ten thousand things

I have exactly ten thousand things to update y’all on. I have a post about breastfeeding that is desperate to be written. And one about grief and marriage. We started night-weaning last night, which I have thoughts and QUESTIONS and lots to say about. I have Bram updates to offer (the boy learns new things every minute; he is a wonder), Iris insights, my first post-miscarriage period (which is hell and which I’m in the middle of now), job conversations… Oh, and I finished my doctorate. Bloggers, do you ever have so much to write about that you find yourself sort of paralyzed and thus write nothing. I’m there. But instead of continuing to write nothing, I’m going to write a jumbled mess of WAY TOO MUCH. You’re welcome. By which I mean I’m sorry.

•  Maybe I’ll start with the week before my defense, which we got to spend with an out-of-town guest, a beloved professor/friend from Charleston. She came to our sweet town to run a marathon (!!!), and then to attend a conference, so it just worked out that she was here for my defense. She stayed without complaint on our couch for five days being alternately woken by a toddler and harassed by a kitten. She was a trooper. But what’s even more delightful is that she got us OUT OF OUR HEADS for a while. Things had gotten sort of dark around here: I’ve been struggling more with depression than usual (the loss of a baby, death of a father, loss of a(nother) pregnancy, and death of a beloved cat kind of depression, which isn’t slight) and J has been walking through the default anger that sorrow tends to bring up in her. I won’t say we’re out of the woods (really: we have work to do), but M coming brought us some much.needed perspective. She is a joyful person, and that’s what we needed: less navel-gazing and more lighthearted happiness. When she left, we sort of fell back into the tension a bit, but only for a moment. I think we both realize that as easy as it is to act out of grief and anger, it’s not worth the toll it takes. I’m not 100% sure what the next few months will look like, but I know we’re both devoted to staying grateful and present and kind again, and that, as my dad would have said, is a good good thing.

• And then there was my defense itself. It was intense, but so so lovely. My committee really seemed to like what I’m doing. They basically planned out my next four books, which is daunting (and laughably unreasonable, frankly, given my devotion to a work/life balance), but so exhilarating. One of my committee members said she “fell in love” with my take on vulnerability and wanted to re-read my dissertation immediately after finishing it. I can’t even tell you what hearing something like that does for my sense of… I don’t know… having labored with a purpose? Another said it was the most original he’d seen in a long time, and he called it “courageous.” They had all kinds of ideas about how to use the theoretical lens I constructed (to read history. to understand culture.). I hesitate to include this (and won’t go on) because it sounds like I’m bragging, but having felt like a failure for years in terms of my reproductive abilities, and having labored so painfully twice now with babies who will never be with us, it feels amazing to have actually accomplished this feat. So please forgive the self-congratulatory tenor of this part of the update. I truly needed a personal win to help dig me out of the sense of bodily defeat that has threatened to consume me of late. The feedback I got from my committee (and from J and my mom, both of whom read my dissertation and offered lots of wise insights) felt healing.

• Also healing was the party J threw right after my defense, a kind of open house at a local wine bar, which lots of my dearest friends attended. I always find such events overwhelming (I can never process them until weeks after), but I will remember the feeling of being surrounded by so much love and support for the rest of my life. The everyone-calling-me-doctor part, though? That’s just weird. I expected to find it sort of exciting. I mean, it was kind of a lot of work to get here. But so far, it just embarrasses me and makes me feel extremely awkward. Who knows what that’s about. A sense that it isn’t real, maybe? Because of course I’m not a real doctor, right? Or, to some people, a real mother. These narratives. Sigh.

• And then there’s this damn menstrual period. Oh, gods. It was this way for the first few periods after Emmett too. Every cramp is a PTSD trigger. Every bit of bleeding. Flashbacks. Panic. The constant reminder that we’re not. I’m not. That a lifetime of clockwork-like ovulation will almost certainly come to nothing but loss. Last Friday was supposed to be the first day of our second trimester. I had started to consider which dress to wear (for my defense) out of a box of gorgeous maternity clothes that friends lovingly sent. Now that box sits in our basement waiting for one of us to have the courage to mail its contents back, unused. It is a struggle. But Yogi’s Mama has been helping a friend through loss, and she wrote this about that mom: “she lost her child. Her son. Her second born. She didn’t lose a pregnancy and she didn’t have a 2nd trimester loss. While those things are technically true, they skate around the emotional heart of the matter. Although the mechanisms may be different, this birth will shape her life and the life of her family in ways that are no less significant or far-reaching then the live birth of her daughter.” It is no small comfort to have people in our lives who understand the loss we’ve faced, and who grief our babies alongside us.

• But then there’s Bram! This kid, I tell you. His words aren’t completely consistent, and they’re not super clear either, but man oh man are they awesome to hear. Cat, dog, mo (for pomo), mama, cow, horse, truck, eeeooooww (meow), oooo (moo), who who (the sound an owl makes), Nemem (for Nemesis), Ice (for Iris), mun (for monkey), no!, hi!, done! (said at the same time he signs “all done” at the table). He’s also gotten super attached to his (my) woven wraps. It used to be that when I wasn’t wearing him in one he kind of ignored them. Now he gets them out of their little basket and wears them like capes or snuggles them on the floor. It is SWEET. He’s never really had much in the way of a (successful) lovey, so I’m pretty sure these are the first objects he’s attached to in this way. Which, if you couldn’t guess this, makes my heart MELT. Also, my mom got him a squirrel feeder for his birthday which we FINALLY put up a couple of weeks ago and he is IN. LOVE. with the squirrels that come to eat corn off of it just outside our dining room window. She also taught him to use the sign “eat” for squirrels. So now whenever he sees one (here or out on the town) he puts his fingertips to his mouth. You know, because they’re always eating. Lovely little being, our boy. He also, though, threw his first temper tantrum in the grocery the other day. Oh, Id-driven little creature. J was alone with him, and I know she handled it wonderfully: she didn’t make it about her, she managed not to care what other people thought, she was present with him, and comforting. But it’s a whole new world. I mean, the trauma when something breaks: a Lego tower, a banana (he WILL ONLY eat the banana while it’s still attached to the peel)… Still, mostly he just loves life and we just love living it alongside him.

