Day 2, 10 Days of Great Women

In the final days leading up to the Women's Marches across the nation, I'll be highlighting the GREAT Americans I know who have fought for our progress as a nation. I'll specifically be looking toward the women in my life that have impacted my ability to see progress, women who have inspired me, women who have pushed me to be better.

 

In the 1800s, public support of universal education swelled and our concept of education today is still routed in what were founded then as common schools. They are now known as elementary schools and it is one of our greatest sources of strength as a nation that we offer quality education from an early age.

The less egalitarian part of starting up all these schools and educating everyone was a need for cheap labor. In the face of the need for teachers, women were targeted to fill that workforce gap.

And so began 200+ years of unjust pay for arguably the most influential roles in our society. For who cannot name a great teacher who influenced the their life and their thinking?

So for Day 2 of 10 Days of Great Women, I choose teachers in my life.

Dr. Eichhorn was my 9th grade English teacher. She was my teacher 3 more times by the time I left high school. I never skipped her class and she taught me the nuances of meaning in a book. She read us each and every page of Beloved allowed and painstakingly helped us draw out its deepest meanings. I fought through other books and attempted and failed to find the hidden themes. I loved learning about time periods through stories and art that gave a full picture of a time and a people. I owe her a great debt to this day for inspiring me to be a great reader.

In my undergrad program, I had Nikki Murdick (also a PhD.) She made me laugh in class with stories of difficult behavior in kids and both the obvious and less conventional means of intervening in problem behavior in kids. I remember her telling a story about a kid who had to wear gloves because of sensory problems and her cutting off a little bit of the fingertips each day to acclimate him to not wearing those gloves. I also remember a certain story about adults chasing a kid in circles around a building. I owe to her, a lot of my choices in working with tough kids and more importantly, feeling like I could figure out how to help those kids perform academically. She has pushed for justice and presided as a hearing officer in due process hearings for Special Education cases for (I think) 20 years. She's worked her entire career to help people with developmental disabilities and that's not usually something that gets you glitzy notice. But let's be clear: it is doing the work that matters.

In my graduate school program I had Elisabeth Kinsey who went way above and beyond to help me with my book, Between Families. She met me in person multiple times for coffee and to talk through the book. She also volunteers her time to teach online for a school in a 3rd world country where the computers are guarded 24 hours/day but armed guards in order to keep them from being stolen. She was excommunicated from the Mormon church and is writing a memoir about that while helping students and also working toward a PhD. I owe her for teaching me to be a better and more planful writer.

While these are some of the teachers in my life, they are the tip of the iceberg in terms of great women. There are also the teachers I've seen in my children's lives like Erica who taught my younger son to share and be away from his family, and Mrs. Bartelt who so clearly loves my older son for just exactly who is that he is thriving in 1st grade. These early teachers are the biggest influencers outside the family for children. They are informing how my children view education for the rest of their lives. These are great women.

And they are not the tip of the iceberg either. I still didn't touch on my friends in the profession like Meghann who has worked for 13 years in special education or my editor who is a special education teacher now. Or my friend Liz who teaches at my kids' school and constantly stops whatever she's doing when she runs into students to catch up with them and really look them in the eye. I didn't get to mention yet my family members who are professors that teach everything from Psychology to Biology to Reading Education.

While it's been underpaid for over 200 years, education has offered women the chance to influence future generations, to teach the love of learning, to teach people to be good people.

So today, Day 2 of 10 days of Great Women, is devoted to you, teachers.

"If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people." -Chinese Proverb

10 Days of Great Women

Like many women in America right now, I'm feeling the impending loss of a great leader in the face of the incoming anti-feminist leadership. I recently responded to an email from a woman who told me it was time to make America great again with the following

"Gross. When exactly was the time that you'd like to return to in American history? Before women could vote? When people with disabilities were institutionalized? The phrase "make America great again," is offensive to all the progress this country has made. It is unpatriotic and despicable to imply that we should rewind the progress of our greatest Americans."

