calamity's child

this is what it looks like, in my mind. i’ve been here in new york since 2003. lived in philadelphia for a tiny two-year bit, and still it apparently can’t seep into my bones, that this isn’t home. i thought it had, had made myself believe that it had, for a while. but this last trip home has taught me different. those clouds, that water, those green hills, the valley you are within between two ranges, the sound you are surrounded by, the sunbreak moments of relief. that mountain looming over everything in case you forgot and started to think that you are the center of the universe: you are not.

the people drive slowly. how slow, you wonder? VERY  SLOWLY. i learned to drive in ballard, which is not that different from learning to drive in minnesota or anywhere else where there is a high ratio of scandinavians. what do i mean? this:

this is exactly why i don’t drive in new york. i’m happy to drive like i’m from ballard. and happy to keep my ass off the street in new york. it’s like those people who stop at the top/middle/bottom of the subway stairs: they shouldn’t be taking the subway until they learn to operate in the flow of traffic because they just make everyone else pissed off and people accidentally walk into them and then they get upset, but they don’t realize that it could all have been averted if only they moved to the side after they weren’t on the stairs or near the entrance. if i drove in new york, i would be like the most annoying new york pedestrian ever, but instead of being walked into, i would be driven into, and everyone would be so much more upset.

anyway. home. maybe it is actually better to be a fast-moving west coaster than a slow-desiring new yorker. my family was so happy to have me there, and i enjoyed being able to introduce e to them and to hang out with my nieces and nephews and grampa and to have life be pleasant and full of abundance and greenness and so much walking and so many hills and so much nature around me that i had to acknowledge all of the time that me and my kind are not the center of anything besides our own overwrought brains.

the most trying thing about new york for me is that to survive it, to thrive in it, we have to believe all the time that we matter more than anything, that we deserve everything we want and are fighting for, and that somehow, miraculously, we are going to get it. because even having a house, having food, having water, having healthcare is a struggle, the extra stuff: green, blue, kites, play is icing, not necessity. what a strange life. dorothy allison sums up my feeling on this matter most succinctly: “survival is the least of my desires” (skin: talking about sex, class, and literature, pp. 211-216). i have spent so much – too much – of my life in survival mode that i can’t imagine choosing a life where survival is the best of what’s imagineable. i don’t want to survive. i want to thrive, to delight, to have as much joy and abundance as possible, to help others have the same. can i get that there? most days, i can’t even imagine how.

the nw is the most abundant place i can imagine. there are still cheap places to live, to buy food, to grow your own food, to visit. and there is life everywhere. it can’t help growing. like this moss, here. moss will grow on anything; trees will grow on anything and will grow roots strong enough to bust up the cement. the plates below the earth are active, and will tell you through earthquakes and the various volcanoes around the pacific rim that fuel the amazing hotsprings in the mountains. you can not help but know that there is life bubbling up *everywhere.*

i want to be where life is. i want to be surrounded by so much awe and beauty that is not made my me and my kind, but that we have a responsibility to preserve. of course there is beauty out here in the east, that is just as old and just as majestic. but it does not tower above me here in the city: the skyscrapers and projects and apartment buildings do. what does it take for new yorkers to get it through their (our) heads that there is life, abundant life, outside of this tiny bubble of a world, that we are not the center of anything?

what do you do when you have to see your estranged-for->5-years mother on your younger sister’s wedding day? this is the main question on my mind.  no matter the normal omg-my-younger-sister’s-getting-married-and-almost-has-a-phd-and-i’m-32-and-not-even-competent-in-hebrew-enough-to-apply-for-rabbinic-school-yet feelings; there are also the how-do-you-talk-to-your-estranged-parent feelings. it’s a lot like standing in the doom-path of a falling boulder.

and really, for most of the two months that i’ve known this visit is coming up, that’s how i’ve felt. because really! how can you not! but now it’s 5 days before hand and i have far more pressing concerns. like:

