This place seems as good as any to see a ghost this tantalizing space between vulnerable and safe the constant creaking of wood wind shaking the tops of trees the insistent clank of boats knocking against their moorings lapping of the dark water on the banks of the invisible canal distant chorus of frogs I can see no one but I am surrounded by the night
All evening while everyone else was playing and eating and swimming and reading bedtime stories I was plastered to the bed by a migraine only vaguely aware of anything else Still more hours lost to pain
And now, while everyone else sleeps I keep watch from the screened porch of someone else’s house who I have never met
In a few minutes I’m headed to a school board meeting to speak on behalf of protections for trans kids in our school system, such as training teachers to effectively support them, and letting trans kids use the bathrooms and locker rooms in which they feel comfortable.
Here’s what I plan to say:
Good evening members of the school board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Betsy Rosenblatt Rosso. I have lived in Arlington for 22 years. I have two children in Arlington Public Schools, and I have been a school volunteer for several years and an occasional substitute teacher.
The summer after fifth grade, my daughter’s best friend came out to her as non-binary and later as transgender. I know the evolution of their identity was not out of the blue, it was not on a whim, and it was certainly not easy. Thankfully, their parents have been supportive, and their school has helped ease the transition.
People have asked me how my daughter reacted to her friend’s transition. My daughter has not missed a beat in her unconditional love and support of her friend. Why would she? The only thing that’s changed is my daughter is now incredibly well-informed about the LGBTQIA+ community, and she is quick to correct me if I accidently use the wrong pronouns.
I’m also glad my six-year-old son has had this personal experience to learn about gender diversity. He creates elaborate family structures with his collection of stuffed animals. Some are straight and some are LGBTQIA+. This little purple sloth is named River, and he is female to male trans. My son decided this, on his own. He gets it. He loves all his stuffed animals for who they are.
I know a lot of LGBTQIA+ kids, some of whom are trans. I have several friends from our Unitarian Universalist church and the community who have adult kids who are trans. They all have their own unique stories of recognizing their gender identities, but I know in every case, these identities did not develop out of the blue, or on a whim. It’s not easy to come out and live as who you know you are inside, even if that isn’t how you’ve presented before. It’s so important for APS to train teachers to support trans youth and to ensure schools foster an accepting and inclusive climate. These are critical factors in reducing the high risk of attempted suicide among LGBTQIA+ youth.
Trans youth and adults are often on the receiving end of bullying and assault. They are not perpetrators. Trans youth and adults are not pretending or dressing up as another gender so they can harm others or have an advantage in sports. They are trans because owning and identity is necessary for their survival, even if it’s incredibly challenging in mainstream society. No one takes a transition lightly, whether they are 5 or 15 or 55. They do it so they can be at peace with themselves and feel as fully human and whole as they were born to be.
I support the school board’s proposed policies to protect the rights and safety of trans kids in our schools, and to train teachers and staff to effectively support these kids. Our community must demonstrate that we support and embrace kids for who they are. All of us are worthy and deserving of that respect.
They were invited to take off their shoes and socks which is usually NOT allowed at school but this was barefoot day in kangaroo class
On the concrete floor the teachers had taped down bubble wrap (the kind with big bubbles and the kind with small bubbles) that padding that goes under carpet and lengths of textured yellow foam– packing material that could be a topographical map of another planet
Along one wall of the classroom they laid out a long sheet of brown butcher paper with gallons of bright paint at one end
Each child who wanted to (which was not everyone– some built train tracks or sculpted play dough or did wooden puzzles of farm animals and vehicles) chose red or yellow or blue paint and the teachers poured a puddle onto a square of bubble wrap and the child stepped in
The teachers had to hold the hand of each child as they squished their toes into the paint because paint on bubble wrap can be quite slippery when you’re two or three years old
Walking along the brown paper path they left small footprints until they came to the end where I had filled a big blue basin with warm water and they stepped in and i washed their feet with my hands even though they did not know me at all they leaned on my shoulders to steady themselves as I gently lifted one foot and then the other to wipe away the paint
Then I held their hands as they stepped out of the water onto a towel where I dried their feet and wiped off smears of paint from their ankles that I had missed (there was still some paint between their toes, but I had to keep the line moving)
Soon they would return having left more footprints now in blended colors because eventually all the paint mixed together
and I would wash their feet again and now they knew me as the lady who was there to wash and dry their feet (still between their toes the paint clung) and they smiled at me in wonder, so delighted by what they had done
At the end, one of the teachers decided to walk through the paint and down the brown paper path and one of the little girls quickly took her hand to walk beside her and make sure she was steady
A place I like to walk is the aisles of the specialty pharmacy where they carry one of seemingly everything for any ailment or stage of life like breastfeeding supplies and tiny vials of baby medicine and one whole wall filled with compression stockings another lined with wheelchairs, motorized recliners, and furniture and accessories for your toileting ease don’t forget the aisle of tall candles and boxed thank you cards because you’re never too ill or incontinent for elegance or good manners.
