Giving Birth to an Empty Uterus.

Recently I had been having this issue, not a femergency necessarily, but still a feminine issue I needed to get checked out by the Gyno Doc.  I went.  She checked me out and said, well I didn't find anything, but just to be sure, let's do an ultrasound to have a better look at your woman parts.  So I did.  I had never had one before.  The technician put the gelatinous stuff on my lower belly and expertly placed the blunted wand above my nethers.  And Waaa!  there was my uterus on the screen in front of me, and Waaa!  there were my ovaries too.  My uterus was empty.  My ovaries were... eh, oval.

Hi You, its Us!, Uterus and Oval Ovaries sang in chorus as they stared back at me.

They looked okay, the radiant technician noted, nothing alarming here.  Thank the Lord.

I sort of pranced out of the doctor's office glad to have that over, deeply grateful for the good news, and deeply grateful to still have some medical insurance.  As the week proceeded, however, the vision of my empty uterus began to plague me.  Popping up in my thoughts.  A vision in the back of my head.  There is something profound about seeing that at 37 years old.  My feelings and ideas are still inchoate, but there is something really rich and melancholy about it.  I am yet unable to articulate what is going on with me about it.

So I began painting... Uterus and Oval Ovaries are me and I am them.

"Empty Uterus"

So far its called Empty Uterus.  But I'm not done, and maybe it should be called Empty Uterus, Full Life.  I don't know yet.

Women's Healing Prayer.

G

lory be to Thee, O Lord my God!  I beg of Thee by Thy Name through which He Who is Thy Beauty hath been stablished upon the throne of Thy Cause, and by Thy Name through which Thou changest all things, and gatherest together all things, and callest to account all things, and rewardest all things, and preservest all things, and sustainest all things—I beg of Thee to guard this handmaiden who hath fled for refuge to Thee, and hath sought the shelter of Him in Whom Thou Thyself art manifest, and hath put her whole trust and confidence in Thee.

She is sick, O my God, and hath entered beneath the shadow of the Tree of Thy healing; afflicted, and hath fled to the City of Thy protection; diseased, and hath sought the Fountainhead of Thy favors; sorely vexed, and hath hasted to attain the Wellspring of Thy tranquillity; burdened with sin, and hath set her face toward the court of Thy forgiveness.

Attire her, by Thy sovereignty and Thy loving-kindness, O my God and my Beloved, with the raiment of Thy balm and Thy healing, and make her quaff of the cup of Thy mercy and Thy favors.  Protect her, moreover, from every affliction and ailment, from all pain and sickness, and from whatsoever may be abhorrent unto Thee.

Thou, in truth, art immensely exalted above all else except Thyself.  Thou art, verily, the Healer, the All-Sufficing, the Preserver, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Merciful.

- Bahá’u’lláh

FREE BUNNA FOR EVERYONE!

How's that for an alarming title?

shamelessly stolen from HowtoCookGreatEthiopian.com

BUNNA!  BUNNA!  I screamed it in my head this morning, having realized at 4 am that I totally had no coffee whatsoever to get up and make.  Again.  For the 2nd negligent day in a row.

The title of this blog post is entirely misleading and patently false in its advertisement.  I am not giving coffee to everyone.  Unless, you know, one by one each individual person wants to come to my bohemian hermitage and huddle around my little table and drink coffee with me and tell me their stories.  Then, its free coffee for you!  And you!  And you!

Earlier, I stumbled into the grocery store at 5:30 am searching for a little, cheap tin of coffee.  The only woman working, at the express lane, was an enthusiastic, high energy Black woman who kept saying "MMmmmm Yes, girl!"  which I found super charming.  She was tall with short hair, bright pink lipstick and a radiant smile.  Having inquired as to how she manages to exude such infectious bouyancy at such a wee morning hour and whether she drinks coffee, she emphatically proclaimed "MMmmm, Yes, girl!" and pointed to the tall to-go cup of coffee sitting by the register.  I smiled.  I drove back home like a zombie.

