savagemama

Lately Eliza has been suffering from a series of maladies. A broken arm, a broken leg. She hobbles around on sticks fashioned as crutches and wears her arm in a makeshift sling. She tucks one leg into her shorts and steadies herself on the wall, the stairs, the kitchen chairs as she tries to make it in this modern world with a peg leg. While her bones are actually still in tact, you wouldn’t know it by watching her limp across the yard with the aid of a snow shovel under her arm. I can hear her coming — clang, clang, clang — hopping on one foot, stopping to rest because the trek from the swings to the tree house is just so exhausting when you have a fresh tib-fib fracture or was it a crushed ankle this time?

Yesterday I stepped over the shapes of kindergarteners traced in chalk on the sidewalk outside of her classroom. As I studied them I began to be able to make out the shapes of the children in Eliza’s class. Then I saw one with an above-the-knee amputation and I knew that was my girl.

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I was born in North Carolina in a medium-sized town just west of Charlotte. Against the backdrop of dinner is at 2 p.m. on Sundays and love my neck when you leave, I grew up listening to my grandparents and extended families talking about the shifts they worked at the local textile mill. They all aspired to the first shift, daytime work. Some made it, others worked the third shift until they were forced to retire in the late 1980s when their jobs simply went away. They never said it out right but I knew they worked hard. They told me to study hard, to go to school and get into college. So I did. I never worked third shift spinning cotton. I left North Carolina but it’s never left me.

So Tuesday I was following with great interest the vote there on Amendment One, the constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban same-sex marriage. I think I knew down deep that it would likely pass but I held out hope that maybe just maybe my home state would not become the 20th state to adopt a marriage-is-between-one-man-and-one-woman edict.

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I was not proud of the vote in N.C. but I understood how the amendment passed. I don’t know if my grandmothers voted Tuesday but I do know if they did, they voted yes. Neither has ever met a same-sex couple (that they were aware of) in their lives and they have no frame of reference for this debate. One man, one woman mirrors their lives. It’s all they know.

But it isn’t all I know. For them this conversation is faceless but for me it is anything but. When I think of marriage equality I see friends, families, regular people just trying to live their lives. People who deserve every right I enjoy.

For years I worked as an abortion counselor and I used to get so frustrated at the political dickering that went on around the debate. Mandatory ultrasounds, parental notification, counseling requirements, spousal notification. Every week, I saw through the smoke and mirrors of political distraction a woman asking me to hold her hand, wipe the tears streaming down her face, call her husband to tell him it was over. In that job, I saw the love women are capable of. But all of the yammering on the campaign trails and in the halls of the legislature neglects to mention these women at all.

I felt a similar frustration yesterday when I heard President Obama had finally come out of his own “my views are evolving” closet to support marriage equality. While I understand the significance of, as one friend put it, a sitting president speaking out in support of marriage equality, I am still a little annoyed at his timing. Did you finally get a backbone Mr. President? Or did some statistician whisper in your ear that the day after a big vote in a swing state was precisely the right time to show your support? I suspect the latter and I think that’s what saddens me most.

I understand there is likely necessary political strategy at work but it’s the principle of the thing, Mr. President. Just as the abortion debate is so far from a woman sitting in an exam room, so is this discussion so far from the women, men and children it affects. You are playing with their lives, their rights and, by turn, you are playing with yours and mine. Maybe it’s just too much to ask but I don’t want the scraps of support offered at a time of vulnerability, I want from-the-gut, it’s-the-right-thing-to-do kind of support that forces a deeper conversation and systematic change. I know it’s a pipe dream but a girl can hope. Remember that word, Mr. President? I do.

Last week an audio clip was circulating the interwebs of a North Carolina Baptist preacher who advocated giving gender non-conforming children “a good punch.” Pastor Sean Harris of Fayetteville tells dads of their four-year old sons that may be wearing dresses for fun “…the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up.” He basically says that anyone who doesn’t toe the line of gender stereotypes as an adult is “acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed,” evidently at the violent hand of their parents.

I purposely didn’t listen it to his tirade at first. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Baptist churches in North Carolina and I had a feeling I’d heard it all before. I chalked it up to another zealot spewing hate who didn’t deserve my time so I passed over the story. Then as I kept seeing it on blogs I read, my Facebook and Twitter feeds and the Huffington Post Queer Voices, to which I subscribe. By the end of the day I’d caught a few snippets of the transcript like this one:

“And when your daughter starts acting Butch you reign her in. And you say, ‘Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Hey Buddy, I thought, that’s my kid you’re talking about. I wondered if he thought I should give her “a good punch” because she likes to wear camo cargo shorts and little boy underwear? Should I tell her now that she’s going to “act like a girl” and what exactly does that look like? Should I force her to wear pink and hope that the amazing, creative and lovely little person she is slips away into some kind of self loathing just so she can fit nicely into the role society has created for her? Should I tell her that there are clear lines she cannot cross or that violence awaits her?

