Eek A New Poem! Where I'm From

A view from behind my childhood home when we visited a few years ago. Not pictured: fracking.

Disclaimer: My family is full of far-left-to-moderate wonderfuls. Supersorry they’re not in this poem very much!

Where I’m From

(After a prompt from George Ella Lyon)

I’m from tomato plants
and apple trees
and weeds I’m supposed to be pulling.

I’m from ten acres with horses
but the horses weren’t ours.
The house was harsh,
but not the fields: They smelled like
wildflowers and wild strawberries
and, alternately, cow manure or hay bales.

I’m from five cents for each fly swatted
during the manure times. I’m from hay bales, daylilies
mallow and daisies, from rows of raspberries
and brambles of blackberries—should have remembered to
wear long pants.

I’m from the perfect fall view
and the perfect place to fly a kite.

I’m from banging pots and pans at midnight,
visiting Great Grandmom’s South Philly
and marveling half-asleep
at the narrowness of streets.

I’m from waving little American flags with my cousins
in the big yard at Aunt Connie’s colonial one Fourth-of July afternoon.

I’m from visiting Aunt Patti’s house in Bradley Beach,
some summers even with my own badge
until my body made me promise not to go near Uncle Bud’s
“Deplorables for Trump” sticker anymore.

I’m from Walecki and Mellili and Keating and Wiedmann and McCormick and Penrose and Wojcik and Carter and Lawson.

I’m from meatballs in the crockpot
on Mom’s sideboard and from Grandpa
Wiedmann cooking bacon outside in state parks.
(With plenty of sliced tomatoes of course.)

I’m from undiagnosed depression and toxic positivity:

From Mom telling me I was creating Covid out of my own fear.
From Mom’s pretty Easter card telling me she was paying
Catholic priests to say masses for my soul.
(It should go without saying that I don’t think I need saving.)

I’m from Sicily and Ireland and Poland and Germany.

I’m from wondering what Emily Post’s grandchildren would have to say
about a PS. in Sharpie on the outsides of red Christmas card envelopes:
“Please don’t march with the Proud Boys” or about checking the FBI’s
pictures from January 6^th to look for Aunt Connie

I’m from the (MANY) podcasts about cults I listen to, to try and understand.

I’m from all the books I can’t assign them.

I’m from the both sides of teargas.

I’m from whatever version of family comes next.

For All the Triggered Ladies (And the Men Who Love Us)

Though Hillary’s debate triumph last Wednesday filled me with bratty, exuberant defiance, the fact still remains that we all sat through ninety minutes of misogyny, gaslighting, and rape culture. It was a night of calling Secretary Clinton (and by extension us) stupid, incompetent, a liar. Trump actually came out and said that if she didn’t want him to do bad things, she should have stopped him. We’ve been through the “debunking,” dismissing, and discrediting of rape victims by both parties. Though it was a wild relief to hear Hillary speak up so unequivocally for our right to physical autonomy, it feels unfair that we should still have to be fighting so hard for it. A lot has been written about how this is a different election for women than for men, about the way Trump’s debasement of women has gotten into our bodies. I hate the way it separates women from the men in our lives and bonds us in a state of Get the fuck off us, already.

Going into work after the “grab them by the pussy” weekend (which, by the way, made the Internet what I’ve always wanted it to be, a barrage of incensed women vowing snarlingly to reclaim our space.) I sat down next to a female coworker I don’t know that well and told her that I was feeling jangled. She knew exactly what I meant and expressed her own wish for a blanket fort until the election is over. We had trouble settling in, we were vigilant, both hyperpresent and not there at all. That’s what Trump’s abuse and violation of women reminds us of: The times our bodies were not our own, the vague threat that if we’re okay right now, it’s only because they’re letting us be.

When I went to my tutoring job the same day, the dad had the news on and Trump was dismissing his most recent accusers. Though I shuddered at the situation and the sound of Trump’s voice, I tried to be jokey about it while making it clear that I wanted the news to go away so I could work.

Nice Tutoring Dad said this:

“I don’t know why they’re talking about this. It doesn’t even have to do with policy.”

I was done being jokey. My expression darkened and my voice dropped all the way down.

“Yes. It. Does.”

(I didn’t say: Trump’s WHOLE policy is rape, dehumanization, coercion, entitlement. Instead of “Make America Great Again,” his slogan should be “Let Straight White Men Define, Harm, and Exploit Everything and Everyone.” From stop and frisk to forced pregnancy to anti-gay conversion camps to fetishizing the Second Amendment, Trump’s campaign is aimed at using force to shore up the power of a majority that will soon no longer exist, using fear to fuel oppression of people who are no longer willing to be oppressed.)

Nice Tutoring Dad did turn off the news and I got my work done without a panic attack, but as I was leaving, he put the news back on and when Trump inevitably appeared on the screen, he said “There’s your friend.” Haha yes, my friend, the pussy grabber, the stop-and-frisker, the child-rapist. His jokey comment took me out of any sense of equality and put me solidly on guard, that awful closed-up feeling of suspecting my safety is provisional. I didn’t know how I would go back to work at that house.

I needed to find a way to bridge the distance between my experience of the election and his and so, emboldened by the thousands of women around the world who were stepping up to tell their stories, I just came out and told him. I texted and told him that I’m an “assault survivor” (both “rape” and “sexual” seemed like words I didn’t want to text to an employer, even an informal one) and that the news made me panicky and made it hard to concentrate on my student. He took it very well and there has been no news on and no more insensitive comments. Sending that text was a powerful moment for me, a genuine flawed human connection in the midst of a professional relationship, one of those magically humane moments that always manage to sneak in. But at the same time, why did I have to tell him that I had been raped in order for him to be respectful about it—why isn’t it enough that ANYONE had been?

