Connectivity

Years ago, I first read Madeline L'Engle's book A Stone for a Pillow and, in it, she talked about our connection to nature and to the universe.  She dissected the word disaster, which when broken down to its roots, means a literal separation from the stars.  Because when we are separated from nature, from the light of the stars, the feeling of the earth below us, the pull of gravity and the wind blowing across our bodies, we are disconnected from life.


I was thinking about that last night as I sat outside with some friends, feeling kind of loose thanks to some really good music and some pretty fine beer.  Looking up through the branches above us, I could just make out a few stars between the clouds.  I felt pinned, between the stars above and the ground below.  I felt connected.


More and more I realize that, despite living in a crowded city and being constantly, electronically connected to hundreds of people, most of us spend most of our lives pretty much alone.  We are alone inside our own heads, within our own bodies.  Each of us walks in something like isolation much of our days.


It was a heady feeling as a child to realize my thoughts were truly my own.  Because, at first, I imagined that my thoughts were there for others to see, to hear, to read, and nothing I thought was truly private.  When I realized that I could think as I liked, and no one could look in and see my exact thoughts - though my face probably gave a clue, as I do not possess a poker face - it was both freeing and terrifying.  Freeing because I wasn't going to have my mouth washed out with soap for what I was thinking and I wasn't going to hell, probably, like I'd been warned.  Terrifying because I was alone with my own thoughts, all the time.  In the middle of the night, when frightening dreams yanked me from sleep, with heart pounding and a urge to flee, I could never fully convey that fear to anyone else, and I was all alone in the night, trying to put order back to my thoughts and slow my heartbeat. 


When we are young, there is a sense of knowing, but not really understanding, that other people operate much as we do.  They have the same sense of seeing the world in their unique first person point of view, and they have their own private world inside their heads that I will never completely see.  Even as an adult, I am fascinated and overwhelmed by the frighteningly unending number of internal worlds there are out there.  I try to catch glimpses of it, but I'll never fully understand what even those closest to me are seeing or thinking or feeling.  Their reality is not mine, and our worlds connect only briefly.


Young children who are learning to separate and experiencing separation anxiety are going through a developmental milestone of understanding that they are separate from parents and caregivers, that mother's warm embrace is not an extension of their own selves and desires.  No wonder children cry and cling - they're losing a part of themselves, and breaking a connection that can never truly be regained.  I think about it now, and I have sympathy for my children who are long past that stage, and for the casual way in which I treated their distress during those times.


We spend the rest of our lives trying to forge new connections.  From earliest interactions and playground friendships to complex relationships of adults to sharing worlds with a larger audience, we are constantly seeking assurance that we are not alone.


I was thinking about all of that last night, as I listened to a friend play with her band, admiring her dedication and the way she was both lost in the music and also sharing a piece of herself with a group of friends and strangers.  She creates for herself, but also to connect.  I think now that all creative efforts are done in order to share our world with others.  Music, poetry, prose, two and three dimensional art, plays, dance - they're all ways to give others a glimpse into what we see and how we feel about it.  Some of us feel compelled to create, to forge relationships through this type of sharing.  Creation and connection are two of the urges that make us human.  I believe we are biologically driven to do so.


Connection, after all, is the basis for human creation - for continuing the species.  If we are all separate, and we are aware of how separate we really are, then seeking physical connection with others seems only natural.  Just as I felt last night, feet touching the ground, wind blowing my hair, I can feel connected and real when I'm holding a hand, snuggling a small child, when my senses become tangled with that of another living being.  Physical intimacies are another kind of creation, another way of sharing our world with another.


We talk about connectivity in terms of our digital distances and interactions, but that type of connection feels false - I'm still in mental and emotional isolation during these types of shallow connections.  There is no warmth of skin, sound of breath, no emotional engagement for another living being.  Sitting outside, late on a summer night, surrounded by friends who are laughing and sharing drinks, while feeling the not quite still feeling of the earth beneath my shoes and breathing in the humid air that has been exhaled by those around me, that kind of connection can't be made through my smart phone.


Now, some of my friends resented connecting with the part of nature that comes with six legs and an exoskeleton scurrying across a midnight patio, but still they are connected - through their startled reactions, repulsion and laughter as they found humor in their own response to such a tiny creature.  I'm not a fan either, and I connected with each of those ladies as we gave a collective look of distaste at the roach scuttling out of sight.


Each of us is gifted with a life that no one else can quite understand and experiences that can never be replicated.  By reaching out and connecting, we enhance one another's private worlds, but also bring the outside into our inner workings and enrich ourselves.  I'm making it my goal to put down my phone more this summer and get connected in other ways.

Moving On

Growing up, my family moved.  A lot.  There was one year I attended five different schools.  Another year, my mother forgot to enroll me at all and I missed most of my fourth grade year, instead sitting in a relative's house, watching reruns of bad 70's television and playing with my grandmother's antique tea sets.  Other times, we'd stay in the same house, the same schools for a few years in a row, long enough to accumulate things in our rooms, to make friends in our classes, to plant new trees in the yard, or build a fence.  But in the end, we always moved on again, to accommodate my father's job.  I learned to let go of things very early on - I was only allowed to bring a certain number of toys and books each time, so I learned to choose carefully.  I was never going to be a hoarder.


