for persons of different abilities. Despite the fact that I move with a differently-abled partner I have not come to expect that the world—or I, when I’m in charge of setting up some aspect of the world—should plan for differences in ability. Throughout my conference I saw auditory, visual and mobility challenges addressed through the patience and generosity of both the women affected and their companions, in much the same way that Sweetie and I adjust to whatever obstacles appear in her journeys. But their experience would have been so much better if I had planned for folks who hear, see or move differently than I can.
It proved Barrett’s point that language matters. A word carries with it history and all of its meanings. If one is able to use the word ‘lame’ without remembering that it first meant “disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible” then it becomes easy not to remember that some people are disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible. In speech and action, we acclimate to overlooking some portion of our community. We diminish our collective humanity.
We can do better than this. Settling for ableism in our language and in our world is not at all cool, in fact it’s quite—well, I haven’t found a word for it yet. But I’m looking.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Radio Silence
Hi all--I'm on my way to the National Women's Martial Arts Federation Self Defense Instructors' Conference to hang with my peeps for a while. Lots to tell you about when I get back and a big writing project in the works.
Monday, July 5, 2010
My Peeps
A few weeks ago the Nectarine called and left me a message that said, “Call me. Call anytime. Call now.”
It wasn’t the words that said it so much as the tone of her voice. It was different than the tone of voice Dusty had used when she left the message, “Just checking in y’all. Call me when you get a chance.” That tone told me something bad had already happened but it probably wasn’t getting worse. Dusty would be soldiering on and when I caught up with her in an hour, or a week, I would need to help.
It was a different tone than BirthPie’s email SOS one Friday morning. The fact that BirthPie was emailing and not calling said in itself, “I am hanging on to sanity by my fingernails. Every hard thing about motherhood is pressing on me this very moment. If I begin to speak of it I might start screaming and never be able to stop.”
***
I heard from BirthPie in the brief window between Small coming down with the stomach flu and her passing it to me. I came home from teaching self defense at 10 pm on a Wednesday night and Sweetie said, by way of greeting, “Small is puking.”
We were in the midst of the first summer heat-wave. I climbed into a wall of dense, unmoving heat to check on my girl. Small’s forehead burned dry under a damp cloth. Dead tired from teaching I ran to the basement for the fans, set them up all over the second floor, cooled Small’s washcloth with fresh water. I climbed into her bed to be there when she woke. An hour later the power went out, stopping the breeze mid-spin. Small continued to burn and puke. I wracked my boiled brain for the signs of dehydration but could remember none of them. I slept for brief, searing moments between bouts of her retching before heading out to my 7:00 am clients.
On Friday—power restored, girl no longer puking, the diagnostic has she peed? returned to my brain—I had little in reserve for BirthPie, my stalwart, my other wife. I delivered soup and bread from the Co-op, got take-out for my own family. Saturday the crud struck me down. When Sweetie called to check on the BirthPie family—holding steady, everyone safe—I wailed from my own sick-bed, “We can’t both be in crisis at the same time! Who will feed us?”
***
The Nectarine closed her office door before she said what she had to say. “My brother has breast cancer.” The words came out in a whoosh of air and left a vacuum all around us.
***
I have known the Nectarine since I was fifteen years old. She is not my other wife. She does not bring me soup or fold my laundry or pick my kid up from school. She is not woven into my life of every day. She is woven into my life of forever.
I helped her by hearing her news, by telling her to tell her boss, her friends at The School of Come-the-Revolution. I recommended a meditation book for her manic sister-in-law, I sent love to her parents, I watched for her email updates and sent words of encouragement. I called more often than usual, which is pretty much never.
But it was weeks later—after the tests and the great prognosis and the treatment plan and things looking as good as they could possibly get for someone with breast cancer—that I sat at a stop sign and suddenly thought, “Oh my god, he’s got cancer. It’s the brother. It’s that boy.”
The boy on the front page of the school newspaper, Staples High School, 1984. The boy I had a crush on, and his friend the Communist too. The boy she plays catch with, flies to spring training with, lived with through college. The brother. That boy.
I wept.
The last time we talked, I told the Nectarine about my favorite quote from Anne Lamott. Facing metastasized lung cancer her friend Rich Fields said of his doctor, “He thinks he knows when I’m going to die, but he doesn’t even know when he’s going to die.”
Small has cottoned on to this recently. One night I found myself explaining that, yes, any one of us could die at any moment. She still misses her friend Dave and she knows that it’s strange and awful and unusual but not impossible for someone to be with us one moment and gone the next.
To the Nectarine I said, “How do we live with this? Why aren’t we all running screaming through the streets?”
“Maybe we are,” she said.
