Not What We Had Planned

Last Friday I had to make one of my periodic trips to Nashville. My husband came with, and somewhere on the trip home, lunch or dinner, ate a bunch of salmonella and got terribly, terribly sick. He was admitted to the hospital in the wee hours of Saturday morning and stayed there until yesterday. He's never before been so ill.

I had been planning to leave for my annual trip to Florida, to ride with my friends Angelica and Betty, on Sunday afternoon-I'd shipped my horse down a week early, for some training-but of course I put that off. I'm ashamed to say that when I was younger I might have felt a frisson of disappointment or ill-usage about not getting my treat on schedule; it wouldn't have kept me from taking care of my husband, but it would have made me less happy about it. Thankfully I seem to have grown up. I didn't  feel anything beyond profound sympathy for my suffering husband, and gratitude that I could help him, because, frankly, our hospital did a pretty crap job of things and it was good he had me for an advocate.

His room had a sign on its door that said, "name alert." I thought that was odd, as Bradley isn't exactly a difficult name. But my husband explained that it meant there were two people with the same or very similar last names on the floor, so the sign alerted staff to be sure they were treating the correct one.

On Monday I was waiting to take the elevator to get some lunch when another woman came and waited beside me. She was middle-aged, overweight, and had the dazed and rumpled look of someone who'd been trying unsuccessfully to sleep in the clothes she was wearing. In short, much like me. I yawned, hugely, several times, then apologized. I told her that my husband had salmonella poisoning, that I'd been unable to sleep the night before, and and that I'd been trying to nap in the room but all the noise from the machines made it impossible.

She nodded wearily. "I stayed the night here and I was up all night," she said. "This morning I was so tired I couldn't stop crying." She said that her husband had cancer. "They just told us he wouldn't ever leave the hospital," she said. She drew in a huge breath. "This isn't what we had planned."

We rode the elevator down in silence. As we got out I told her that I was sorry about her husband, that I would pray for him and her family. "Thank you, honey, and I'll pray for yours," she said.  She repeated, "This isn't what we had planned."

Later that day I saw her walk into the other patient room tagged with a "name alert" sign. Her husband has the same last name as mine.

A Pleasant Riff on Being Transgender

Lent Day 2, and already I've had to stop myself twice from typing something snarky. Not here but on Facebook--but I think snark is snark, and sadly I seem to enjoy it.

I went to the library today--finally found my long-overdue books, one under the sofa and the other mysteriously in my daughter's room--perused the new YA shelves as I always do, and was pleased and a bit surprised--though I shouldn't have been, we have such a fabulous YA librarian--to see the book Some Assembly Required. Some of you might know an older (and very good) book by that title, by Anne Lamott, but this is a new book by Arin Andrews, and the subtitle is The Not-So Secret Life of a Transgender Teen.

I'd already read the book, last week, when I decided that I really didn't know much about what it was like to be transgender. I still don't know with my emotions--I've always felt female--but I now know better with my mind.

As I was walking out of the library, I got an email from my alma mater, Smith College, updating me on a survey they're doing regarding gender. Smith is and always has been a women's college that does not admit men to its undergraduate programs. They're now trying to decide what exactly they mean by "women" and "men" in terms of transgender students. I'm glad they're thinking about it because I've realized it's a more complicated question than I thought.

People can be born with XY genes (genetically male) but lacking the ability for their cells to respond to testosterone, either wholly or partially, making them appear to be physically female, or indeterminate.  People can be born with the genotype XXY and with either male or female genitalia. They can be born with the genotype XX, genetically female, and yet have male external genitalia. In all of those cases, the person's core feeling of self might match either their genes or their genitals.

I know, personally, one trans-male person. He used to babysit for my children. He's a really nice guy, and I like all his family too, especially his mom who is a friend of mine. I can't imagine what it was like for her to realize that a child she thought was her daughter was more correctly her son, but I think she's handled--is handling? his transition well. He is foremost her child, and she loves him.

I didn't know nearly as much about range of possibilities for human gender, both anatomically and genetically, two weeks ago. It hasn't taken me long to learn. I hope other people will take the time to learn, too; I hope lots of Bristol teens will read Some Assembly Required. I would like a world where we all get to express who we are, who we were created to be.

A Different Lent

It's absolutely snowing like mad outside, a near-whiteout of huge whirling flakes. According to the radar it isn't actually snowing at all, and the forecast was for less than an inch of accumulation. We've had at least three, by my sidewalk reckoning, and it doesn't appear to be stopping soon. My daughter has been off school three days and has almost no likelihood of going tomorrow, when the high for the day is 9. (Our average high this time of year is 50. Around here schools are often delayed for temperatures below 10, because we have them so rarely that kids really don't have the appropriate outwear.) My daughter is getting a little (lot) stir-crazy. I, on the other hand, am in heaven (except for the barn chores). I really like to hibernate now and then. Everything in my week has been cancelled, and there is damn-all I can do about it so I may as well be happy.

