The orange cat is still missing. Our youngest daughter, fighting off the head cold the house has been passing around last week, attempted to pick up and cuddle our remaining cat for comfort, and was rewarded not with the big loud purrs of her sweet gone tom, but the claws and hissing of a black cat that only loves on her own terms.
Solace the black cat came to us the week my Grandfather died six years ago. The tiny black kitten had been dumped in the brown lot behind our Dekalb avenue loft by some asshole. People were always dumping things in that lot, especially the wealthy man from the north side who owned the property, despite the fact that the land was ringed by very expensive Inman Park homes on three sides and our sketchy condos on the fourth. My daughters and their nanny at the time – Alena, a recent college grad who picked them up from school and kept them safe until the husband and I could get home – saw the kitten with a can stuck on its head one afternoon. Once the can was removed from the lost kitten’s head, the small black creature decided it needed to live with us. When I got home from work that evening and settled into my blue recliner, the kids opened the door to show me the kitten outside, and said kitten ran in the door in an instant and right up my legs and onto my shoulder. I had just heard about Grandpa’s passing, and had the final argument with my mother over the phone that solidified our permanent estrangement. I admitted to the kids that the kitten could stay until we found it a new home as it purred in my ear and insisted that I could be loved, that I was loved, and that it didn’t matter that my Grandfather was dead and my mom never liked me anyway.
I still really did try to give the kitten away, even sending her away to another person, who brought her back the next day, complaining that the baby cat cried all night. I sighed and gave up then, posting my bike for sale to cover the vet costs, and that’s how Solace the cat came to live with us.
She was our older child’s kitten in many ways at first, but Solace also came to think of me as her person. My daughters could play too roughly with the kitten at times, making her dance until I told them to stop, or dressing the new pet in hats she didn’t care for. It was up to me as the adult to rescue the kitten from these situations, and so Solace became used to sleeping with me at night. She still does. Solace’s favorite thing in the whole world is just to lie on me or the husband at night, or during the day, or whenever we can be induced to lie on the bed. The best thing that ever happened, from Solace the cat’s perspective, was the quarantine period, because suddenly someone was available to sit on at all times. The more often we are in bed, the happier Solace the cat.
Despite her love of our company in bed or occasionally on the sofa, Solace does not like to be picked up. She is determined to cuddle on her own terms only after the excessive cuddles of the children in her first year with us. If my daughters lie on my bed or the floor, Solace may try to groom their hair or sit on a teen’s noggin until she squawks. Walnut, the orange tom who we acquired eighteen months after Solace from the old Decatur Cat House, was the cat who adored being carried around like a baby over the shoulder, the cat who could be cuddled and who would often demand to be picked up with loud yowls. Now that he is gone on his own adventure, we are left with just one cat to love the four of us, and she only does so on her terms.
The only times Solace the cat has been out of doors are when some asshole dumped her, that one night I tried to give her away, the times we’ve moved and the times she’s been to the vet. As far as Solace is concerned, the house’s front door leads only to bad things, and she actively runs from any door that leads outside. It’s not worth the risk to her of losing her warm and comfortable home. I wish Walnut had felt that way. People keep telling me stories about cats that have been returned to them or have turned back up after months away. I hope Walnut turns into one of those stories. Both of our cats, I suppose, have been good at teaching our daughters that you can never really make something love you the way you want. It just sucks that the loss of love is baked into that lesson.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Thursday, March 23, 2023
I had to lie down last week.
The weather shifted today in Atlanta, starting somewhere around 40F and going all the way up to 80F, a swing so sudden that it was upsetting, causing headaches and sneezing. I had the familiar nausea of change that happened too fast, and then found myself outside the house at the end of a day of work blinking at the clear blue sky and warmth where a cold overcast wind had cut through me just twelve hours before. I felt like I had been thrown into a new environment suddenly, like I went to work and came out into a different city. In some ways I had; the governor signed a genocidal sort of thing against trans kids, the prosecutors in downtown courtrooms insisted going to a concert made some other kids domestic terrorists, and everything suddenly seemed dangerous in ways it hadn’t before.