Since becoming an adult, I've lived in only four homes, all in the same city.  My children have attended only two schools in their lives - a private Pre-K through 8th, and a public high school.  They see friends every day who they have literally known their entire lives.  They, like all children, do have a little bit of hoarding in them, and our houses have overflowed with their toys and crafts and puzzles and outgrown shoes, and all the debris that follows in the wake of those who are carelessly secure in their own home.  They take for granted that things in their lives will change someday, but that someday won't be now.  I can't say that I haven't wanted to make moves or changes, but I tried to give them something I never had growing up - a permanent home.


The hardest part of moving all the time wasn't leaving behind books or Barbies or baseballs, it was leaving friends behind.  It felt like I always moving on, always leaving just before some monumental event.  We unpacked in Mobile on my ninth birthday, having a quick celebration at a pizza parlor recommended by the realtor.  I missed a ceremony where I should have gotten a city award for poetry, but we were driving away to Tennessee when that was taking place.  All over the country, I left salt dough maps half finished, forts half built, games that would never be completed.  Only once in all that time did I watch another friend move away first.


I was eight when Heather moved from a small town in Alabama to Ohio.  We had a sleepover two days before, making forts out of blankets between the moving boxes, listening to our voices echo in her nearly empty basement rec room.  Her mom made the kind of frozen pizza we liked best, and let us stay up late watching old movies, until the station went off the air around midnight, because television wasn't always twenty-four hours a day.  Riding my bike to Heather's street, I pulled up in front of her driveway just in time to see her family climbing into their station wagon, the giant moving truck already rolling away around a corner.  Heat rose up off the asphalt as I stopped and Heather got out, ran and gave me one last hug, and promised to write.  I stood there, straddling the seat of my bike,  feeling the warmth of the pavement through my summer sandals and no warmth anywhere else, and feeling empty inside.


When you're the one moving on, there is often some sorrow, but there's also nervousness and excitement and a sense of adventure ahead of you, no matter how reluctant you are to move at the time.  When you are the one being left behind, you feel only the sadness and...hollow.  It's bittersweet watching someone who has filled a piece of your life, for no matter how short a time, drive off in to the sunset.  As an adult, I'm happy and excited for friends who are embracing a new opportunity, a new adventure, and I feel a little like a selfish asshole because sometimes those feelings get so strongly outweighed by my own sense of loss and wish that they didn't have to move forward.


This summer sees five of my favorite people moving away - all for very good reasons.  In some cases, they've known for months that the move was coming, and for others the change was quite sudden.  I'm having a hard time saying good-bye, though I know it's certainly not a final word.  In today's world of technology, I can easily keep track of them and their lives.  But it's not the same - whether they're going a few hours away, or across the country, the change will mean it's not possible to meet up for a last minute drink or plan an evening training session together.  And they're moving on in more ways than one.  People come into our lives and we can stay in touch, but as things change, our relationships change as well.  Moving on has to do with more than just a location on a map.  No matter how we might fight it, things will always change.


I am sad to see my friends move, and I am also maybe more than a little bit jealous.  I've been rooted for longer that I had realized or planned, as is only right, while I raise my children.  My job is wonderful and challenging and means something to me, but it's been the same job for quite a few years.  I am the very opposite of moving on right now in my life, and I feel the same restless pull that others do, but I've forced myself to resist it.  I've gone forward and grown in other ways, in ways that affect my physical being and my emotional relationships.  Stagnant would not describe my life, just grounded.  In just a few short years, my children will both be out of school and will be going forward on their own, making their own changes and forging their own paths on the map.  And I'll likely feel that pull again to move onward.  Maybe that time, I'll decide to let the urge carry me forward.


For this year, I'm planning trips, to California and Colorado, looking forward to testing out a tiny bit of my friends' adventures and new lives.  I'm saving up some time for when they come to town to visit, so that we can reinvent our friendships to fit with their new lives and new homes.  Things are both ending and beginning in parts of my life right now, and sometimes that seems a little scary.  But there's not a whole lot of choice about moving onward, only about which path to follow.

Let It End

Some days I dread turning on the news.  I mean, I turn it on because I feel a need to know what is going on in the world, but the news is generally so ugly, listening and reading leave me feeling heavy hearted on so many days.  When did news become synonymous with tragedy and hate?  People make jokes about "slow news days," when the reporters talk about inspiring kids starting up lemonade stands, or the president visiting an orphanage.  I like those days, because it means that somewhere in the world, someone did something out of hope and out of love, and someone else saw the value in recognizing it.  And I guess I wonder if what is reported on CNN is an accurate representation of the world in which we live?  If someone hundreds of years from now had only that as an archive of who 21st century human beings were, what would they think of us?  We'd be the barbarians,  that word we use describe some early civilizations.


So, billions and billions of dollars are spent on research for finding a cure for cancer.  For diabetes.  For heart disease.  We spend untold amounts creating safety standards for roads, airplane travel, group sporting events, school safety.  Human natural life expectancies are at an all-time high, despite our culture's absolute obsession with doing self-harm through food, alcohol, drugs.  All of this effort, but we squander those few moments we've gained through medical advances by allowing hatred to win?  I'm so fucking confused by all of this.


