Woman

I've been chasing something around in my head lately that I'm having a hard time articulating. I like to consider myself pretty open to gender bending, whether I indulge in it overtly myself or not, I'm not the least bit bothered by trans-women/men, effeminate men or butch women. And yet, I identify very strongly as a woman. I have several very good women friends and a core of close women friends that I consider closer than my family in many respects. I enjoy spending time with these women and laughing or crying over our shared experience as women in our communities, families and society at large.

Even as I say this, I realize that I don't really even know how to define the word woman for myself. I'm certainly not the type of woman my mother and sister are. I've always leaned more toward classic/liberal arts education and before leaving Mormonism, had a hard time relating to other women because of this. I've always been more career oriented and reluctant around babies, another characteristic that made it difficult for me to relate to most women in the church. For the last couple years of my stint in Mormonism, most of my mentors were men, and I related better to the husbands (with a few exceptions) than the wives in my circle of married friends.

Now that I've left the church, I've found more like-minded women and formed bonds that have surprised me with their strength. There's something very fulfilling for me to sit and visit with women in my mother's or even grandmother's generation--as if we share a common heritage or culture all our own. My core female friends are some of the most important people in my life. I relate to them and rely on them and support them in their own struggles on many different levels.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in theory at least, I don't consider myself to be a gender essentialist. I do think that gender is more fluid than we acknowledge in our society. So it confuses me that so much of my identity is wrapped up in being a woman--not androgynous, not lesbian, not butch, not feminine--but a woman. It's just that my views about gender are so flexible that I have a hard time defining that in any concrete terms. I think of myself as a woman, but I realize that I can't under any circumstances generalize what it means to be a woman from my own experience. So I'm wondering why that label is so important to my identity and why it brings me so much fulfillment.

Anyway, I'm not sure that was as clear as I would have liked it to be. Any thoughts anyone has on the matter would be welcome. How do you define the two genders? How do you see yourself on the spectrum?How do you relate to others of your "assigned" gender? How much of gender bending is perhaps anomalous (by anomalous I mean outside "normal" gender identification but acceptable nonetheless, clear as mud)? How much of gender identity is socially fabricated and how much is biological?

To My Children

I know that I can be somewhat cynical where my children are concerned. And not towards them, so much as to my own emotional ability to raise them and be fair to them. So let me make a few things clear, both to remind myself that I'm not entirely lost as a parent and to go to a place I don't often go here.

My children fascinate me. I've come to realize this more often in the past couple of months. I think I'd forgotten it for awhile. While I positively loathe pregnancy, I remember being fascinated nonetheless with the concept that I was actually bringing a new individual to life. I remember the anticipation of meeting this person and seeing who he would be (because yes, I totally wanted to know what I was having before I actually had it ;-).

My children continue to fascinate me. They're so small and yet so complete. They have opinions and ideas that are entirely their own, even though Alistiar and I and their other care providers have striven to influence them with ours. And while they have this definite individuality, they are also clearly a product of the two of us and our families. Watching these tensions develop into another person is so intriguing. I get to know them more and more everyday and yet they continue to change in small ways everyday.

I suppose my fascination with their individuality is what informs my parenting (what little of it I actually do). I'm not so much interested in shaping my children as I am in meeting them. I certainly try to make sure they understand important basic concepts, such as "torturing one's little brother (or anyone for that matter) is wrong", "respecting others is important if we want to be respected", "other people see the world differently and that's okay", etc. But in general, I like seeing how they react to problems, I like seeing them interact with others and I like sharing parts of myself with them. I admit it's gratifying when they express interest in the things I want to share with them, but I also admit it's fun to watch them develop their own tastes.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I love my children, fiercely. It's been good to remember this. Indeed, if I'm honest with myself, it's been good to discover this. Theron and Gareth, if you ever have the chance to read this, go in peace, be well, and know that every word of it was written in honesty. 

Deliberate Decision

My divorce was a very deliberate decision and probably an inevitable one. However, I admit that it has still been painful. It hurts to see my soon to be ex-husband hurt. It hurts to see my kids hurt when they can't stay with whichever parent they're in the mood for on a given night. It sometimes hurts to be alone. And yet, I am determined.