Well, I’m not going to tell her any of these things. I am going to tell her that there are arrogant and ignorant people among us and that she should watch out for them. I’m going to tell her that there are people in positions of power that use it to harm children. I’m going to tell her that there is no limit to what these people will do to run away from their own fears.

Then I’m going to tell her that there is a big wide world full of love and tolerance. I’m going to tell her over and over again that she is beautiful and wise no matter what she wears or how she identifies herself.  I’m going to tell her that she is loved deeply and without exception. I’m going to tell her that there will be pressure, strong and persistent, to conform to what other people think she ought to be, how she should act, whom she should love but that she’s known exactly who she was since she was three and other people speed a lifetime trying to figure that out. I’m going to tell her to walk confidently past people like Mr. Harris with his delusions and deep seeded bigotry. That I will be waiting for her there, arms wide, ready to hold her for as long as she needs because she will always be my child and that she is perfect exactly the way she is.

 This essay originally appeared on mamalode. Read savagemama every Thursday. 

My dad playing peek-a-boo with Eliza, 2007

Tonight Lucille ran down the driveway with cottonwood sap in her hair and mud all over the rest of her.

“Bye Mama, I’m going to Portlandia,” she said.

“Drive safely,” I told her as she ran toward her new (read sister’s hand-me-down) bike. I stopped myself before I blurted out one of my dad’s favorite turns of phrase, it’s a jungle out there.

My dad has always had a way with words. He’s an accountant by trade but in our family his currency is the well-placed one liner that roots us out of a funk, usually makes us laugh and almost always makes us roll our eyes. Sometimes these zingers are original lines he’s created out of thin air. Others he’s picked up from god knows where and filed them away for just the right moment. And since my daughters were born, his sayings pop into my head and sometimes tumble out of my mouth with alarming regularity.

Eliza wasn’t two days old before I was whispering to my newborn about lip sugar, something I’ve heard for as long as I can remember. In those early days I took full mother prerogative to kiss her on the mouth and brush my cheek across her lips when she was sleeping. I think my dad picked up the term lip sugar up from his mother or his sister but I heard it in high school leaving for dates out the back door, “Don’t be handing out any lip sugar,” he’d say. Those were also the years when he would tell me every morning to “wake up and meet the day” with a little too much chipper in his voice. No teenager wants to hear that first thing in the morning but evidently he hasn’t learned his lesson because he still says the same thing to my sister. She’s a senior in high school and I’m sure she’s thrilled beyond words to hear that coming at her before the sun comes up.

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This morning I stepped outside into the early dark. A light rain hung in the air. It smelled like a Blue Ridge Mountain morning. It smelled like North Carolina, it smelled like so many mornings I’ve known. I took deep breaths, filled my lungs and longed a little for my childhood home. Something in that deep familiar made think of my strong and beautiful daughter.

I always wanted children. As a child myself I tended dolls, carried cousins on my hip and helped my neighbor make bottles for her baby on Saturday afternoons. After she poured the formula mixture into the sleeves I’d created by pulling plastic liners over hard-formed bottles, I’d fit nipples through twist bands and lock them tightly. We’d make eight at a time and I still remember the sour smell of formula on my hands and the orange rows of bottles on the refrigerator shelf.

When I was thirteen I changed my brother’s diapers and at nineteen I rocked my sister to sleep on our front porch swing. I remember the weight of her small, curled hand in my lap as she slept. This is what I want, I thought, not now, but some day.

When Eliza was born more than ten years later, as any mother will tell you, I never knew I could love someone as much as I loved her. By the time she came along we’d had a few false starts that ended in drives to the emergency room and months of sorting out why. So it was also with deep gratitude that I held my baby close in those early months.

It’s strange that I could not have known then that we’d be so deeply tied because I’m sure that’s when those bonds formed. My breath and hers tangled together in the early morning hours to create something beyond either of us and we didn’t even mean to. She’s my first child and sometimes she feels like an extension of me. She has the curve of my face, the color of my eyes. She stares at other people in restaurants, just as I do, trying to figure out where they’ve come from, who they are. She’s compassionate and sensitive. If someone is unkind to her she wants to know why. That sense of justice is raw and unwavering.

The other day I saw through the glass door of her classroom an interaction with another child. I couldn’t hear what happened but I didn’t need to. Eliza said something to him, he shirked her and turned away. When she turned her face, I saw the disappointment there. I don’t understandwritten across her lowered eyes.

