keeping abreast | keeping a breast

I will be mothering a daughter. I thought that knowledge would bring me relief, the familiarity, the navigating what it means to be someone who identifies as a woman, having gone through the same steps on the ladder to becoming. The relief was fleeting.

I know that she will tell me who she is and who she wants to be, and that she will be a she until she tells me otherwise.

And I: I will work, toil, scream in order to quiet all the voices in my head, the 40 years of this and that, the suggestions and directions and requests and demands about being a girl and a woman. If ever there was a time to examine something, take a magnifying glass to it and peer at it and watch it squirm under the fiery sunbeam streaming in, it’s now.

Mothering a daughter.

Don’t have hips, don’t have thighs, don’t have a belly, don’t have fettuccini alfredo, don’t get pregnant, don’t dress like that, don’t look his way, don’t make eye contact, don’t purse your lips like you want to be kissed, don’t laugh too loud, don’t be past the point of passing out, don’t raise your hand and show off that you’re the smartest kid in class, don’t take up space, don’t be angry, don’t be a floozy, don’t bare your soul, don’t worry so much, don’t share your ideas. Oh let me count all these insidious ways of policing and patrolling a body and a mind, my body, my mind, her body, her mind.

Don’t negotiate, whatever you do, don’t think that everything that happens to you is because of your sex, don’t wear dresses and show your leg in the workplace, don’t report the coworker who tried to suggest you should come to his hotel room, don’t run from the colleague who tries to coax you onto the dance floor and threatens you with the title “party pooper,” don’t stop wearing a man suit, don’t slap your boss for his question about whether you’re going to step back from work after the baby, don’t be too direct, don’t be hostile, don’t make them feel less smart than they think they are, don’t interrupt, don’t upstage, don’t disrupt male spaces – locker rooms, engineering labs, cockpits, construction sites, street corners.

Don’t throw like a girl, don’t shoot like a girl, don’t swing like a girl, don’t be sad, don’t cry, don’t be upset, don’t get hysterical. Only later do I think of what the right response could have been – in this situation, in any of these situations – my neck flushing and hot – screaming, “do you even know the root of that word ‘hysterical’?!” because in each of these moments I so want whatever is agitating me to stop that I agree with the sentiment or action or direction. And, I swallow it. I want there to be harmony on the outside that matches the harmony I strive for on the inside. I’m not quick enough on my feet to really understand what an insult is in the moment and how it compounds. And then, maybe that’s even a symptom of it all – not wanting to scream and rant and be the bitch that someone else defines.

I wonder how deep these narratives run, into the air, to the culture, to the bone, to the marrow, to the soul.

I have to get to work.

We have always been part of nature, one being in an ecosystem of other beings who are breathing, living through cold stunning events, each trying for a good chance of survival.

My ancestor’s homes used to be more closely tied to the earth, made of sod, mud, newly-felled round logs, grasses, reeds and rushes, hides. They were impermanent, moveable, seasonal, modal based on the need at hand, the angle of the sun, the temperature of the earth’s crust, and the direction of the breeze.

What was the turning point, when we enveloped ourselves in sheetrock and plaster and paint? Creating a barrier, an us and them, an inside and an outside, rather than just a shelter or a place for warmth and rest? For storytelling and rejuvenation? For feasting and mourning?

I think about this moment – coming indoors forever – that was perhaps considered a revolution, something positive and transformative, a big idea that was to improve the lives of millions.

I think about this moment.

Disconnected from the cycles of nature. What is happening in the winter underground, decomposition and decay, what the ice and cold contract and constrain, what springs forth through the mud and mire, shoots roots deep to stabilize earth, washes ashore in a king tide. To then produce, seed, spawn, fruit, flower, germinate. And in the sequence of things, flame out and wither, scattering to the four corners, returning to the place as sustenance for a future generation.

As I walk outdoors, outside of my home and these four walls, evading an invisible virus that has brought us to our knees, the boundary between us and a so-called nature a blurred reminder, I realize that I’m surrounded by death. Being in nature is experiencing death, always. And birth, always. The giant mother trees in the forest, felled by wind and age, becoming hosts for a multitude of other trees who are the early-to-rise ones, the first generation, competing with each other for light and the mother tree’s nutrients, racing to reach the canopy like fastidious first-borns. The grey whale who swam with her children’s children children, now sunk to the bottom of the ocean, a whale fall, creating an ecosystem all of her self, with undiscovered worms burrowing through her blubber and sea-fans affixing themselves to any open surface, waving at fish, circling above, who produce their own light. Nutrients being transformed and suspended on a current through ocean basins and global hemispheres.

Even in death, she gives. We receive. But if we’re not careful, we just take.

Is this why we’re so disconnected from the earth? Is our culture so death defying that even being in nature is a reminder that while the universe is infinite, our time is finite?

That being interconnected comes with responsibilities, to tend, to care, to love, to be, to bear witness to all of it?

I don’t know when I started noticing. Was it always there, with me? Or did it creep in slowly like the finger of fog on the Bay until it just was?

Parenting the sensitive child. My mom probably wishes she would have read that book earlier.

