If you tell me to just eat a salad I will tell you to just get fucked

by mollykl

In the debate last week with Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, GOP candidate Herschel Walker explained why he didn’t support a $35 cap on insulin, in his words, “Because I believe in reducing insulin, but at the same time you got to eat right” and goes on “unless you have eating right, insulin is doing you no good.”

I’ve heard some ridiculous and dangerous statements from candidates throughout my life, but this vilification of diabetes patients and the victim-blaming shows and unprecedented level of stupidity and lack of care from someone who is running to represent Americans. It also should be a call to every politician to understand this issue, because it affects all Americans.

Particularly in the case of Diabetes Type 2, there is the view that it is the patients’ “fault”. Like Herschel Walker, many people think that if people would just exercise and eat right, poof!, the problem will go away. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes when I got pregnant at the age of 38, and I was devastated, and very, very angry. I had done everything right! I had done everything I was supposed to! I ate well, I walked every day, I didn’t use my pregnancy as an excuse to eat whole pies (which I really, really wanted to do). My coworkers complained because I ate cooked spinach in the breakroom at lunch every day for 6 months. I couldn’t stand the smell of fast food, and it was the one thing I wouldn’t allow my husband to bring in to the house. And yet, despite all of that, I developed Gestational Diabetes. About once a week I would break down in tears giving myself my insulin shots. Throughout, though, I knew I was very, very lucky. My insurance through work paid for my insulin and my testing supplies.

50% of women who develop Gestational Diabetes go on to develop Type 2 Diabetes. I was given this warning, and I have taken it seriously. I have watched my weight, made exercise a regular part of my life, eat well, and I make sure I get my A1C tested every year (which I pay for out of pocket, as it’s not considered a “necessary” test). It has been on the high side, but not concerning until this year. Ironically, this is the year I have felt my “healthiest”. Steadily losing weight, feeling better, hiking every weekend, taking my healthy lunch to work, and yet, for all that, I am now in “pre-diabetes” stage. And I am very, very angry. Once again, I did everything right. I did everything I was supposed to!

So you understand why it makes my blood boil when a politician makes the flippant “just eat better” comment to millions of Americans diagnosed with Diabetes. If it were that simple I would not now be having discussions with my doctor about “ok, now what?”.  Drug companies are making billions of dollars on insulin, while people die because they can’t afford it. But Diabetes patients are the bad guys because they didn’t eat right? I did eat right and exercise, so who are you going to blame now? When are we going to vilify the people who deserve vilification – the drug companies and the politicians who do their bidding and keep Americans dying painful deaths, all while pontificating that it’s their own fault.

We talk a big game about “personal responsibility” in America, and I call bullshit. I was responsible. When are we going to talk about community? When are we going to address the systemic racism of the medical community that is still victim blaming Black women, who have a 1 in 4 chance of developing Type 2 Diabetes? When are politicians going to say enough, and demand that drug companies be held accountable for the profits-over-human-lives policies and pricing?  

Herschel Walker’s comments were outstandingly ignorant and callous, and it’s time for politicians and policy-makers to do better, and for the American public to stop expressing opinions about shit they know nothing about.

In praise of Mrs. Lucille Bridges

by mollykl

One day couple of years ago at work while picking up much-needed caffeine from the coffee bar, I did my usual schtick of regaling them with “this day in history” facts. On that particular day, exactly 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered immediate desegregation “superseding the previous ‘with all deliberate speed’ ruling”. 

I’d read the history events in order, and I could tell they weren’t too interested, it being 7 a.m. and the espresso machine already having a line of cups waiting to be filled, but when I’d moved on to the next event (somewhere in the early 70’s), B stopped me.

“Wait, when did you say that happened?”

“1969. 50 years ago, this very day.”

She actually stopped what she was doing (and let me tell you, we never actually stop moving at work), turned to me and said, “That’s not very long ago.”

With more than a little sadness I said, “You’re right, it’s not.”