Okay, I’m pretty sure this nap is about to end, so I’ll close here. But I still owe you updates on breastfeeding, grief and marriage, night weaning, Iris and Nemesis, Mother’s Day, job stuff, and a tiny little baby named Maya (AKA my craziness). Oh, and I clearly owe you photographs! Soon, soon, soon. I promise. I hope spring has brought lightness to all of you! I’ve kept up with blog-reading, just not blog-commenting. Forgive my failures and know I am with you, if silently.

Okay, little baby gave me time to post a handful of photos!

Iris. J. Bram. As you can see, we’re all struggling to bond.

Celebrating M’s marathon!

We get to look at this face. Everyday. Everyday.

Bram is a peaceful little lover of wide-open spaces. Which makes him different from his (city loving) mama and pomo and exactly like his Aunts C and A (whose land this is).

B wears Bernard (his stuffed rabbit) a lot. This photo is blurry, but I don’t even care. Oh and yes: that’s his pomo’s undershirt. We welcome warm weather/no air conditioning in style, I tell you. ;)

Pre-defense me. Not a maternity dress, but a sweet one anyway, and a graduation gift from my mom. Those gorgeous roses are a graduation gift from J’s mom. I have a thing for roses. And dresses. And graduating. And look closely: this mama even painted her nails! (Which chipped off immediately. Because I’m a SAHM. Which is incompatible with fingernail polish. Still. For that moment.) :)

Me and my wonderful friend Z wearing our left-leaning, sleeping babes on a pretty spring day.

Oh and see! He snuggles his wraps now!

facts & feelings

A friend told me this week that feelings aren’t facts. Oh, the great great freedom of those words. I started breathing more deeply the moment my mind grasped them.

It’s a Sunday, early evening, and I should be making dinner, but the boy is cutting a molar and a cuspid, which means he’s in agony, which means he’s taking a desperately-needed-late-nap on my chest. Here, then, are the scattered facts and feelings of my today.

• We have an astonishingly great community. I’ll write it again because it is breathtakingly true: we have an astonishingly great community. There is no such thing as deserving the profoundly generous and loving and empathic and compassionate and ever-present friends and family we’re surrounded with. We don’t deserve you all, which means that having you all is just a matter of grace. Grace. Not God’s grace, but humanity’s grace. We are surrounded by it.

• I am overwhelmed, crushed, by the simple narrative being constructed around the Tsarnaev brothers right now. We are so quick to condemn violence without struggling to understand our own complicity in it. Our willingness to model it in ways small and big. How is it possible that expressing compassion for a no-doubt terrified teenager (a child) can be read as negating the suffering that teenager likely inflicted? I am heartbroken by this tragedy, but I am even more heartbroken by our quick, unconsidered, vengeance-driven reaction to it. People suffer. Even people who inflict suffering suffer. I don’t know how to express what I’m saying. There’s complexity, and I shudder for our fate when I sense that it is being ignored. Yogi’s mama wrote a little about this this week, as did Anna. If I felt more whole, I’d try to contribute something meaningful. As it stands, all I can do is worry, and mourn, and wish. If my writing this makes you angry, please know that I mean no harm, and please let it go. I don’t even know how to process anger right now. I can’t meet it with anything but confusion.

• Nemesis is lonely without her brother. We are lonely without her brother. Saul (who is no longer Saul) is now five months old. He’s been gone for four months. His birth mother refuses to send us a photo. Since he left, we’ve lost my dad, and Love Child, and our puppy cat. We are not in the weeds of despondence, as we’ve been before. Instead, we’re heavy but moving. Walking with grief in a new way that feels permanent (though thankfully I see through that word). I found a list I made in 2009, shortly before our wedding. On it, I name loss as my biggest fear. It was relatively unknown to me then. It is no longer my biggest fear. It is like a friend I didn’t meant to befriend. I’m not even sure how I’d answer that question now.

• Anyway, we are lonely, and I keep having the impulse to bring home a kitten. Or a cat. Another being. A being who is unlikely to be taken from us. A being who is likely to stay awhile. Who will make Bram smile. Who will warm our hearts. Who will in no way replace E, or Sauly, or Love Child. Who could never replace Hades, king of the cottage frontier, cat-king of my heart. But who could be a home for some of the love we have that needs a home. I sense, though, that we’d be judged. That it is too soon. That there are appropriate ways of responding to loss and that we haven’t been appropriate. I’m not explaining this well. I just want more beings to love. Right now, I might adopt a flea circus if I felt that one needed me. Perhaps that is the argument for waiting.

• We went to a SHARE meeting together last week: our first together since B was born. I’m always struck by the gentleness in those rooms. People are fragile. There are spaces where that is just recognized.