Plopped myself in front of the computer and listened to the blub-blub-gurgle-gurgle of the coffee maker.

Moments thereafter, I sipped on my dark, rich, embarrassingly cheap-no-standards-coffee-for-the-masses and I read about how to stay wild and also the trouble with the snooze button.  

Now, I will do some immigration work before I go pick up my son and go to the Baha'i center.

Happy Sunday.

He's SO LUCKY.

We are all so sick of the word 'privilege' that we could puke for distance at a high velocity and take out the nuclear warheads in Pakistan.  Even anti-racists are sick of that bloody term.

So what I am going to use instead of the word privilege is a far more insidious word.  A word that is the proverbial red-headed stepchild of adoption discourse:

LUCKY.

*pauses to give audience time to recover from collective gasping and shuddering*

My kid is lucky.

OUCH.

Oh yeah.  That is possibly the worst adoption community violation you can make, calling your kid lucky.  I am risking getting ostracized here.  But for a second let's strip away the adoption story.  Just for a smidgen.  Let's pretend my kid is a just a person in the world.  For a tiny moment that will capsize in two seconds time, let's strip away everything about adoption, race, and loss.

Let's just talk about resources.

Holiday Cookie Making!

Our beautiful Tiny Solstice Tree!

My kid goes to Kindergarten in an affluent community in a big, hella diverse city with loads upon loads of cool, cultural resources and with an entrenched, historical, culturally-rich Black and immigrant community.  On top of that, he sleeps in a bedroom that is all his own in two different locations; one where his Dad lives, the other where his Mom lives.  His parents are progressive enough to live a few miles from each other and to passionately share the perspective that they should get along and work towards their kid's best interests.  My kid will start going to Spanish class once a week before his Kindergarten class starts.  After his Kindergarten class, once a week, he will also go to theatre class.  On top of this, my kid goes to Tae Kwon Do twice a week and this Tae Kwon Do is no joke either in terms of expense or value; it is uber pricey, it is wonderful!  At 5 years old, my kid has traveled all over the place.  He has been to Alaska, British Columbia Canada, Cairo Egypt, has visited Ethiopia since being united with his adoptive parents, has traveled all over Texas, has spent over a week on the beach in Florida, has been to New York City several times, upstate New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle. He gets to hang out at his paradisaical grandparent's farm out in the Midwest and help harvest vegetables and feed cows.  Museums?  Galore.  Restaurants?  As if.  Kid activities and events out the wazoo.  My kid gets a flu shot every year.  My kid regularly goes to the doctor AND the dentist.  My kid goes to adoption gatherings.  Let's talk about toys and gadgets, shall we?  At his Dad's he gets to play on the iPad with a much greater frequency than I am comfortable with.  He has a drum set.  A guitar.  A kid's trampoline.  Baseball bats, soccer balls, footballs.  Puzzle sets, plastic toys of every nature you can imagine.  [And the amount of toys he has is actually minimal compared to the amount of toys his peers have, by design.]  Cars, trucks ad infinitum.  I ordered him a train set for Christmas.  We haven't even gotten to BOOKS yet.  By design, this kid has an overwhelming, outrageous, flowing out of every hole in my apartment, amount of children's books on every subject, lofty, superficial, deep, educational, super-hero-ey, you can possibly imagine.  Not to mention, we live three blocks away from the most precious children's library in town that is CHOCK full of gorgeous children's books and educational toys and guest children's entertainers.  That library just had a parade and a celebration with cake and people dressed up like Dr. Suess's cat-in-hat etc.

He has two parents; both of which are lawyers, that really love him and care deeply for him and do everything they can for him.

This kid, as a kid in the world, is one lucky kid.

I don't expect him to appreciate this, or be thankful, or even like it.  (Especially not at this age, not that it wouldn't be nice if someday he appreciated these things in the contextual abstract sense.)

