empowered futures
begin with activism
when necessary
Real Men Are Feminists
empowered futures
begin with activism
when necessary
marriage
Why We March
We march because we have daughters. Because no one has the right to grab them by their pussies. Because “women’s rights are human rights” (God bless you, HRC). Because the world needs a wakeup call.
We march because we have sons. Sons who will grow into men who can learn how to respect women.
We march because we can’t be bullied. We can’t have anyone–male, female, binary–telling us what to believe. What to do with our bodies. What level of education we deserve. What pay rate we should succumb to.
We march because of our mothers who fought their way into the workforce. Because of our grandmothers who balanced households and work during WWII. Because of our great-grandmothers who were forced into marriages with strange men. Because of every woman who was ever mistreated or controlled by a man.
We march because politics matter. Political policies affect our lives, from whether we have birth control choices to being able to play sports in school to having equal opportunities in higher education.
We march because we are women and men, Muslim and Christian and Hindu and Jewish and Buddhist and atheist, LGBTQ and straight, married and unmarried, parents and grandparents, employees and employers, activists and pacifists.
We march because we are human. Because the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we see it as a binding contract with our government. A binding contract with our world.
We march because we are free.
We march to protect that freedom.
Return of the Jedi
Star Wars costume show
followed by our nation’s truth:
the stench of failure
it seeps through the stacks
into our souls’ library:
let’s check ourselves out
depression so rank
we can’t even choose a book
from our city’s shelves
soon we will rise up
upon realization
of Trumpocracy
but it will take faith
beyond what fits in a poem
to fight the Dark Side
To Laugh Until I Cry. To Live Until I Die.
In the crook of early January, three weeks since seeing my students, on a cold wintry Saturday morning I shlep across town to make lesson plans with three other colleagues.
Later I will heat water for hot tea and curl in my recliner with a book, wishing I could write a novel as lyrically beautiful as Caramelo as my children wander in and out of rooms, in and out of our house and the neighbor’s, in and out of wanting to be near their dear old mom.
This after two attempts to jumpstart the old Hyundai whose lights I left on in our trek to the grandparents’ house last night.
This after listening to dating tales and math updates and wondering what it would really be like to be a single woman in modern America.
This after coloring intricate books with the girls in the brief time between our latest tech argument and the neighbor’s reemergence.
So is our Saturday, chicken defrosting in the sink, chores done and Echo playing my Pandora playlist to suit the color of my mood.
No dog to walk, no true purpose to the day other than making plans for a class no one really wants to teach.
What sits in the back of my mind is how easily I want to be able to relax. To have a deep and thought-provoking conversation that is justifiably, blood-burningly exciting. To laugh until I cry. To live until I die.
To take these lonely household moments and flip them over or back or somewhere else, when my children were small and my Chihuahua never left the warmth of my leg, when my marriage was young and everything we thought and did was about each other, not some game or book or phone or faraway friend.
In the crook of early January, holidays left out on the curb waiting for a second chance at life (mulch me till I can be reborn!), the cold of winter settles into my bones. The winter of this year, of my children’s childhood, of my marriage, nineteen years in the making.
Even with the beauty of the flakes that fall, their demise lies in slushy streets and icy black pavement, ready to trick any masterful driver, so used to winter but not its ugly, dry-grassed truth that lies beneath the surface.
In the crook of early January, I wait for the sun to rise high in the sky. For the snow to melt. For the tree to be taken. For the hollowness that hides inside this nook to break open in me a new way of looking at the world. For the bend of this season to straighten out into a road I can see, wide and clear and as questionless as a summer’s day.
But in the crook of January, there are no summer days. There are only questions.
Closing Thoughts on 2016
The year closes with a slew of celebrity deaths, a frightful president-elect, and the hovering window of how hopeless humanity can be as we watch the genocidal and refugee crises erupt around us without comment, without help.
The year closes in my personal life: a new principal at my school, the second daughter in middle school, the first daughter preparing for high school, the third daughter closing out our family’s elementary education. Tumultuous tumbles with family and friends that make me question everything: what I write, what I think, how I speak, how I feel about the issues surrounding me… and whether or not I should publish it “for all the world to see.”
The year closes on my habits: in many failed attempts at fulfilling resolutions, such as writing every day and ditching dairy, I have at least wholly committed to one–not a drink, not a drop, of alcohol for 2016.
And here I am, posting this. Am I an alcoholic? Are any of us? Would anyone be willing to admit it if they were?