Maybe it's because I'm living in my fifth decade now, and I'm seeing how quickly the time from 23 to 43 has gone.  Maybe it's because I see how quickly my children have grown and watched so many of my students move on.  Our lives are tiny - no matter what kind of impression we leave - and there comes a point where none of what we are in that very last moment on earth really seems to matter, other than how we are remembered by those who knew us.  Why waste it on hatred?   Because someone is different?  Because they don't think the same way that you do?  Because they look different, or act different, or make you think or feel something that maybe you weren't ready to think or feel?


When I was five years old, I moved to a small town in Alabama from a large city on the North East coast.  It was like moving onto an alien planet.  I had no friends when I first started school, and other kids made fun of the way I talked, since I lacked their deep southern drawl and I spoke bits and pieces of other languages.  My first grade teacher despised me, and took every opportunity to paddle me, despite my behavior being no worse than any other first grader's behavior.  Mid-year in first grade, because my words didn't sound like everyone else's, I was moved into a special education classroom due to "inability to meet standards for reading."  At home I was reading Little Women.  In that tiny closet that they called a classroom, I learned for the first time in my life that not everything was fair.  That people could abuse power and sometimes there was nothing you could do about it.  Special education in that tiny world was made up of me, two deaf students, one black student, and two students who spoke only Spanish.  We had no windows, no books other than a dictionary, no games or distractions.  For two weeks, I stayed in that room - until my mother met with the school principal - and we did nothing but sit in silence and copy words and math facts from a blackboard.  I don't remember the teacher ever smiling, or even talking to us very much.  I learned to sign the words for "friend' and "turtle."  I learned some Spanish.  And then I left, because I had my mother to be an advocate for me, but over the years, I thought about those other students a lot. About how their education had been limited and perhaps a desire to learn completely shut off, because they were different and the educational system saw this as the easiest way to deal with their differences.   Still today, I hurt for the way we were treated.  Prejudice and hatred can be small, like shoving a child who talks differently face first in the dirt, while a teacher deliberately looks away, or it can be as big as a bomb ripping apart buildings, cities, lives.  Neither one makes any sense.


If I thought life in that small town was rough for me, I wonder what it was really like for my older brother, who was a student in the high school and who came out for the first time while living in that small town.  It was a town where I saw a cross burned on the lawn of the town's first black family - a family who lived in one of the most expensive homes and was comprised of a father who was a doctor, a mother who was an accountant, and a daughter who was a brilliant musician.  Hatred boiled over on this family, for no reason other than they were not only different, but brilliantly and successfully different.  They moved away shortly after that.  And so, I can't imagine how my brother was treated - I was too young to know the full stories.  I know many, many times over the years my parents have feared for his safety, despite their own difficulties with accepting him as-is.


I have friends who are afraid to let others know that they are gay.  Or Muslim.  Or Jewish.  Or Christian.  Or atheists.  Because they are afraid that they will be targeted with prejudice and hatred.  Hatred because they hold a belief.  Or because they love someone.  They hide a part of themselves in order to live in peace, but there's no peace found in a life where you can't be who and what you are. 


Now, despite all the political heat surrounding us in this country, I know that when it comes to safety, we are some of the lucky ones in this world.  There are many, many other places I could have been born.  Places where I would have had no voice.  Places where I could not publicly post the words I am writing without fearing for my life.  Places where I would have no right to an opinion because I am a woman.  Or because I am part Jewish.  Or because I don't hold the right political affiliations.


And at the end of the day, while I can tell you what people say are the motivations and justifications for their violent, hateful actions, I still can't understand.  See, I understand biologically the absolute improbability that any of us are here.  The odds that one sperm managed to survive the brutal assault that it's under from female anatomy.  That one fragile cell managed to divide and thrive and come into the world and then grow to adulthood.  The absolute against-all-odds that any of us are standing here - and that someone else thinks that they have the right to come along and take that away dumbfounds me. Because they have an opinion that is different than mine?  Or a belief that their concept of spirituality and a greater deity is more right than mine?  See, we already have cancer.  And car wrecks.  And acts of nature. Someone with a gun, they are not an act of nature.  They are not unstoppable.  Words of ugliness and hatred are a disease, but not one we have to accept.  Refuse to listen.  Even better, refuse to react.  Let the escalation stop here.  Let it end.


I have no power over anyone or anything, other than myself.  I can be saddened by what I hear on the news, and I can feel anguish for those who are left behind, bewildered and suddenly all too aware of how fragile our lives are and how stupid acts of violence really are.  But the only response of which I am capable is to refuse to hate.  No matter how much sometimes it hurts to see the child who is treated wrongly by other children, because they are different, or to see a friend turned away from a club because the color of his skin is wrong, or to see lives blown apart on the evening news - I refuse to hate.


Tomorrow, I really hope it's a slow news day.  Maybe there's a baby giraffe about to born somewhere and who can't feel love for a baby giraffe?  We could use some love.

We Are Family

Last year, on my 43rd birthday, I celebrated with my friends and family for the first time in my life.  It felt a little weird, inviting other people out to celebrate with me - as though I were demanding attention like a petulant three year old.  Yet, it was something a friend convinced me I needed to do at least once in my life.   My birthday is just before Christmas, and I was the youngest child of older parents - they never wanted to be bothered.  My mother told me one year that I was having a birthday party, but that no one had accepted the invitation.  It wasn't until years later that I realized, looking at pictures,  she had bought only a very small cake, and a handful of plates.  She'd known all along no one would come, because she hadn't invited anyone outside our family.  My immediate family was very private and closed off, and they didn't want to let anyone from the outside in.  It's easier to maintain a façade that way.