I can't speak for myself in twenty years. Who knows who I'll be by then (or since I do edit obits, if I'll even be around then). But I do know that the me right now and the me in high school and early college just isn't the marrying type. I'm not sure why I had so much invested in listening to other people and letting them tell me what was right for my life, but I knew as far back as high school that the things I wanted out of life were incompatible with being married and having children. The only reason I eventually did both is because at the time, I thought I was supposed to.

Unfortunately, rather than joy and fulfillment, for the most part, marriage and children brought me pain and suffocation. I know that sounds ungrateful and dramatic, but it's true. It's not that I don't enjoy companionship, sex, friendship, etc. I do. But at least in my marriage, the trade-off wasn't worth it. I felt like there were all kinds of expectations and duties that I bristled at fulfilling. I felt taken advantage of, unappreciated. I tried so hard to communicate these feelings to my husband. But in all honesty, and he's realized this now, he didn't listen.

To be fair, Alistiar and I had some good times. He could make me laugh, he was always there for me when I was hurting from some outside source. He was so attentive when my mom died, he was okay with my decision to leave the church and while it scared him a bit, he was accepting of me when I finally decided I was an atheist. And I'm grateful to him for all of that. And I hope that someday, Alistiar and I are able to be very good friends. I still like him. I still care for him. But I can't be married. I can't be tied down anymore than I already am with my boys. I need to stretch my wings. I need to be answerable and accountable only to me. Even though Alistiar and I had a decent relationship, there was always a power struggle going on under the surface. Our voices were not equally weighted at all. I was sinking, and in spite of my efforts to help him understand my struggles, he continued to not listen.

Marriage isn't the happy ending for me anymore. It's not that I don't want to be loved or to love someone else. It's that I value my freedom and my independence and my power over my own life. It's not even that I refuse to compromise. It's that I resented having my compromises taken for granted. If I ever love again, I hope to never take for granted the gift that is love. And I absolutely will not stay if I feel like my love is being taken for granted. And I think this represents the paradox that may be my life: I love me best now and someday, that may mean giving me to someone else to show gratitude for them having given themselves to me.

From the Obits Page

". . . That must be an interesting job . . . " I get this a lot when I tell people that I edit obituaries at my local paper (the fact that I also edit letters to the editor seems to get lost in the shock of the word "obituary"). It has been an interesting job. I wrote a post about it right after I got hired. But in the months since, I've lost some of my sensitivity. It's still difficult for me to work directly with family members, and doing obituaries for young children and infants still gets me down, but for the most part, I've put a certain amount of emotional space between me and the people whose lives I'm reading about. Nevertheless, I still find myself thinking from time to time, "She is totally cool! I wonder if she'd . . . Lessie, she's dead. You're not going to be meeting her in the street anytime soon." Then I have a moment where I ponder the finality of death, sometimes do a mental hat tip to my mom and the other deceased loved ones in my life, and get back to looking for comma splices and misspelled words.

When my mom died, I actually got to write the obituary. It wasn't difficult. Most papers have a format for their obituaries and after reading one or two obituaries in my folks' local paper, I was able to churn out a suitable piece based on the information my dad gave me. The pattern usually goes like this: Name, age, place of residence, date of death, place of death, date of birth, place of birth, parents' names, schools attended, military service, date of marriage, notation of divorces, hobbies, we'll miss you, survivors, folks who died before, service times, the end. There are variations on the theme, but that's the gist of it.

It's the "hobbies" and "we'll miss you" parts that are the most interesting to me. These are the couple of sentences (at least in the cheap obits) that ostensibly tell you the most about the deceased (in the expensive obits, the whole damn thing might center around these two sections because the family is paying a truckload of money for that space, but I'll visit that later). These sentences usually go like this, "John/Jane Doe enjoyed cross-stitching, skiing, hunting, cooking, but especially, s/he loved her/his family. John/Jane was the kindest, most loving, patient mother/father/grandma/grandpa and spent his/her entire life doing everything for his/her family."

