"You Used to Be So Normal"

I have a confession.

I voted Republican pretty much exclusively till about ten years ago.

My family was working class middle class Lutheran class Midwesterners settled into a mid-sized town squished between Milwaukee and Chicago and perched precariously on the shores of Lake Michigan.

So here's what I was taught-

-Work hard and you'll be rewarded. At least well enough to keep your family fed and clothed and housed. Which is all you should expect- just that is enough to say daily prayers of thanksgiving for and anything more is frankly a burden most people can't handle.

-Pray sincerely and you'll be rewarded. There's a special place in Heaven for good people who attend church, tithe without fudging and kick a little something into the (socially approved) charity of your choice for extra bonus Angel Points.

-Listen to your teachers and get good grades in school, for therein lies the path to success, to contentment, to a life every bit as good as your parents' and grandparents' lives. A 9-2-5 taxable employment, a mortgage, a marriage, 2.5 perfect children.

Anyone not following the above rules and steps and who succeeded anyway was unusual, and anyone not following the above rules and steps and did not attain the (implied) promised rewards was doing it wrong. Hadn't tried hard enough. Needed to (cue music)...

... pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again.

It's what the Republicans believed, so I voted Republican, as did my parents and their parents before them.

Then things got sorta wonky.

Despite following all the rules (I had employment, church, a marriage, a mortgage, and the appropriate number of children) everything fell apart.

My marriage ended. My church looked at me sideways. I had a hard time on my own keeping the house...and the children.

What the hell?

Surely I had done something wrong so I...

...picked myself up, dusted myself off and started all over again. In Texas.

I worked damn hard- two full time jobs- one day job and one night job. I bought a house and found a (tremendously fabulous) husband. We had a baby.

I did not find a new church. Though I had no quarrel with God, I was kinda miffed at the church for abandoning me. That was the first paver on the path to being a non-conservative.

But still I voted Republican.

Then Ward got sick.

He had insurance through his job- a job he'd held for well over five years and had never missed a day of work. Ward's cancer took a fair amount of time to take care of- several surgeries and hospitalizations and all of it painful, awful, exhausting, disfiguring. The man never took a minute to recover. We drove to the cancer hospital the day before surgery (or 2 days before if pre-op appointments were needed), he had surgery, was discharged from the hospital, we'd drive home the next day and the day after THAT? Back at his desk at 8am.

He worked through six weeks of radiation.

He worked through it all not because he loved his job- frankly he didn't. He hated his job and it was killing his soul to be there. I'd watch him go off every day and my heart would break seeing his shoulders stoop a little bit each step he took to the car. He worked because it was the right thing to do...and he needed the insurance.

It ended up not mattering.

He got fired (sorry- "downsized") because the company was going in another direction and for losing a lot of work time "to this cancer-thing".

COBRA was hideously expensive- it would have taken his entire salary just to pay for it, except he didn't HAVE a salary anymore. The high-risk pool wouldn't take him till he was ineligible for COBRA and had used it. He was without insurance. And with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

The next scheduled scans we were told had to be paid for in advance, in cash, no exceptions. No matter that he'd had insurance up to that point. No matter that he'd been approved for Social Security Disability that would take effect a few months hence. No matter he was already a patient. We were told that if we couldn't afford the scans, we could wait till the SSD kicked in and that "He probably won't die before then".

Said the little girl in the business office with no medical experience.

I started looking hard at those around us. ALL those around us. Alot of them what I would've considered "slackers" in my younger years.

People losing their homes, their jobs, their everything due to illness, due to the economy, due to circumstance beyond control.

And it had nothing to do with how hard they worked, or how fervently they prayed.

Shit Just Happened.

The whole "work hard/pray harder/be rewarded" ideology turned out to be a house of cards, a smoke screen, fallacy and fairy tale.

I couldn't stomach the discourse anymore. Because I knew better. I had seen the Truth, and it was bitter.

Here's the thing.

You'd think it would be claw yer eyeballs out scary to know that all of the by-the-book-rules that form the foundation of conservative society are hogwash, but it's really not.

After the initial "HOLY SHIT WHAT DO WE HOLD ON TO NOW???" moment it's crystal clear.

We hold on to each other. Help each other. Care for each other. Respect each other.

Whether they "look" like they "deserve" helping or not.

Because the truth of the matter is it's not OUR place to judge. It's our place as card carrying members of the Human Race to care for each other.

Not tell each other what to do, how to live, what to think, how to vote, what can be done with your own personal body, how much care you or your loved ones have EARNED according to some bullshit manual or doctrine- part of being human is the acceptance and respect of the Free Will of others and compassion for their distress for Yea Verily all of us will at sometime or other be so distressed...or worse.

