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(originally published on Invocations.blog)
Before my second baby was born
I used to worry (a lot) about
having a boy
thinking, “what would I DO with a boy?”
as if he would turn out to be a different
species than me
rather than another gender
and that we would lack a
common language
Now he is almost six
and I understand that
what I was afraid of
was that he would be
a stereotype
of a boy
or that he would
(alarmingly)
be a clone
of boys I had known
who had scared me
or disgusted me
because of their
aggressiveness
or
crassness
or
insensitivity
which I wrongly
attributed
to testosterone
and the Y chromosome
My son loves to kiss me
and snuggle and
make art
together and
battle bad guys (not with me, because that’s not my thing)
and build Legos (sometimes with superheroes and bad guys
but sometimes not)
and watch the Great British Baking Show
and do martial arts
and play with his multitude of stuffed animals,
all of whom he has given names
and identities
(some straight, some gay, some trans)
and family relationships
(usually interspecies)
He likes to wear pink and purple (and sports shorts and Adidas)
I told him that I’m glad he knows
pink and purple are colors
for everyone
and not just for girls
He said unfortunately not everyone
at his school knows that
and not everyone at his school thinks boys
can wear nail polish
but he knows
how much fun it is
to get your nails done
and how cool it looks
I used to worry
that people would think
I was a boy
because my hair is short
because I mostly wear
t-shirts and jeans
In high school when I wore Doc Martens
I was told “those are men’s shoes.”
(Now I sometimes shop in the men’s department for my size 11 feet
and I receive many compliments on my brown leather wingtips)
In college when I asked the boys down the hall
to use the clipper to shave the back of my hair
I was told “that’s a lesbian haircut.”
and because I wore plaid flannel,
“you dress like a lesbian,”
(but seriously, it was the 90s)
A little girl once asked me, “are you a boy?”
I said no but she still said, “I think you’re a boy.”
When I wake up and stumble into the bathroom
in the middle of the night or
first thing in the morning
so many times I’ve looked in the mirror
and wondered if I looked that day like
Richard Simmons or Andy Gibb or Michael Moore
it’s always a weird male celebrity I see
I used to think that if I didn’t wear earrings
when I left the house
people would think I was a man
even though plenty of men
wear earrings when they leave the house
like my daughter’s 5th grade teacher
who was a middle-aged married father of two
who wore basketball shorts to teach and sported
a gold hoop in each ear
My son notices when I have new earrings
and is the first to compliment me
when I get my hair done
He often does not care if his clothes
are clashing colors
but sometimes he wants me to brush his hair
and help him choose the perfect outfit
for the occasion
My son recites the names of all the Avengers
(and their friends such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four)
and their unique capabilities
and asks me what powers I would like
and then endows me with them
and says,
“I love you with all my heart and all my dreams.”
and falls asleep with his forehead touching mine
and his arm around my neck
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(originally published on invocations.blog)
When I get a massage
I am polite
but quiet
because in the past
I have made the mistake
of being too friendly
and inquisitive
and hearing too much troubling
information about a person
who was supposed to be
helping me relax
Chida is my massage therapist now
She is usually polite and quiet too
Last week she was
bubbling over
with excitement
because she and her five-year-old
daughter are going back
to Thailand for a month
Chida said she has to go
so her whole family
can participate in the rituals
to say goodbye to her father
who died several months ago
but who neighbors say
they have seen
sitting on his front porch
Chida’s mother told her
“You have to come home
or your father’s spirit
will be stuck here.”
“Miss Betsy,” Chida said to me.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
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When the motorized scooter was delivered to our hotel in Orlando, the scooter guy assembled it, and showed my parents what to do. My sister shared an instructional YouTube video with us even before the trip so we could familiarize ourselves with the assembly and disassembly process. Even so, the first morning of our adventure, after my mom drove the scooter up to my parents’ minivan, it took several adults several (10? 15?) minutes to take it apart and stow it in the back of the van.
When we arrived at the Magic Kingdom, we put it together slightly faster, but when it was assembled and my mom put the key in the ignition, there was a lot of beeping. So much beeping that it was clear that the scooter was telling us something. Like, “don’t drive me.” We took things apart and put them back together. Finally, we discovered that the lock/unlock switch was in the wrong position. It may have been Zeke who figured it out. We flipped the switch and the beeping ceased. The only sound was a cheer from everyone.
By the end of the week, we (and by we I really mean Randy, because he did the lion’s share of scooter assembly and disassembly, usually with some assistance from my dad or me) could transform the scooter in 30 seconds flat. But the real scooter master was the driver–my mom.
The dashboard of the scooter only has one dial, which goes from turtle on the left to rabbit on the right. My mom definitely preferred to rabbit away on that scooter. She zoomed through the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Legoland, Universal Studios, and Disney Hollywood Studios like it was a getaway car, deftly maneuvering through throngs of people, around couples and wayward toddlers and large unruly families like ours. She sped up ramps to the scooter and wheelchair accessible entrances to rides and attractions. She executed tight turns. She sometimes gave rides to the youngest members of our party, who could most easily fit on her lap, when they got tired of walking. She cruised through gift shops. She circled around to find the perfect shady spot to park in while waiting for others to go on roller coasters or anything fast or spinny that wasn’t her cup of tea. She did not, as far as I know, run over anyone except for the feet of some family members when we were standing around not paying attention to when she was ready to drive. Not really her fault. And she never crashed. She sidled up to a handsome young guy on a scooter to ask how long his battery lasted because hers seemed to be fading midway through the day. They compared notes companionably.