This week I took to heart the fact that while I have the courage/privilege/years of therapy to stand up for myself, to come out and tell my story, there are so many women who don’t have the words. For every generous soul who shares her story at #notokay, there are countless others who blame themselves instead, who turn themselves inside out to excuse and identify with their attackers, who lose the power of speech entirely just when they need it most. I want to recommit to speaking up for and with them.

In large ways and small, the times our bodies are not our own changes us, changes our course like creepy rocks in an otherwise lovely stream. For me, it’s the constant battle between liberation and safety, between my openhearted adult self and my inner teenager who is livid and snarling because she couldn’t fight off her attackers. No matter how full my life is of flowers, cake, and kid-art, the past is still in me: The drugged, helpless feeling, the favorite shirt covered with blood, the parts left out of the deposition, the loss of connection, the struggle for hope.

With so much grace and work, I’ve transformed my past traumas into superpowers. My pesky vigilance gives me a knack for creating an atmosphere of acceptance and safety. My sensitivity to persecution gives me a chance to be a voice for anyone who might need an advocate. Knowing the true meaning of helplessness gives me the drive to always believe I can make things better, to hang in there for the little changes that add up to big ones.

Still, I’d love to go back in time and lead my childhood self briskly and decisively away from every abuser, every “you’re too sensitive,” every questionable babysitter, every non-consensual bruise. I’d love to intercept myself on the way to one particular party, wrap up my teenage self in blankets, and tell her she is so, so loved. And I can, I do.

Every uncomfortable text, every campaign call, every door-knock, every march and rally has been for that little self, to show her she’s not trapped, to show her the love she deserves and make the world a little safer for other little girls, for everyone.

I hate the things that divide us, especially the disconnect I’ve always felt from men. The times that I manage to bridge the gap are too precious and lovely to contain. In the last few weeks, sprouting like a morning glory on a trellis of triggers, I’ve felt something else: A reconnection to the part of myself that’s open, yielding, willing to let my imagination run away with me in the best ways. In the safety and strength of a sea of riled-up women (and a few adorably ally-ish men) I’ve felt something strangely and miraculously like health, the knowledge that our bodies are have infinitely more love and magic than oppression could ever really take away, that the angry cries of Trump supporters are those of a dying way of life. They’re trolling us because they are at the end of their relevance, because their time is up. Part of me, most of me, is glowing pink for whatever life comes next.

Talking With My Childhood Self About Bill Cosby

Photo by my Uncle Steve

Before I get to the soul searching, I want to say that I think Hannibal Buress is a hero for bringing the reality Bill Cosby’s victims into the public consciousness, but I really wish that women were taken as seriously on the same set of topics—Jen Kirkman has been censored and Julie Klausner vilified for pointing out similar allegations  and hypocrisies, (about Louis C. K. and R. Kelly respectively) and I would very much like to live in a world that isn’t trained to dismiss women’s point of view, especially on this particular matter.

For a lot of my adult life, I’ve been a trusting, open, jump-in-with-both-feet kind of person. I made friends and became devoted to them instantly (okay, I still do that) got crushes on poets and wrote reams about them, greeted nearly every person and new situation wholeheartedly.  I’ve never been afraid to walk alone at night and I’m still not, but in the past few years, I’ve ended up seeing the world through rape-colored glasses, seeing facets of coercion and exploitation everywhere. The problem with this lens is not that it isn’t true, but that it isn’t helpful; it’s not taking me where I want to go.

I want to slay those dragons and really start to live knowing I have agency and hope. The personal reasons that I tend to see the world this way are well-documented; they’re private and complex, but the psychological impact, the pulling-the-rug out-from-under-me that Cosby-as-rapist has wrought matters.

Like probably so many little girls, I LOVED Bill Cosby. This is not an overstatement like “Oh, I love Netflix,” but real, abject human love of a child for an adult man who seemed more than deserving of that love. My dad had all of his records and my brother and sister and I listened to them so much that it was almost like we were the siblings in those stories.

But The Cosby Show. It was one of the few shows we were allowed to watch—somehow that Thursday night block was highbrow enough for my dad (who before long would give into the slippery slope of Growing Pains and Perfect Strangers) (Mike Seaver didn’t do much in the not-letting-me-down department either, did he?) so we watched it as a family every Thursday night, like everyone.

Was there ever a more appealing paragon of manhood than Cliff Huxtable? He danced with his wife. He goofed around with the kids. He lovingly and hilariously laid down the law when necessary. And sometimes, as I think was pointed out once on Community, an entire episode could be about making a sandwich with his daughter. He was a perfect picture of what it means to be a man in a family, exactly the beautiful grownup my ten-year-old self needed.

There are a lot of factors that combine to make me generally skittish, but the shift from what I felt about Cosby then to what I know now exacerbates the feeling I have sometimes that if I relax for one second, if I trust for one second, the world will turn upside down and I will be completely fucked. But I certainly don’t want to approach the world that way.

So.

Dear Little Self,

What you loved was a story, and that story is still true. Everywhere there are families with singing and laughing—you’ve lived in one for a long time. Everywhere there are men, dads and brothers and friends and strangers who wish you and everyone nothing but love, safety and happiness.

You can grieve for Cliff Huxtable and be mad that Kurt Cobain was such a creep to that girl in high school and still be pretty peeved about that one episode of Buffy. I will always be mad with you and on your behalf. I will always be on your side.

But let’s look for other, better examples, and allow them to be true. I’ll do my best to keep you safe, if you’ll do your best to let it go. Take all the time you need.

Love,

Grownup You