Growing up, my parents insisted that family was everything, that you couldn't count on anyone else.  My mother came from a huge family - she was the youngest of six children - and they were always around.  Even as we moved around the country, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents would show up and stay with us for a few days before moving on.  Somewhere, my mother still has reel-to-reel tapes from those visits - grainy, distorted colors flickering,  with all of us slipping through waves at the beach, raking leaves on the lawn, running through sprinklers, and playing in snow banks.  The adults always had cigarettes in mouths, and other than my mother, usually a drink in their hand.  No wonder we kept to ourselves - my mother's family are all alcoholics.  They might have stuck together, but often were so mean to one another that it would send me to hide in the closet.  Yet, they were a clan that was nearly unbreakable. My mother was the baby sister of five brothers, and they protected her.


My brother, David,  and I were raised  in near isolation, and certainly a lot of insulation, from the rest of the world.  We didn't often invite others into our home, and in all the time I was living with them, I never knew either of them to have friends outside of the family.  I had friends from school, and they were invited over to my house on many occasions, but always for a limited amount of time, as my mother could only hold her best behavior for so long.  My closest friends saw enough that I was often embarrassed, and yet I still clung to the idea that my loyalty had to lie with my blood relatives.  Even when they were cruel to the people who were the nicest to me.




David, as we grew older, pulled away from our insular family and moved more into a world of his own making.  I married young and moved half-way across the country to escape their painful affection, only to find that my parents had followed me.  Guilt drove me to continue to feed the lie that we were close even as I had children of my own and fostered my own kind of family. 


There was a Thanksgiving a few years ago when we were sitting stiffly at my parents' table, where I was seated across from my then husband, our daughters a physical boundary between my mother and I, and I was fuming because my mother had managed to put meat in every single dish on the table, including the vegetables, because she still thinks my being a vegetarian is a phase I'll grow out of. Like sucking my thumb, or refusing to step on cracks.  And while I was sitting there, pushing a roll back and forth on my mostly empty plate, having eulogized the turkey instead of saying a real blessing - because passive-aggressive humor is more my style than full frontal confrontation - I thought back to some of my best holidays.  Shortly after I had been married, a group of friends I would gather each year and cook together in one of their homes.  We were all, mostly, pretty mediocre cooks and we never managed to get all the entrees cooked at the same time, and our tables were a hodge podge of whatever dishes we could throw together.  What we had were people who had met through happenstance, who came together because we wanted to spend time with one another, not through obligation, but through mutual admiration or affection.  And I couldn't help comparing the two experiences and feeling a little bit of a loss that I didn't have that same sense of joy and connection with my biological family.  I could see my mother's connection to her roots - it was all around me, from the china we ate off that had been her grandmother's, to the lace table cloth my father's mother had made, and the silverware that was passed down through generations of her family.  And I didn't feel connected to any of it.


For years, I agonized over what I might be depriving my children of, if I didn't give them enough time with extended family.  It was my own daughter telling me she didn't like the way my mother talked to me that made the biggest impression, though.  They noticed more than I thought, and weren't hurt at all when I was sick one Christmas and wanted to stay home for the holiday.  And I remembered one of my favorite Christmases, early in my marriage, when we had no family in town and our car was in need of repair.  My then husband and I woke up in no hurry to be anywhere, to get dressed or cook the traditional items.  Instead, we dressed at leisure and walked to IHOP for a late breakfast, then walked on to a movie theatre, where we took turns picking out movies to see for the remainder of the day.  Outside, the rain fell down and it was cold, but we had good day together without any of the things that drive me crazy about holidays.


I've learned to find a balance with my parents, but despite our blood bonds, they're not people to whom I feel particularly close.  I care about them and I check on them now and again, but they're not who I turn to when I need something, and they're not the people I want to share with when I have good news.  Those places have gone to other people in my life.  People who share more than just DNA with me, but are, rather, the people I choose to have in my life - and the weirdos who chose me back.  It was reinforced for me this past December, when I invited people from all parts of my life to come have a drink with me to celebrate my birthday.  No matter how self-centered that made me feel, it was a good night.  And, on that very cold December night, as we sat around a fire pit, talking and laughing, I was able to look around and see my daughters, friends I've known for 20+ years, new friends, training partners, coworkers and people who have nothing in common in their lives except that they share a part of mine. 


Those people, the ones who care enough to spend time with me when they don't feel obligated, the ones who will get out on a Friday night when they'd rather be at home, or those who will pick up their phones and text me because they realize they haven't seen me around in a week, or those who send me jokes at 2 a.m. because they know I've had a horrible day and I'm likely to be awake - those are my family.  I love each and every one of these goofy, brilliant, talented, sometimes alcoholic members of my family.  I'm way more forgiving of them than I am of those who hang off a branch of my family tree.


I don't think I'm too worried about my children's roots any more - they have plenty.  Not necessarily the kind that come from relatives, but from the good people I've brought into their lives and the stable influences they bring.  My girls see that I have people who mean something to me, and on whom I can rely when it comes to that.  They get to share in our laughter and hear about it when I'm angry with one of them and their decisions.  Sometimes we don't get along, sometimes we make up, and sometimes we just pretend the fight never happened.  It's what families do.

