Judging Bad Parenting

This week, I had one of those days when "I'm a bad mother" was echoing through my head. Normally I feel like I do a decent job of parenting and my family is pretty darn wonderful. Most days I believe that. That day, drained by several days that were filled with 16 hours in the car and three work meetings, I was not at my parenting best. I was not quite calm and  objective in handling a three year old who soaked a car seat in urine while taking a four hour nap in the car, who attempted to unbuckle the seat belt as we traveled 70 miles per hour on the highway, and who managed to pull out of my grip and dash across the parking lot after we went picked up our dog who had been boarded while we were away.

Not my best day ever.

Watching that chubby body run away in a parking lot filled with cars reminded me of the case of Raquel Nelson. In 2010, she was coming home from shopping with her three children. They were an hour behind schedule because they had missed their bus. Rather than add an extra half mile to her journey by walking to the out of the way crosswalk, she planned to cross the street at the bus stop which was directly across from her apartment building. While they were waiting, other people began to cross,  which encouraged her four-year-old to slip out of her hand and start crossing. She followed. She, her son, and her daughter were hit by a drunk driver and the four-year-old boy was killed. The drunk driver who killed the child--and was guilty of two prior hit and run incidents--served only six months of a five-year sentence. Raquel Nelson was tried and convicted of second-degree homicide by a vehicle, crossing roadway elsewhere than a crosswalk and reckless conduct. She had faced up to two years in jail. Somewhere along the way, common sense was injected into the case and at her retrial, she pleaded no contest to the jaywalking charge and the other other charges were dropped.

Luckily, my Boobaloo is slow enough that I was able to recapture that little hand before circumstances conspired against us. The three of us made it home, safely. The car seat cushion had finished washing while we were gone. No one, other than me, attempted to judge my parenting for something that happens all the time. My family remains whole and healthy and safe and mostly sane.

Gardening Progress

I am not nearly as good a gardener as I was four years ago. Weeding is a haphazard affair. I am less vigilant about watering. And yet, I still persist. And I am excited to see growth. 

I find that gardening, like relationships, require faith. Faith that my efforts are not wasted, that eventually there will be a harvest. My young tomato plants look a little silly, currently dwarfed by their tomato cages. I have faith that those cages will eventually keep the plants from toppling over when they are huge, covered in ripening tomatoes, and wanting to sprawl.

I have six Brussels sprout plants. Honestly right now, without the tags, I'd be hard pressed to differentiate between the Brussels, the collards, and the broccoli. I am excited for when they grow enough that I have no doubts. I've never grown Brussels before and while they're not my favorite vegetable, they're Booba's. There is something very powerful about growing them for him.

Also in the garden, we have lettuces. Which is a little odd since I typically only make salads using spinach, but lettuce is soooo easy to grow. Still, with what I spend on spinach, I should definitely be making yet another attempt to grow it and not be so deterred by the creatures who insists on munching it before I get the chance to.

Toddler Food

I am lucky. Some people have children who are picky eaters. Their children refuse to eat anything other than chicken and pasta. Or the kids will only eat breakfast then pick at food the rest of the day.

My child will eat anything and a lot of it.* I guess my first hint should have been at 9 months: my Boobaloo crawled in lap and demanded to sample my ginger tea. It was home-brewed ginger tea and it was STRONG. I shared a sip, figuring it would be the last request. After a tiny sip, he tried to get the cup again, insisting, "Mo'! Mama, mo'!" Anyone who can appreciate the spice of a properly made fresh ginger tea is not going to be a boring eater.

I decided that slathering artichoke-spinach hummus on a tortilla and topping it with a slice of tomato sounded good. Booba agreed and gobbled that up, along with walnuts and strawberries, for lunch.

Life is good.

* So far, he's turned down arugula and has picked the rosemary leaves out of his alecha. Everything else seems to be on the good list.

What is Detroit spending money on?

"Mommy, why they putting the concrete in that dump truck?"

I really don't know. Apparently, our city--which is on the verge of bankruptcy, where the state-appointed emergency financial manager is threatening to liquidate art work and any other public asset to creditors, where we cannot keep the street lights on consistently--is replacing driveways and sidewalks in my neighborhood.

