The Total Femme

Yesterday I visited my mom in her memory care unit. I’ve been worried about her as she hasn’t been eating all that well, has lost weight and seems weaker. I was glad to find her looking a bit better and walking more strongly. She’s 92 with advanced dementia, and it’s just every day one day every day these days.

As I was rushing down the hall to to grab her Pride beads from her bedside table (she loves her Pride beads), I passed a woman coming out of a room with a big WELCOME CLAIRE! sign on the door. We said hi, and later, she and my mom were sitting next to each other as the activities director got ready for the next jolly thing she was going to do with them.

We greeted each other again, and I asked her how she was liking things.

“Oh, I’m just visiting my sister,” she said. “I don’t live here.”

She’s not the first resident to tell me they’re just visiting, will be going home any moment, aren’t staying. As my mother dozed off, Claire and I chatted about books and libraries and past careers. Anything to not delve deeper into the reasons we were both sitting in a locked unit about to watch videos of cats or babies or somebody’s got talent.

Well, they were. I got to leave.

That night was going to be a full moon, something my mother used to keep close tabs on. Tex and I walked to dog over to the park, ran into some queer friends, and sat a while together, looking at the view. It was still light and the sky was filled with glorious clouds, something my dad always loved. “Oh, look at the clouds! Marvelous!” he would have said.

People were gathering with humongous cameras, getting ready to make moon portraits. Other people were just hanging out. Other people were sitting together near signs that said, “Meditation. All are welcome.” Our little dog was going from one of us to the other, getting a lot of love. There was a nice breeze.

Oh bodacious ones, beauticious, balancing, breaching and breathing oh my bonny queer femme sisters, where do you live? Are you settled, curious, accepting, aware and allowing yourself to linger on whatever wonder and spark there is around you? And are you tortured by the what-ifs and the inevitable shitty shit that there’s no escaping, no getting away from? Where do you put your energy and how do you manage your discontent?

As for me, I’ve been extremely critical of where I live, for years, for damn good reasons, full of regrets, angry, sad. Blinders up, middle finger up.

Last night, I let myself breathe and what a relief.

We yet live, we yet are free from the locked unit, we yet are able to decide.

And the moon rose.

Every Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com