But the luck he has in terms of resources is out of this world.  I did not get a lot of this stuff growing up, and I had a pretty decent childhood.

Last night I was watching this Aileen Wuornos documentary.  Man, what a fucked up childhood.  I felt sorry for her.  Yes, I felt sorry for the men she blasted away, but I felt really sorry for her too.  That is a sad, sad childhood for one person in the world.

Motherhood: Devil in Details.

A few mornings in the past couple of months have had me up early sewing thick star patches on my tiny son's Tae Kwon Do uniform.  They are hard to sew on.  Ironing them on is not an option.  I only get around to sewing them on less occasions than I'd like to; the occasions during which I reduce the small pile of stars collected in a plastic plate.  Mostly, even when I am a tad late or a tad rushed, I take good care of my Mom business.  My son is well-fed (lots of vegetables), he is clean, he is loved, he is learning a lot.  He seems fairly emotionally balanced and happy especially given the upheaval of the past year.  I take him lots of places.

A perfect Mom I am not by any stretch.  I work full-time.  I come home exhausted after battling daily apocalyptic traffic.  A procrastinating grunt, I rush and yell sometimes in order to get my son out the door and to school in the mornings.  I am impatient.  I expect a lot.

But often I can be good.  A decent, affectionate, attentive, present mother.

I sew his stars on.  Not always timely.  His ardent participation in the discipline itself takes priority over the sewing of the stars.  He is at Tae Kwon Do, as required, twice a week.

Sewing on his stars at 6 am in the morning makes me feel like a Mom.

I have this vivid memory of this one heart-rendering moment, among others, when I viscerally felt I embodied Mother.  Last Spring.  I stood on the sidelines of a soccer field watching my son and his pint-sized team mates scrabble, fumble, kick and whine over a jostling soccer ball.  I remember seeing my son look up and scan the sidelines looking for his person.  All the kids had a person there, a person who was intently watching their clumsy beginner athlete moves, a person who was connected to them, a person they knew and trusted, a person who would jump and scream and call their name and clap and send waves of positive energy out into the field to touch upon the heart of the mini zealot chasing the ball.

Amidst all the chaos unfolding on the field, my son stopped, looked over at the sidelines.  His eyes scanned until they found me.  And he smiled!   I think I saw his puffed chest relax a bit.  Once he found me, he sprang into action again and rejoined the organized mess of small feet whacking at an escaping ball.

I felt so proud to be there for him.  Moved to tears that I was his.

Fractures.

"Life, art and emotion are inherently messy. This acceptance of messiness has been my turning point. I now embrace that I have a messy soul, mind and heart. They are filled with joy, and filled with defeat. They bounce between success and failure, tears of happiness and tears of sadness, earth-shaking love and underworld-shivering loneliness. Containing multitudes means not just embracing different facets of the good; it also means accepting the faults and failures. The reason I could not do this before? I could not sit calmly in the mess. I never understood that beauty develops precisely because of, not despite, the fractures we experience...

Among other changes, I want to (re)discover a feeling of fearless love, toward life and toward myself and toward the passion and willingness to be vulnerable and caring that have led to the best things in my life. Somewhere along the line, fear sneaked in, snatched that away, and sabotaged the good. I want it back."  

~ Patrick Linder

Eat a Turkey, Kiss a Goat.

Accept invitations from far-flung, soul friends

Fly north for the winter

Wink at the feathery juggernaut overheard

Camera snuggle with wild abandon

When your heart is a salty pretzel

And your mind occasionally shudders at the mysterious, winding future

A future as fleeting as the present, as precious as the past

Think of splattered bright gold paint on a canvas

How it mimics a dripping ray of brilliant sun

How it materializes a five year old’s wonder

Listen as your leather boots lightly crackle the frosted grass

As you glide across the acreage of a charming property you can’t afford

With your beautiful, dark-skinned lover on your heels, never close enough

Laugh at diminutive ears on a noisy, round-bellied goat

Tilt at the waist

Pucker up


- written by me