Some of it would seem to make sense…probably some areas do need to be replaced. They ragged and uneven and I can't imagine someone in a wheelchair navigating over them:

Though my neighbor wanted to know why they aren't grinding up the stumps before replacing driveways like this one. The workers, of course, said the inspector makes decisions on what to replace before they come out; they just do the marked areas.

Other areas are cracked, but flat and not stopping any movement:

Or driveways that are ugly, but functionally fine:

I find it especially odd since the sidewalks and driveways have been like this for *years*.

Inclusion and Exclusion on the Gender Binary

I confess I've never wanted to attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I thought about it briefly once and then learned there were group showers--I haven't had to deal with that experience since high school gym class and I was not about to sign up for it again. So this is from an outsider's perspective.

Apparently someone has a petition going to call for a musician boycott of the festival because the event is not trans-inclusive. The organizers are adamant that the festival is intentionally a space for "women born women."

I find this interesting for several reasons and there are several issues all tangled up:

Freedom of association (and not just as related to Congress)
On the one hand, I think people should be free to associate with whomever they like. Personally, if integration had required me to go to school with hostile people--or (say what?) send my precious child into such an environment--it would not have happened.  I have no desire to give my time, energy, or money to anyone who doesn't appreciate my humanity. There's a fiercely proud slice of my personality that believes that any space that doesn't welcome me, doesn't deserve me.

Freedom of speech (and not just as related to Congress)
At the same time, people should also be free to boycott or protest their exclusion, as they like. Particularly in cases when perhaps simply raising awareness of an issue would change how it's viewed. Until I read the organizer's letter on the topic, I hadn't known that trans women weren't considered "womyn" and part of the target audience of the festival.

"Women born women" as a Gender Identity
This idea is new to me. My gut reaction is that I was not born a woman, I was born female and I matured into my womanhood. Odd label aside, I'm not sure I'd consider this a "unique gender identity." And this is perhaps because these days I find myself in more spaces where the distinction is more likely to be femme/stud and not woman/man. So I now tend to think of gender expression as a huge component of gender identity and then I falter at how to read "women born women" other than as a way to tell trans women they are not "really" women who belong in women's spaces. Indeed many of the comments I read seemed very much related to the typical concerns that get trotted out in discussion of who gets to use what restroom.

Call it what it is
I wonder why the organization don't just rename the festival. Instead of saying it in footnotes (or actually: having the discussion in facebook pages outside of the main one), why not just call the festival Michigan Female-born Womyn's Music Festival? Then they could simply point to the sign and redirect those women who thought, as women, they might be long at the gathering. This would clarify: unless you were born with a vagina, this isn't your space. And then maybe supporters could stop attacking self-identified women,  calling them "men" and "he" and "him," simply because they want to participate in a so-called "women's event."

Privilege
I don't necessary have the highest levels of privilege and power in this society. But I am very aware of the privilege that comes with being cis-gendered/gender-conforming or whatever you want to call being born with a vagina and identifying as a "woman." Here's just a few:

• No one has ever challenged my right to use the women's bathroom
• I never had to think about when/if to reveal to anyone what genitalia I was born with or what genitalia I had. Or worry what would happen if they found out without my telling them.
• No one (okay, no reasonable person) will consider my not conforming to feminine ideals/stereotypes as valid reason to consider me not a woman.
• I can be rude/aggressive/just mean and no one is going to take that as proof that I'm not really a woman and am just proving my stored "male privilege."
• New revelations of about what genitalia I have now/had a birth is not going to lead to the loss of my housing or employment.

Here's a long list of privileges.

While I think, as I wrote, that people are free to associate with whomever they like, if we want to be conscious and connected, it is important for us to think about we are excluding and why--particularly in cases in which we are in the position of power and privilege (however unusual that may feel for us).