I’m having problems adjusting to the new reality reflected by the laws and cases happening around me, and along with the ongoing external turmoil, my own grief for life before the quarantine comes in waves. I had gotten back into the habit of blogging weekly for six months, and then the third anniversary of the quarantine shut down came, along with a rain of bad news both personal and political. I couldn’t write last week. I could barely move after work some days. I had to stand with my back against a wall, as per therapist instructions, and try to breathe and stretch and exercise my way out of the inner tempest. I walked as much as I could, tearing up the backs of my heels as I have yet to regrow the calluses lost over the 1,095 days since the world turned upside down. I still cry too easily. The calluses will only grow back with time.
The income tax refund came in this week, so I took the youngest to sign up for much-needed braces, a victory in parenting. We’re all slowly catching up on health care we’ve been missing, first because of quarantine, and then because of the finances. The oldest was able to pick out a second pair of prescription glasses, a backup pair that will make us all less anxious. I’ll be going to the optometrist myself for my first pair of bifocals on Friday, and I scheduled some preventative health care for next month. I tried to take both cats into the vet, but our five-year-old orange tom caught wind a day early, and took off, the first runner he’s ever done. We have posters up, and he’s chipped, so we’re hopeful he’ll come back.
The youngest is bereft, crying that this is the worst week of her life, as she was told she has at least two years of orthodontia ahead of her and her cat went missing. I often wonder about the perspective the teens in the house have had about what we’ve all been through the last three years, but they’re a notoriously difficult to talk to demographic. I wonder what they’ll say to me in a decade’s time about 2020, the year of school at home, and 2021, the year we struggled to get back on track, and then 2022, the year we lost the house. I have joked - and in front of them sometimes - that I went through quarantine with two girls at the meanest ages, 6th and 8th grade. I can’t write about what it’s been like for the kids though, because I’m not them. I lived with them, but that’s not the same thing as having the same experience. I haven’t been a teen for thirty years, and their world is so different I admit I haven’t a clue as to their feeling on anything. I wasn’t a teen in a world where everything could shift so radically in a day or a week that what was safe and true when you woke up could be illegal or outlawed by the time you went to bed.
Of course the domestic terrorism and anti-trans movements here in Atlanta have been rolling towards us for a while. But it’s still a shock that these things just keep happening. I want to write more about my own work, but I can’t, because it’s not safe anymore to talk about any sort of activist work, or to even say public service work is activism. I debated last week the merits of deleting twenty years of personal blogging because who I am and what I do is ever more contentious. I have a library degree. That used to be something that guaranteed fairly secure, safe work.
I didn’t delete the twenty years of blogs - the wayback machine would hang me anyway, if someone wanted to make my personal life an issue by way of a professional attack. But the idea of the laws in Florida, the ones that mean librarians can be sued personally, along with all the pointless censorship, were in part what laid me out for a week.
I can live through this. I lived through the last three years. I want to talk to my kids, in a decade or two, about what they felt and thought about what’s happening in Atlanta, both inside and outside our home life. I want to know what they think about everything. I want them to talk to me with their straightened teeth about how they felt when (hopefully) the cat came home. I want to know what the girls are like in ten or twenty years when the calluses on my heels and emotions have grown back. And after the adults I have raised tell me their truth about growing up through the quarantine and fascist governorships, maybe we’ll sneak over the Chattahoochee and piss on Newt Gingrich’s grave together in the dark. These hateful old men can’t live forever, and my daughters are young and strong. At least, that’s what I tell myself every day now, with my back against the wall, as I focus on breathing.
I’m having problems adjusting to the new reality reflected by the laws and cases happening around me, and along with the ongoing external turmoil, my own grief for life before the quarantine comes in waves. I had gotten back into the habit of blogging weekly for six months, and then the third anniversary of the quarantine shut down came, along with a rain of bad news both personal and political. I couldn’t write last week. I could barely move after work some days. I had to stand with my back against a wall, as per therapist instructions, and try to breathe and stretch and exercise my way out of the inner tempest. I walked as much as I could, tearing up the backs of my heels as I have yet to regrow the calluses lost over the 1,095 days since the world turned upside down. I still cry too easily. The calluses will only grow back with time.