Here are my haikus from 13 January 2016, in a moment of reflection and redemption:
reasons why i stopped:
one–brutal voice in writing,
uncensored anger
two–not much laughter,
too much crying to count
(my tear-stained regrets)
three–exhausted sleep
from too many restless nights
swimming in nightmares
four–so much good lost
on the desire to numb,
to not fully live
five–waste of money
in times when we had little,
in times when we’re rich
six–lust and lack of
mediocre love-making
blurred by consumption
seven–fat belly
of someone too far along
to give up this quick
eight–every bad choice
i have made as an adult
came from that bottle
nine–joy i once felt
disappeared on icy rocks
of my lost chances
ten–my daughters’ eyes
watching every move i make
(and i’m making… them)
The year closes with sadness, with darkness, with fear. I lost friends, I came to realize how few I have, and yet… hold them in such a greater light because of their proximity, their understanding of me. I reconciled with my sister and mother. I worked through difficulties in my marriage. I, as always, struggled through the intricacies of teaching teenagers and raising them. I got a new new kitten… and lost her a month later.
I watched the world witness the election of an evil demagogue.
I cried and I cried and I cried.
I wrote less and worried more.
But I didn’t drink. (I didn’t go to AA either. I didn’t need to.) I just wanted to see what the world was like again without the rose-colored glasses.
And the world is a hard, cold place. Filled with people who only think for themselves. Who send text messages to end friendships three years in the making. Who disregard human rights to save themselves a buck. Who turn their backs on those in need for political safety nets.
And the world is a bright and beautiful place. With young eyes that light up and demand that the future sees them for the beauty that they are: conservative Muslim, flamboyant LGBT, bleeding heart liberal, hopeful to no end. With city lights and mountain views, blue skies and snow. With full moons over lapping waves and pink sunrises over quiet urban neighborhoods. With ancient ruins and family freedoms. With girl power and urban schools. With everything that surrounds my bubble of humanity, my hope for human rights, my need to know that it. Gets. Better.
The year closes, and my eyes have opened. I have come to realize how infiltrated in our culture drinking is (this never quite occurred to me before) as I enter restaurants and am immediately offered cocktails or beer; as I go to book club and happy hour and parties and barbecues and hanging out at anyone’s house; as I navigate the simple sentence, “Water for me, thanks.”
The year closes, and I haven’t been numb. I have been fully awake, fully aware, of the pain that sneaks up when your youngest hasn’t done her math homework in three weeks, when your oldest can’t answer a question without a smirk, when your middle child talks back as easily as she grins, when students refuse to relinquish phones and family members whisper and rejection seems to lie behind every unopened door.
The year closes, and it may have many mistakes. It may have many moments of hollowness. But it does not have a single moment of regret.
Because it has been me, uncensored, unaltered me, in every last word, every last post, every last turn around the long journey through life.
The year closes, so let me hold up a glass: Cheers to a new year, a new tomorrow, a new hope… cheers to a new way of looking at the world. Drink… or no drink.
Cheers.
Getaway. Get. Away.
as we leave, she tells us goodbye till Thanksgiving,
and as always i can’t tell if it’s a guilt trip or a plea.
soon there will be no Thanksgivings.
it will be just us, moved across continents and back,
moved across town and back,
only to remain while they go.
and i pile it on my weekend,
probably our last getaway without grandparents in town,
so perfectly shaped by a Colorado sky,
so tainted by the loss in every flip
as social media stings me again.
before i walk down the steps,
i remind her of Mythili’s birthday,
our dinner reservations before Thanksgiving.
but it’s another night of tears for me knowing that they’re leaving,
they’re really leaving,
and soon all the birthdays and holidays will be just us,
just us,
and i feel the vacancy already,
the gaps once filled by friends
who’ve left us one by one,
and the greatest gap of all
lying in wait,
a storm fit to burst,
a cat poised to pounce,
a weekend ready to be ruined.
and i stopped drinking this year
and lost eight pounds
and didn’t write a single mean post
about my sister, mother, or anyone,
and it’s been ten months,
so why why why
am i surrounded by sadness?
i drive home and can’t dry the tears long enough to read with my youngest,
have only enough in me to enforce showers and teeth brushing
and folding one load of laundry,
and i want so badly to be more than the world only to him,
and i think how fiercely i latched onto him at age nineteen, knowing
even then,
even then that no one would love me that much the whole world over,
and to this day, even with that love in every step of my soul,
rejection. still. hurts.
and this is how our getaway ends:
with the waterfall that never stops.
and the road that never ends.
