My 91-year old mother lives in a memory care unit. She used to have a big room to herself, but now she has a roommate, a much younger woman, let’s call her Eva. Eva has a kind of dementia where she doesn’t know who anyone is, but a lot of times she makes perfect sense.
The other day when I went in there, I asked Eva how she was doing.
“If I told you the whole story,” she answered cheerfully, “you wouldn’t believe it.”
My peaches, my plums, who among us wouldn’t be able to say that, if we sat very still and carefully, honestly mined the far reaches or our hearts and spirits? As George Eliot comments (yes, I’m finally reading Middlemarch and wherever my father is, he is smiling in satisfaction), “…anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergance of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference of the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.”
I don’t suppose Eva ever thought she’d end up not knowing who even one member of her family is, spending her days wandering about trying to figure out what she should do next (it often has to do with going into other people’s closets, choosing a nice piece of clothing, folding it, and moving it somewhere interesting, like a bookshelf — or else she might put it on). How did she end up where she is? How did my mom?
George Eliot again, “And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”
We push and push to get where we think we want to go, and either we get there and are surprised and often angry, or we don’t get there and are surprised and often angry. Or at least, that’s been my experience. You, my goddesses? You?
On a webinar about Flourishing with Diabetes I recently attended, the presenter, who’s had diabetes her entire life, asked us to find one positive thing that diabetes has given us. Yeah, fuck that. It has given me zero positive things. So then my question is, can a person move forward positively without feeling bullied into putting frameworks of gratitude on everything? Like if you don’t you’re somehow not a good person? Like you’re causing harm somehow if you don’t, harm to yourself, harm to others?
Plus, who among us doesn’t want to god damn flourish?
Yeah, sometimes we can be all love and light and sometimes we just can’t. Some things just are a fucking drag or worse. Like right now I’m feeling weird so I’d better check my blood sugar to see if I’m going low. I mean, mother fucker!!
Ok, fine. I’m grateful I didn’t get this shit earlier in my life. Does that count??
It’s ok to feel your feelings, says my therapist. It’s ok to be angry.
I feel like if I skip over the angry because someone whose experience is very different from mine presents a gratitude exercise, well. That angry will just come back out and bite me or someone else quite handily in the butt.
I want us, me, you, to be able to move honestly through the memories, the every day happenstances, the big, the little, the personal, the global.
What are the things you hide because they make you angry but you just smile and nod? Where are you still nursing a grievance or twenty that periodically rear up and roar?
What is the whole story?
Tell me. I swear to you on my femme honor that I will believe you.
My blossoms: anger. Queer femme anger. Righteous, searing queer femme anger.
I hold it up today, yours and mine.
Are you fucking pissed off today? I know I am.
Let it burn.
Let it burn everything to the ground.
Sometimes, that’s the only way to make room for new things to grow.
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
The Total Femme 