The income tax refund came in this week, so I took the youngest to sign up for much-needed braces, a victory in parenting. We’re all slowly catching up on health care we’ve been missing, first because of quarantine, and then because of the finances. The oldest was able to pick out a second pair of prescription glasses, a backup pair that will make us all less anxious. I’ll be going to the optometrist myself for my first pair of bifocals on Friday, and I scheduled some preventative health care for next month. I tried to take both cats into the vet, but our five-year-old orange tom caught wind a day early, and took off, the first runner he’s ever done. We have posters up, and he’s chipped, so we’re hopeful he’ll come back.
The youngest is bereft, crying that this is the worst week of her life, as she was told she has at least two years of orthodontia ahead of her and her cat went missing. I often wonder about the perspective the teens in the house have had about what we’ve all been through the last three years, but they’re a notoriously difficult to talk to demographic. I wonder what they’ll say to me in a decade’s time about 2020, the year of school at home, and 2021, the year we struggled to get back on track, and then 2022, the year we lost the house. I have joked - and in front of them sometimes - that I went through quarantine with two girls at the meanest ages, 6th and 8th grade. I can’t write about what it’s been like for the kids though, because I’m not them. I lived with them, but that’s not the same thing as having the same experience. I haven’t been a teen for thirty years, and their world is so different I admit I haven’t a clue as to their feeling on anything. I wasn’t a teen in a world where everything could shift so radically in a day or a week that what was safe and true when you woke up could be illegal or outlawed by the time you went to bed.
Of course the domestic terrorism and anti-trans movements here in Atlanta have been rolling towards us for a while. But it’s still a shock that these things just keep happening. I want to write more about my own work, but I can’t, because it’s not safe anymore to talk about any sort of activist work, or to even say public service work is activism. I debated last week the merits of deleting twenty years of personal blogging because who I am and what I do is ever more contentious. I have a library degree. That used to be something that guaranteed fairly secure, safe work.
I didn’t delete the twenty years of blogs - the wayback machine would hang me anyway, if someone wanted to make my personal life an issue by way of a professional attack. But the idea of the laws in Florida, the ones that mean librarians can be sued personally, along with all the pointless censorship, were in part what laid me out for a week.
I can live through this. I lived through the last three years. I want to talk to my kids, in a decade or two, about what they felt and thought about what’s happening in Atlanta, both inside and outside our home life. I want to know what they think about everything. I want them to talk to me with their straightened teeth about how they felt when (hopefully) the cat came home. I want to know what the girls are like in ten or twenty years when the calluses on my heels and emotions have grown back. And after the adults I have raised tell me their truth about growing up through the quarantine and fascist governorships, maybe we’ll sneak over the Chattahoochee and piss on Newt Gingrich’s grave together in the dark. These hateful old men can’t live forever, and my daughters are young and strong. At least, that’s what I tell myself every day now, with my back against the wall, as I focus on breathing.
Thursday, March 09, 2023
That time I took a newborn to drag queen bingo and she ended up part of the show
I could write this week about how upset I am at the Tennessee anti-drag law, but instead, I’ll write about how I took a newborn to a drag show and she ended up being part of the show. It’s a fun family story.
A week after I gave birth to my youngest in a coverted warehouse loft off Dekalb Avenue near Little Five Points, her godparents asked the husband and I out to the monthly drag queen bingo game that supports PALS Atlanta. It was 2008, and these drag bingo benefits for charity were already a long time fixture in town. PALS Atlanta was started in part by a guy who used to work reception at Inman Animal Hospital, where my cats have been treated since I moved back to the south in 2002. PALS started as a charity specifically to take care of pets of those suffering from the first pandemic of my lifetime, HIV/AIDS, but later PALS moved on to take care of lots of animals for those who were ill.