It's Ash Wednesday. I nearly always attend Mass on Ash Wednesday because I like receiving ashes on my forehead. I won't make it into church today, but I'm still thinking about Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, and what I want it to mean for me this year.

When I was a kid I usually gave up popcorn for Lent. This was painful; we ate a lot of popcorn on winter evenings in my house. Sometimes I gave up chocolate, which was also hard. As an adult I've been more prone to adding something to my life rather than subtracting. One year I prayed the rosary every day.

It does not make a whit of difference to God if I go without popcorn for 40 days. Nor, I think, is God enhanced by my prayer. But it might make a difference in me.

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately. I plan to blog about that soon. One of the things I've really liked about yoga is how my teachers stress that it is a practice. We practice yoga. We don't perfect yoga. We don't have to be good at it or skinny or bendy, we just have to show up on our mats and try.

In a similar way I want to show up this Lent. I want to allow myself to grow closer to God, and to my ideal self as I am created to be. Which is why I'm writing a vastly different blog post than the one I had planned for today.

I was going to write a rant about something that's really driving me crazy. I've already talked it all out with my daughter, and I even had internet examples to back up my side.

Then I thought, maybe for Lent, I'll give up arguing. Maybe I'll give up rants. Maybe I'll try to write about just the good things.

So this is the start: snow, ashes, a cup of green tea. The noise the wind makes against my window. Forty days of harmony. I can practice. I can try.

Grateful for Flush Toilets

So. I can't get down my snow-covered driveway. My son is sick far away, where I can't tend him. ISIS is beheading Coptic Christians; politicians are spouting stupidities in public where people can hear them. Also, on Thursday it's supposed to be -17 degrees. Fahrenheit.

Here. Where it is never supposed to be -17 degrees.

So I've decided to replace my usual rant with a list of things I am grateful for. I don't mean big things, God, family, friends, love, the glories of modern medicine and technology. I'm talking prosaic. It's the everyday we tend to take for granted. (Also. I've been reading Ian Mortimer's books.)

I am grateful for my washing machine. Have you ever read accounts of laundry day anytime before, say, 1920? Makes you shiver in your bones. I think if pioneer women could see my Kenmore washer, they would throw themselves across it and weep.

Ditto the toilet. Now I have used many an outhouse in my day, but I have never, ever, had to cope with a night jar. And I am grateful.

I'm grateful for disposable paper hygiene products. All sorts, tp, tampons, menstrual pads, but especially Kleenex, which prevents me from having to use upwards of 3000 (non-disposable, and probably requiring ironing) handkerchiefs a day.

Wicking sports fabric. Riding and yoga are so much more fun now that my sweat doesn't make my shirt weigh 40 pounds.

TIVO. I never thought I'd say it, but this, like having separate closets, has been a source of harmony in my marriage. It means I don't have to force my husband to watch Downton Abbey on Sunday nights. I don't have to force him to watch Downton Abbey ever. What's not to love?

Anti-depressants. Oooh, baby. For the misinformed, these are not "happy pills." These are "anti-suicidal thoughts" pills. (Okay, maybe they are happy pills--in that my friends and family are really happy that I'm not depressed.)

Book reviews. I love them. I love all of them. I love good reviews that orient me towards books I would not otherwise read, and I love bad reviews that keep me away from others. I love reading reviews of my own books, even when I itch to correct their mistakes (Ada isn't locked in a basement, she's up on the third floor--which might be the fourth floor here in America). Last week I had a five-letter review of TWTSML, on Goodreads: "Harsh reality and riveting sweetness." Doesn't the phrase "riveting sweetness" kind of rock your world? It did mine. Until my husband, who loves word games, started coming up with replacements for "riveting." Cloying. Sticky. Revolting. Etc.

That's enough to go on with. I'm off to watch Downton since my world is hemmed with snow.

Gallileo's birthday, trust, and freedom.

It strikes me sometimes how many of us approach religion from a sense of exclusion, fear, and guilt, when we're clearly taught, over and over, that we're meant to live in inclusion, trust, and freedom. I mean, how many times in the bible does some sort of heavenly presence (God, angel, etc.) reveal itself to a human (Moses, Mary, etc.) and its very first words are, "Fear not"? Because the human is afraid.

We are meant to trust God entirely, and we're meant to love each other, entirely, without exception. That's pretty much it. Instead we divide ourselves into groups and argue over minutiae, and that comes from fear, not trust. From hate, not love.

Today is Gallileo's birthday. In the early 17th century, armed with the newly-invented telescope and a brilliant mathematical mind, Gallileo discovered that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun. Before that, everyone had assumed that since the earth was the ultimate form of God's creation, everything in the universe must revolve around it.

At the time, nearly all Christians were Roman Catholic. The Pope denounced Gallileo as a heretic and threw him in jail for 9 years, only releasing him when Gallileo recanted.