After all, Ruby Bridges is only 14 years older than I am. Segregation is not the distant past – it is the horrifyingly recent past. So recent that it’s not only our grandparents that lived in segregated America, our parents did as well. (Another co-worker said, “Those women in the pictures of Ruby’s first day of school? The ones screaming at a little girl just trying to get an education? I wonder what their grand-children think when they see those pictures in their history books?”)

Since having my son 15 years ago, I’ve thought a lot about parents and children. I knew parenting wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, but I’d had no idea the number of sleepless nights I’d spend worrying about whether or not I was doing a “good enough” job. The upside is that I am in awe of parents who have been absolute beacons for their children, and have raised incredible human beings.

Enter Mrs. Lucille Bridges. Not to take anything away from Ruby, because can you imagine being a little girl and walking past, escorted by federal marshals, those crowds screaming epithets, but Ruby’s mom was, and is, the superstar. 

In an interview with the Indianapolis Star, Ms. Bridges said she “wasn’t really afraid” of the crowds as she walked to school. She didn’t grasp that they were angry because she was going to school with white kids. She was 6 – thankfully, most 6 year olds can’t comprehend irrational hate.

Oh, but I bet Mrs. Lucille Bridges was afraid, because as an adult, and as a black woman in the United States in 1960, she knew what irrational hate was and she’d seen the results. She must have been terrified walking her daughter to school that first day, and every day after. She knew what they as a family would be facing, but she also wanted what every parent wants – the chance for her child to get a better education than what was available at the time.

There are swaths of communities and politicians telling us that we shouldn’t be learning about the crowds that threatened to kill a little girl….for going to school. There are parents that insist that it is their job, not the schools’, to teach about racism, and you’ll excuse me if I don’t trust that as a white parent you’re going to do an adequate job. Politicians and their accompanying, toadying news affiliations rail against Critical Race Theory as an election-year gambit. You know what I call it? History. It’s the history of this country, and if you are against it, I have to wonder if maybe one of those young women wearing neatly pressed, respectable dresses, screaming death threats at a little girl, isn’t in fact your grandmother, and maybe you just don’t want to admit your family’s part in the systemic racism inherent in this country. Maybe you want to stick your head in the sand, you want to insist that it’s not like that anymore, that you are different, that your kids are different. If you are white, that’s not your call to make. 

We don’t move forward by burying the truth. We move forward, we grow, we get better, by learning the truth. We change. 

On this day in history, in 1960, 6-year old Ruby Bridges attended William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She had to be accompanied by federal marshalls, to get her safely into the school, where parents pulled their children out of her class, because they didn’t want them going to school with a black girl. 

That truth needs to be taught. We owe it to Lucille Bridges, for everything she went through to make sure her daughter would have a better future. 

Living In Care

by mollykl

While the past year and a half has been horrifying it has also been…enlightening.

Of course, the horrifying part wasn’t just a pandemic that claimed millions of lives, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was the realization that the horror was our fellow man. As the news got more and more grim, and the lockdowns, and shortages, and hoarding began, people’s true nature appeared, like David from the marble, chipped away by the pressure from the outside world.

I got a front row seat to the show. As an essential worker I saw it all. I saw my coworkers yelled at for wearing masks. I got called a “sheep”. I got temped each day coming to work, holding my breath and crossing my fingers every morning. I was accused of holding stock in the back for myself. I was accused of price gouging. Through it all I tried my very best to keep myself healthy, sane, and still sober.

Looking back on the year, and a million social media posts, op-eds, soundbites, and chyrons, I’ve decided that the world is divided into two groups, and the previously mentioned set us against each other.

The first scream into the void that they will not live in fear. What entails living in fear you ask? Wearing a mask. Buying a mask. Staying home per the “stay at home” order. Not gathering in large groups. Getting a vaccine. Planning to get a vaccine. This group says that the economy is paramount, and businesses need to stay open, people need to get out there and spend. Schools need to stay open, and, well, kids don’t get COVID anyway, do they? Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas put it succinctly when he said that senior citizens might be willing to die for the economy. He also said there were “more important things than living.” Please keep in mind that this is from the “pro-life” party. If you disagree with them you’re a sheep, a snowflake, or a liberal. Or a combination of all three. A “snowshlib”? Quick, tell Fox News that I’m trademarking that!