We noticed during all five days at the park that the scooter rental companies in Orlando are doing a booming business. And the drivers of the scooters are diverse. You might expect most of them to be older people with mobility issues, which certainly accounted for many of them, but not nearly all. The man my mom chatted with couldn’t have been out of his 20s. I wondered if he was a combat-injured veteran, but really he could’ve had any kind of condition that made walking long distances challenging. It didn’t matter. I also saw pregnant women driving scooters. I remember just walking through the National Zoo when I was nine months pregnant and desperately wishing I could flag down an employee driving a golf cart to give me a lift. The fact is that these parks are gigantic, and you often have to criss cross back and forth to go on the rides you want to go on when the lines are shortest, and you cover a lot of territory. If walking far is difficult or painful, as it is for many people, the scooter is genius.
Often during our trip as I watched my mom’s back as she zoomed away, I imagined how powerful she must have felt driving that scooter. She didn’t have to use a cane or be pushed in a wheelchair. She didn’t have to ask anyone for help. She didn’t have to hope that the rest of us would wait up while she took a break on a bench. She didn’t have to miss anything. And she could go fast. I don’t know when the last time would’ve been that she could get somewhere faster than the rest of us, but it’s been a while. Sometimes we would be standing around trying to figure out where our next destination was and suddenly realize she had sped off, and we’d have to run to catch up to her.
While we were on vacation my mom mused about how having a scooter like this at home would enable her to do things she hasn’t been able to comfortably or easily do on her own for years, like go shopping. She wondered why they don’t have scooters for rent at Tyson’s Corner. I wondered that too. While the concentration of people needing scooters would not be quite as large as at Disney, surely there would be enough to make it worthwhile for the mall to have some on hand. They rent strollers, why not mobility scooters?
I’ve thought about the power and independence my mom could reclaim if she had a scooter at her disposal all the time. But she couldn’t take it out of the car and put it together and then take it apart again and put it back in the car by herself. And if she had to have someone with her all the time to do that for her, she wouldn’t really have the independence that she wants. She’s not in a position where she needs a custom van with a scooter lift. She can walk. I don’t know the solution to this yet, but I feel sure it’s out there somewhere. If we did get my mom a scooter of her own, we would have to customize it so she could have her Diet Coke easily accessible and it wouldn’t spill, she could fit her purchases in a large basket, and there would be red flames painted on the sides because she loves speed.
One of the best parts of the vacation for me was seeing my mom go full rabbit on her scooter all through every park, knowing that she had all the power she wanted.
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(originally published on invocations.blog)
So much is out of our control
who moves in next door
who doesn’t clean up
after their dog
on the sidewalk
in front of
your house
When the bus finally arrives
Whether the check
is in the mail
How your boss
behaves
How anyone
behaves
Who lets you in when
you’re trying to
turn left out of your
neighborhood onto
Columbia Pike
Who stops when
you’re trying to
cross the street
Who is having a bad day
and takes it out
on you
who holds
the door open for you and
all the kids you’ve brought along
and smiles and doesn’t seem to mind
that they are oblivious to the fact of the door
How viruses mutate
whether the nurse assigned to your room
has ever taken care of a patient like you before
Whether the people in charge of your country
decide to start a war
against another country or
against you
Whether someone who looks like you–even a little bit
commits a crime
What DNA you inherit
What your mother did
or did not do while you were
becoming human
Whether she brought you
into the world with joy
or despair
Whether you get put in the class
of a kind kindergarten teacher
or one who should have
already retired or found
another steelier line of work
So much is out of our control
it is a miracle that we find
at the end of the day that
a single thing we set out to do
has been done
A testament
to our optimistic persistence
that we write out
yet another to do list
naively determined to try again
even though
so much is out of our control
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(originally published on invocations.blog)
My main skill
on the soccer field
is getting in people’s way
Also I can cheer
I am not fast
No matter how many
games I play
or watch
I cannot see
what needs to happen
beyond my need to kick
the ball away from me
toward someone who will
know better than I do
what to do with it
Nothing that happens
on a field
or with a ball
or on a court
or in a pool
or on a track
or on a mat
comes easily to me
This is not to say I am weak
because I AM strong
I can be fierce
and determined
and endure
but it is
never
ever
easy
I watch my teammates
sprint toward the ball
maneuver around our opponents
boot the ball gloriously
through the air
with what seems
to me like
no effort at all
I hear them talk about the other team’s
offense and defense
and which players
are the ones
to watch
“All we need to do is…”
they explain
on the sidelines
but I don’t
really
understand
still I will jog onto the field
and see who I need to
get in the way of
when she has the ball
and maybe steal the ball
if i’m lucky
and pass it
and cheer loudly
for whoever
takes it down the field
to score
You Ask a Lot of Questions 