• what should i eat!
• what should i wear!
• how many times can i make e ride the ferry!
• should i dye a red streak in my hair?
• how much fun will my other younger sisters and their babies be to dance with at the wedding?!
• how many maple bars can one person eat in a week?
• what are their faces going to look like when they see me in that dress with those heels and this hair? it’s a version of me they’ve never seen before! fun for everyone!

it all feels very much like an adventure. you start at the lowest place, looking up, thinking, jesus h christ, i’m never going to make it way up there. but little by little you get it done. select your outfit. remember your going-home rituals. decide to bring your girlfriend along for comfort, laughter, and protection. and then suddenly you’re climbing easily, becoming more brazen, and accepting your sister’s invitation to read the biblical text at the wedding (1 corintheans 13, of course). there is no way to hide from your estranged mother, so you might as well read to her from the altar:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

because somehow, maybe she will hear in that a bit of the truth, and seek teshuva, and there will be the slightest glimmer of space made.

or maybe she won’t, but at least i’ll look fucking awesome up there in my dress and heels and hair, and that’s something, too.

I’m on the B, on my way into work this morning. I had forgotten I’d put Whitney on my ipod: the greatest love of all came on.

My gramma listened to the soft rock and power ballads station. My musical life at her house was the Beatles, Elton John, Boston, and Whitney, to name some. We would sit at the dining room table, me doing homework or coloring or reading and always singing under my breath, her needlepointing Renoir replicas* or reading. We would talk intermittently, stop for meal preparation, sometimes I’d get bored and go to my grampa who was inevitably at his computer with the local jazz station playing.

This morning, maybe there was something about the light in the train that reminded me of her home in Spokane. Or maybe I caught the right phrase at the right time, but there was a lyric, a breath, a pause, and then my heart broke again.

My gramma died on April 19, 2004. I miss her madly all the time, but more in these weeks leading up to her yarzheit than ever. I mark her yartzheit not on the lunar calendar, because she was not Jewish. But it is right to honor the dead. With lights and prayers and memories and heartbreak years after the fact, reminding me that mourning is never really done. It just becomes part of me, healing over as a scar, becoming part of my skin and bones and daily life.

So singing along to Whitney this morning, this song is for you, Shirley. May your memory be a blessing.

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* Really, my gramma did this. She also made needlepoint replicas of blue and white china patterns and British tapestries. Because she’s British, and apparently this is what my people do.

the free siddur project is new to me, but something of a godsend. i don’t read hebrew. have some basic recognition, can sometimes follow along, but have a hard time with it and absolutely need transliteration to be able to access prayer in services. thing is, i tend to like a fairly traditional service, and i like sim shalom, and it’s not really the case that congregations that use sim shalom have a lot of transliterations kicking around. also, i like to make things at home, and i don’ t have kol haneshamah to help me out, so the free siddur project is totally an amazing resource: there’s everything you could want, in both hebrew and transliteration. no translation, so that part of the accessing is still difficult, but it totally makes participation possible.

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i went to mincha with my rabbi on wednesday, to park slope jewish center. no transliteration for that, either, but i did ok in holding my own, and only once was i in the wrong place and standing when everyone else was sitting (lost in my own little world of prayer). i love the amidah. i can’t say it enough, i love the amidah. the thing that’s different about weekday services of course is that prayers of supplication and petitioning are offered up, as it’s “normal” time, not celebration time, like it is on shabbat. i like the attention to intent: if we are celebrating, don’t ask god for things. if it’s a regular day, it’s fine. even more than that, though, in one of the amidah prayers, there is this line that basically says: i tried everything else god, and now i’m asking you: please help.

this is how i think of intercessionary prayer. god just doesn’t come on in and work things out for us. no way at all. and so having that be the first step, totally doesn’t make sense to me. i understand the comfort of it, understand the inclination, but in terms of actual belief in god and what that means for my own actions and obligations, it just doesn’t make sense. so this pleading, this hit me hard. i tried everything else, god. and now i’m asking you. god is a last resort in terms of helpers. we look first at ourselves and our community, at the resources around us, at the things that we can do and changes that we can make, and then we ask god. largely, it seems, to console ourselves, and to connect when we are feeling sad and dire.