To exhibit any caution (over a disease that was remarkably contagious and promised a painful death or slow agonizing recovery) was to be living in fear. Or so I was told by news pundits, politicians, and the president himself, who held super-spreader events that led to numerous cases.

I chose to see it another way, and I like to think I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t “living in fear”, I was living in care.

So what is living in care? Living in care is wearing that mask to ensure that your friends and neighbors are safe. I spent 8+ hours a day, five (sometimes 5+) days a week in a grocery store in 2020. I donated blood every 8 weeks, and every single test came back negative for COVID anti-bodies. I tell you what, around September, which was approximately the 6-month mark of lockdown, I started to feel pretty fucking bullet-proof. That I’d made it that long, as the death toll country-wide was ratcheting up, felt like I was untouchable. News flash: I’m not, it’s just that the masks actually work.

Living in care is the smile, and yes you can see a smile even through a mask,, no matter how tired you are, to the stranger, because you know it’s is actually going to matter. It’s the hug for your kid because freshman year of high school is not what they imagined.

It’s my friend and coworker L, who brought in an unopened bottle of rubbing alcohol from her home to a customer because he needed one for his daughter who was diabetic and needed to clean her injection site.

It’s the restaurants that shifted to take out to keep their staff working.

It’s the school districts that kept their breakfast and lunch programs going, knowing that for many students, their school meal is the only one they get.

It’s nurses, doctors, med school students, working triple shifts to keep up with demand. Staying away from their own families to protect them, when at the end of 24 or 48 hours all you want is a hug and a shoulder to cry on.

It’s my employer, who, when other grocery chains stopped “hazzard pay” after a month or two, continued to pay well into 2021.

It’s “Nana Fran” who made hundreds of cloth face masks to give away for free to people she didn’t know.

Living in care is caring for your neighbor. Hell, it’s caring for people you don’t even like, but don’t want to see suffer.

I guess it’s all how you look at it. You might see that I wore a mask, and washed my hands, stayed home and think I was living in fear.

I wasn’t. I was living in care. And I tell you what: if I had to, I would do it again.

Mantra

by mollykl

In the nanosecond after my mind decided that the shattered wine glass and spilled sauvignon blanc on the floor was my last, I started making a list of everything that was going to change. And reader, I’m here to tell you my eyebrows were not on that list. They should have been.

In blinding pain from having hit the laminate floor HARD, weight evenly distributed on 50-year-old knees, and seeing the blood on the floor, I simultaneously thought to myself, “But I only had one freaking glass of wine!” and “Who trips over a couch?”  When I got up, and let me tell you I still remember the crunch my knees made, I started picking up the remains of the wine glass, washing the blood off and applying direct pressure, and because I’m a “there’s always a bright side!” kind of gal, immediately started looking for said bright side. Hence, the list.

1.”I’m gonna lose 20 pounds!” Well, not right away I didn’t. When you’re 25 and you give up alcohol, sure you can probably drop 20 pounds overnight. When you’re 50…not so much. I immediately packed on 10 pounds, probably from the intense sugar cravings I had. It figures: I’d been giving my liver a steady supply of sugar in the form of alcohol for 30 years, it was bound to be a little cranky to be cut off. I think I went through an entire box of Annie’s Bunny Fruit Snacks, and every single one of those little suckers joined me on the scale. But after about a month it evened out, and I lost the additional weight I put on as well as another 10.

2. “My skin is going to look ah-ma-zing”  Oh, and my skin broke out. I’ve had bad skin most of my life, and I have severe rosacea that when triggered can last for months. Thankfully, because geez that would have pushed me over the edge, they were just normal breakouts. (If you have rosacea you understand that “normal acne” is like a spa vacation). After a month that cleared up as well, with the occasional everyday suprise! from time to time. No, I don’t look amazing, but my skin doesn’t hurt anymore, and I’ll take that any day.