We have passed beyond the threshold where everyone is supposed to play nice or check in with a friend who has hurt feelings. I know this. I also know these schoolyard games will continue. But when I see the effects of rejection on my tiny child I try to pick apart her experience from ones I’ve known and I have a hard time separating her feelings from my own. I feel what she feels, for better or worse. This is one part of motherhood I didn’t see coming.

My daughter lives in a netherworld somewhere between boy and girl. She plays rough, climbs trees and digs in the sand. She’s not interested in swinging with the girls but sometimes the boys aren’t interested in playing with her because she is a girl. They are kindergartners and these things matter some days. They are starting to realize that there are differences between boys and girls but they are not mature enough to realize when they really matter. Sometimes my daughter gets caught in that crossfire.

I nurse my own sense of rejection as I watch her grapple with hers. In fifth grade when Allison and Laurie told me they wanted to best friends, in seventh grade when it seemed I had no friends, in college when I didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Even as an all grown up mother of two in conversations that make me feel isolated and alone, it’s there.

Standing in the hallway that day I thought of ten different ways to address Eliza’s disappointment. We’ll change schools, we’ll home school, I’ll pull that boy out by his ear. But I suppose none of these are the right answer though the need to do something was nearly overwhelming. Eventually she saw me standing at the door. She smiled and ran over. I scooped her up in her camo pants and light up Spiderman shirt.

“You’re amazing,” I whispered in her ear.

She wrapped herself around me and held on tight. In that moment we had what we both needed.

This morning I pulled onto the highway and into a snowy moment. I say moment because in spring, in Montana, that’s how the weather arrives. And departs. By the moment. As my car accelerated up a small hill I realized it was exactly 32 degrees, which as we all know around here, means the roads are as slippery as snot. So I slowly drove a few hundred yards when Eliza started asking her hallmark 4,001 questions. When we get in the car, that child starts firing off questions and she doesn’t stop until I pull up the parking break, open the door and announce it’s time to get out. That is unless I tell her I’m taking a break from questions, which I often do because she never seems to run out of them. But this morning I let her go and it went something like this:

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I like to think I’m a fairly tech savvy kind of girl. I’m the one who downloads updates, figures out the wireless modem and installs printer drivers. In other words, for those of you who grew up in the 1980s as I did, I’m the one who programs the VCR in our household. And I like to think this computer I’m typing on actually belongs to me, by default, because I’m the one who knows how to work it. Then I sit down with iTunes as I did the other morning and I get schooled in an application I’m not sure I understand. The most shocking part of this little walk down a back alley called “What the…?” was the fact that not only does my husband understand iTunes, he has another life, wide and vast, in places I never venture. Librivox. EconTalk. Alternative Radio. 

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I’m thinking of getting a bumper sticker. I know. That’s a bold statement. I’m not really what I’d consider one of those people. At least not anymore.

But these days I’m considering a bumper sticker for pure logistical reasons. The other day I nearly loaded my groceries into someone else’s car. I need an identifier, a red flashing arrow that says, “Savage, this is your car!” I need something that makes my dirty, winter-worn, silver 2006 Subaru Outback stand out from all the other dirty, winter-worn, silver 2006 Subaru Outbacks in Missoula. I could get one of those MisSOULa bumper stickers, I thought. But it would not help my car stand out because if there is anything more ubiquitous in Missoula than having a Subaru, it’s have a MisSOULa sticker on the back window of your Subaru. I was having this little conversation in my head as I pushed my empty cart back to the store and realized then that this scenario sounded like an episode out of Portlandia, the sketch comedy — quickly becoming a cult classic — that pokes gentle, loving fun at the smug, elite, sanctimonious side of the city of Portland.

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Two days ago I woke up to this Facebook status update from my friend Bobbie who lives in Eugene.

“Dear month of February: I don’t know what hurt your inner child has suffered that you had to pack such a punch every single day so far. And now this hissy fit storming? Use the leap day this year to get your self-help on, girl. And don’t let the door hit your butt too hard on the way out.”

I wrote to tell her I thought her description of February was spot on and asked if I could quote her.

“Absolutely!” she said. “I’ve decided February is some kind of stone, cold bitch the last couple years.”

In case you missed February’s departure in the wee hours this morning I’m here to tell you the stone, cold bitch has officially gone away. For another year. We Northwestners have done our penance. It’s over. And no one is happier about it than me.

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Last weekend we found ourselves outside of Butte at one of Montana’s hot spring spots. As we drove into the parking lot Eliza saw the giant waterslide we’d promised would be there and she could barely contain herself.

“Do you think I’m old enough? Do you think they’ll let me on it?” she asked over and over.

Once inside we confirmed that, yes, with a life jacket, Eliza could, indeed, ride the corkscrew slide. I’m pretty sure the few hours that followed might be the thus-far highlight of my five-year-old’s life.

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