• I found teaching! Okay, that’s overstating it. I found two sections for the fall. Media and the Sexes. With that phone call, the absence of students in my life this year came flooding in. Students! Yes! I am more fully me when I am teaching. When I am learning from students. When we are of one another in the way that the classroom makes possible. I sigh with relief from this news, not just because we (desperately) need the money, but because I desperately need that purpose again. The exchange of ideas. The intellectual intimacy. The community. The presence it demands of me. Yes. Teaching. What relief.

• My defense is set for May 10th. PhDs: How did you celebrate? We have to celebrate. If we insist (as we do) on mourning the losses, we must celebrate the victories. We have earned this. As a family. So how did you let in the joy.relief.pride of being done?

• We are interring my dad’s ashes on Wednesday. We will try to make a day of it: eat good food, take Bram to the zoo. A day that is not born solely of sadness.

• Tomorrow, Bram and I will celebrate Earth Day at a bird sanctuary. I never really understood birds before. Lately, I get tears in my eyes watching them fly.

• Here are my true, true loves. There’s no such thing as deserving this life. That I am living it is merely a matter of human grace. Kindness. The kindness others have bestowed on me.

welcome to

It’s a new year.

2012 – year in which we brought home two sons and said goodbye to one – is of the past.

I’m always a big, big New Year’s person (not for partying reasons – I only leave the house for a walk – but for the sense of possibility that comes with a bright, clean year) and this is no exception. It feels like being welcomed into something, but there’s no way of knowing what. It’s like the universe saying welcome to and not finishing its sentence. I like that. Though the sadness of losing Sauly still comes in waves, I’m full of hope about 2013. I have some specific posts planned for the next couple of weeks, but for now, I thought I’d try to orient myself a little by documenting a few things here. A bulleted list, then, in no particular order.

• We took a trip this last week to visit blog friends. Really, we were running away (the house was so sad after S left), but Yogi’s mama, her wife, Yogi, and Monkey of Love Invents Us welcomed us into their home with generosity and graciousness. It was exactly the kind of spontaneous trip that I’m completely opposed to taking, which is to say that it was absolutely wonderful and totally what we needed. [I think I'm at my best when life forces me just the slightest bit outside of my comfort zone (which it does anytime spontaneity is involved).] Anyway, B found Yogi and Monkey to be delightful. Getting to spend time with other lesbian-led families is always a gift, but these moms are especially thoughtful and caring; we were lucky to have them to run away to. To wit: I came home feeling understood and upheld, and armed with lots of great new parenting ideas. Here’s Yogi teaching Bram all about the world.

• We also received the most amazing gift in the mail on the day before we left for our trip: a hand-sewn mei tai for Bram to wear his new baby doll in. Cricket’s mama at Parenting Cricket made B and Cricket matching carriers, and Bram already adores his. Because he’s been eating Rudy’s hair (which means B needs a few more months to develop his parenting skills before he can be trusted), here he is wearing Mortimer the Moose. But truly: how sweet is this mei tai?!? And hair-eating aside, isn’t Bram quite the proud papa? ;)

• On the Saul front, there’s no real change, and getting home reminded us of this fact. Grieving a child who is alive and healthy is a strange, diffuse sort of thing. I think it might take me awhile to understand it even enough to write about it. I get J’s anger (expressed in her last post), but my dominant emotion most of the time is confusion. I’m not sure L will offer us any more updates. She seems to feel that she’s been wronged by us in some way. I just miss his face and his sweet baby smell and his oh.so.lightness in my arms. This is my favorite photo of him. It will probably be the last photo we post of his perfect, little self.

• J and I have finally decided to start taking regular dates, so that’s a good thing. Our beloved friend Christina watched Bram for our third wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago – which was our first night-time date since B was born – and we liked it so much we decided to make it a thing. A lovely former student of mine – whose long red hair B is IN LOVE WITH – is going to come once every other week so we can have an early evening out. Our second date will be a SHARE meeting (for pregnancy and infant loss), which we haven’t attended together since B came. It will be good to have a place to share our grief over S.

• In the not.so.great.news category, though, I didn’t get any job interviews. Feel free to take a moment to ponder two months of writing application materials almost full-time, twenty-five applications, and no interviews. It’s defeating. I should be on my way to Boston right now, but I’m not. It doesn’t feel as doomsy as I thought it might, though. I’m still ABD, and from what I’ve heard, ABDs did not fare well this year (not that they ever fare especially well). I know that the position I applied for at UT Austin got 480 applications. If even 200 of those were PhD-in-hand, ABDs probably had little chance, right? Fordham got 300 applications, and I made it into their top 40. I am holding onto that piece of goodness with the life-grip of a toddler on…well, anything they don’t want to lose. And anyway: I’m thrilled to be staying here another year. I’m beyond thrilled, really; I am elated. This town is home, and I wasn’t ready to leave it. I got an article accepted to a great journal in the time since my applications went out. Gods willing I’ll graduate in June. And I hope to have another publication pending by the next application cycle. I’m as optimistic as can be expected, I think. Still, scholars: feel free to offer encouragement and cheer in the comments of this post. :)

• Finally, today is J’s first real day back since her maternity leave (which was followed, after one day in the office, by holiday leave), so we’re settling back into a new (old) routine. Bram and I took the bus to a museum with B’s Aunt Madeline this morning, which was super fun. We’re in between two naps and one nap a day, though, which is not super fun. This is made all the worse by J’s return to work, which finds me wearing the boy (after a twenty minute bed nap) in front carry all the way through a nap for the first time in weeks. I often wear him down this way, but I have to transfer him to the bed because he is WAY.TOO.BIG to just sleep like this. We’re both a bit jarred by J’s absence, though, so I’m craning my neck around his head to type. Closeness is just irresistible right now.