A week after giving birth, I was desperate to get out of the house. I also looked like total shit, but I didn’t care. My sisters were both still in town, and willing to stay home with the toddler, so I put on the maternity pants that wouldn’t fall off, a nursing top, and a button up shirt, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. The husband and I met The Godparents at the venue, which was set up like any big old bingo hall. Long communal tables allowed me to discretely deposit the newborn baby girl in a sling across my chest, where she happily curled against me unless one friend of The Godparents or another wanted to show her off. It was a perfect first outing – I could sit and play bingo, enjoy the show put on by expert Atlanta drag queens, and the baby equipment – carrier seat, diaper bag, etc. – were easily hidden under the table. The large bingo hall set-up meant that lots of people were always getting up and moving around, so trips to the bathroom were no big deal. The combo of nursing top, wrap, and button up shirt meant that I could feed the baby discretely whenever she wanted.
Discretely, that is, unless you saw me from a very specific vantage point.
A feature of Drag Queen bingo, wherever it might be held, is crowd work. The MC’s walk around the large room looking for opportunities for comedy, or just to get the crowd’s attention. About midway through the night, as I was getting close to bingo and thus intent on both my card and nursing the baby, I failed to notice the host walking up behind me – until I heard a SCREAM.
The host, Ms. Bubba D. Licious, had noticed the weird sling I was wearing and had walked up behind me and looked down. It bears mentioning here that breastfeeding in public had only been legal in Georgia for a few years at this point and was uncommon unless you were in an area with a lot of progressive moms. So what the hosting queen observed, when she looked down at me from over my shoulder, looked to her like I had THREE BOOBS, AND ONE OF THEM WAS MOVING.
To give her credit, after the initial scream, she recovered quickly. Of course, my face was bright red – this night of all nights I really did not want everyone looking at me. Still, the situation had to be explained on mic, as everyone had heard the sudden shriek.
We all laughed it off the best we could, there were a few jokes, the MC returned to the stage, and the game continued, but it was clear the queen had lost the crowd. When the next break happened, women kept coming over to me to tell me they supported public breastfeeding. Which was nice, but I really didn’t want to be noticed, it as just that I had accidentally caused Something Political to happen at a drag show. Did I mention breastfeeding in public had only been legal in Georgia for a couple of years at that point? The idea of feeding your newborn outside the house was still gaining acceptance, and I had just brought the debate into Drag Queen Bingo accidentally.
Bubba D. Licious realized she had lost the audience and came over to me during the break and apologized for screaming. I wasn’t put out. Then she asked if she could hold the baby for the next bit.
By happy accident, I had actually brought the perfect blanket for the occasion: a furry Winnie-the-Pooh job with a wide yellow satin border. I set the host up with the blanket so that Bubba's dress wouldn’t be hurt by the baby and the baby wouldn’t be hurt by the beaded and sequined fashion. As the lights went back to normal show levels for the next round of bingo, my youngest made her local theater debut in the arms of one of Atlanta’s best improv drag queens.
There are fewer greater introductions to Georgia society than being held in the arms of a local legend and being proclaimed one of the most beautiful and best-behaved babies in Atlanta. It’s a memory I really treasure, and a story The Godparents have told endlessly. Of course, one of them is always sure to mention that the real reason they wanted us at bingo that week was because he showed up at the venue the previous week unknowingly still with placenta on his shirt from helping deliver her. Not everybody believed it was placenta, so he had to show up next week with the mother and baby.
Drag has been part of my children’s lives from the start. I really can’t imagine Atlanta without drag. That Nashville, where I saw my first proper drag show in the Spring of 1995, now considers drag some sort of corrupting experience is bizarre. The south has always had some of the best drag in the nation. I tried to watch a show in Boston in 2001 – it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I heard the shows got better up there in the last decade. Boston drag certainly couldn’t get any worse than what I saw.
The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil wrote a story about Nashville once called “High Heel Neil”, one of the first works he published after his book on Savannah. The title refers to Neil Cargile, a wealthy and respected Nashvillian, who once had to make an emergency landing on I-24 when I was in high school. Neil did so while wearing a dress, as was his habit – he wasn’t really a drag queen, the author explained, but a cross dresser. Still, I find it hard to believe that current governor of Nashville wouldn’t have at some point in the late 80’s or early 90’s, been at the same fancy restaurant or society event where Neil Cargile was present in less than masculine clothing. He was around, and he was part of upper class Nashville for a very long time. As was drag- that same era I was in High School was the Cowboys La Cage era of downtown, where a really excellent Reba impersonator was very popular.