30 Years of Teen Angst

Standing on the edge of the crowd, I watch a girl anxiously twisting a few strands of her long brown hair, her feet shuffling against the scratched linoleum.  She's trying to look, without looking, at a group of three or four girls who are standing together, giggling, and trying very hard to obviously not look back at her.  One in the group turns on her cell phone and swipes a few times, bringing up an image that she shows to the others, and they laugh, now looking openly at the lone girl.  I can see the indecision in her face, her gaze falling downward.  Running away really doesn't help, but the fight or flight instinct is there all the same.  Her hands smooth down her skirt, over and over, needing something to do. My own heart aches for her, because I recognize the feelings all too well.




I left middle school nearly three decades ago, and I've said often over the years that those are times you couldn't pay me to live again.  It's so incredibly hard to be that age, to be stuck between childhood and adult, to be assaulted 24/7 by your own hormones and emotions - everything just feels so much more intense when you are thirteen.  Once upon a time, I was convinced that my world was ending at least once a week.  Clearly, it never did end, and I survived, sometimes wiser and most of the time hiding the hurt so no one else would see, because to show weakness in middle school was to label yourself as a victim.  Girls at that age are vicious, being most cruel to those they label as "friend."  The opposite sex is a mystery, and early forays into dating meant late nights up reading way too much meaning into casual encounters and hushed phone conversations.


This was all before internet was a thing, when cell phones were in experimental stages, when talking on the phone after ten without your parents finding out was its own art form.   There was no texting,  and secret conversations in class were done by means of passing notes, covertly, and hoping your teacher wouldn't see and read your note aloud for the whole class - including the boy you had a crush on - to hear.  We learned to think carefully about what we put in writing.  Not only could you be embarrassed, but once those words were out there, in ink, you couldn't take them back.  Talking behind someone's back was one thing, but leaving evidence of that was entirely something different.  And who knows what person might decide to share the note you gave them in confidence, just because they wanted to start trouble.


Drama.  It was at the center of every day of my life when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old.  There was drama with my parents, with my friends, teachers, the girls who didn't like me for reasons I'd never grow to understand, and the girls who used to be my friends but decided I wasn't popular enough, also for reasons I would never grow to understand.  In other words, while I had some really great memories from middle school, most of what I remember are moments of quiet punctuated by intense drama and angst.  Growing up, I guess I thought that all of that would change, but looking at some recent moments in my life, I realize we're still all still carrying those thirteen year olds around inside of us, and none of those emotions really change, just the way we handle ourselves in the midst of them.  And I'm still struggling to understand it.


I have a friend who is very straight-forward.  If she is angry with you, she will tell you.  If she loves you, she will tell you that as well.  When there is a man in whom she is interested, she walks up and lets him know.  No apologies, no drama.  And I envy her.   She has all the same emotions, insecurities and fears as the rest of us, but the way she's learned to cope as an adult is as far from that middle school hallway as she could get.  I still hide behind the politeness that was beat into me growing up, hiding my own anger and very seldom telling anyone what I really want.  But a drama diva, I'm not.


Raising two teenage daughters of my own, there are plenty of emotions running high in our house, and sometimes I feel like a fraud, trying to teach these young women to cope with the highs and lows, when I really haven't figured it out for myself.  I interact great with the opposite sex - as long as you're talking about in a meeting, debating a book, or exchanging blows in a boxing match.  Navigating emotionally?  Not so much.


I know that we are forever imprinted by the things in our lives when we are in our early teens.  The reasoning portion of our brain is all but hibernating, while the limbic system is on hyperdrive.  The music we hear at fifteen, we will forever think is the best music ever (and most of what I remember is really pretty bad).  We forever connect to that first love.  We are drawn to the friends we had during those years, and we carry the scars of the fights, and humiliations, and the nothings that felt like everything.  But lately, I think the emotional approaches we have during those years also imprint on us, and lay down the foundation of how we are going to deal with ourselves and others for years to come.  I know that I can rationally talk myself out of most behaviours, but the hurt, the jealousy, the self-doubts, and the giddy joy still create chaos within me. I can control my outward reactions, but inwardly, I am still a seething mess.  So, I'm toying with a theory that if I could teach my children to calmly declare both their emotions and their intentions, they'd lay down a whole different kind of framework for their adult emotional blow-outs, possibly saving them thousands of dollars in wine and ice cream later in life.  But certainly giving them an empowerment that most of us do not have the luxury of owning.


Now, I'm the adult, and I can intervene for that girl in the hallway and I can force her friends to stop behaving like itty bitty bitches, but I can't change the imprinting that has already happened.  Will she be the woman who stands and lets a boss wrongfully fire her, while she stares at her feet.  Or will she be the date rape victim because she didn't feel like she had the right to say no, even though she never actually said yes.   Will she let opportunities pass by in her life, because she was too afraid to walk up and say, "I want this.  I want you.  You make me happy/angry/giddy and I own those feelings?"  So, I'm learning to do better with faking it until I make it, hoping that the young girls in my life can see some hope at the end of a tunnel that's filled with a lot of tears and laughter and fear and heart-pounding puppy love - usually all at once.  I know I still feel that way sometimes - I think it's part of being alive.  But letting it consume us isn't.   Let's condition our children to embrace their emotions, rather than running or hiding from them, and check the drama at the door.