And so, in honor of all the GREAT Americans who have fought for our progress, I'm highlighting women in my life that have impacted my ability to see progress, women who have inspired me, women who have pushed me to be better.

Today is Day 1

Women's soccer is one of the greatest sources of pride in my femininity in life. I feel strong; I feel driven to be stronger; I feel inspired by the professionals; and I feel patriotic at the leadership the women in my country have taken in the sport.

During the summer, I drive an hour or so each direction to play women's soccer for this fantastic team that I love. We've played together for about 2 years and in that short time, I've watched them form a deep, close-knit group of support. I live far away so I'm not in that inner circle but I witnessed from my vantage point, the speed with which women can form strong, supportive bonds.

I remember the first season playing this game in my head where I tried to figure out who was straight. I've done this most of my life because my dad's gay and learning that came as such a huge shock to me, that it's this little challenge I play where I try to guess who is straight and who is not. That first season, it was less obvious who was and who wasn't which orientation. But now the women are as comfortable with each other as a dozen sisters and everyone just is who she is.

I thought of these women a lot as the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric came out in the election. I wanted to see their reactions and joy at electing the first woman president, and looked forward to seeing photos of them celebrating. And then when that didn't happen, I wished to be with them in solidarity as women, as those who support diversity.

These last two years since we first started playing, I've loved watching them hang their arms around each other's shoulders in facebook photos. I love to see who went out together and how they support each other if someone is moving or has a breakup. I love when they've been drunken fools together. But more than anything, I love when it's just us. Just the girls. On the field with a ball. And we're pushing to be better and stronger and faster. And as 22 women on the field each Sunday, we do that.

So Day One of 10 Days of Great Women is dedicated to you, Optimist's United. As it says on our jerseys, "Friends for Life."

Privilege is a bitch to spell

Black lives matter. We can say it. We can mean it. But don't let's pretend all lives matter.
If we really meant all lives, it wouldn't be so damned hard to convince my community to allow a homeless shelter in. If we really meant that, we'd actually help the mentally ill and disabled. But we don't. Some lives matter. Some of them are black and some of them are white. Most of them are white and the ones whose voices are heard most are male.

A note on privilege. I haven't written or commented more about white privilege because that word's too hard to spell. Privlidge, privaledge, privledge....

In all seriousness though, I think white people who disregard the existence of inequality are stuck in the possible precedent admitting someone's been mistreated based on their skin color will create and how it might impact someone from their own group down the line and mostly they're stuck in themselves and their own suffering in this life. We all have suffering in our lives. Every one of us. And here's where I'm at with that. I hate that. But more than that I hate that amid someone's own suffering, they're so attached to their pain, so afraid of letting go of their own suffering they can't see someone else's.

I want all my white friends to know, that if you're honest about that word, "privilege" you can still complain. Your suffering is still real. As silly as it sounds, I think some white people are reluctant to admit their privilege because they think it means that nothing can be wrong in their lives, that if you have a privileged life, you can't have problems. But that's not true.

The existence of privilege does not negate all inequity in the world. Among the best parts of being human, I think, is the drive toward fairness, the need for it and the fighting for it. Admitting privilege doesn't mean you can't complain about how the mentally ill are treated or the bum deal you were given with your home or student loans. It just means you can extend a hand to convince others to join in the struggle for a more equal world. And that, is worth doing. Even if I can't spell for shit, I can reach out a hand, and, with all my faults, try to connect myself with the human family in its efforts to be ever greater.

So reach out a hand. Help someone else up. We are better together.

Stop Licking That

My younger son, who I'll refer to as Gomez from here on out, got me sick. The way it happened is this.

Gomez: "Mommy, I want a kiss."
Me, a fool: "Aww..." leans in for kiss
Gomez sneezes in my mouth.

This happened twice.