I stopped being a black/white right/wrong conservative not because I couldn't play by the rules I grew up with, but because I realized that the only way to "win" using those rules is to be lucky. Literal Dumb Luck. Merit had exactly zero to do with it.

I became a tree-hugging bleeding heart liberal not because I go through life wearing rose-colored glasses and wearing flowers in my hair, but because I don't. I see injustice and I hear intolerance and my hair is gray and my soul weeps.

Life is hard. Shit happens willy nilly and without warning or reason.

And though we may FEEL more secure holding onto false truths and bogus rules, we'll BE more secure once we realize that the only safety net consists of...each other.

The Baby Shower- Bonding for the Non- Beer and Jerky Gender

My friend Cathy has known me for over 30 years, and likes me anyway. She's been there for me (and I hope I've been there for her) through thick and thin all these many years as I've pinballed my way from one marriage to another, one crisis to another, from joy to heartbreak and back again. All that time she and her husband Mark have been steady, calm, loving rocks protecting me from the worst of myself.

Cathy's daughter Christi is pregnant. Yesterday was the baby shower.

We've missed many milestones in the lives of their kids due to logistics and health and work- graduations, marriages, but THIS time I could make it and Ward and Alec said "Go- stay overnight- have fun- we'll be (gulp) fine".

The shower was held at Cathy's friend Deborah's house, a gigantic sprawling glamorous yet comfortable and oddly enough for its size not ostentatious 2 story home set in the middle of North Texas prairie.

Attending were Christi, Cathy, myself, Deborah, the sister/mother/grandmothers-in-law, and several other friends.

The table in the breakfast nook (which is bigger than my living room)was set with gorgeous flowers, a crystal punch bowl, Waldorf salad, cheese and crackers, a beautiful cake and the new (to me anyway) Hershey's Bliss white chocolate with melty middles candies (how did so many fall into my pocket? I can't imagine...)

After eating, we assembled in the blue and white living room for present opening, the scent of an expensive candle wafting here and there with subtle elegance.

We oohed and ahhed at all the tiny clothing, accessories, baby books and whatnot, passing them all around to admire- just the feel of the tiny items dredging up sweet visceral memories for all of us "old women".

There were no stupid...err...silly games, which I was ever so grateful for because they would've ruined what happened next.

Once the presents were opened and Christi thanked all of us, the mood in the room shifted, changed, slowed down and muted.

We were no longer in Deborah's living room, we were transported back through the generations to times when the older women gathered among themselves and passed on knowledge verbally to the younger women who were becoming the next step in the process of being human- from baby, to girl, to teen, to wife, to mother.

One by one yet without order or intent, the stories started flowing. Between all of us there had been well over 2 dozen births- hospital births, midwife births, multiple births, c-section births- each one special and terrifying in its own way.

And those stories hung in the air, wove together in the candle-scented atmosphere like so much smoke by firelight and wrapped around Christi with the assurance that even though this IS going to be hard and no one CAN tell you what to expect exactly because even the woman who'd had six babies admitted each birth was very very different, that the outcome will be the same-

"Where's my baby? Give me my baby- is my baby OK?"

And you are handed that tiny miracle who looks pruny, and pissed off, and amphibian-like, and perfect.

The rest of our lives as mothers is spent wondering and worrying "Is my baby OK?"

No matter how old they are, or how far away they live, or how migraine-inducing they were as toddlers or how hateful they were as teenagers, a mother never stops loving or fretting.

A wedding, for all it's planning and pomp and importance is just the beginning of a marriage, and despite what the florists and tuxedo rental and jewelry stores tell us the wedding ceremony is the EASY part- the really trivial part. The hard but oh so satisfying work starts after the honeymoon. Because you're not responsible for just you anymore- you have the security of a partner along with the extra burden that loving someone more than yourself places on you.

A birth is the beginning of three whole new persons- the one being born and the two being thrust into parenthood. And it happens with every new child- you may say "I know how to do this- I've already had a child" but you've never been the parent of TWO children, or THREE, or more. Each one is a whole different playing field, a whole new way to define and stretch yourself.

This gathering together for a baby shower is so much more than a gift giving punch drinking experience- it's a way of reassuring the mother-to-be that yes- this is scary and unknown, but that other women have done it- WE have done it- and you come out the other side with a family, and a history, and a future, and strength you never knew you possessed.

There is magic in being a woman, and power in being a mother, and it's all good.

Especially when there are Hershey's Bliss white chocolate filled with melty middles candies involved.