Just One of the Boys

Sitting - very uncomfortably - on a foam block, I looked out across the circle of women gathered in the glow of electric candles and dim track lighting.  It was my familiar yoga studio, and yet nothing was familiar or comfortable about this situation.  Instead of people waiting introspectively on their own mats, we sat looking out at one another, listening, and waiting for our turn to introduce ourselves and to talk.  Speaking to  group of strangers, introducing myself, talking about what I do like about myself and what I don't....it was basically my worst nightmare in many ways.  I got more anxious as the talking stick, a pretty pink plastic heart on a wand that would be the envy of any four year old wanna be princess, moved closer and closer in my direction.  It would be easy to say something flippiant, something that revealed nothing about myself, when my turn came.  But, somehow, I felt like that would be cheating.  I had listened to women reveal that they had been raped, verbally abused, afraid to return to life after a messy divorce, battled illness.  It would have been cheap and wrong to make something up, or to gloss over why we were sharing.

I'd registered for the workshop, a women's empowerment evening, because the teacher is a friend and someone I greatly respect and because another friend was attending and I accepted her encouragement to come with.  Yoga is what I do, when I have the time, to try and undo some of the damage my other activities do to my joints and my spine.  Yoga helps me relax, but it's not as key to my life as it is to some of my friends.  But I'm also always pretty game to try something new, and so yoga with all women to some music followed by wine was an invitation I couldn't resist.

So, I sat there, listening to these other women and thinking how incredibly strong they all are, and shifting around on my foam block, trying to find a position that it wasn't digging into my ass with every breath.  They  listened with open eyes, clapping for each person who shared, sometimes reaching over to give a hug.  Everyone has a story, and all of these women, of different shapes and sizes and backgrounds and each carrying some pretty heavy baggage the world doesn't see every day, they all came together to celebrate who they are.  Who we are.  I'm one of them, though I'm not comfortable with being that open, and I've never been one to flaunt my feminism.

If I'm being really honest, girly stuff gets on my nerves.  I hate to shop.  I don't travel to the bathroom with a gaggle of friends - I'd rather pee alone, thank you very much.  I wear make-up and heels, and I get my hair done, but it's not something I think much about at the end of the day.  Some of my best friends have always been guys, because I better understand their directness, and even their occasional crassness is preferrable to the cattiness exhibited by some of my female friends in years past.  Really, it's been that way since I was a kid, wanting to wear  a baseball cap all the time, and wishing I could play football with the guys.

But, lately, something has changed.  The women in my life have changed, or what I see in them has been altered.  Really, I think something happens to women as they age - maybe we grow into our femininity, in a more graceful and less forced way.  In the last five years, I have been priviledged to get to know some really incredible, badass, beautiful, and brilliant women - women from all walks of life, all ethnicities, and all types of lifestyles.  Somewhere in their thirties, most of them have thrown off the giggling and the worrying what men will think, and they've made being a woman into an art.  From my friend in Denver who dresses with class and grace, and whose sense of humor lies in the gutter with mine at times.  She's fearless and changed her life because the one she had didn't make her happy.  She's brave like that.  Or another friend, who is a fabulous hairdresser here in Houston, and whose heart is one of the biggest I've seen.  She sees good things in people that they don't even know are there.  And she's a dancing diva of the first order - her moves put all of mine to shame.  Everywhere she goes, it's soul train, all the time.  There's another woman I've known for years who holds those around her in love and grace and will be the first to offer you a hug at any time.  She loves my children as much as her own, along with many, many other children.  And she will cry for you, when your own tears refuse to fall.  I think, as someone who doesn't really cry in front of anyone, that that is incredibly brave.  These women...they've survived so much, and yet they smile and they have the ability to take others by the hand and by the heart.   I want to be that brave.

It's been said by someone in my life that I'm not much of a girl anymore, and I think they referred to the way I dress on the weekends - workout wear and running shoes, mostly, and to some of the things I do for fun.  Yes, I put on boxing gloves and beat on grown men.  Yes, I wrestle and I roll, and sometimes I walk around wearing the marks from those rounds - black eyes, busted lips, bruised shins.  And I laugh outloud, say what I think, and drink my bourbon straight.  But to me, this is just part of being comfortable with who I am and caring just a little bit less what others think.  To me lately, those things make me more of a woman - not less.

Standing on the mats a few weeks ago, sparring, I overheard one of my training partners tell another that he was "hitting like a girl."  I turned to him, arms spread wide, and asked, "what does that even mean?"  He was quick to back peddle, stammering a little and saying, "I didn't mean you, I mean you don't even hit like a girl."    "Yes, I do, " I replied.  "I'm a girl - however I hit, or walk, or talk, I do it like a girl."  In return I got a look that might have been sheepish respect or a silent cry of "you're crazy, woman." 

See, I'm not my mother, having to fight with my father for the right to go back to work after marriage.  I didn't have to stay in a place where I was unhappy just because it was expected of me.  I have the right to work in any career I wish, even knowing that a man doing the same job would make more money.  Progress - it takes time, and as long as we keep moving in the right direction, I won't bitch about the pace.  But still I struggle with what does it mean, to be a boy or be a girl?  After the new baby has been wrapped in pink or blue and bought the appropriate gender biased toys, where does it lead? 