It's not in this book, but feel free to check out Stop Licking That. It's up for pre-sales!

https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Licking-That-Karin-Mitchell-ebook/dp/B01MZWOIUL

 

The way we'd be happy

This morning as I drove to Denver, I had so very much to say. I was going to describe this little girl and how she would turn out in my story. How her Quincinera would go, how her family would have saved and slaved for it and how she would have just wanted to wear tennis shoes because at15, she still wasn’t ready for high heels and womanhood. But I can’t remember what else. There was something about a man and his body and how to describe the way destiny arranged his limbs into my path, but I can’t recall exactly what intersection I was at when I was supposed to run into and then write about him. What happened? Were they supposed to meet?

Did he miss the little girl too?

 

Maybe I was supposed to start a book about an apocalypse. The one where the floods come and those of us who live atop mountains where it is dry and without plenty would be flooded with humans coming up the hills to where they might survive. I would write about the way the groups stood atop of mountains and shot at the scores of people who clambered up the mountain trying to survive the rising tides and rising temperatures. The floods of people with floods behind them, and their panicked faces and how the westerners couldn’t handle it. They defended their land against the flood of bodies coming up the hill, desperate. But before that, there was the Florida bride who sizzled and steam rose from her side as it was so hot at her wedding that she literally caught fire. Rain on her wedding day would have saved her but instead her dress melted into her flesh, what was left of it after starving herself to fit into that dress in the first place.

 

But then life got busy and I didn’t write the characters down and they moved on to other authors, handed out by other muses.

 

And should I even bother to tell you how much I missed, trying to juggle the people I encountered yesterday and the let down when I didn’t get a chance to have that meaningful conversation with any of the authors. We got together to donate books and it was my tribe and I was so excited to see them. The introverted, contemplative lot. How I love to take a long break inside their minds and hear what they’ve dreamt up lately. And then instead, how we spoke in snippets abuzz with holes of interruptions. What was I saying? I was saying how I missed the connections I’d hoped to have. Only that wasn’t what I was crafting with words. It was deeds and I’d hoped to dance around it a while in conversation, hoping we could waltz into the world of friendship and remember how it felt to be together. But it didn’t work on account of the cheese holes, the way we didn’t finish a thought. The way I didn’t hear you, or see your face and watch it while you formulated a thought. I didn’t see. I was too busy.

 

We’re all too busy. I fantasize about winning the lottery, like any poor fool does, really. Except I think my fantasy is all about time. I want more of it. I want to use it to hike and skip and listen and never, ever do laundry again. I don’t want to own more anything. So really, if I think of what I most want at any given moment, it’s connection. When I think of what I miss about high school, the answer is mostly nothing. High school was a terrible time for me. But in those years and the ones that followed, I had those deep down friends, anything-friends, the ones you can do nothing with or swim around a pond, or go to a party, or start a ruckus, you can do anything with them. Those friends. Nearly 20 years after high school, I still know plenty of anything friends, everything friends. But the times when I’m around them are rarer and so what I truly miss is that one friend. The one friend you see every other day or so, that you talk to once or twice or sometimes even three times a day. I miss that connection. And if I think of what money would get me, it isn’t that. So maybe I need to figure out how to right my ship and point it toward the chance to connect and form that friendship. Except, everyone’s too damned busy for that sort of thing. It’s too bad. I think it’s how we’d be happy.

A Tiny Grocery Store, which lives?

On our way out of town, we stop in a small town grocery store. Lynn's Grocery Store. The aisles are shorter and fewer and the linoleum older than the major chains. There's bins just like the bigbox store but these have no copy written glossy signage. There's just a bin of balls all low down with a paper sign. Rob says yes to the kids when they ask for a ball and I roll my eyes at how sweet his soft spots are: two of them, one for each kid.

"You guys can pick one and share it." My soft spot is a communistic piece of me. They share it and it takes over my heart like a wild weed turning over on itself and going out of control over all of me.

The boys agonize over their choice and argue each option's virtues. The orange basketball is a better choice because... duh, basketball and the soccer is better because well, soccer. In the end after making a persuasive argument, the older piece of my soft spot gives in to his own weak spot for his brother, hugs him, and says they'll get the soccer ball. The younger boy smiles in a way that makes his plump cheeks stand out and his eyes sparkle with delight. The weeds spread.

