Vermont, continued

And what is it about sex that makes everyone so insane about the topic? Why is a girl's sexuality seen as a finite commodity, one that can run dry if tapped too soon? Aren't we women like maple trees, producing an abundance of sugar regardless of whether or not we've been tapped before?

Granted, one doesn't tap a sapling. A tree shouldn't have more than three taps at a time. But the idea that women are harmed by early or frequent sexual expression makes as much sense to me as, well, most things my mother believes to be true. I don't think I was "damaged" by my backseat adventures. Sure, I had my heart broken, and I wrote some bad poetry. But that's not damage - that's life. Like the Vermont maple, my tap-marks heal over, and I am a wellspring of sugar, an inexhaustible fountain of the sweet, sticky syrup of life.

Maple Syrup, Ben & Jerry's, and Pedophiles

My mom is crazy, in a functional yet above-average-crazy sort of way. We agree on very few things; in fact, I can't even think of a TV show we both like. I spoke with her last night on the phone, one of my dreaded infrequent guilty calls, and she started telling me about Vermont. Vermont, it seems, is a state that protects pedophiles, where activist judges give ridiculously lax sentences to repeat offenders of the nastiest sort, and where Jessica's Law will not pass because the people of Vermont don't care about their children. My mother knows this because she learned it by watching Fox News with Bill O'Riley. Bill O'Riley is evidently the sort of newsman who really goes after the stories and uncovers the truth about things, and one of those things is pedophilia in Vermont. She said, "I would not go to Vermont to save my life, which is too bad because it's a beautiful state. But those people in Vermont are crazy."

When I think of Vermont, I think of autumn foliage, maple syrup, Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I don't think of pedophilia amid an apathetic population. But then again, when I think of reputable news coverage, I don't think of Fox News and I definitely don't think of Bill O'Riley. I told my mother that I find it very hard to believe that the good people of Vermont would allow child rapists to go free, and that it was more likely that Mr. O'Riley took a case out of context to make his point. She said, "You should watch the O'Riley show for one week - you will not believe it." She is absolutely correct: I would not believe it.

Over the course of the conversation, I learned that my mother thinks that a 19 year old man who sleeps with his 17 year old girlfriend should be legally treated the same way as a 45 year old man who sleeps with an 8 year old. She could not be swayed from this belief. She thinks anyone who has sex with a minor is morally bankrupt, spiritually diseased, and deserving of the strictest of punishments. She does not differentiate between consensual teenage sex and sexual battery. To her, the ability of a 5 year old to consent is equal to the ability of a 14, 16, 17 year old. "Children should not be having sex, period," she said with absolute conviction.

I first had sex when I was 15, and I think I turned out OK. I'm happy, relatively healthy, in a stable monogamous relationship, own my house, have a good job - what, I asked my mother, is so dangerous about grope-y high school coitus that it should be punished like forcible rape? And she told me that she thinks I was damaged - permanently and irreparably - by my "behavior" in high school. She really believes that I've lost the opportunity to experience some of life's joy because of choices I made as a teenager. What have I lost? I asked. She couldn't say specifically, but she knows it to be true.

And what bothers me is not that she thinks sex is wrong, or that she thinks Vermont is full of perverts, or even that she listens to Bill O'Riley. What bothers me is that she views me as damaged. What is it about me, about my life, that she feels falls short?

Mourning Doves

On my way back to work after lunch, I saw a mourning dove standing in the road. I slowed down a bit to give the bird time to fly off. But it didn't - it just stood there. We made eye contact as I drove around it, me turning my head as I passed and it turning its head to stare at me with first one eye, and then the other. It didn't make any effort to get out of the street, didn't flap its wings, didn't hop-hop back towards the curb - it just blinked at me with black shiny eyes. I looked in my rearview mirror to see if it moved after I passed, but instead I saw the car behind me crush it. Deliberately, it seemed to me - not only did the car not swerve to avoid the bird, but it appeared to steer towards it. Watching the dove disappear under the tires, and then seeing the clotting mass reappear behind the car, I was so angry that I had to turn at the next street so I didn’t have to see that guy in my mirror any longer.

I have a running argument/joke with my girlfriend about braking for birds. I do, sometimes abruptly, and she doesn't. She doesn't swerve towards them, but she doesn't slow down. It freaks me out, and I find myself stomping on the passenger side floorboards with my stomach knotted up. The birds always move, she says, laughing as I clutch the door handle. And mostly they do.

But here's the thing - we do not have a fundamentally greater right to be here than the birds do. We are not entitled to take up space that is already occupied by something else. The belief that we – as humans, as Americans - are somehow more deserving of space, of resources, of existance, is the root cause of so much turmoil and anguish in the world, so much suffering. I don’t understand the thought process; I don’t understand subscribing to such an arrogant philosophy. Yes, mostly the birds move, but we don’t have the right to expect it.

And so here I am at work, feeling the weight of what I witnessed – the cruelty, the selfishness. How do I coexist in a world that runs over the little things just because it can? What does it mean that the last image captured by the dove’s deep fluid eyes was me? What responsibility have I earned for being the last creature connection in its small precious life?