We're not the same, no matter how much some would like it to be so - men and women are gloriously different, but we're not two homogenous camps.  No cookie cutter made all the women I know, each one their own unique creature with strengths and weaknesses that are theirs alone.  Their beauty, in each, unique.  Just as all the men I know have their own blend that makes them who they are.

Sitting there, I wondered about the men in the next yoga studio, having their own empowerment session, focusing on strength and power.  Were any of them struggling with what it means to be a man as much as I was grasping at what womanhood might be?  For a moment, I longed to be with them, partly because I didn't want to have to talk, and partly because mabye I could get off the stupid foam block.

When my turn came to share, I was a little blown away after just having heard a friend share something pretty soul shattering, and I found I first had to admit just how hard it is for me to share in a group of strangers, and how uncomfortable I really was.  Then I found the words came more easily and I was able to say why I really was there - that I'd been born in to a family who had taught me that I was expected to be everything a girl could be - beautiful, smart, classy and, did I say beautiful?  But it was considered wrong and selfish to spend any time on yourself, improving yourself, taking care of yourself, and how I had spent twenty years abusing my body  in every possible way because I'd failed to fit that vision.  Twenty years to figure out that someone might have been wrong, because I didn't fit their mold of what a girl should be.  Twenty years to figure out that I'm not a bad person if I make time to exercise, or read a book, or do nothing at all, if that makes me happy.  And I was shaking after I said that, passing on the silly plastic heart on a stick, and listening as the others around the circle shared their own stories.  But I felt brave for, for the first time ever, putting those thoughts into words.

As the circle was completed, and we gathered our yoga mats to begin practice, I felt more at ease than normal in yoga.  Our leaders stripped down to sport bras and bared more of themselves than just their thoughts, encouraging us to do the same in acceptance of our bodies.  My friend to my right proudly pulled off her top, but I'm just not that brave.  Some damage runs too deep, and I wouldn't have been able to stand there and not cover the scars on the outside and feeling the ones on the inside.  But together we moved and celebrated the bodies we had been given, dancing to music, shaking hips and stopping more than once for sweaty hugs.  The session ended with a dance party, and my diva friend rocked it out to "Pour Some Sugar on Me," as she was surrounded by others in freindship and kinship of the moment.  Her incredible lightness of being draws in those around her like a tractor beam, and I watched as I danced on my own mat, smiling at her sweaty glow, and glad that I had a chance to be with these other incredible women.

Rolling up my mat and preparing to go home, I wasn't sure I could ever explain all of this to anyone, but I'm hoping that this decade I'll grow into one of these women.  Their appeal goes beyond the false eyelashes and manicures, it comes from a sense of knowing they are increidble women and not being afraid to show that to anyone.

That's How We Roll

Feeling my feet leave the mat, I know I’m going down.  It’s part relief, to be on the ground where I feel more comfortable, part disappointment because my partner has succeeded where I have not.  But I don’t have time to think about that, because I’m already scrambling, searching to improve my position, with my heart pounding in my ears and sweat pouring in my eyes.  I move, but he counters fluidly, and I find myself moving without thought, listening to the conversation our bodies are having, but not stopping to think about what they are saying.  He overreaches, looking for an armbar, and I take my moment to explode, reversing our positions, and coming out on top.  I can’t rest or hesitate, because hesitating means being submitted.  Controlling my breathing, I stay tight to his body, feeling perfectly at ease.  For the first time as an adult, I don’t  feel slow, or awkward.  I feel like I’ve come home.

A few days ago, when I mentioned needing to get back into the rhythm of writing in this blog again, a friend asked me, quite earnestly, why I never write about martial arts, our gym, or training jiu jitsu.   It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, as goodness knows bjj has become the place where my brain drifts when it’s not otherwise occupied.  “I don’t feel qualified to talk about jiu jitsu,” I replied.  “I’m just a white belt, not an authority on the art.”  My friend surprised me by nodding, and then saying, “but you’re an authority on your own experience with it, and with what’s like to be a woman your age who trains.”

We were sitting on the mat, talking while we cooled down a bit, catching our breath before starting another match.  Open mat is different from class.  No less serious, but paced differently, allowing for time to talk, to drill, to try out techniques and make mistakes.  I look out across the sweat wet mats, seeing pairs of bodies locked together in silent combat, some weird primordial movement that looks part death roll, part alien foreplay, watching them roll.   My friends, my training partners, who trust me with their bodies, so that I might learn an art I’d never even heard of until after my 40^th birthday.

I stepped into Urban Jungle Self Defense a little over two years ago, a 40 year old woman with no athleticism, no background in any type of martial arts, and more than a little out of shape, wanting to try out Kardio Kickboxing classes, in hopes of losing some weight and finding some self-confidence.  Walking onto the mat that first time was one of the scariest things I had ever done.  So many people, all more fit than I was, and they all seemed to know what they were doing.  I flailed around with arms and legs for an hour, occasionally lying on the mat panting and fleetingly hoping to die.  But I left feeling…exhilarated?  Sore?  Absolutely.  Accomplished, for some odd reason.  And I went back two days later, though the instructor seemed surprised that I had returned.  And that I kept returning, more determined to make it all the way through a class, to move more gracefully, to prove something to myself that I couldn’t even define.  Spring turned to summer, and I sweated my way through the heat and felt myself grow stronger than I had been a long, long time.  It was waiting for Friday evening Thai pads class to begin when I first saw people rolling.  I had a moment of confusion, thinking one of the men had just attacked his own son, as they rolled across the mats, each battling to be on top, legs wrapping, arms twisting, muscles straining.  “What are they doing?” I asked.  The man’s wife replied, “jiu jitsu,” with a sigh.  I was both intrigued and appalled by what I was seeing, like some kind of wrestling gone mad.  I’d never heard of this art before, although I knew that Urban Jungle taught other classes.  I simply had not been curious about what any of them were, or, perhaps, thought they were for those far more fit and, well, younger.