I feel that recoil though when we get to the line to pay and there's a sign "We support our Police, All Lives Matter." My roots lift up and wait for different soil. I'll be able to soak up the nutrients I've picked up from my trip without setting anything down. I can hold it until later.

I think of Faviola, Favi she likes to be called, the pregnant Mexican woman I met at the pool with her son. She's a permanent legal resident who was concerned about my family staying in such a dump as the cabins we'd decided on. She made sure to tell me she was legal, as if it made any difference to em at a pool alongside an RV park and cheap cabins. She invited us to shower or cook at her house. She hadn't had people be very nice to her in this new community she'd just moved to and I pondered that. How could that be? Her accident was so good, her English as impeccable as her manners, she wore tasteful small gold jewelry and a nice blouse. How could people not have been more hospitable and welcoming to her? Were they racist?

The sign would seem to indicate yes. "All lives can't matter until black lives matter. And it's a police state when police can kill with impunity." I wanted to scream as soon as I saw the sign. But where would that get me?

Probably no further than it would have gotten me to tell the old white farmers at the truckstop where we'd stopped for lunch the previous day why it was that all these pussies would be voting for Hillary. "I'll be voting for her," I wanted to shout, "because of 30 years of what she's had to say for women and children." What might your posterchild for entitlement have to say for women and children. Wait, nothing appropriate or respectful or additive, that's for sure. And how can you call him anything but a pussy? He's never had to work a hard day in the sun with his bare hands like you have. Never. He's not worked for things the way you have. You've nothing in common but your skin and gender. And even that has weathered differently. But where would saying this get me?

Probably no further than it'd have gotten me with the couple with the confederate flag hanging from the side of their tent alongside an American one we'd seen earlier in the week in the national park where we'd been camping. I'd wanted to yell, "how's the view from up there you racist asses?" But that was just anger. I couldn't think of anything clever. As I steamed in anger, I tried unsuccessfully to think of something. I wished I could change my skin color and march right up and say nothing. Cross my arms across my chest and stare right at that flag until they felt the shame they should. They had it coming to them.

We probably all do really. With our expensive clothes and cars full of camping gear, driving across thousands of years of buffalo and Lakota bones. Fences caging in ancestry and ancient knowledge, spiritual connection.

But this thinking wouldn't get me anywhere.

Anymore than saying something to the checker would. I look at the cursive black lettering of the store's name Lynn's Grocery Store. I wonder if Lynn saw the video of the unarmed black caregiver who was trying to explain to police about his autistic charge and was shot despite laying on the ground. But clearly all lives matter?

Instead of saying any of these things, I ask for directions. The woman, a black gap where a tooth should have been to the right of her two front teeth and her dyed brown hair pulled back in a pony tail, nods at me and comes around the till. The whole area had many of her. Women who were missing one or two teeth, whose gums had receded.

She walks me out of the store to the parking lot, points and says, "It's easier if I show you."

Tuck you behind me, an ear listening

I would that I could be the wisps of hair on your face,
That I could cross your cheek like a waterfall tumbles down a hill
Tuck you behind me, an ear listening
when I fall for you,
We are water and rock, roaring
Our spray-- misty rainbows and lime-colored mosses

I would that I could be the sweat that gathers on your brow,
As you swing a pickax
I would salt you and taste the sweetness of sweat in the quake of earth and dirt on you
I just wanted to say quake
Because it’s what I do
I quake
I quiver inside of your jagged thoughts
I love the ripples of your belly like water skipping beats across the heart-shaped pond of my stomach
I’m shallow in this
I wade in at night, in stolen time between seconds ticking on the clock
Where I might meet you in dreams of barefoot stillness
waters like glass, stars amid blackness, winks on the ground
Your arms are long enough to reach across a dreamt-pond to let me hold onto you
then you pull me up mountains: post holing and gasping
I pull you into dreams: ethereal, drenched, and panting
I feel your rhythm in my hips, we sway and dip, sultry as we are
You feel my words in your hollows, sinewy and inviting
 But the second hand moves
I wake
You move
I move on
It is day.