 

photo challenge, 4

Something green:

The (mostly green) tools of a scholar/mama life.

* There’s one (really a few, but one big one) website where all of the next academic year’s English professor jobs – in the whole world – are listed, and it came out about a week ago. As I plan to defend my dissertation and graduate by either April or June, I am going on the job market this year: this is my list. It is more than possible that I won’t get a job this year. It often takes two to three years to find a good fit. Nevertheless, I will give this all I have. I will probably apply for about thirty jobs. The application process is a beastly one and involves tailoring multiple documents to each school.department.listing. For about the five millionth time, I am grateful to have an incredibly generous advisor. For about the fifty millionth time, I’m grateful to have loving, supportive friends, and a wife who will suffer the madness that will be this process with patience and lots of encouraging words. This is an exciting time, but it’s a daunting one too. I look at some of these jobs – especially the ones that feel like they’re written just for me – and my heart races. I don’t like the feeling of wanting something I’m unlikely to get; it makes me feel vaguely nauseated; I’m in no way a gambler. I would rather not want something until it’s close to being mine. Or better yet: until it’s mine. Coming off the heels of a long TTC process, it feels dangerous to head back into the territory of likely-unrequited desire. These are risks I’d rather not take. And I’ve never been good at this: ask J about the process of applying for PhD programs. I have loved every step of being a doctoral student (course work, teaching, qualifying exams, oral exams, prospectus drafting, dissertation drafting, and now editing), but I unravelled when I had to send cover letters and cvs and teaching philosophies out there to be judged by people I’ve never met over a cup of coffee. The distance – the lack of intimacy – pushes my buttons. In short: it’s taking a lot of work to talk myself up for this.

Here’s what it will consist of:

• Round 1 – months of writing/applying/research about schools (all the while editing the dissertation and being a wife.mama.daughter.friend)

• Round 2 – hopefully a handful of interviews at a conference in January

• Round 3 – if I’m very lucky, one, two, or a few campus visits in the spring

• Round 4 – if I’m profoundly, absurdly lucky, a job offer to start next fall (gods willing in a state where we would feel safe, in a place that could come to feel like home)

Some of the locations on our list so far: the Bronx, Manhattan, Amherst, MA, Amherst, NY, Nashville, Eau Claire, WI, Madison, WI, a couple of towns in New Jersey, a small town in Washington state, a town in Virginia, Boulder, CO, Austin, TX, Toronto, Saint Louis, another school in Massachussets, and a small city in Connecticut. Many of these are reaches for me, but you never know what committees will be drawn to. The first applications are due October 15th, so I’m (we’re) officially in it now.

rolling, laughing, running along

Life is moving along pretty sweetly.

We just passed our anniversary of making Bram (May 2nd), so this little being has been with us for over a year now.

I submitted grades last week, so I’m teaching-free for the next year, which is just: wow. My first writing deadline is June 1st, though, so there’s no time to revel in this blessed freedom. I’m working on my sex chapter now, which is a particularly intimidating one. Wish me luck.

And in even more exciting news, J ran a 5k yesterday! She’d never run a mile in her life before she carried and gave birth to this Rabbit, so this fact is especially amazing. SHE is especially amazing. She liked it so much that she’s already planning a 10k, and she’s moved her runs to 5am so as to make sure there’s time for them. My exercise-resistant, sleep-loving, already-sleep-deprived wife is preparing for a 10k, and she’s willing to get even less sleep to do it. I did not see this coming, but man am I impressed. Also, this just in: running-J is sexy.

And in even MORE exciting news, our boy rolled from back to front! And then he did it again! And then he did it again! And THEN (the next day) he laughed for about a minute straight! I’m not even sure what was so funny, but it was like he discovered he could do it, and it felt too good to stop. It was a total life-high for both J and me. I’m absolutely certain there’s no sweeter sound.

Let’s see, what else. I walked the 5k wearing B in my new woven wrap (a Storchenwiege Leo Black and White). J and B got it for me for Mother’s Day, and I love, love, love it, love the support it offers. I adored our stretch wraps until these last couple of pounds, but a fifteen-pound baby calls for woven cotton. There’s not much in the material world that makes me wish I were rich, but woven wraps seem to be a weakness. I’m sure it serves as a replacement in my mind (heart?) for breastfeeding (which I still long to do), but regardless: this boy loves to be worn, and I love to accommodate him.

Oh, and our (probable) new sitter is coming for a visit this morning. I think we’ll just sit down over tea and talk through her expectations and ours to be sure it’s a good fit. She’ll be with B on Monday and Wednesday mornings from 7:45 to 12:15, and J and I are both having a hard time with this. He’s only ever been away from us (both) for two hours one time. And though I went back to work pretty quickly after he was born, I never really went back to work. I did nearly all of my reading, prep, and grading while wearing B, or while he was with J, or while he slept at night. My visits to the coffee shop (and even my one visit to the library) have all been with-baby. So though my work just got more flexible, it’s actually going to be a lot more demanding. I can do some reading with Bram asleep on my chest, but I really can’t write that way. Writing takes a lot of focus for me. And I’m beginning to understand what Erica told me in a comment a few months back: that I need to go away to write so that I can be truly here when I’m here. I can’t do both things well at the same time, and what I’m finding is that I’ll sacrifice my work every time if it means getting to be a present mama.