It was my experience writing my mother's obituary that clued me in to what these sentences actually show: the person that they wanted the deceased to be or the person that they think the deceased should appear to be to the public. That sounds pretty cynical, huh? But ultimately, it's true. We as a society are loathe to introduce ambivalence or nuance into our memories of our dead--at least in public. I wrote similar sentences into my mother's obituary.

But what troubles me about this practice is the extended pain it can actually cause. My mother was kind and patient. My mother was emotionally manipulative and judgmental. My mother was rock solid in her beliefs. My mother doubted her abilities and worthiness. My mother taught me a lot. My mom neglected to teach me some very important things. My mom loved me. My mom didn't love me enough to accept me for who I became. My mom sacrificed a lot for me. My mom took my decisions personally and was offended by them. My mom had an enormous capacity for love and compassion. My mom saw the world in black and white. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm sure these same sentences could be applied to any number of the people whose lives I read about every day. The only thing they all have in common is that they all had the best of intentions.

But as it is, they were all human. And we humans have a tendency to hurt those we love even when our intentions are good. When we codify and make public only the idealized version of our loved ones, I think we do ourselves a disservice. We make it taboo to discuss the more troubling aspects of our interactions with these people and therefore interfere with the healing process.

I confess I'm somewhat at a loss to understand why we do this (and I'm totally unaware of how other cultures speak about their dead, anything anyone has to add in that respect would be welcomed). Do we feel bad talking disparagingly about someone when they're no longer there to defend themselves? Are we too overcome with grief when we write the obituary to see our loved ones in all their mottled glory? Are the believers among us afraid to face our loved ones later when we've been talking badly about them behind their backs? Are we afraid of how others will perceive our own capacity for love and compassion assuming we spoke about the less ideal aspects of our loved ones? Are we relieved that we no longer have to remember the painful things our loved ones (however inadvertently) inflicted on us? Do we, perhaps, welcome death as the way to bury not only the corpse, but also the painful associations we had with that person?

A penny for your thoughts (not really--I'm broke :). But please, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Conflicting Moralities

Good Saturday afternoon! And welcome to Lessie's philosophy class :) Today we're going to talk about Kant and Nietzsche (it took me forever to learn to spell that correctly :). Now because I only have the equivalent of a minor in philosophy, this may not be a particularly sophisticated analysis, but this is how I perceive them.

Kant has a lovely thing called the "Categorical Imperative". I'm sure I have the exact quote lying around in one of my books somewhere, but I'm going to paraphrase him (glancing around at bookshelves to see if the anthology I'm thinking of is within easy reach . . . doesn't appear to be. Paraphrase it is). His Categorical Imperative states that individuals should always be treated as ends in themselves and never as a means to an end and that when deciding whether or not an action is moral, one should consider whether it is universally applicable or not. Kant was rather stringent in his application of the imperative; he was wary of stepping outside the boundaries that he believed his imperative set. From this stringency came a profound sense of duty to others.

Learning my philosophy at a religious institution as I did, Kant's imperative was a convenient co-opt of the Golden Rule (which we all knew Jesus had come up with first, regardless of the fact that the Buddha and other proponents of the rule had lived hundreds of years before him). We commended Kant on his ability to rationally necessitate the Golden Rule; we were down right smug, I think. 

However, not only did Kant give us philosophically sound ground for being Christian, he also provided me personally with a reason to stay in what was a very . . . difficult, conflicted place, id est my marriage (which I had entered into before studying philosophy, btw). Not only did being Mormon-Christian require one to live the Golden Rule, but it also required one to live the commandments. My impression of the commandments at the time was skewed by well meaning but misogynistic religion professors who managed to turn even the parable of the talents into an admonishment to get married and have lots of children. Well, I had gotten married and had a child up to that point, but it had all been under severe cultural pressure. My husband's and my relationship had consisted of making out in the back of my car and talking about whether or not we should get married. I felt like I had a duty to marry this apparently righteous priesthood holder and so I did (although I look back now and see that I was actually going against Kant's ideas of treating him as an end rather than as a means to an end). After I got married, I realized that I really had nothing in common spiritually, intellectually or emotionally with my husband. However, in Mormonism, short of abuse or adultery, divorce is frowned on. Plus, I'd had a child with this man and that increased the amount of duty I felt in staying with him (if for no other reason than out of duty to the child to be raised in a two-parent home). It's amazing that in our co-opting of Kant's imperative, we had managed to twist it to the point that we actually were using others as a means to our own purported salvation (but we were doing it out of duty, by god!).