3. “I’m going to be so happy!” And then there’s dealing with the emotional shit. (Well, obviously I’m not the best PR person for not drinking so far..but bear with me). Everything you used alcohol to hide from or forget you now have to deal with, which kind of sucks, because, hello! I’m here trying to be healthy shouldn’t I get a fucking prize or something? But noooooo….you want me to start examining my life at 50? A bad day used to mean coming home and cracking open a bottle of wine, or mixing a martini. Now it means coming home and getting out in the greenhouse, or doing yoga, or going for a walk, or writing it all down. On the day of the Parkland shooting in 2018 I came home and drank half a bottle of vodka, because at the time that was really how I handled things. Figuring out new coping mechanisms is a bitch.

Finding the support is even more so. When you’re not drinking, it’s noticeable, and people want to know why. It’s not any of their damn business, but they think it is, and friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers have an opinion. (Remember: these are the same people who also have opinions on your parenting, your job, and how perhaps a woman of your age shouldn’t wear that denim pencil skirt.) There’s a point where I would bring it up, with a painfully bright smile, just so I could circumvent questions. Let this conversation be on my terms, not yours, because honestly, your questions are stupid, particularly if you’re halfway to drunk already.

Alcohol is so much a part of our culture that it is harder to explain why you’re not drinking than why you are.  The whole “mommy needs wine” schtick has normalized binge drinking with cute pink t-shirts and Facebook groups.  And that’s what it is – a schtick.  When you’re sober you start to notice what a presence alcohol is in our everyday life – on social media, how we interact with friends, coworkers and family, how we spend our time and money. You cannot open social media without seeing memes about vodka in Starbucks cups at weekend soccer games. I was almost ashamed to go back and look at Instagram posts and see how many of them contained martinis or glasses of rose. (I still have glasses of rose on Instagram, but now they’re St Regis alcohol-removed, and I mix a mean virgin Cosmopolitan.) This summer I saw so. many. glasses of rose and at one point had to wonder what 100 degree heat in the south of France while drunk would feel like, and said a prayer of thanks for tripping over that stupid couch.

But back to my brows. In addition to the things that I thought would (and did to some point) change, there were quite few things that came out of nowhere.

I didn’t get my brows done regularly, but I would go in and have them waxed and cleaned up every so often. Since I wear glasses I would make sure they were as perfect as I could make them, and I love my mini Tweezerman tweezers. Once I stopped drinking I was pretty much like, “Eh, fuck it.” I mean, I would still put a little gel and brush them, but I stopped worrying that they didn’t look good enough. For fuck’s sake THEY’RE EYEBROWS!

“Eh, fuck it” became my mantra. It’s not that I stopped caring about things, it’s that I reserved my caring for the things that matter, and dear reader, let me tell you eyebrows don’t really matter. Neither do, in no particular order:

1. other people’s opinions of your parenting
2. how many likes you get on Instagram
3. what other people think about your taste in music
4. your family’s opinions on anything that doesn’t actually affect them

Oh God I could go on. So, so many things that I’ve said “eh, fuck it” to in the past 11 months. And every single one and time makes me smile. This entire past year, in fact, makes me smile. It has not been easy. I have cried and slept a lot. (Geez, the first 2 weeks I was probably sleeping 10 hours a night). I have been able to let go of past perceived slights (which now make me laugh), of my own mistakes, and my disappointments. I have been able to embrace my imperfections and throw myself into projects without worrying if I’ll fail (I submitted 2 cold pitches to Conde Nast, and was rejected for both, and guess what? Life went on). I’ve read hundreds of books, taken pictures of the most random things just because they make me happy, and impressed my dentist because I now floss (which happens when you’re not too drunk to at night!). Saying “eh, fuck it” to the stuff that I don’t care about has saved me time, energy, and stress. I can spend that time on the stuff that I do give a fuck about: my family, friends, and voting rights.

Quitting drinking kicked a tiny snowball off a mountain, and that sucker just kept on rolling till it brought the mountain down. I stopped drinking, and then I cut back spending money on things to make me feel better but that never did. I stopped drinking and I started cooking more and more creatively. I stopped drinking and I started reading more. I stopped drinking and stopped obsessively cleaning and making lists. You know the supposed- Hemingway quote “Write drunk, edit sober”? I stopped drinking and started writing again – getting going on a story idea I’d been kicking around for years but was afraid to start. I stopped drinking and suddenly the weekly anxiety attacks stopped. I stopped drinking and in the most amusing of ironies, starting seeing the world through rose colored glasses.