So here’s the plan: I’ll ride in with J on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and I’ll work in the reading room of her college’s library (which is stunning) all morning: 4 hours each day. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, I’ll head to the coffee shop after dinner, giving J and B alone.together time and me 2-3 hours each night to write. I’ll do the same thing Sunday mornings from 8-10:30. And I’ll commit to reading (for work and not just blogs) for at least one hour of B’s (on.my.chest) afternoon nap each day (5 hours a week in total). This adds up to about 20 hours a week, which may not be enough, but my hope is that 20 hours of intense focus will go as far as 40 hours of pre-baby, dawdle-filled work. If what I can get done around the house in 20 baby-free minutes is any indication, I’ll make these 20 hours count. Still, I’m pretty unsettled about leaving Bram with S – though I think she’ll be amazing with him – for nine whole hours every week. Anyone have any advice for letting go of fears and trusting someone else with your little one?

Oh, and a couple of photos:

My true, true, true loves. Who knew the heart could feel this huge?

Mama, Bram, Springtime, and the Storch.

Our sweet B-Rabbit. Attentive. Curious. Beautiful.

Hope May has been sweet to all of you so far!

N.B. I just realized that I published this under J’s log-on. R fail. You all know, though, that her posts all have periods to either side of the title and mine don’t, right? Also, she’s not arrogant enough to describe her running self as “sexy.” :)

doors

I closed the door last night to the last classroom I’ll probably ever teach in at this university.

I’ve taught a class a semester here for four years. As I turned off the lights and pulled the door closed in an empty building (I collected essays until 9:15 last night, so I think I was the last instructor there), I reflected on what these past four years have meant to me. When I came to this town, I had only been studying literature for three years, and had only taught for one. I knew I wanted a transatlantic focus, and that postcolonial studies spoke to me, but I was intimidated – completely baffled, really – at the thought of making my own narrow way through such broad spaces. Everything felt new, on the brink. J and I were committed, but not yet engaged. We’d yet to grieve Charleston. To find this little cottage. To find our footing as partners. To meet our wonderful wonderful friends. To sit in silence – in a room full of our loved ones – promising to always uphold each other. To honeymoon in Boston. To be nearly run off a mountain for being gay in rural Ohio. To get pregnant. To lose E. To get pregnant again. To bring our son into the world. J didn’t have an MA or a passion for doula work. We didn’t know I had Graves’ Disease or Factor V Leiden. I’d yet to hear Jack Halberstam speak and feel the puzzle pieces of my scholarship click into place. We had no idea what terrible gardeners we’d become. I’d only just started learning to cook. We couldn’t fathom how deeply we’d love parenting.

When we first got the offer here, we weren’t sure we’d come. I also got a funded offer from SUNY Stony Brook, which houses a higher-ranked program. My mentors in Charleston felt strongly that SUNY’s was the offer to accept. But J and I had a hunch, an instinct, that this was the place for us. So I called the man who would become my dissertation director (though we didn’t know it at the time). Then we packed up everything we owned in a u-haul, put the cats in a carrier on the seat between us, and drove across the country towards a small city we’d never been to before.

Now here we are. I closed that door last night and began to face the prospects of a whole year with no teaching. The last year of a long road of formal education. I found out last week that in addition to the internal dissertation fellowship, I will also receive an AAUW (American Association of University Women) fellowship starting in June. For me, this is a big deal. This is a dream. The AAUW has been funding women in higher education since 1888. They’ve funded some pretty amazing women doing some pretty remarkable things. I’m blown away to be in that kind of company. Truly: aside from my ongoing struggles with medical anxieties and an autoimmune disorder – both of which I’m trying to cure – my life is pretty much perfect. I’ve been striving for so much for so long, and now I’m surrounded by the things I’ve wanted. And you know what? Now that those things are here, they’re even better than I’d imagined.

As I type this – green tea at my side and rain falling steadily from a gray sky outside – Bram is upstairs taking one of his very.few.ever crib naps. (I know I should be doing the laundry, babe. I’m sorry.) We got to spend lots of time this week with our dear C (Kippie), and having her here makes all three of us happier. She even brought us some of this year’s first crop of asparagus, and you know how I feel about that. My mom’s coming on Friday, and we’re planning a trip (B’s first time on the road!) to visit lots of J’s family this summer. It isn’t that things are easy. Really, they’re hard. My writing schedule for the next year is intense. I just finalized the plan last night, and I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. We need to find in-home childcare we can trust for about eight hours a week, and that’s daunting. Being back at work is hard on J, and though I love doing it, being home alone with B for forty hours a week is tough. We’re both exhausted. But it’s an exhaustion born not of grief, nor of longing, but of doing what we’ve desperately wanted to do. It’s an exhaustion of life coming together.

Now a few photos of that life.

First, Bram and Ramona at three months. He’s not one of those constantly-smiling babies, but he’ll give you one if you earn it, and gods they’re worth the world:

B and his dearest friend. He loves that boy madly:

Bram in Aunt Kippie’s arms:

Sitting up for peace:

B now joins us for family dinners:

I hope this spring is treating all of you kindly. I’m as grateful as ever for this community.