Alas, Cowboys La Cage folded before I was eighteen, and I was never bold enough to sneak in. Until I reached the age where we could legally get into a bar, my boyfriend and I entertained ourselves instead by sneaking onto elevators in the L&C tower to jump up and down as they descended to induce brief moments of weightlessness, to see how many seconds we could make ourselves airborn. Without bingo or storytime or other public drag performances, we resulted to the petty teen crimes of trespassing and misuse of private property. This is what locking drag away from minors gets you – kids seeking their own dumb thrills and then growing up into the kind of moms who will bring their infants to drag shows to breastfeed in public after home births. I know that’s not the kind of future conservatives want for their children, so I suggest they unlock drag for minors and public appearances to prevent such shenanigans.
A week after I gave birth to my youngest in a coverted warehouse loft off Dekalb Avenue near Little Five Points, her godparents asked the husband and I out to the monthly drag queen bingo game that supports PALS Atlanta. It was 2008, and these drag bingo benefits for charity were already a long time fixture in town. PALS Atlanta was started in part by a guy who used to work reception at Inman Animal Hospital, where my cats have been treated since I moved back to the south in 2002. PALS started as a charity specifically to take care of pets of those suffering from the first pandemic of my lifetime, HIV/AIDS, but later PALS moved on to take care of lots of animals for those who were ill.
A week after giving birth, I was desperate to get out of the house. I also looked like total shit, but I didn’t care. My sisters were both still in town, and willing to stay home with the toddler, so I put on the maternity pants that wouldn’t fall off, a nursing top, and a button up shirt, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. The husband and I met The Godparents at the venue, which was set up like any big old bingo hall. Long communal tables allowed me to discretely deposit the newborn baby girl in a sling across my chest, where she happily curled against me unless one friend of The Godparents or another wanted to show her off. It was a perfect first outing – I could sit and play bingo, enjoy the show put on by expert Atlanta drag queens, and the baby equipment – carrier seat, diaper bag, etc. – were easily hidden under the table. The large bingo hall set-up meant that lots of people were always getting up and moving around, so trips to the bathroom were no big deal. The combo of nursing top, wrap, and button up shirt meant that I could feed the baby discretely whenever she wanted.
Discretely, that is, unless you saw me from a very specific vantage point.
A feature of Drag Queen bingo, wherever it might be held, is crowd work. The MC’s walk around the large room looking for opportunities for comedy, or just to get the crowd’s attention. About midway through the night, as I was getting close to bingo and thus intent on both my card and nursing the baby, I failed to notice the host walking up behind me – until I heard a SCREAM.
The host, Ms. Bubba D. Licious, had noticed the weird sling I was wearing and had walked up behind me and looked down. It bears mentioning here that breastfeeding in public had only been legal in Georgia for a few years at this point and was uncommon unless you were in an area with a lot of progressive moms. So what the hosting queen observed, when she looked down at me from over my shoulder, looked to her like I had THREE BOOBS, AND ONE OF THEM WAS MOVING.
To give her credit, after the initial scream, she recovered quickly. Of course, my face was bright red – this night of all nights I really did not want everyone looking at me. Still, the situation had to be explained on mic, as everyone had heard the sudden shriek.
We all laughed it off the best we could, there were a few jokes, the MC returned to the stage, and the game continued, but it was clear the queen had lost the crowd. When the next break happened, women kept coming over to me to tell me they supported public breastfeeding. Which was nice, but I really didn’t want to be noticed, it as just that I had accidentally caused Something Political to happen at a drag show. Did I mention breastfeeding in public had only been legal in Georgia for a couple of years at that point? The idea of feeding your newborn outside the house was still gaining acceptance, and I had just brought the debate into Drag Queen Bingo accidentally.