 

Damn

by mollykl

People talk shit about “kids these days.” I’m nearing 50, and honestly I should be at the “you damn kids get off my lawn and get a haircut” stage. But more and more, I’m impressed, even awed, by this upcoming generation.

It started over a year ago, at the Women’s March in Sacramento. High school-age girls. Quite a few of them. Handmade signs about women in S.T.E.M.. About voting rights. About their right to say “no” and dress however the fuck they want to. Teenagers, particularly girls, have been out front and loud about the proposed Muslim ban, the proposed wall, about DACA. At this year’s march the number was doubled.

I see my friend E’s daughter, K, who’s only in junior high school, but has her shit together. Sure, she’s still a hormonal teenager, but she knows who she is, and it seems like she isn’t going to let anyone tell her different.

I watch my cousins’ daughters run, climb, bike and snowboard anything not nailed down. And be unapologetic about it (because why the fuck should they). Those are some girls that will not only stand up for themselves, but for anyone else, should they need to. (As sisters, I imagine they fight, but I can also see little red-head A ambushing and beating the crap out of the first boy to break big sis’ heart.)

I’ve witnessed my friend K’s daughter growing up, and managing to find a balance between her faith and being a pre-teen (I can’t imagine that’s easy). She’s learning what servant leadership is, and in fact, what it means to live your faith.

Those are great examples. I would have been happy with those. But this week brought even more.

I didn’t want them. I didn’t want high school students to have to stand up to the government and demand that they act to ensure the safety of other students. I didn’t want to bark with laughter at responses to the presidents’ lame-ass “we stand with you” speech. No you don’t you mother-fucker. You stand with the National Rifle Association who gave you 30 MILLION dollars. You rolled back the Obama era regulation that stopped the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

They’re calling out the government for failing them. They’re calling out the lies from their elected officials who took money from the NRA to curtail sensible gun laws so they could profit from selling one more damn AR-15. They’re calling out the hypocrisy of “pro-life” members of Congress who only care about life in a uterus, and not walking the halls of a high-school, thinking about a prom dress.

Let me make this perfectly clear: there is no silver lining here. This is not the “bright side” that I am so famous for.

Teenagers today. These kids aren’t putting up with any of your “thoughts and prayers” bullshit. They want to know why someone with mental problems, and who was fucking identified as a threat, was allowed to buy a fucking assault weapon. And they’re doing it on Twitter, confronting the President directly.

Damn, I’m impressed. This is the next generation. The ones that have been ridiculed as being snowflakes. To quote my husband, “This is the post ‘participation-trophy’ generation.”

They will be marching, they will speaking, and they will be voting.

You have been warned.

The rent you pay

by mollykl

A family friend recently responded to something I’d written in support of vote-by-mail, saying “Voting is a privilege”. I beg to differ. Living in a free democracy is a privilege. Voting is a right and a responsibility. It is, in fact,the rent you pay for living in a working and evolving democracy.

We need to change our view of voting – of the process and what it means. Voting itself evokes a myriad of reactions: some think their vote doesn’t count “so why bother”, others see it as a sacred duty, and still others as a reward, a privilege. Voting is how we level the playing field, and voter suppression is simply an attempt to keep the status quo. The beautiful thing about democracy is that, in theory, we are all equal. Voter suppression, in the form of restricted polling places and and voter I.D. requirements under the guise of voter fraud protection, supports the notion that voting is a privilege, and as such is reserved for the privileged few. If we cling to this vision of voting as a privilege we are not serving this country or its citizens.

If voter fraud is your only argument against making voting easier, then you should look at the statistics. An Arizona State University study found only 10 cases of voter fraud in the years 2000-2012, as quoted by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Voter fraud is the monster under the bed that politicians use to defend voter suppression. Kris Kobach’s Presidential Commission on Election Integrity claimed that there was widespread voter fraud in New Hampshire, only to have that argument fact-checked (quoted by USA Today) and found to be bogus. 