 

baby, fellowship, food, & photos

the baby: Is either sick with his first minor cold or teething really early. To wit: he’s stuffy, but no fever. He wants to suck on everything, and even to chew a little. He’s drooling like a mastiff puppy. He can’t get comfortable enough to sleep very long. He only wants to nurse, to be worn, and to listen to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans. The child will listen to anything (seriously, he was jamming out to some polka on Prairie Home Companion yesterday), but he has his preferences. Lots of strings. Big orchestral numbers delight him. And Sufjan Stevens seems to be his first favorite musician. He also adores a board book we have full of Matisse paintings (which is making me notice Matisse in a new way – how incredible is that? my son is teaching me about art!) and Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. Red seems to be a favorite color: when he sees it (especially on book pages) he just kicks and grins, grins and kicks (which is how he responds to almost every book page, but he does so with more vigor if there’s red on it). He lights up around his little baby mirror: he loves that little baby, whether or not he knows it’s him. He’s started to like zerberts, but only very gentle ones, and only if after you’ve given him one, you look up at him and laugh. Then he’ll laugh too. And he started rolling over last week. It is the cute cute cutest thing to watch his face when he realizes he’s suddenly on his back.

the fellowship: I got it (one of the three I applied for)! I got a full year of dissertation funding through my university. This means that as soon as I’m done teaching this class (in five weeks), I can focus exclusively (work-wise) on my dissertation for ONE WHOLE YEAR. No teaching for a full year. I still can’t believe it. The freedom this gives me to spend lots and lots of time with this baby is indescribably great. It’s just a dream. And the time to immerse myself in my project is thrilling. I need to finish by May of next year. The next twelve months will be full of hard work, but it’s work I WANT to do. I can’t tell you what a privilege this is. I really am over the moon with gratitude, relief, and excitement.

the food: So the story here is that J has had to give up dairy, gluten, and soy to get this boy’s rash to go away. This has meant some changes in the way I cook/we eat, but we’ve used the opportunity to make a shift we’ve been heading towards for years. I have been dogmatically vegetarian for a long time. For my first five years, I felt righteous in the knowledge that I ate (lived) ethically because I didn’t eat animals. A few years ago, I started to think about non-food products – soap, shampoo, make-up – and we began to eliminate things that were tested on animals from our household. What good is not eating meat if you buy from a company that, for example, coats a rat’s eyes in mascara? Isn’t that even more cruel? Then I started to avoid factory-farmed dairy. Especially as we neared the TTC period of our lives (and began to think about breastfeeding), I stopped feeling comfortable buying diary that came from animals that were kept for years on end in tiny box stalls being milked by machines all day, This is worse, I would argue, than eating meat because at least beef cattle have a shorter period of suffering. I still believe in all of this. To my knowledge, we buy no (or very few) animal-tested products. But here’s the piece I didn’t get until now. Not eating meat for so long led me to incorporate more and more fake meat products into my diet. Tofu. Tofurkey. Tempeh. Veggie burgers. And when I started thinking about THESE products, I felt troubled. We’d done so much work to eliminate anything but whole, real foods from our diets – to learn how to cook using single ingredients – but fake meat products are full of ingredients I can barely pronounce. And their status as vegan doesn’t tell us anything about the ethicality of manufacturing them. Because they’re mass produced, I can only assume they’re made in assembly line conditions, by factory workers. How well are those factory workers compensated? I don’t know. How far must the products be shipped to reach my supermarket shelf (i.e. what’s their carbon footprint)? No idea. What’s in them, really; I mean, what ARE all those ingredients? I don’t have any idea. This is something J and I have been discussing a lot lately. She’s been eating fewer and fewer of these products and more and more local, ethically-farmed meat for the last year or so. And now I’m finally on board. So here’s what we’re doing. We’ve stopped shopping at the huge regional-chain grocery in town and joined the co-op. If we can’t find it there, it probably isn’t something we need to eat. And for the record: so far it hasn’t cost us any more money to stock up there than it did at the chain. We’ve started to buy local meat that we can trace back to a farm here in town. We could go visit this summer if we wanted to. There’s very little packaging on our groceries now, which means we’re cutting down on the waste products we produce. I still eat a very small hunk of local, ethical (the cows are pasture-raised and hand-milked only twice a day) cheese each week, which feels like such a delicious treat now that it’s rationed. I’ll still eat gluten if we go out, but at home, I’m cooking with lots of brown and wild rice instead. And it’s delicious. I no longer believe that vegetarianism is the feather in the crown of ethical living. I think it’s too tempting to conclude that you’re being conscientious just because you don’t eat meat. I know I felt that way for a long, long time. Now I’m trying to understand the full effects of what I purchase. What I put in my body. Even if animals don’t die to make a particular food, are they mistreated? If so, I shouldn’t eat it. How are the humans who are a part of making a product treated? If I don’t know they’re treated well, I probably shouldn’t eat it. Who’s ultimately profiting off of my food choices? If it’s a farmer, great. If it’s a corporation getting rich off of genetic modifications, I’m not interested. Or at least not regularly so. Because that’s the other piece here: letting go of all-things-dogmatic. Because anytime we think dogmatically, we think un-critically, right? I mean, that’s sort of the point of dogma. This is true of religions, and it’s also true of political stances and movements like vegetarianism. But what I want to teach our son is to make decisions thoughtfully, not based on black and white conclusions he’s drawn up ahead of time. If I’m out celebrating, and I want to eat dessert but it’s been made with conventional butter, I want to do it anyway, and I want to do it guiltlessly. Then I want to come home and eat only local/ethical dairy for awhile. I want to support my community’s farmers most of the time. I want to impact animals and workers alike as positively as I can manage while still staying joyful and unobsessed. So that’s how we’re approaching this new no-soy, no-dairy, and no-gluten diet. And on that note, if anyone has recipes that might work, I’d love them! I’ve almost never cooked meat in my whole life, so this is all new to me. So far, I’m mostly eating chicken and wild caught fish. Tell me what to do!

the photos:

B visits mommy at work (and is smitten):

Bram and mama greet spring:

See those active arms? That’s our boy. His legs usually move that fast too! Gods help us when he’s a toddler:

This face:

work/life

So I could use some advice.