Bubba D. Licious realized she had lost the audience and came over to me during the break and apologized for screaming. I wasn’t put out. Then she asked if she could hold the baby for the next bit.
By happy accident, I had actually brought the perfect blanket for the occasion: a furry Winnie-the-Pooh job with a wide yellow satin border. I set the host up with the blanket so that Bubba's dress wouldn’t be hurt by the baby and the baby wouldn’t be hurt by the beaded and sequined fashion. As the lights went back to normal show levels for the next round of bingo, my youngest made her local theater debut in the arms of one of Atlanta’s best improv drag queens.
There are fewer greater introductions to Georgia society than being held in the arms of a local legend and being proclaimed one of the most beautiful and best-behaved babies in Atlanta. It’s a memory I really treasure, and a story The Godparents have told endlessly. Of course, one of them is always sure to mention that the real reason they wanted us at bingo that week was because he showed up at the venue the previous week unknowingly still with placenta on his shirt from helping deliver her. Not everybody believed it was placenta, so he had to show up next week with the mother and baby.
Drag has been part of my children’s lives from the start. I really can’t imagine Atlanta without drag. That Nashville, where I saw my first proper drag show in the Spring of 1995, now considers drag some sort of corrupting experience is bizarre. The south has always had some of the best drag in the nation. I tried to watch a show in Boston in 2001 – it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I heard the shows got better up there in the last decade. Boston drag certainly couldn’t get any worse than what I saw.
The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil wrote a story about Nashville once called “High Heel Neil”, one of the first works he published after his book on Savannah. The title refers to Neil Cargile, a wealthy and respected Nashvillian, who once had to make an emergency landing on I-24 when I was in high school. Neil did so while wearing a dress, as was his habit – he wasn’t really a drag queen, the author explained, but a cross dresser. Still, I find it hard to believe that current governor of Nashville wouldn’t have at some point in the late 80’s or early 90’s, been at the same fancy restaurant or society event where Neil Cargile was present in less than masculine clothing. He was around, and he was part of upper class Nashville for a very long time. As was drag- that same era I was in High School was the Cowboys La Cage era of downtown, where a really excellent Reba impersonator was very popular.
Alas, Cowboys La Cage folded before I was eighteen, and I was never bold enough to sneak in. Until I reached the age where we could legally get into a bar, my boyfriend and I entertained ourselves instead by sneaking onto elevators in the L&C tower to jump up and down as they descended to induce brief moments of weightlessness, to see how many seconds we could make ourselves airborn. Without bingo or storytime or other public drag performances, we resulted to the petty teen crimes of trespassing and misuse of private property. This is what locking drag away from minors gets you – kids seeking their own dumb thrills and then growing up into the kind of moms who will bring their infants to drag shows to breastfeed in public after home births. I know that’s not the kind of future conservatives want for their children, so I suggest they unlock drag for minors and public appearances to prevent such shenanigans.
Thursday, March 02, 2023
I'd rather be crazy OCD lady than crazy crying lady
I’ve had some good times with the kids lately, like the afternoon I took them to the Japanese convenience store on 14th so they could load up on foreign junk food, or the time I helped the youngest with her Girl Scout cookie distribution, or the time I introduced both of them to subs at Publix. I’m trying hard to commit all these good times to memory as our time as a family unit of four enters the final stretch.
This week I helped the oldest register for some college classes she can take in her final year of High School. Actual human wailing may have been heard as my oldest child encountered bureaucratic red tape for the first time, being forced by offices of higher education to repeatedly enter the same information again and again on digital forms all on the same website, all going to the same institution. Explaining that this frustrating endeavor 1) used to all be done on paper and that 2) was needlessly complicated because administrators still think of web forms as a 1:1 analog to those antique paper forms did nothing to lessen the prospective student’s suffering. Children born in this century find no comfort in the idea that it could all be worse, you could be working in pen and have to start all the way over when a mistake is made. I might as well have said I used to have to do my paperwork uphill in the snow both ways.
I may have felt a little smug when I explained to the suffering applicant that I had, for YEARS, done the same sort of applications for every summer program she had been in - and often times done it in duplicate, as both children attended camps and enrichment programs. A teenage snarl was the only reply.