Year of the Boar

I am prone to marital strife.

I've known this since I was 8, when I went to the Chinese restaurant with my family and saw that decree printed on my placemat. Born in 1971, the Year of the Boar, I am noble and chivalrous, my friends will be lifelong, and I am prone to marital strife. It shocked me to read that, when I had such an idealized view of marriage and such a sense of expectant entitlement to wedded bliss. It hadn't occurred to me before that day that my life could be otherwise, and I remember with visceral clarity the feeling in my chest as I read my fortune aloud. It was as if my ribcage collapsed, burying my heart and lungs under the rubble of bone.

My family, which at the time had not fully descended into the madness that would follow, laughed indulgently at my concern, and assured me that fortunes found on paper placemats weren't sureties, and I could have a happy life and marriage if I wanted to. I was somewhat soothed by their certainty, and I ate my Snow White Chicken and poked my siblings with chopsticks and made polite conversation with my grandparents. But as I aged, that sentence stuck with me, worried me every time I saw the prediction on placemats, and I would read the sentence over and over as I slurped egg drop soup from a flat bottomed spoon. My family took their grim pleasure in my fears, and eventually my fortune became an accusation, hurled up the stairs after my stomping teenage fury, my father leaning on the banister and craning his neck to shout, "You are are prone to marital strife! You are prone to marital strife!"

Which is true. I am prone to marital strife - I filed for divorce yesterday. It took me exactly 5 minutes to read and sign my petition - five minutes to begin to undo my public and sacred vows. But the end, as all ends do, started long ago, before even "I do." The reasons are convoluted and tedious and so I will just give you the official party line: We are headed in different directions, we are better off as friends, it just wasn't right between us. Our incompatability had nothing to do with the Year of the Boar, nothing to do with my fear of my fortune's accuracy, nothing to do with the predictions reverberating up the stairs. I am prone to marital strife because I married someone I didn't love, because I didn't pay attention, because I was looking for something I thought I could find on the other side of the broom.

Pulling away from my lawyer's office, I felt like I was driving too fast around a sharp curve, as if I needed to slow down and buckle up before I lost control. My husband moved out a year ago, we agreed to get divorced six months before that, I've known I made a mistake since the honeymoon, and yet it all seemed to be happening way too fast. Ending is hard, defeat is hard, admitting that I cannot fix this marriage by sheer force of will is hard. I hate to be wrong, and I was wrong in front of 200 of my family and friends. I didn't doubt for a moment my decision to get divorced, but the reality of the severance was wrenching.

But even among the sorrow and wilderness and longing of this failure, I can feel my chest reinflating. My dismal fortune has come to pass, and I am free to find other fortunes. I the petitioner feel myself escaping my marital strife.

A Knockout

I have alopecia, which, as very few people know, is basically an allergy to my own hair. (For more info, see www.naaf.org) I've had this since I was two, my hair falling out in big round patches and then growing back, a cycle repeated over and over, again and again. Through grade school, through high school, through college (although for most of my teenage years I was able to hide it with vigilance that bordered on paranoia and hair styles that covered the bald spots). I don't think I dealt with the disease well, instead opting for my family's method of dealing with unpleasantries - ignoring it and anyone who asked me about it. So that was tough, having alopecia in grade school, right? Lousy, actually. But every time the disease flared up, a little less hair would fall out, and I figured that by the time I was 25 it wouldn't fall out anymore.

And then when I was 24, it all fell out. Everything - eyelashes, eyebrows, leg hair - everything except under my arms. Again, tough - I was in my mid 20s, single, and quite suddenly, bald. I knew I never wanted to have to tell someone that I didn't have hair, having already had the exquisite experience of having friends and lovers disappear on me when I did so in the past, so I didn't get a wig. I had my eyebrows tattooed on (ye-fricking-owch) for simplicity, and because I am rather low maintenance and not known for great attention to detail and so feared having my eyebrows careening across my face at odd angles if I left the coloring in all to myself, and because I couldn't get used to my eyes without brows above them. But that's all I did. And I did that, for 10 years. No hair. I got married and divorced with no hair, I got jobs and quit jobs, I made friends and lost friends, but none of that had anything to do with my hair because I never hid the fact that I have none.

Of course this wasn't without its own challenges - it's difficult to be 25 and have a car full of beautiful people slow down next to me on the highway and laugh at me. It's difficult to know what to say when a stranger asks me in the restroom if I have any pubic hair. It's difficult to know how to respond to the man at my cousin's wedding who told me that while I'm pretty enough without hair I'd be a knockout with it. I don't know,even after 32 years of dealing with this disease, how to even believe that people are actually saying the things they are saying to me, let alone know how to respond. So I punt: If I happened to be eating in the car when the highway drive-bys happened (and really, they happened more times than I can count), I'd open my mouth as wide as I could and give the gawkers an eyeful of masticated French fry. I told the woman in the restroom that while some people lose their pubic hair, I myself had not, which was true at the time. And at the wedding I just finished dishing up my scalloped potatoes and went back to my seat, wondering what this man would have said to me if I had lost my arm - would I still be pretty enough without my limb, I wondered, or would he have had the sense to keep his musing to himself. I deal with these situations as they happen, and with whatever energy I have at my disposal that day.