I had to start working this week. This feels far, far too soon. To be fair, working for me involves grading, reading, researching, writing, revising, and prepping from home, with only a few hours of teaching when I have to be away. I won’t teach for the first post-Bram time until next Tuesday night, but I’m behind on grading, reading, and prepping, I’m not sure I even remember my dissertation topic, and I’m up against a fellowship application deadline. So it’s time.

Until I actually started working yesterday, the thought of pulling my attention away from my family – of putting it on anything other than J and B – made me feel vaguely nauseated. When a dear friend came over when Bram was about four days old, and she and J started discussing queer theory in relationship to Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (a text my students read last week), I had to leave the room because I couldn’t even follow their conversation. This is my field, folks, but I felt like that part of me had been shut off, and I wondered if it might never come on again. “What other careers might I be good at?,” I asked myself all last week. “If I never get this back, what else might I do with my life?” Though I didn’t come up with any alternatives, the thought of leaving academia wasn’t upsetting.

When I finally forced myself to start reading yesterday, however, I found the routine of it surprisingly comforting. Gather coffee, a glass a water, the book, a pen, and a big blanket. Oh, I know how to do this! Unlike skin-to-skin with a mysterious new person, near-hourly diaper changes, and learning how to use my baby carrier, these tasks were familiar. The slow paragraph-by-paragraph read, taking the time to mark passages that might be useful in the classroom, as well as those important to the dissertation – there’s muscle memory there. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t mind working. I even liked knowing that while I read, my son was sleeping in the next room or nursing with his mum. It felt a little like coming home from a much-planned, deeply-desired vacation, only the vacation was still upstairs, just waiting for me.

But here’s the tricky part. My very meager goals for yesterday were to read fifty pages of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (which is a part of my third chapter, and which I’m teaching next Tuesday) and to do one set of revisions on my fellowship application. What I managed, however, was about eighteen pages of Waiting. And nothing else. That’s it. And I came back to it about a dozen times, so I don’t even know how this is possible.

So my question to you is this: Do you have any suggestions for how I might begin to achieve a work/life balance, working from home, with a newborn I’m madly in love with? Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance; I’ll reward you with sweet Bram photographs if you help me. :)

*** Good luck to the mamas over at Baby Mama(s) Drama! We’re holding you in our thoughts as you prepare to meet your sweet, sweet son, and we can’t wait to hear that you’re all together, healthy, and happy! ***

attachment living

It’s been an intense few weeks. On top of the typical post-midterm craziness of any academic semester (made more intense for me this semester because I’m teaching an upper-level course I’ve never taught before and trying to write as much of my dissertation as possible before Rabbit comes), I’ve been working on applications for dissertation completion funding. I’m applying for three different fellowships, and if I receive one of them, I won’t have to teach next year; I’ll be able to focus exclusively on my writing. This sounds like an unimaginable luxury to me. Really: it’s almost too delightful to consider. Throughout my course work, I thought of the dissertation as a means to an end – one last difficult requirement – but now I find myself deeply devoted to the work itself. I love the female (and two queer male) characters I’m writing about. I sense their power, their strength. But when they’ve been written about by other critics, it’s been to point out how powerless they are. So I feel a responsibility to offer them a different reading. A recognition of what has gone unnoticed. These characters have become real to me, and I love them both as individuals, and as a collective body of feminine power that has been long.long.long overlooked.

This funding would give me time with them. If I don’t get it, I’ll still have time, so the situation isn’t dire. (And I should add: I fully recognize this as a luxury problem. I mean, who gets a year off to just think and read and write? It’s an almost absurd privilege, and I see that.) But I long for it, and that’s disconcerting to my don’t.get.too.attached.to.anything.that.isn’t.yours cautionary self. These are very competitive. I met with a friend of J’s (from the private college they both work at), and she was tremendously helpful. But she also (inadvertently) made me aware of how different my public-school world is from her liberal-arts-college reality. There’s a different kind of grooming. Money begets money. These fellowships don’t just go to the neediest applicants, they go to the best applicants. And “best” means “best equipped to present oneself in a particular way.” This takes training. Grooming. So while it makes sense that I might not get these because they’re competitive – because others may have better (or more important) projects in the works – it makes me sad to think about not getting them because I didn’t go about applying in the right way. Anyway, I came away from the meeting feeling defeated, but I’m still trying. And though it seems dangerous to want this funding so much, I’m letting myself do it anyway. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that I can adapt. If (in the spring) I find out that I didn’t get any of them, I’ll go to plan B. Or plan C. And I’ll find things to love about those plans too.