Now let's talk about Nietzsche. How do I describe Nietzsche? The Nietzsche that you learn about in undergraduate philosophy classes is famous for his Will to Power. At my school, his was a dangerous school of thought. He was blamed for everything from the Nazi invasion to our modern materialistic culture. His Will to Power asserted that the Christian ethic of pity and charity was weak and prevented humanity from reaching it's full potential. If you give to your neighbor, don't do it out of smug superiority but out of a sheer excess of your own power. Do it because you are a truly great human and that's just what great humans do. At the same time, though, Nietzsche advocated for a tantalizingly individualistic world view. For Nietzsche, the only authority that one need consult was oneself. I still remember walking out of my class the day we read excerpts from his "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" being changed forever. At the time, he was like a revelation from God. Nietzsche offered me the philosophical permission to make my life what I wanted it to be. He freed me from listening to outside voices like prophets and apostles. I think a part of me knew even then that reading Nietzsche had given me permission to leave my marriage.

My marriage wasn't what I wanted out of life. I had wanted to go to graduate school and immerse myself in academia (originally I had wanted to do comparative linguistics, but I fell in love with philosophy and changed my mind). My mother had told me that I couldn't have a career and be a good mother and so I had decided I just wouldn't get married and have kids. When I was in high school, this seemed like a good idea. But I had also internalized the idea that the prophets knew what was best for my life, and so when I was told that my life's work was to get married and have babies, I decided to do it and give up my career ambitions. After all, it was clearly what God wanted me to do.

The Kantian model was enough to keep me in my marriage until I realized at some point that I was simply making myself into a means for other people's ends. Also, as I lost my belief in an afterlife, I realized that I only had one shot at life--if I was going to do anything, I had to do it now and chances are I'd have to do it by myself. Finally, I got up the courage to switch my morality. I work from the Nietzschean Will to Power. Is it easy? No. Does it hurt sometimes? Yes. Is it fun hurting other people? No. But ultimately, I was hurting so badly by hanging on to the vestiges of duty bound morality that I knew I had to give myself permission to live for me. And so here I am. A little lonely from time to time, but lonely on my own terms. And for now, that makes all the difference.

Faith in Humanity

I woke up pretty damned depressed this morning. I was feeling too keenly how very little control one has over one's life. I was resenting the dependency on others that, try as I may, I could not completely escape. I was also resenting the dependency of others on me. I suppose, as I write this, that a little of that is coming back into play. Part of what wasn't working for me in my marriage were the claims that I felt others had on me that I didn't want to honor. When I left Alistiar, it was in an attempt to show myself that I got to choose who had a claim on me and who didn't. Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that there are a lot of claims that I was making on other people that made my life bearable. And so it was that I woke up jaded and angry that it was necessary to give myself to others in order to be happy.

I moped around all morning, was late for church and close to tears throughout the service (not a whole lot of which I remember, by the way). When people asked me how I was afterward, it was almost impossible for me to keep my voice from breaking. I was miserable. But it was a pot luck Sunday, and so I decided to go ahead and stay (no good post Mormon would refuse free meals :). I sat with an older-than-me couple and we talked about languages and music and I started feeling better.

It was also forum Sunday. On a whim (I do a lot on a whim, it would seem . . .) I decided to stay for that as well. I attend the Unitarian Universalist Church and today's forum was a chance for members to look over their seven principles and decide if they were still relevant, if they were succinct or if they needed some revision. Quite a debate ensued. Each of us in that room had strong opinions about what we thought was important and what we thought needed to be changed. But debate we did. It was fantastic! We philosophized, we jested, we pouted. But we all got heard and we all knew that we were respected nonetheless.