Watching from a distance, I started to appreciate the way the men moved, the thought and strategy behind the movement.  I thought to myself, “maybe, someday, I’ll try that out.” I didn’t believe it, though, thinking I was too uncoordinated, too old, too out of shape to move my body through rolls and too heavy to climb on anyone without hurting them.

Six months after joining Urban Jungle, I signed up for a women’s self defense course, and talked my best friend into attending with me.  She doesn’t like physical contact with strangers, hates sweat, and considers a walk around the block physical exertion – I told her as little as possible about the class ahead of time.  She wasn’t thrilled that the class involved people sitting on her, grabbing her arms, trying to pick her up, and choking her – to say the least.  I, however, was entranced.  “This is part of jiu jitsu?”  I asked the instructor.  He explained to me that jiu jitsu was a sport, but also how it was an art of self-defense.  Somehow, I got the courage to ask if I could try a class.

That next Thursday, I put on my ill fitting, borrowed gi and climbed the stairs to the room I associated with Kardio class.  Instead of chatting women relaxing before a workout, there were a dozen men stretching, rolling, and talking.  I sat down in a corner and tried really hard to be invisible until class started.  One of the  men I knew from Kardio classes said hello, smiled, made me feel less like I needed to run away.  Warm ups started, and I was instantly lost and regretting my decision.  The men traveled as one unit, from one end of the long room to the other – bear walks, crab crawls, cartwheels, and things I didn’t even recognize.  I couldn’t do any of it.  One of the instructors took me aside and tried to teach me how to forward roll, a skill I had mastered when I was five, but could no longer perform.  By the time warm-ups ended, I was drenched in sweat, frustrated and really, really hated my oversized gi.  Class, however, returned us to the self-defense moves I had liked so much, and my confidence was bolstered by recognizing some of the instructions and being able to perform some of the basic movements.  A nice young man in a brown belt promised, “you can throw me as many times as you like.”  I took him up on it and left feeling impossibly happy, considering every part of my body hurt.

I went back the next week, and the week after that.  Everything hurt, some nights so much I couldn’t sleep, because I was using muscles I hadn’t previously known existed.  I still couldn’t do many of the movements, but every week it got a little bit easier.  I started to roll, having no idea what I was doing, and I learned how to tap out.  To tap out is to acknowledge your partner as a winner, to submit, but also to acknowledge you have something to learn.  I tapped often, sometimes mere seconds into a bout of rolling, often in frustration or even in anger.  Early on, my emotions beat me as often as my partner.  I’d get overeager in gaining a position and find myself on my back, or make a mistake because I was tired and frustrated, only to find myself being choked.  Within five minutes of rolling, I would be out of breath, having pressed as hard as I could, using strength rather than skill, and losing to someone who was calm and patient.  Often, as much as I loved what I was learning, I wanted to quit.

Urban Jungle truly began to feel like a second family.  More experienced students took the time, gave of themselves, to let me practice, to teach me, piece by piece, what I needed to survive and to advance.  Some days I feel as though I am learning and growing, and other days I wonder if I know anything at all.  Frustration is a part of the process, as is patience.  It’s not something to be learned in a week, or a year, or maybe even a lifetime. 

Over time, I’ve grown more comfortable, gained a little skill, but really just enough to see how far I still have to go.  Jiu jitsu has become a part of my life every day, whether I roll or not.  I find myself thinking about it, wake up dreaming about rolling – and sometimes choking my pillow.  My family and friends roll their eyes sometimes, because I probably talk about it a little too much.  I get out of bed every morning feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck.  A big, freakin’ truck going way over the speed limit.  Slowly, it’s changed who I am; I no longer overreact to small things.  I have more patience for a long process.  Being a person who has learned most things in life fairly quickly, it’s been a big deal to accept such a long learning curve, to settle in for a lifetime of learning and growing, knowing there really is no end goal to reach – just milestones along the way.  And the only ones that really count are the ones that answer the question, “am I better today than I was yesterday?  Last week?  Last year?”  Hopefully, the answer is yes.

 

I don’t hold top position very long.  My friend has years of experience on me, and he gives me chances to grow, and learn, but he’s not going to just let me win.  As my knee skims over his ribs to mount, I find myself being unbalanced and turned, landing back on the bottom, this time under tighter side control.  My arms scramble to find a safe position, my knee rising automatically to hold off his own mounting.  I fight down a fleeting moment of panic as his wet rash guard gets stuck to my face, making breathing impossible, before I turn my head and get a quick gasp of the humid air. I’m waiting for him to move, to hopefully make just a tiny mistake, but he’s quick and sure as he secures my arm and steps over my head.  With nowhere to go, I tap, noting to myself just how he made me give up that arm.  I won’t make that mistake again.  But, for that moment, I just stand back up, and start circling, looking for a chance to take us both to the mat, hoping I’ll be the one getting the take down this time.