The sounds of fireworks sending me into hiding. Crying about finding a dead butterfly, swallowtail, the yellow and black dust of its perfect wings imprinted on my small fingers, evidence that it lived. Watching the geese crisscross the faded autumn sky and longing for time to stop. The feeling of my white wool knee socks, the hemline needing to be “just so” straight across my toes. Smelling gas or mold or a dead animal before anyone else, rooting out whatever the danger could be through my nose. Noticing.

In our pandemic world, wearing masks has not bothered me one bit. It’s an act of kindness, it’s survival, it’s political.

My other senses are acute, eyesight good, the small hearing loss in my left ear compensated just fine by my right ear. The sensors in my skin giving me notice of the breeze’s direction. The angle of the sun helping orient me to time and place. I don’t feel a barrier wearing a mask perhaps because I choose not to feel it. Ambling in the world, just fine.

This weekend, in Golden Gate park, I walked along trails laden with tannic Monterey pine needles, sprouting ferns, next to coastal prairie – green for the only time this year – and coastal scrub and its succulents. Rhododendrons and azaleas in full blossom. Yellow and orange and pink poppies standing tall. The first fuchsia magnolia bloom on a tree, leading the way for the other buds to follow.

I looked around on the trail, all directions. No one was coming. I paused. The white and golden-crowned sparrows rustled along the ground. A chestnut-backed chickadee, so tiny, sang for its partner. And oak titmouse perched up high with its pointy crown, head tilting side to side. A charm of ruby-throated hummingbirds rushed back and forth.

I pulled down my mask. My triple layer mask with a filter.

Just to take it in. Oh how can I explain the noticing that went off in my nose – earth and humus. Decomposition and birth. Rain. Steam. The gentle scent of pine that seems to only waft in a patch of sun. Delicate rosemary mixed with cowboy bush. Noticing.

I miss this. I miss the smell of the earth, of place, of purpose. Of all of us, noticing.

Violets blooming in November in my parents west-facing landscaping

Their bright purple like a firework against the frozen solid ground

muted and fading greens of grass

like the brightness of the green had a can of low white mixed in

diluting

depressing.

They were a surprise to me

But not to my mom

Buttercups in the spring, in the woods, and into the summer

If you eat them they taste sweet, like butter

Little yellow chalices so prim and proper

When we decided to become a household of three, I didn’t think about auspicious days or the best time of year to be born, I didn’t think of zodiac signs and what is most compatible among the Lunar calendar’s animals. I didn’t much think, except to say that no amount of thinking would ever make the decision for us. Mike was the one who knew though, always with clarity about how this should go down.

So when we crossed the threshold last week from the year of the rat into the year of the ox, I was surprised at how panicked I was, how I was scrambling to do research to give me a sign, any sign, if this baby is going to be compatible with me, with Mike, with our combination. He’s a sheep and I’m a monkey, generally ok on the copacetic spectrum, annoying one another because of spontaneity (me) and whatever the opposite of spontaneity is (him). But ox – what this baby will be – and sheep, no good, apparently. Maybe both too stable and reliable for each other, one a perfectionist the other a get er done kind of approach, one prone to indulgences and the other to minimalism. Monkey and Ox on the other hand, total harmony, like the two scales balancing each other out. A perfect match.

Maybe that fact alone is the missing piece in all my hesitancies about becoming a parent. Maybe it’s THE sign that this is meant to be.

Learning about the precious Nano Chameleon – a new creature to western science – rushes back memories of basic biology. When the focus was on kingdom phylum class order family genus species subspecies. Where did this belong and that belong, based on its digits or ears or scales or reproduction abilities. Sorting, always sorting.

With the world continually showing itself for what it is – or the world we created holding a mirror back up to us and our souls is maybe the better description – I think about this structure and how these old white men, long dead, yet still present, who were products of their place and time constructed the construct as I live it today, created order through hierarchy. One thing more supreme than another. A higher order of being, doing, knowing. Humans at the center, control, plow, raze, clear, excavate, drill, level. Erasing the truth and wisdom of those before us, those who knew the truth and wisdom, the meaning of time. Stamping them out, or trying to, like throwing water on the burning embers of a campfire, but the smoke signals drifted up to the sky, a warning, a tea leaf, a cloud pattern from which to discern which way to safety to hold onto any shards that could be salvaged from the bones and slivers that could be held in memory.

I think of all we’ve lost just because of this system, this worldview, that has been taught to millions of people like me around the world, maybe billions.

In the Potawatomi Native American language, there is no pronoun, no binary, no hierarchy. All things are equal and in action – rocks, water, the wings of a bat, a spirit, the clever crow, the person manifested. They – plural, multitudes – are in a state of being, doing, knowing. Everything has energy. Can you imagine it?

What would a walk in the woods feel like with these lenses? A swim in the ocean? Sleeping under a starlit sky, waxing moon peaking over the horizon?

I learned about an Anishinaabe wampum belt that was repatriated from a museum somewhere in the UK. Or put another way, stolen goods were returned to their rightful owners. The wampum belt had a pattern on it, a story that was long forgotten. No, not forgotten, it was stolen too. Like words grabbed from the breath of your chest, the front of your mind, the end of your tongue.