Spring Back to Fall Forward
finally a break
if only for a weekend
to soak up autumn
Technically a Winner
Girl Scout turnaround
after a friend-connect run:
silver linings shine
computer genius
who should be making big bucks
for knowing the most
(at least i won him
to save me from tech nightmares
that plague my career)
Saturday wins week
(dipped in sorrow and regret)
proving that hope wins
The Silver Linings of Emptiness
haunted by nightmares
was how this morning began:
insomniac’s fate
but then he woke me
with the love he always has
(embedded in lust)
and then a work day–
every basket now empty
(this school year’s first time)
and a lunch offer
out in the sun and crowd free
where hope lies waiting
tonight? i’ll sleep well
praying for a fresh new day
of this teacher life
WTF
“What the fuck–?!” She shoots a dirty look across the room, in the same space I have been standing watching with my own eyes as I monitor their ability to read sentences, their ability to respond to questions. “What did you throw?”
I have seen nothing. Not a speck, not a spitball, not an airplane.
“Can you tell me what—?” I begin, and am harshly interrupted by her friend whose phone I took away yesterday, who argued with me and cussed at me and told me that I should give her my phone if I was going to take hers, who said I don’t pay her bills and have no right to her property–“So you’re gonna ask her about what happened when he’s the one who did it?”
“I’m trying to figure out what happened. F, can you tell me?”
But before she can answer, all I hear is, slightly under her breath but loud enough so she knows I hear it, “Yeah, that’s right, she’s a racist.”
I call the boy outside, a boy who has sat in my class for two years and has never allowed a cruel word to cross his lips, and ask him about throwing the paper, which he adamantly denies, but I can hardly hear his response as I am already swimming in a pool of tears that sits just behind my eyelids, ready to fall loosely down into the hole that is this day.
Because I either say the wrong thing or make the wrong choice or don’t say anything at all, and none of it is ever right. Because I spend my life trying to be fair to all of my students, to all of the people in my life, even when they are not fair to me.
Because sometimes it feels like nothing I do will ever bring positivity, love, friendship, or trust into my life.
Because I was already crying before this class even began. After two months of planning, paperwork, training, money, and time, before we’ve even had a single meeting, my Girl Scout co-leader has just informed me that her daughters don’t want to do Girl Scouts and therefore, neither does she.
Because I promised my daughters that we could do this after a four-year break.
Because I’m terrible at making friends, and I feel like it is multi-generational, as my girls have struggled in recent weeks to click with her daughters despite the last three years of friendship. And I wanted to bridge that gap between the girls and their old friends and the mother who has warmed up to me, and build a foundation for something that could last for years.
Because I don’t have the right words, when I’m standing there watching a kid cuss in my class or at happy hour telling people what I really think, to do anything more than make people hate me.
“R, you don’t have your tablet today, do you need the paper copy of the book?” I try, several minutes later, a pathetic attempt at peace.
“Don’t even try to talk to me, Miss.”
Don’t even try.
Because, why should I? I got married when I was twenty years old and made my husband the center of my entire life. And whenever I try to reach outside of that safe bubble I built up for myself, I am misjudged, blamed, ostracized.
Because, the truth is, he is my one and only friend. And when I get a text at lunch as I’m walking around the gray-eyed dressed-up-for-autumn park, I have no one to share my sad news with once I arrive back to my school.
I have no one to call to talk through it.
No one but him.
And I spend so many moments of my days worrying that my daughters will face the same fate, the same insecurities as they enter adulthood. Which is exactly why I wanted to start the Girl Scout troop in the first place–to help them make and continue their friendships. “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold…” The tune of the song will forever be emblazoned on my soul.
Yet, no matter how hard I have tried, people have left my life for one “circumstantial” reason after another. And once they leave, they leave an abscess that I pathetically try to fill with a new set of… friends. Colleagues? Girls’ friends’ parents? Bueller? Bueller?
This is me, standing in front of my class, trying to hold together another day of teaching, another day of being a mother, a wife, another day of trying, and failing, to be a friend. And I may as well be the monotonous voice that no one listens to, searching in the dark for something that was never there in the first place.
Because I have heard nothing. Not a speck, not a word, not an offer. And I want to be like that brazen 14-year-old and shout out, “What the fuck?”
Only. I want an answer. Not a scapegoat.
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