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
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?”
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.
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
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
I keep thinking about these positive self-talk charts I see from time to time on Facebook. They’re usually designed for teachers to use with students, or for people with ADHD or various learning differences. Here’s one example I found after a quick Google search.
So even though it’s not specifically listed here, I’m trying not to keep saying, “I am terrible at following through with a plan to do something every day,” such as, say, writing 100 words. Because I can clearly demonstrate that I am capable of doing some things every day. I brush my teeth. I feed and care for my children. I feed myself. And usually I do a number of other required tasks also, although not necessarily every day. So I am trying to remind myself that even if there are days that I haven’t written here (because rarely does a day go by that I’m not writing something) that doesn’t mean that I should give up on the challenge.
Last week Zoe and I went to see Jacqueline Woodson–one of our favorite authors–speak at Central Library. Woodson has written many middle grade and young adult novels and memoirs as well as amazing picture books. After she was interviewed by librarian Diane Kersh and she read a couple of her picture books, Woodson took questions from the audience. One woman asked if Woodson keeps a journal, which it turns out she doesn’t. Woodson said whenever she’s tried to journal, she just feels like she should be writing something for one of the books she’s always working on. The woman who asked the question said she keeps four journals, each with a different purpose. I don’t remember what her four journals are for, but I was exhausted at the thought. There are always so many things in my head that I want to write about but that amount of time and differentiation is beyond me.
On top of loving Woodson’s writing, I really enjoyed what she had to say at the library. Zoe and her friend Andrea, who we ran into at the event, asked Woodson how and when she started writing. She said (and she mentions this in her memoir in verse–Brown Girl Dreaming) that when she was a child she frequently got in trouble for lying. Until one day a teacher told her that if she wrote it down it wasn’t a lie–it was fiction.
When Kersh introduced Woodson, Kersh cited someone whose name I didn’t catch who had talked about the importance of kids reading books whose characters were “mirrors and windows,” meaning the readers see some people like themselves with whom they can easily identify, and other characters who are different in any number of ways, who provide a window into other identities, cultures, backgrounds, etc. I love this concept. And I especially love that, after a lifetime of reading mostly mirrored books, I am flying through one window after another after another. And that Zoe, who has only been reading novels for a few years, has already read enough windows that I feel confident she will not get stuck in her own mirror. I love the fact that so many phenomenal authors are telling stories that are mirrors for kids who’ve had painfully few mirrors, and windows for kids who are thirsty for new views. Especially as I’ve spent a lot of time in my church and in my community and in our country learning about white supremacy culture and white privilege, I am reminded again and again about the power of books to cultivate understanding and empathy. I am convinced that there are some books that, if every human read them, humanity would be changed for the better.
Recently at my church we had an outstanding workshop called Beyond Categorical Thinking, designed to help our congregation think more openly and broadly about ourselves and the kind of minister we want to call, as we are engaged in the ministerial search process. Rev. Keith Kron, who led the workshop, (and has led this workshop in UU congregations hundreds of times before), said that one of the most common concerns in congregations about calling a minister of color, or an LGBTQIA+ minister, or a minister with a disability, is that they will be a “single-issue minister” and all they will preach about from the pulpit is race, or sexuality, or ableism. One of the activities we did during the workshop was to discuss in small groups how our childhoods and lives might have been different if we had been born a different gender or sexuality, a different race or ethnicity, a different religion, or with different abilities. I encourage you to think about that. What opportunities would you have had or might you have been denied, in any of those scenarios? There’s a lot more I could say about this, but as usual it’s past midnight. My point is that it isn’t actually that hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, through a book of windows, or imagining an alternative path for your life.
Jacqueline Woodson said everyone has a story to tell and everyone has a right to tell their story. I believe that 100%. And what’s more, I think we have an obligation to bear witness to the stories that others are telling.