If you think that voting is a privilege that should be undertaken with ceremony, e.g. lining up at polling places and not easy,  then perhaps you have a job whose schedule fits around polling hours. I work a semi-swing shift in grocery, and when I get off from work I pick up my child after school. As I’m not about to miss out on voting I am registered as a permanent absentee voter so that I may vote by mail. Does this make my vote count less? Am I not taking elections seriously enough because I fill out my ballot while in my pajamas? I read my voter pamphlet and weigh my decisions. Yes, I miss out on the camaraderie of the polling place line. I do not miss worrying about whether I’ll be late for my shift because of that line. Would you rather people working in retail just not vote? What about doctors working in emergency rooms who can’t leave a patient to go vote? Or EMT? Firefighters? Police? What about the minimum wage worker in an assisted living facility taking care of your parents? Do they not deserve to have their voice heard because they are on a 12 hour shift?

We should be making it easier to vote and to include more people in the process. The State of California should be promoting Vote by Mail as an option. People should not be turned away at polling places, they should be welcomed with open arms. Let’s stop seeing voting as something for the privileged few, but as the duty we owe this country to keep it moving forward and reflecting its citizens.

A Thanksgiving Letter

by mollykl

Dear Secretary Zinke,

I spent this Thanksgiving morning standing in a river. The American River, to be exact, between the Howe and Watt bridges. I’d gotten up at 5 a.m., and waited anxiously till dawn. I made coffee and figured I’d use up some of the time making the cranberry sauce (might as well get that out of the way). When dawn came I was already in my boots and vest. I tiptoed into the bedroom to leave my husband a cup of coffee and whispered “I’m going fishing” to which he mumbled, “ermmm….have fun.”

I was feeling quite smug, thinking I’d have the river to myself, but no, there were already 2 guys there when I arrived. Another joined us soon after. I’ve been fishing for over 40 years, but only took up fly fishing about 2 years ago. I’m still pretty unsure about my casting, so I tend to stay away from where “the real fisherman” are – that is, the riffles by the Watt bridge. But this morning I waded out, and took my place. I grew up here, so my early memories are of travelling over the Watt Avenue bridge and looking out and seeing the fishermen lined up when the steelhead were running.

I stood in the water and marveled at the human invention that is neoprene and how could my feet and legs possibly stay so warm in this water? I listened to the hawks and kept an eye out for otters (they’re usually farther downstream but you never know). I remembered the story my mother once told about her disastrous water ski adventure.

When she was younger she went water skiing with friends on the Sacramento River where it meets the American, just a few miles from where I stood this morning. Now, my mother was not athletically inclined, but bless her heart, she tried. (She once ran over her own hand while snow skiing. She explained that skis used to be much longer so it was possible, but not likely. It took skill for her to manage that.) She gave it her all, but spent most of the day being dumped into the river. The next day she was so sick that a friend had to take her to the emergency room. When the doctor asked what she’d done the day before, because he could not figure out what was wrong with her, she told him she’d been water skiing in the river, and he immediately knew what was wrong. He told her to go home, and wait for everything to get out of her system, and to stay out of the river, because at that time it was so polluted that it made her sick.

This morning you would never know that this river , along with the Sacramento, was such a mess. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time on the American River Bike Trail, but I don’t remember ever seeing a hawk. Now they perch in my neighbor’s tree and when I’m at the river I never fail to spot at least one or two. When I take my son for walks along the river we keep an eye out for tracks – deer, coyote, and yes, the occasional, mountain lion. This river, and the region, have been transformed over the past 50 years. The river is clean and we protect it now.

You have a choice before you, the immediate or the lasting. The immediate is the cold, hard cash that can be gotten from mining rights to public lands or drilling in the Arctic. There’s a lot of money to made in selling out the public lands that you were intrusted to protect. And, in case it wasn’t mentioned when you were first nominated for your job, that job is to protect the Interior of the United States of America.