It’s not all fun and games as the kids prepare to move out. The girls are going through puberty while I go through perimenopause. Given the hormonal upheaval we all live in at the house, plus all the grieving for the life we had before the pandemic, I’ve unhappily taken to crying at the drop of a hat starting around last December. This is deeply unpleasant, and while I’m good at keeping a lid on the disgusting trash water coming from my eyes and nose at work, tears fall in private and in social situations when I would rather it not happen at all. In an effort to get the crying to stop, or at least get it under control, I started physical therapy this month for crying.
Yep, the whitest thing I do (white lady crying over nothing), is being addressed by the second whitest thing I do (finding a therapy to try to feel different). This week was only the third session, but I can feel the progress happening slowly. This week the therapist had me back up against a wall and just…feel the wall behind me as a physical support. So I may be replacing my deeply inappropriate crying with weirdo wall groping in public spaces.
I’d rather be a weirdo wall toucher than a crier. I would find it more acceptable, in fact, to repeatedly touch doorknobs or have some other OCD “eccentricity”, anything but tears. I’m actually happy my kids are growing up. I’m happy I’ml almost menopausal. I’m even happy that I have to teach my kids how to deal with the stupid red tape of academic bureaucracy, even while I have my doubts about the usefulness of higher education. At least, my brain is happy, my body is forcing the water works open without consulting my brain. So when you see me, teaching my girls to drive, or getting some new certificate of achievement, please don’t mention it to me if there are tear tracks down my cheeks. Just extend some understanding while I do some breathing exercises while groping a wall.
This week I helped the oldest register for some college classes she can take in her final year of High School. Actual human wailing may have been heard as my oldest child encountered bureaucratic red tape for the first time, being forced by offices of higher education to repeatedly enter the same information again and again on digital forms all on the same website, all going to the same institution. Explaining that this frustrating endeavor 1) used to all be done on paper and that 2) was needlessly complicated because administrators still think of web forms as a 1:1 analog to those antique paper forms did nothing to lessen the prospective student’s suffering. Children born in this century find no comfort in the idea that it could all be worse, you could be working in pen and have to start all the way over when a mistake is made. I might as well have said I used to have to do my paperwork uphill in the snow both ways.
I may have felt a little smug when I explained to the suffering applicant that I had, for YEARS, done the same sort of applications for every summer program she had been in - and often times done it in duplicate, as both children attended camps and enrichment programs. A teenage snarl was the only reply.
It’s not all fun and games as the kids prepare to move out. The girls are going through puberty while I go through perimenopause. Given the hormonal upheaval we all live in at the house, plus all the grieving for the life we had before the pandemic, I’ve unhappily taken to crying at the drop of a hat starting around last December. This is deeply unpleasant, and while I’m good at keeping a lid on the disgusting trash water coming from my eyes and nose at work, tears fall in private and in social situations when I would rather it not happen at all. In an effort to get the crying to stop, or at least get it under control, I started physical therapy this month for crying.
Yep, the whitest thing I do (white lady crying over nothing), is being addressed by the second whitest thing I do (finding a therapy to try to feel different). This week was only the third session, but I can feel the progress happening slowly. This week the therapist had me back up against a wall and just…feel the wall behind me as a physical support. So I may be replacing my deeply inappropriate crying with weirdo wall groping in public spaces.
I’d rather be a weirdo wall toucher than a crier. I would find it more acceptable, in fact, to repeatedly touch doorknobs or have some other OCD “eccentricity”, anything but tears. I’m actually happy my kids are growing up. I’m happy I’ml almost menopausal. I’m even happy that I have to teach my kids how to deal with the stupid red tape of academic bureaucracy, even while I have my doubts about the usefulness of higher education. At least, my brain is happy, my body is forcing the water works open without consulting my brain. So when you see me, teaching my girls to drive, or getting some new certificate of achievement, please don’t mention it to me if there are tear tracks down my cheeks. Just extend some understanding while I do some breathing exercises while groping a wall.
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