***
Dusty’s call was to say that her sainted mother, Mme. Lasagna, fell and broke her hip. Mme. tripped on a threshold. As she fell, Dusty caught her.
In my mind I see Dusty diving head-first like a base runner sliding safe. Her arms stretch in front of her and her mother’s tiny, heavy body lands in them. I feel the oomph of impact, the cushion of their bodies smashing together.
I see us cradling each other the same way: Sweetie, BirthPie, Dusty, Small, the Nectarine, the School of Love, Our House of WarShip. My world. My heart. It’s how we fall: a whoosh of air and a cushion of impact. We’re never unscathed, screaming and flailing through this life. We break all the time. But we’re so much less hurt than we might have been.
It wasn’t the words that said it so much as the tone of her voice. It was different than the tone of voice Dusty had used when she left the message, “Just checking in y’all. Call me when you get a chance.” That tone told me something bad had already happened but it probably wasn’t getting worse. Dusty would be soldiering on and when I caught up with her in an hour, or a week, I would need to help.
It was a different tone than BirthPie’s email SOS one Friday morning. The fact that BirthPie was emailing and not calling said in itself, “I am hanging on to sanity by my fingernails. Every hard thing about motherhood is pressing on me this very moment. If I begin to speak of it I might start screaming and never be able to stop.”
***
I heard from BirthPie in the brief window between Small coming down with the stomach flu and her passing it to me. I came home from teaching self defense at 10 pm on a Wednesday night and Sweetie said, by way of greeting, “Small is puking.”
We were in the midst of the first summer heat-wave. I climbed into a wall of dense, unmoving heat to check on my girl. Small’s forehead burned dry under a damp cloth. Dead tired from teaching I ran to the basement for the fans, set them up all over the second floor, cooled Small’s washcloth with fresh water. I climbed into her bed to be there when she woke. An hour later the power went out, stopping the breeze mid-spin. Small continued to burn and puke. I wracked my boiled brain for the signs of dehydration but could remember none of them. I slept for brief, searing moments between bouts of her retching before heading out to my 7:00 am clients.
On Friday—power restored, girl no longer puking, the diagnostic has she peed? returned to my brain—I had little in reserve for BirthPie, my stalwart, my other wife. I delivered soup and bread from the Co-op, got take-out for my own family. Saturday the crud struck me down. When Sweetie called to check on the BirthPie family—holding steady, everyone safe—I wailed from my own sick-bed, “We can’t both be in crisis at the same time! Who will feed us?”
***
The Nectarine closed her office door before she said what she had to say. “My brother has breast cancer.” The words came out in a whoosh of air and left a vacuum all around us.
***
I have known the Nectarine since I was fifteen years old. She is not my other wife. She does not bring me soup or fold my laundry or pick my kid up from school. She is not woven into my life of every day. She is woven into my life of forever.
I helped her by hearing her news, by telling her to tell her boss, her friends at The School of Come-the-Revolution. I recommended a meditation book for her manic sister-in-law, I sent love to her parents, I watched for her email updates and sent words of encouragement. I called more often than usual, which is pretty much never.
But it was weeks later—after the tests and the great prognosis and the treatment plan and things looking as good as they could possibly get for someone with breast cancer—that I sat at a stop sign and suddenly thought, “Oh my god, he’s got cancer. It’s the brother. It’s that boy.”
The boy on the front page of the school newspaper, Staples High School, 1984. The boy I had a crush on, and his friend the Communist too. The boy she plays catch with, flies to spring training with, lived with through college. The brother. That boy.
I wept.
The last time we talked, I told the Nectarine about my favorite quote from Anne Lamott. Facing metastasized lung cancer her friend Rich Fields said of his doctor, “He thinks he knows when I’m going to die, but he doesn’t even know when he’s going to die.”
Small has cottoned on to this recently. One night I found myself explaining that, yes, any one of us could die at any moment. She still misses her friend Dave and she knows that it’s strange and awful and unusual but not impossible for someone to be with us one moment and gone the next.
To the Nectarine I said, “How do we live with this? Why aren’t we all running screaming through the streets?”
“Maybe we are,” she said.
***
Dusty’s call was to say that her sainted mother, Mme. Lasagna, fell and broke her hip. Mme. tripped on a threshold. As she fell, Dusty caught her.
In my mind I see Dusty diving head-first like a base runner sliding safe. Her arms stretch in front of her and her mother’s tiny, heavy body lands in them. I feel the oomph of impact, the cushion of their bodies smashing together.
I see us cradling each other the same way: Sweetie, BirthPie, Dusty, Small, the Nectarine, the School of Love, Our House of WarShip. My world. My heart. It’s how we fall: a whoosh of air and a cushion of impact. We’re never unscathed, screaming and flailing through this life. We break all the time. But we’re so much less hurt than we might have been.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)