Your other choice is to be remembered. Remembered for having stood for our public lands. For saving them from those who would think that leaving our lands to future generations means less than a nice check today. The second choice is harder – you would have to stand up to your contributors, to the Senators that voted to approve your nomination, and to the President himself.  Teddy Roosevelt is remembered to this day, and revered by both conservatives and liberals, because he stood up for what he believed in – in our public lands and the incredible beauty of this country.

“There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.”
– Speech by Theodore Roosevelt in Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910.

You and I are lucky – as fishermen (um, fisherpersons?) we experience that mystery, melancholy and charm every time we’re standing in a river, throwing a loop, watching the water and waiting for a strike. Let’s leave it be, so that future generations can have those moments too.

Sincerely,

Molly

 

Slainte

by mollykl

I fucking hate St Patrick’s Day. There, I said it.

In the first place, it falls during Lent so how did it become twisted into a day of bacchanal-level drinking?

Secondly, do you even know who St Patrick was?

And thirdly, beer should not ever be green, and there’s a special place in purgatory for you if you think it should be.

But this year I’m going to revel in it. Well, I’m going to revel in the irony of it, because Trump’s Travel Ban II (subtitled, “let’s just keep throwing these out until one sticks or until people get tired”) was, before being struck down, supposed to take effect March 16th. On March 17th we will celebrate the culture and saint of a people that this country once thought of the equivalent of the Syrians we are now rejecting, and we will do it with big smiles on our faces and cheer in our hearts.

America’s relationship with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free has always been complicated. We are ridiculously proud of being a nation of immigrants, but we don’t want any more right now thank you. We want immigrants like us, thanks, not like them. We were hostile to the Chinese, to the German and Irish in the mid-1800’s, to the Vietnamese in the 1970’s, and now to the Syrians. We were so fearful of Jewish immigrants that in the 1930’s we turned them back, where they returned to promptly be sent off to camps. Why is it we conveniently forget? (And sweet mother of God why does “Clueless” have a better argument in favor of immigration than Trump has in opposition?) We’re pretty good at forgetting that the greater number of us were immigrants, some only a few generations back.

Tomorrow everyone will pretend to be Irish. Want to really pretend to be Irish? Pretend you just left your home and came to a country that doesn’t want you. Delve into cultural memory for a time when your ancestors came here and were treated as the “other”, when the newspapers were full of editorials on why your great-great-grandfather was going to steal jobs or bring disease and crime.

Don’t like it, do you? Enjoy your green beer.

Love letter

by mollykl

Getting to Davis from Sacramento, even far out east Sacramento where I live, usually takes 15-20 minutes max. Unless you go on a Sunday afternoon. Everyone is coming home from the mountains, so when you hit the causeway, where 80 meets 50, you’re in for the slowdown of a lifetime. 15 minutes became 50. I am not the most patient passenger, and getting cut of by a Ford Explorer who DID NOT signal only prompted comments about the possible size of his anatomy (which is why he had to buy that car). The husband made an annoyed sound. Not at the driver. At me.

We pulled along side a Greyhound bus (and Husband J said, “That’s a Greyhound bus. They still exist?”) and I instinctively put my arm over my belly. Because, you know, they could see down into the car and see that my belly was probably not as streamlined as I hoped it might be. For lack of a better phrase.

In that moment I travelled back in time. Over 10 years approximately, to about 25 minutes before son j was born. I was in the operating room, and after the third try (YES, THIRD!) the lead in anesthesiology yanked the needle away from his student and snarled, “Let me me do it!”. Finally, it worked and my spinal block was complete, and they carefully laid me down, and prepared to transfer me to the operating table. The nurse, whose name I never got, looked down at me, grabbing part of the sheet and lifting me against her belly, said, “That’s what I’ve got this belly for – it’s a cushion.” And she laughed. I laughed. I was fucking terrified out of my mind, but I laughed. And I thanked God for her belly. That belly, and her casual acceptance of it, saved me. She gave me something to cushion me, she gave me something to laugh about, and she showed me absolutely, unequivocally that her body was something she treasured.