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there is a tsunami warning in washington, oregon, california. it won’t be as bad in any of those places as it is in japan, guam, hawai’i, and all the little islands that have been washed over, and all the islands and land that are closer to japan. but my family are in seattle and san francisco, and i am scared, irrationally. i called my dad, and everything there is fine. next, calling m. i know in my heart that everything is ultimately going to be ok. but i have spent my life waiting for “the big one” that will send the west coast off into the pacific. my reaction in moments like this is not to thank god that i am 3000 miles away on the east coast and therefore 3000 miles away from volcanic plate techtonics and their accompanying tsunamis. my reaction is to be upset that i’m not there, too. not because i want to be in the action, but because i want to be with the people who matter so much to me, facing the earth’s whims together.

a and i have a tradition (it’s the second year it’s happened, that makes it tradition, of course) of going to the donut diner, aka donette, for hanukkah. you can get donuts AND fried potatoes (though no latkes) at the same time. and other fried delicacies. last night included mozarella sticks, fries, a reuben for a, a boston cream donut, the best jelly donut, and the twist that was our menorah.

hanukkah is not my favorite holiday. i love the lights. i really like hanukkiahs. i love donuts and latkes and pretty much all fried things. resisting imperialism is one of the most important tasks to the liberation of all people that i can think of, and i do believe that sometimes that will be through violent revolution. and the maccabbean revolt is complicated. and another example of revolution so that the jews could go on to conquer other lands and kill many other people so that all the land and all the people can be jewish. it’s complicated. is this what olam haba looks like? i do not think so.

but i can light lights and remember hanukkah miracles, and light them towards the olam haba i do believe in: racial, economic, and gender justice, true religious pluralism for people of all (including no) religious traditions, and plenty of space for light, joy, laughter.

my gramma and i spent the summers sitting in her yard in spokane. we both loved the sun, wanted to be in it as much as possible. she would work on her roses (she had one for each of her kids, and her two grand kids), tend the weeds, sit and smoke, join me at the table to read, and she would always be drinking either wine (white or pink) with ice cubes in it, or iced nestea. my grampa, who’s allergic to sun, would join us for brief moments, when it got too quiet in the house. i would poke around in the yard, play with my sister, or read. we would go in and out of talking. sometimes a neighbor would pop their head over the fence, into the backyard, or around from the garage, and we would talk a while, or i would go off with a friend. but mostly, it was just my gramma and i at the porch table, sunning, quietly talking, reading. it was calm. peaceful. i could just be there, present, and happy. i miss those summers more than anything.

it is thanksgiving day and again i am not in seattle with my biological family. and this year, am pretty without anything i would call a “chosen family.”
this is the time of year that i find most difficult. a collective weight of expectation that things are as they should be. i feel this time of year that i am always just where i am: working hard to get at family, at community, at my self, but not quite there. this year i’ve been unable to decide: should i go to a friend’s house, or just stay home and make macaroni and cheese? i’m going to a friend’s, because it seems to depressing the other way, and because my friend is a dear friend, who is family to me also. but i’m unsure what the point of even celebrating this holiday is.

there is the history of colonization, for which it stands. there is the force of expectation of being with (blood) family, even if that family is bad or complicated for you. there is the production of chosen family, which is sometimes reliant and sometimes not. and there is the attempt to figure out something to do in the midst of this holiday that is both nurturing and honest. shifting to gratitude only doesn’t even do that: it erases the legacy of colonization and destruction that created this country and this holiday.

deep down, i want to be with m. want to start drinking gin at noon while we’re cooking and listening to tina turner, want to have some friends over and be easy. there are a few people that i have made thanksgiving with every year since 2004, and this is the first year i am having thanksgiving with none of them. next year needs to be different, because this feels wrong and i feel unanchored and adrift in a holiday that barely even feels worth observing.

that said, i am grateful that i have a place to be, to not be alone here watching buffy and eating mac & cheese tonight. to be with a friend who is an old and dear friend, and maybe building towards a new future with this holiday. tonight will be good and full of food and friends and love, as well as recognition and mourning for the legacy of this day, and connecting and embracing of ancestors who pull us through.