I realized that I do indeed depend on others and that they in turn depend on me. Today I had my faith in that interdependency restored. I saw what could come of it when mutual respect was present. I still want this space that I've created for myself. I do need some time to figure out what kinds of claims I feel comfortable making and allowing. I still feel like we should be careful about the claims we make on other people--I know from first hand experience how damaging those claims can be if we don't keep the other person's needs in mind. But I learned a little gratitude for those who let me into their lives and their communities. I realized that the trade-off is delicate but can also be enriching.

(And now let's have mfranti and G play us a chorus of Kumbaya on their guitars :P, because I have clearly reached my sap limit for the day :)

Death. Again.

I'm sorry to keep going here. I think I'm slowly starting to let the reality of my mom's death sink in. I don't expect this to be a long drawn out post. But there's something that's been bothering me that I had to get off my chest.

Something my mom always assured me of when she was sick was, "I'm going to be fine. I know the Lord can take this sickness from me." Or on days when she was scared and tired, "I'm going to be okay, right? I can do this?" God, it haunts me. I was never sure, you know? I knew cancer killed in the most random fashion. I had no idea whether she'd live or not. I wanted her to live. I wanted her to beat it. But I also knew that she was continually getting mixed reports from her doctor. The cancer kept spreading, at first in little spurts that they thought were containable. After that happened the third time, I started to realize that my mom probably wasn't going to make it through this. But I couldn't tell her that. She practically plead with me to tell her she was going to be okay.

Maybe this post will go longer than I thought. Let me tell you about the days leading up to her death.

She had just gone to seek a second opinion about her condition (her oncologist had been consistently confusing her chart with someone else's). The new doctor had looked over all her records and told her that he had a new treatment for her to use. It was a more aggressive chemo treatment. I talked to my mom when she got back from his office and was excited for her that things weren't looking grim afterall. I think that was on a Friday or Thursday.

Sunday evening, I called home with some question or other and my dad answered the phone. My mom was moaning in the background. I mean moaning. Deep, labored moans. My dad told me he'd call me back. He called me to tell me that if she wasn't better by the next morning, he was taking her to the hospital.

Monday morning he called from the emergency room of a little town near our home. They were taking my mom in an ambulance to a hospital in a larger city. I could hear my mom moaning in the background. She wasn't saying anything. Just moaning.

At the larger hospital, they put her on morphine and antibiotics and then gave her three blood transfusions. The chemo had obliterated her immune system and she had a UTI, a blood infection and possible pneumonia. The cancer had also spread to her liver and so her liver wasn't functioning correctly. The blood transfusions did nothing to increase her platelet count. Monday night, my dad called me while I was at a friend's house and told me that if the antibiotics didn't start improving the situation soon, then he would move her back to our small town hospital and put her on comfort care until the end. I could hear my mom moaning in the background. My dad was calling from the hallway.


Tuesday morning my dad called again. He had taken her off the antibiotics and was getting ready to have her transferred to the hospital near home. He let me tell her that I loved her. She moaned. I made travel arrangements and was in Oklahoma by Wednesday night.

At the smaller hospital, they increased my mom's dose of morphine and sedatives. When I went to see her Thursday, she was completely unconscious. They had taken off her wig and her false teeth. Her cheek bones protruded grotesquely under her skin and her mouth was hanging open. She had small whitish whiskers on the sides of her head. Her arms were swollen with fluids. And she was pale . . . almost grey, but not.

For all of Friday and into Saturday morning, my mom lay like that. Her breathing was shallow and clogged with fluid. If someone spoke too loudly, too closely to her ear, she moaned and coughed. My dad decided he wanted to be alone with her when she died. My mom's best friend called us Saturday morning and told us to call our dad. He told us she had died. We went to the hospital again and she lay there still. She was still. Her mouth was still and hanging open. Her eyes were still and closed. Her body was still.

It hurts me so badly to think that she may have died confused and in pain. Was it better that she be unconscious for the last few days of her life? Did it keep her from having to deal with the ultimate betrayal? And where was my mom those last few days? All I saw was a sentient being reduced to nothing but pain. Why should anyone have to lose their humanity like that? There was nothing of dignity or peace in my mom's dying. Her suffering finally ceased, but not in a way that does her any good, because she ceased with it. And now I'm left to make sense out of this. To rebel against the idea that sometimes, the only way we can stop the suffering of another person is to obliterate them.