As we continued on Hwy 50 I thought that this belly carried son j. It endured insulin shots, and bruises from those shots that didn’t fade for months. And I’d do it all again for him, even though every three days or so I’d break down in tears because I hated needles, so developing gestational diabetes was pretty much awful for me. Yes, I could probably be thinner, but on Friday I had a glass of wine (Murphy Goode Sauvignon Blanc 2015) sitting outside in the backyard and I saw a lizard! Seeing the lizard had to make up for at least an inch or so, right?

That nurse? She saw her body for what it could do, and she probably had no idea what she was passing on. I’m surrounded by young, beautiful women every day, and it can be hard, being 48 and a bit heavier than I would prefer. But I know what my body is capable of – carrying another human being, making it through the day. I’m appreciative of all that it does. It doesn’t look like the 20 year olds that I work with, and that’s ok. It looks like me, and I love all that it has done for me.

It’s damn time I started showing that.

 

9066

by mollykl

I was an english major in college, and yes, I read Jane Austen. (In fact, I wrote my senior project on Jane Austen). But when I left school the first genre I really dived in to was history. I’d always had a thing for learning about history, so much so that I deeply regret not getting a second major in it. I’m not sure how, but Cornelius Ryan’s “The Longest Day” ended up in my possession, and I devoured it in two days. What sealed the deal for me with history is the morning I took my book to work to read on my lunch hour. My boss Dave noticed it and casually said, “Did you know George was a paratrooper at D-Day?” George. George “the tea guy”, my salesman from Murchies, who came in every two weeks to make sure I had enough product, place orders, etc. He was quiet and reserved and your standard middle aged, slightly paunchy white guy. The next time he came in I nervously asked, “So George, Dave said you were a paratrooper at D-Day?”  Yes, he replied. Then I blurted out, “Why the hell would you want to jump out of an airplane?” “It seemed like a good idea at the time” was his oh-so-George reply.

And with that I was hooked. Just the idea that the everyday people we run in to were a part of some of these moments in history, and you might never know what they’ve seen or how they played their part. At that same store I met a Vietnam veteran who flew helicopters, and despite the average one month life expectancy of huey pilots managed to come home, only to get in, you guessed it, a crash and lose partial mobility in his legs. At another place I worked we had a group of customers, old cranky-as-all-hell Russian women, who you made damn sure not to get on the wrong side of. I cringed every time I saw them, until the day I realized, suddenly, that given their age they lived under Stalin. They survived Stalin.  And from that moment on I had nothing but utter respect bordering on reverence.

In 1988 I was in college, and I wasn’t exactly the Cancun for spring break kind of girl. In fact, I rarely did anything for spring break besides go home and read for a week. But my mother bought me tickets to go to Washington D.C. and visit a friend, and it was my first time there. I was lucky enough to get to visit the Smithsonian when they had the exhibit “A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution.” My companion for the day was T, and her family had been interned.  It was my first real exposure to what the internment detailed, and I soaked it all in. More than that, I watched. I watched T’s face at each display. I watched her try to put herself in their place, try to absorb the enormity of it, try to understand it. On a whole, it is outside of understanding. It was, and is, a symbol of the worst we do when we are afraid and when we allow our fear to dictate policy.

75 years ago today President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which moved all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, into military controlled government camps. It was an order born out of fear, and was so blatantly a violation of the constitution and a suspension of rights that it will be studied by constitutional lawyers in perpetuity. We think that we’ve learned from the past, but when push comes to shove, when we are afraid, we repeat the same mistakes, over and over. It’s no surprise that among the hundreds of thousands marching on January 21st at the women’s marches held all over the world and in the spontaneous protests held after the recent executive order prohibiting immigration from specific Muslim countries were men and women who were interned at Manzanar, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, Topaz, and Rohwer.

We still have people around us who lived this history, who know how it started, who perhaps hoped and prayed that it “wouldn’t come to this.” But it did. It’s time to respect the history they lived and their experiences and do our best to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That’s not going to happen with hoping, it’s going to happen with speaking up. It’s going to happen with the word no. It’s going to happen with standing up for what makes this country unique – our Constitution and the rights we are afforded by it. The best way to honor those Japanese-American who endured internment is to protect the next group that is unfairly targeted simply because of their “other-ness”.