my grandfather hates having his picture taken. won’t let it happen, if he has anything to do with it. i snapped a secret picture when i was in high school. he’s laughing, in my grandparents’ old house, in the kitchen, in spokane. the one that was there all through my childhood and was the closest to a childhood home i had. he is laughing, smiling, my grandpa who is a wisecracking but serious man. he makes donald duck voices and starts political fights and hides in his computer room with npr and the classical music station. this picture of my grampa is so rare, and captures so much of his spirit. he is 3000 miles away from me, but this picture makes me feel anchored to him, here.

my mother is from kennewick, wa and grew up in spokane. she, my dad, my aunts and uncles, and i all went to the same high school, inexplicably. we moved around so much growing up, it was just a matter of luck that i ended up in shadle park’s cachement area. my mother got pregnant early in life, and did her best. she and i are not on the same page, though: her best was not at all good for me. i grew up taking care of both her and my sister, and picking up the pieces when inevitably her relationships would end. i spent the last half of my high school years deciding whether or not i should move in with my dad in seattle or my grandparents i spokane. ultimately, i decided to stick it out and just sent my sister to live in seattle with my dad: my mother basically came home once a week my last year in high school. i have gone through phases of trying to be closer or more distant with her. right now, i am not speaking to her. i do not want to not speak with her forever, but i don’t know how to safely be in relationship with her, either.

my dad was born in london and moved around a lot as a child because my grampa was in the airforce. he’s lived in florida, germany, montana, and washington. he liked washington most. all my pictures from my childhood are with my dad – i don’t even remember doing things with my mother as a child. my dad and i, though, we would watch cooking shows and go swimming and he would take me to his friends’ house and let me sip beer out of the cans i would always steal from the coffee table, laughing as i grimaced and told him that beer was disgusting and i couldn’t believe he was drinking it. god only knows how that became a game for me. my parents divorced when i was 9 and my dad opted to not fight for custody of my sister and i, thinking that the fight would be worse than living with my mother, and that he wouldn’t win anyway (it was the 80s, he was probably right there). we saw him every other weekend and alternating years’ holidays, and the trips were precious moments where i just got to relax and breathe. it was like vacation from my life, and didn’t feel particularly like parenting. as an adult, i have no idea how to relate to him, nor he to me: he wants me to need him and to be like a kid to him. i have no idea how to do this, as i’ve taken care of myself for so long. he has tried hard to be supportive of me through my queerness and transness and religiousness and moving to new yorkness and becoming jewishness, but i know that i leave him mystified.

my step-mom and i share more than others in my family, regarding class. once we had a raucous conversation about having saltines as a meal, topped with savory condiments, with saltines and jam for desert. my dad was horrified. he didn’t grow up rich, or middle class even. just solidly working class. he hadn’t known what it was like to have to scrape together something like-a-meal out of nothing. my step-mom and i, though, we have. i appreciate, and need, this more than she knows. my sisters have had it much easier than both of us, thank god. but with my step-mom, more than anyone else, i feel the particular sting of being the one-who-left. silent pressure to address unspoken judgements: do you think you’re better than us? why won’t you ever come home? i don’t, at all, think that; i feel most at home in my adult life when i’m with people whose lives have been more like mine, like hers. though my sisters had it easier growing up, they certainly don’t have it easy now, and being around people whose lives are like theirs, and like my cousins, is essential to me. it keeps me anchored to myself, to my people, to my sense of rightness and realness in the world. we should all get to move, if we want. we should all get to go to good schools, if we want. we should all get to stay close to home to be with our own, if we want. my step-mom and i conflict, i think, because we are more like each other, and because she’s the only one who’s really called question to the level of autonomy and power that i’ve had in my early family arrangements.