Nowdays, of course, we have no problem with the idea that the earth moves around the sun. Indeed, I would say that the majority of people understand and believe that the sun is only one of a countless number of stars in a universe far vaster and more complicated than 17th-century humans ever imagined. It is, in fact, more wonderful.

This illustrates why I get so frustrated with Christians that attempt to put God in a box. Why did the pope denounce Gallileo? Fear. The idea went that if Christians came to believe that the earth revolved around the sun, they would cease to believe that God created the Earth. The newly discovered truth would uproot Christianity.

It actually did no such thing. The idea that the universe was bigger and more complicated than just the Earth didn't seem to diminish anyone's belief in God.

Gallileo himself said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use."

Someone that goes with "Fear not!" I can see it. Can you?

Contempt and Mercy: The Vaccine Debate

The parents in the waiting rooms of children's hospitals give each other soft, sympathetic glances. Rich, poor, black, white, we're all in the same boat, and it isn't a good one. We feel ourselves sinking. Meanwhile we give each other sidelong glances, quick smiles, and look away. Too much sympathy is heartbreaking too.

I can't tell the whole story here because it is not mine.

In the waiting rooms of children's hospitals some of the children are bald. They are tiny toddlers or sullen teens. They are, every one of them, gorgeous. They are breathtakingly beautiful, tenacious and frail. You find yourself praying for them, Dear God, don't let them die.

If cancer doesn't kill them, chicken pox might. These children's immune systems have been destroyed. They can be put in grave danger by anything, any virus, any germ, any microorganism at all.

In the hallway of a children's hospital, during an epidemic of influenza several years ago, nurses grabbed the arm of every single child that walked by. Patient, sibling, visitor. They hauled that child into a room that was usually a playroom but had become an influenza vaccination center. The nurses asked, "Is this child immunosuppressed? Has this child already had a flu vaccine?" If the answers were not yes, the parent was handed a consent form to sign and the child was vaccinated. Period. The End.

The parents didn't argue. They didn't bring up discredited scientific studies or random noncausitive correlations. (I've noticed that there are more cell phones these days. Does cell phone use cause autism?) They didn't complain about the very slight chance of a febrile seizure. They signed the consent forms and bared their children's sweet slender arms.

Why? Why no howls of protest? Because they were standing in a room in a children's hospital. They already knew what real danger was. Their hearts were already broken by those tender bald children down the hall.

In my hometown newspaper this morning, a letter to the editor saying that vaccinations should be a choice parents could ignore said in part (I swear I am not making this up.): "Do your research on the Web. If what you read doesn't ring true to you, then ignore it."

Feel free, please, to stick your head in the sand. Believe that the Government and the Doctors and everyone else is trying, for some nefarious purpose unknown, to cause your child harm. Imagine yourself some monsters.

Unless you've ever sat in the waiting rooms of children's hospitals. Then you'll know what the real monsters are, and you'll see the faces of children you'd do anything to save. Vaccination? Yes please. My God.

Twitter Rocks My World

I'm really starting to love Twitter, and my husband is really starting to hate that I do. This is because every time someone tweets me, or replies to one of my tweets, or forwards one of my tweets, or favorites one of my tweets (note to my children: notice the correct application of the word "tweet." I've quit calling it a "twit.") I get an email notification. And because my husband and I share an email address, he also gets an email notification. Onto his phone.

Yes, I know I could stop that happening by changing my settings. Thing is, I like getting emails about my tweets. It's all interconnected and fun.

So far, the tweets that have generated the most emails are the large discussions I have with other writers on the following topics: 1) books worth reading; 2) authors worth reading; 3) fonts; and 4) historically accurate vs. inaccurate clothing. Books and authors are pretty self-explanatory but you'd be surprised by how many of my acquaintances get really exercised about fonts. One writer explained that she submits manuscripts in standard 12-point Times New Roman, but she writes in 14-point Arial. LIKE THIS. Another writer jumped in to say that Arial sucks because it relies on context. In Arial, you can't tell the difference between "I" and "l," which is to say, "I" and "l." (Times New Roman) or "I" and "l" (Courier).

I've already gone on record as saying I'm the last living writer who loves Courier font. People in my twitterverse got very aggressive in their hatred of Courier earlier this week. Then one person admitted that it was the best font for "sight-reading entire sentences." Ah, I said. That's why I'm such a fast reader. I like to sight-read entire sentences.

I mean, maybe. How the heck would I really know? I do love me some Courier, however. When I admitted that I send manuscripts to my editor in Courier, and she immediately converts them to Times New Roman and sends them back, and I immediately reconvert them to Courier, writer Jo Bourne, whose work I passionately adore, sent a tweet that was clearly meant to be sung to the theme song from Lion King. "It's the Cirrrccccle of fonts...the cir-ir-ircle of fonts."

This, folks, is why we have technology. This and LOL cats, for sure.