I assume that since I make no secret of my hair loss that people feel entitled to talk to me about it - if it's not hidden, it must be open for discussion, right? And mostly I don't mind, I don't mind the little kids who horrify their parents by asking me why I don't have hair, and I don't mind the cancer survivors who come up to wish me well. (When I was younger people assumed my baldness was a political statement or had something to do with my sexual orientation. Now that I am of the Breast Cancer years, most people assume I'm in treatment. I don't know what to say to the well-wishers either - do I tell them that I in fact don't have a disease in common with them and thereby break the slender band of connection that we all crave? Or do I play along, say I'm feeling fine, that things are "going well," not really lying but not really telling the truth? I never know - I've handled the well wishers both ways, but never to my satisfaction.) I don't mind the little old ladies who press prayer cards into my hand at the grocery store, or the man who offers me a seat at the airport because he thinks I'm sick. I don't take the seat, or keep the prayer cards, but I don't mind it. Mostly.

There are times, though, when I just want to be left alone. Sometimes I just want to go to the grocery store and buy my tub of ice cream and then go home without answering any questions about my health and without having to spend $150 on a wig. It's just hair, for christsake - what's the big deal?

But of course it is a big deal. It is the way we tell at a glance whether a woman is indeed a woman, whether she's young (long hair) or older (short hair or hair put up), whether she's butch or femme, hard of soft, sick or well. We as a species have a lot riding on our hair. I know that. And I have chosen not to wear a wig knowing that, knowing that the price for my honesty is the questions, the stares, the snickering. And then I went to Italy.

My mother turned 65 this year and retired, and my brother, sister and I decided to take her to Rome, a trip she's dreamed of her whole life. My mother is a devout Catholic, and while I myself am not, I am a classical archaeologist by education and so was thrilled at the thought of wandering through the forums and staring into the anguished faces of the Laocoon group (which is a lovely sculpture - you should check it out sometime). And I decided that what I wanted to do in Rome was look - I wanted to move through the crowds and the corridors without attracting attention. I wanted to be the observer and not the observed. So I got a wig, and I wore it in Rome, and I moved through the forum without anyone doing a double take to see if they'd really seen what they thought they'd seen. And it was fun, it was fun to be a Pretty Girl again, it was fun to get the eye and it was refreshing to be anonymous. I can't tell you how delirious I was to just Be, without having to have armor, without having to be on guard, without having to justify my decisions to strangers. I haven't experienced that in ten years, and it was amazing.

Now that I'm back in my real life, I wear the wig sometimes to work. Everyone knows I'm bald, and I think of the wig as a new hat. I can wear outfits that I love but never had a hat to wear with them (think sunburn and winter winds - hats are essential). I don't wear it everyday, I don't wear it around my house, but I like having the option. And then a coworker came up to me today and told me that while my hair is "fine," she misses the hats. She said that the hair style isn't right for my personality (the wig is the exact, and I mean exact, color of my natural hair and cut in the style I last had before it fell out - it looks as natural on me as my nose) and that I should think about something shocking like platinum blonde instead, and that she really misses the "statement" my baldness made. And again I found myself at a loss for words. I don't know how she expected me to respond to her observations, but I ended up feeling rather defeated about the whole thing. I've made a statement every day for the last decade of my life - I'm tired of making statements. I don't want to be the Warrior every day - sometimes I just want to take a vacation from all the work it takes to keep my heart safe as a Bald Woman. Sometimes it seems to me that however I choose to deal with my alopecia, the world wants something different. Sometimes it seems that whatever I do I end up with the wind knocked out of me.

Genesis

New to this. I've been writing my whole life, even before I could write, composing little stories in my head I planned to remember and write down once I learned how. I've keep a journal for 22 years, but haven't been able to sit down to write in it recently. In fact, I haven't been able to sit still, much less write. So since I spend so much time in front of my computer anyway, I thought this might be the way to go. I can't figure anything out without writing it down, and so this last year of limited writing has been rather foggish, and I'm hoping this will help me shrug off the greasy film that's been clouding my vision. So hello.

Some things about me:
1. Not a very strong speller. Am deeply in love with spell check.
2. Middle child. You may sense the resulting bitterness and despair in my writing.
3. Raised Catholic. Again with the bitterness and despair I mentioned earlier.
4. Living in a certain midwestern state where evolution is a nice little theory in principle, having grown up in another, mitten-shaped midwestern state with a large and lovely campground called the Upper Peninsula.
5. Didn't know about chiggers until I moved to my current state - not a real big fan of the chigger. Pretty sure chiggers are the root of all midwestern narrow-mindedness, as it's hard to think clearly when something's burrowing it's maddeningly itchy self into your private folds.

That'll do for now. Don't want to show all my cards at once, you know.