In the bitter cold winter of the Northern Great Lakes, the women in the community sat with the belt, without food or water, for days. Days. Resting on mats in a dark room. Breathing in each others exhales. Eyes closed, eyes open. Until, until the memories came to them, the story, the meaning. In a dream or awake, it doesn’t matter, because it’s the same thing. Because what they know in their cells, the epigenetic thumbprints of their ancestors singing to them through the tunnel of time. And they now know it in today’s breath, can share the story in Anishinaabe.

Like the Nano Chameleon, staying alive through time and with homelands under duress, clinging onto single blades of grass.

I remember snippets of our conversation that senior year spring break with Claire’s grandma down on some white sand beach in the bottom of Florida. All stretched out, nothing to do but make it back in time for 4pm high balls with Nana.

Claire, an artist, said that she’s concluded that we all have at least one thing – one big defining thing – that we just let go of, we lose. For her, it’s neatness. As I think back to her piles of clothes, dishes, detritus of a blooming adult, I agree. She points out to Liz who is shaded under an umbrella, for you Liz, it’s spelling. And it is. Liz, who would become a top-notch assistant district attorney working to support children and families and now a general counsel for a multi-national corporation, is a less-than-stellar speller.

Claire looked at me, the sun starting to go down, and she said hm, you Meaghan, I’m still trying to figure out what you have lost and let go of.

Twenty years later, I can tell her all that I’ve lost. A memory of life before grief. Of being able to feel my chest. Of uncomplicated intimacy. Of a level of carefree without the deep grave knowing. Of an ability to brush off a tweak in my neck or persistent cough as just a normal thing, allergies, aging, sleeping wrong. Of too many friends to count – I tried, really tried, and then I missed a few, the pen attached to my journal running out of ink one day, and now I’ll never have the full record of lives blinking out like fireflies in the dusk so why bother. Yesterday it was Hilary and tomorrow who knows.

When this pandemic started, I thought to myself, I’ve done this before. I’ve been there, or here, literally, in my home for months on end, fatigued and sick, fragile and immunocompromised, every thing a threat to my existence. The in between, suspended between two monkey bars and the only choice to go was forward but in slow motion, was it slow enough for me to free fall down like the others, into the vast unknown or was it fast enough to be here, still, tomorrow.

This body

It’s amazing to me that when our bodies work the best

When we’re young

The muscles and sinews and fascia all flexible, fluid

We don’t realize it, appreciate it, yearn for it

For the ease

Having muscle memory that remembers

Like riding a bike, throwing a pitch, ascending stairs, even, standing up

I remember being little, 8 years old

My mom’s “over the hill” birthday party

I delighted in black decorations, everywhere, black napkins, crepe papers, balloons

Black felt so…scandalous, ominous, powerful, maybe even

She was turning 40

The same age I now

She had 3 children, already well into our gradeschool years, tied up in sports and digging in the backyard and riding bikes to the country fort we had erected from fallen branches and dead things, all our bodies doing the things that young bodies do

So able, so free

Mom too

I wonder how much she thought about her body then

Because it’s all I can think about now

What it can do, what it cannot do, what takes work to do

Burns and scars and tightened chests from two rounds of cancer

Wondering how much of what I feel is about aging and how much of it is about how my life was interrupted, keeps being interrupted until the interruption becomes the norm

This body

Not carrying our child

Wondering when she arrives come July, if my body will know it, if these arms are strong enough to do what a mom does for a baby

if my DNA will see itself reflected

and if the muscle of my heart – still weak from chemotherapy – will expand in new directions

Will it remember what to do, what it never thought it could or would do

To welcome this new body into being

Back when we went places and did things, I hugged a panda. A Giant Panda. Well, it was the baby version. In the wintery city of Chengdu at the conservation and breeding center. As it was preoccupied with a carrot. But because it is a legit bear, after approximately 30 seconds, it remembers that it doesn’t like to be hugged and can bite down on an unassuming tourist.

But for those 30 seconds, I laughed and smiled as it munched, carrot flecks flying everywhere, like a little garbage disposal trying to rack up 12 hours of nonstop eating for the day. Its false thumb clutching that carrot like a lifeline, dexterity even at such a young age.

And I marveled at its fur, hollow spikes providing such good insulation for all seasons in the Shaanxi mountains. Its whiskers, even whiskers on the bottom of its feet so it avoids slipping in ice. The black circles around its peering eyes, and teddy bear ears making it like a stuffed animal imitating a real animal but here was the real animal. The sturdy paws and legs, comfortably splayed, reclined on its low butt, tailed tucked under. Blinking at the audience, content.

I thought of that time when this week in the snowstorm, the Giant pandas Mei (chee-ang) Xian and Tian Tian at the National Zoo in Washington DC were filmed rolling and somersaulting and sledding down the hills in their containment area. Looking like kids who are having the worry-free thrill of an unexpected snow day. Maybe they miss going places and doing things too.