my grandparents filled in where my parents left gaping holes. i could always be safe, and they would listen to me, be angry for and with me, let me sleep, let me be quiet, feed me. my grandparents gave me the space i needed to get through high school. my gramma, may her memory be for a blessing, died when i moved to new york. she made me promise not to come home for the first christmas after i moved, saying, if i could get through the first christmas alone, i could get through anything. it wasn’t so much separation from my family that was hard, but separation from her was terrible. she died before i got home again, but i have never regretted keeping that promise. she moved to the u.s. with my grampa, they got married in manchester (uk) during ww2. i have a picture of her where she’s smoking, looking fierce and angry in black eyeliner in florida, resenting the climate and wishing to be back in england. my grampa is quiet and reserved and looks like an old new york 1950s man. he is lovely and i miss him very much. he calls me buttercup. and because he lives with my dad and step-mom, he’s even more resigned than usual to talk on the phone, as he gets all the socializing he could really ask for.

i’m 31 and living in brooklyn, where i’ve been both since february 2009 and also since august 2003. for a couple years in between, i moved to philadelphia, which was a hard place for me to live. i went there to see if i should be in nyc or elsewhere on the east coast or if i should try the bay or move back to seattle. i decided to move back to the city, since i was coming here all the time anyway to see my friends, and i’m feeling out whether or not its forever or for now.

i moved to new york the first time to go to union theological seminary, where i got the second of my two theological degrees (ma in philosophy of religion; ba in theology and religious studies). i had wanted to move to new york since i was 7 or 8 and my gramma bought me this book, the saturdays, by elizabeth enright. i was instantly in love with nyc and the adventures the melandy kids took themselves on. it seemed to me, anything was possible in new york, and even at that young age, that was what i was looking for. and so, to new york city i went.

before the east coast, i have lived all over washington state.  mainly in seattle and spokane, where i was born and, though we moved a ton in between, i went to the same high school my parents had gone to, 20 years earlier. i moved back to seattle, where my dad has lived since i was 9, to go to college. i came out within my first 6 months of living in seattle, after having stealthily read and re-read am i blue? under my covers for years in spokane. i’ve had many comings-out since: i’ve come out as a lesbian, then as queer, as genderqueer, then as transgender, then as ftm, as a fag, as a guy, and, more recently, as not-a-guy, as gender non-conforming, and still queer as day. i like this life i’m making and know that it is more possible for living in new york than it would be other places.

here are some things that i’m doing that take up my time and energy and heart: i am a case manager doing peer-based work with transgender and gender non-conforming people in the tri-state area at a queer community health center; i am (hope upon hope) going to go to social work school in january to start work towards getting an msw focusing on clinical work with individuals and families, to become a therapist; i am in process to convert to judaism, working with reconstructionist rabbis; i am a member of a mussar va’ad (council); i like to cook and bake, and recently became a meat eater again; i’m working on co-writing my first chapter for an anthology on transgender and gender non-conforming people modeled after our bodies, ourselves.

in the past i have wanted to be a concert clarinetist, a professor (philosophy or theology), a teacher (h.s. english), a children’s librarian and, most notably, a pastor in the united methodist church. since leaving christianity and the umc, i have spent a lot of time trying to find a way to do the work to which i am called – multi-issue community organizing in a ritual context that is paired with struggling and learning and living and praying and loving in community with the dailiness of life. i’ve found it hard to figure out how to do that as not-a-religious-leader. right now i’m thinking that i’ll build a clinical practice that is built on my ethical and political values (self-determination, feminist, queer, anti-zionist, anti-colonialist, centralizing racial and economic justice, body politics that include varied dis/abilities), connect that to larger communities in brooklyn, and include a component of spiritual direction. i am really interested in processes related to grief, trauma, expansion, and self-actualization.

here are some things i love: the ocean, books, my cat (burt reynolds), dinner parties and meals with friends, thunder and lightening, the puget sound, ferries, food, old friends, quiet stillness, prayer, tarot, ghosts, fire escapes, jellyfish, crows, spiders, busses, 2 lane highways, cliffs/edges, really long walks, mystery, laughter and silliness.

astrology – sun: virgo; rising: cancer; moon: pisces; saturn: virgo; venus: virgo; mars: cancer
enneagram – 9w8, stack: sexual, self-pres, social