The Total Femme

This morning an older woman with a cane was in the gym locker room when I got there. As I started changing shoes, she wobbled a bit, then caught herself, laughing a little.

“I’m on tilt,” she said.

Yesterday at the grocery store, the man in front of me was extremely brusque with the cashier, and after he left, she and I got to talking about how stressed and in a hurry people are this time of year. Then I asked the bagger how he was doing with it all, and he shook his head, looked down like he might spit, and muttered, “Customers.”

Somewhere in this post I also want to put that there was a woman in the grocery store parking lot with a sign about having left an abusive relationship (I gave her a dollar, in case you’re wondering) and I heard her talking with someone about how she’d gone to college, she has a BA.

I’m going through our cds and listening to them in the car, seeing if there are any I don’t need anymore. I’m on the Prince section right now. Usually, I listen to books on tape in the car, but right now, I start ‘er up and there’s Prince, skuhreeeeeeeming and creaming and talking about pushing up on it and how he’s not a man of war. You know I’m keeping my Prince. I am so incredibly grateful for his art. His music surrounds me and keeps me and reminds me of things I forget in my sadness, missing my parents, who are dead, missing and worrying about my elder son, who is estranged and mentally ill. Hitting the wall over and over with having LADA*, oh, girl, it’s been almost two years since diagnosis, aren’t you all ok by now? Shut up complaining already!

So much else to worry about, also, do I have to tell you that, my queer femme sisters? Our people, our animals, our water, our ecosystems. So sad. So disappointed and where is our recourse?

All these different bits of spark and art in the day, the tilt, the customers, the BA’s and coming back from abuse, and death, and mental illness and addiction, everything we wallow in get drowned in swim in surf in paddle about in sail above. All these different moments, observations, glimpses and glances. Oh my sexy dancers, my crying doves, my most beautiful girls, my raspberry berets and my little red corvettes, how we so always do and must keep our eyes and ears open, there all around us so many ways to only connect, for a moment, for a lifetime, for a lifeline, a laugh, a smile, a shake of the head, another reminder of so it goes, how it goes, here we go

                        together.

I hear you.

I see you.

Yes we are.

*Latent Auto-Immune Diabetes in Adults

Many a 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.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com

The National Day of Mourning is my most holy day of the year. This past week, I was there on my own, due to a wave of feeling under the weather washing over the other people who would have joined me. I got there in time for the prayer, thank heavens. I am so grateful for the prayer. When I knelt down to touch Mother Earth, I just kept going down until a woman behind me caught me and gently pushed me back up. We smiled at each other through our masks and I thanked her, laughing.

So much gratitude, so much to do, so many all of us there wanting healing, wanting community, wanting wiser heads and ways and hearts to prevail. Wanting to know we’re not alone and that what we feel and follow is worthwhile, healthy, sustainable, and loving.

The message from the Mayan Elders this year was short and sweet: “Ok, kids, it’s your turn to fight.” Eyes of the world on the US. Next year, Leonard Peltier told us in a recorded message – from his own home!! – he hopes to be with us to celebrate, to mourn.

When we got to the pebble (known by some as plymouth rock), the march stopped for more speakers. Me and my crew usually go up the hill so we can see, but this year I decided to just sit on the wall at the bottom of the hill. There was an open space beside me, and people kept clambering up. I would offer my hand if they needed a boost, which many of them didn’t, limber dear things that they were, but some of them did. One little boy did, and the incredibly practical way he took my hand has stayed with me. He took my hand because he needed a little help up the hill. He took my hand because it was there, because of course a random lady would offer to help him because he knows himself to be loved and cared for. He took my hand with a trust that was healing balm for my broken mama’s heart.

I was thinking about Seth that day, there on my own, surrounded by all the people. My troubled, angry, unwell and unhappy boy. How he used to listen and ponder at NDM. How he read a book about Leonard Peltier, how he – the boy he was, the man he is in his heart – would be so glad to hear Leonard’s voice. How he would listen with care to the speakers. How he would join in the prayer and the chants.

Seth doesn’t seem to be able to let anyone help him, me, his other mom. This morning’s latest go-round of angry, accusatory texts from him just about did me in. What went wrong? Where did I fuck up?

“I think we just need to give ourselves grace,” wrote a dear friend, whose son is also somewhat estranged. “We parented the best we could.”

I know that, I know we did. And still, and still.

I can’t help Seth, other than holding him, always, in my heart and prayers and love.

But I helped that little boy, and up he went.

To not notice because I am so overwhelmed with grief about my own child would be to refuse what is good, what is sweet and loving and true.

I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to live like that. Alongside my grief, joy.

Bartlett pears, golden kiwis, nice ripe bananas, crisp and blushing McIntosh apples, my queer femme sisters, my travelers on this human road of it all and all of it, everything we never dreamed of and more coming at us at unstopping unstoppable speeds, reach out your hand.

Here.

Here’s mine.

Many a 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.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com