Thinking about Love

"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free."-Thich Nhat Hanh

A friend of mine posted this quote on facebook. My immediate reaction was a confused "Hunh? How can one person's love be responsible for making another feel free???" I was very confused. A different friend attempted to explain it to me, using more paragraphs and the concrete examples that I need to understand things. She spoke of the need to love someone as he or she is, to take people as they are and not try to change them, and to support them in what they do. Ohhhh

That makes sense to me, though I would probably phrase it as "to love someone, first you have to accept they are free." I don't think it's possible to love someone without understanding their flaws, those quirks that make up who they are. And beyond the flaws are those things that are just different. Not flaws, but also not characteristics or choices or feelings that you would select for them. I tend to think of love as that space where you accept who a person is and still hold them closely in your heart.

But I also wonder what it would mean for my love to help a person feel free. What would that look like? Would that be my reaching out to help a person remove the barriers that pin them? Is this referring to a type of agape love, rooted in social justice? Is this about helping a person to open up with themselves and recognize their inherent beauty and power?

Free Family Events in Detroit Area

Admission to Cranbrook Institute of Science will be free after 5pm on February 1st and the first Friday of each month until June 2013 (they close at 10pm).

Admission to The Henry Ford Museum on February 4th (9:30am to 9:30pm) is free in honor of Rosa Park's 100th Birthday.

The admission to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is now free for residents of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. The museum itself is wonderful and there are many family-friendly performances regularly. Upcoming Family Sunday events include:

• February 3 - 2pm Storytelling by Ivory Williams
• February 10 - 2:30pm Chinese New Year Lion Dance performance 
• February 17 - 2pm Puppet Performance by Schroeder Cherry

Defining Women

What is a woman?

That was the question up for discussion. And I was stumped. I had nothing to say, because I didn't have an answer. A woman isn't one thing, can't be summed up in a single phrase. Women can be strong and can be weak. We can be brave and we can be cowardly. We can be loving and we can be spiteful. Women can be whole and we can be broken. Women are so, so, so many things. Woman can manifest every possible form of human expression. We aren't one thing.

Then, of course, the question for me would be that if I truly believed that why was I there? What in me needed sisterhood, needed a community of women if I couldn't even define what a woman was? And that question was easier for me to understand and wrap my head around.

For me, women have been my nurturers. Women have cooked for me. They have sent me home with leftovers when they worried I would spend too much time studying and not enough in the kitchen. They invited me to holidays with their families and then cooked vegetarian baked beans for me…because even though my not eating meat didn't make any sense to them, they wanted me to be nourished in their homes. They have combed my hair. And while, yes, sometimes that was attacking my kinks with a vicious hot comb, it was also me sitting between knees as gentle fingers massaged my scalp and adorned my head with braids. Women have held me, soothed me, and moved me.

I enjoy the company of women, though I may not quite be able to tell you what a woman is.

Most of the other women at the table had many descriptions of women. And for nearly every one, I wanted to amend with a "sometimes." And, as often happens when self-identified gay and bi women get together, the conversation turned toward femininity and femme and stud and roles. That conversation followed a fairly predictable path, with one group decrying the reenactment of heterosexual male/female roles while another group  expressed how labels are a convenient way to help us understand each other and that to pretend they don't is to hide reality. And then there was my favorite group…those who welcomed everyone to take or reject whatever labels/roles/behaviors they wanted--and asked that their own choices, different though they might be, be just as respected. They spoke for themselves, shared of themselves, defined themselves, all without permission and without apology, just with an honest attempt to be heard and understood.

I do so love the company of women.

A journey of 21,000 miles begins with a single step

Listening to NPR this morning, I learned that journalist Paul Salopek is preparing to walk from the Rift Valley in Ethiopia to Chile. Africa, Asia, North America, South America. The Bering Strait. I am beyond impressed. In so, so many ways.

On one level, this must be his passion. You don't make a 300,000,000-step journey in order to collect a paycheck. And yet, he is getting paid for this; this is his work. National Geographic is funding much of his walk and will be publishing updates from the travel at Out of Eden -- A Walk through Time.

As always, I am excited about purpose. When people manage to get beyond working and into fulfilling and maybe even a calling. I'm feeling inspired right now.

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks

Actually, it's more like "rich Census tracts, poor Census tracts." Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks offers interactive maps displaying median incomes for Census tracts. Very interesting. I'm looking at Detroit and being fascinated by the juxtaposition of lower income areas right against higher income ones.