Anyway, this process has made these past weeks stressful, which in turn made yesterday AMAZING. We took our last road trip as a two-person family to a favorite city of ours. J and I are so happy in cities. Every chance we get to travel, we find our way to one, and we eat, and coffee.shop, and people.watch, and stroll and stroll and stroll. Like Clarissa Dalloway in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, I’ll take city walking over country walking any day. Yesterday was even more special, though, because we splurged on a 3D/4D ultrasound of Rabbit River! Seeing him was incredible. Afternoons are his sleepy time, and he adorably refused to lower his hands from his face, but the tech still got some wonderful images. We are both so entirely in love. There is no holding back out of fear. No wishing things were different. There is only the sense that this baby is our son, and that we are meant to parent him, to help him become…well…him.

Here he is, left hand pressed sweetly to forehead:

And sleeping away:

And left hand, right arm, face, skinny ribs and all (I suspect this boy will be long and thin):

I said at one point that I think he’s going to have a big nose, and the tech said, “No! His nose is cute.” She doesn’t know how much I adore big noses. :)

After the ultrasound (which was after an amazing gourmet-Chinese lunch), we headed into the city, and we practically fell upon one of those upscale baby stores that basically amounts to crack for new parents and parents.to.be. We oooohed and aaaahed our way through TWO stories of gorgeous baby accoutrement, test drove our stroller (which J’s mom bought us, but which we’ve yet to see as she’s giving it to us at the shower next weekend), tried out the baby sling I picked for myself after lots of internet research, and purchased Rabbit’s first pair of baby leg warmers and a striped kimono-style onesie that we couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Then we hit a local coffee shop for a chocolate croissant and two espressos (J’s decaf, mine regular), where we watched the seemingly thousand new babies/new parents, and stared and stared at the ultrasound photos of our sweet boy.

After that, we walked around for awhile in search of an ornament for Emmett Ever. Our SHARE support group hosts a holiday memorial every year, where parents can hang an ornament on a tree to remember their lost babies. We chose a blown glass sphere with purple and white swirls that has a distinctive seashell-esque look.

We also discovered an oil and vinegar shop, where we sampled about a dozen aged balsamic vinegars and brought home one bottle of white balsamic (which we learned is less sweet/more acidic than the darker stuff).

Then we ate at a favorite Jewish deli and headed home. On the drive back, we listened to music that made me think a lot about E. I cried for awhile, not because I miss her or because I wish she were here, but because I love her. Because my connection to her creates an ache that is painfully sweet. Because I can love her and be happy at the same time.

So all told, a GREAT GREAT day, and a much needed break. I am so in love with my wife, who is carrying this baby with about a thousand times more grace than I could have done. It’s funny, we thought we knew which roles we would thrive in: I would be a better GP because I’m feminine; she would rock out the NGP role because she isn’t so into the girly side of girliness. But the truth is, all of that was culturally dictated. And none of that has anything to do with what it takes to nurture a child (via either role). None of that was about our particular strengths and weaknesses. In truth, I’m so well suited to non-gestational parenting. The choice it requires. The care it allows me to give my whole family. And J is brilliant at the gestational role. She’s heartier than I am. Less anxious. I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but it’s impossible not to recognize some wisdom to all of this that surpasses our limited understanding.

humility v. humiliation

A little over a month ago, I had a meeting with a person in a position of authority over me to talk about maternity leave. It didn’t go well. After a great deal of painful conflict (in the week following the meeting), I was told that I could have the minimum of what I had requested, and I was asked (by someone for whom I have a great deal of respect) to accept the terms of that offer, which included taking no further action. Out of fear of getting nothing – and because I didn’t want to make things worse for my immediate supervisor – I did that. I asked my union to drop the issue. I stopped talking about the way I’d been treated. But the fallout from doing so has been painful. I feel silenced. I don’t have any authority here, and I know that. I’m a PhD candidate; I’m not faculty, and even if I were, there would be no guarantees. It’s a sexist world. It’s a homophobic world. This is something we all face. But there’s a basic level of decency with which I think people should be treated, and I wasn’t treated decently. That’s what haunts me. So I’m writing about it here because – in reading Lyn’s recent post over at First Time Second Time – I’ve realized that this is probably the one place I can share this. The one place where everyone (and not just my closest friends) will understand the deep insult of this experience, which I am horrified to admit has resulted in my feeling ashamed of having asked for maternity leave as an NGP, and as a graduate student. Reading Lyn’s post reminded me that I have nothing to be ashamed of, that it was totally reasonable for me to ask for support. I’m not writing this, however, to reengage with the anger I initially felt. What I’d like is to stop feeling hurt, embarrassed, ashamed. These feelings are a waste of my energy. I’m hoping that – if I regain a bit of voice via this space – I might be able to let go of all the terrible feelings this situation inspired.

As a disclaimer of bias, I should start by saying that I had concerns when this person was given a position of authority. Of course, my concerns weren’t (and still aren’t) relevant because I’m a PhD candidate (and not faculty), which means that I have no say. But I write this here to own the preconceived notions I had going into this encounter. In addition to this person’s career in the humanities, he is an officer in the Naval Reserves. He recently spent a year in Afghanistan. To understand my resistance to that fact, I should note that I have been both enlisted and a commissioned officer in the military. I worked in military intelligence for a total of eight years. Throughout that time, the DADT policy wrecked havoc on my relationships, and on the way I thought about myself. That policy (really, that environment) led to no small amount of shame and internalized homophobia. So I had some concerns about this person. I mean, if it’s taken me almost seven years as a civilian to let go of that sense of inferiority, how could a straight, white, Catholic man who served under that policy for so many more years not be influenced by it? I worried that the institutionalized bigotry so prevalent in that system couldn’t help but influence his decisions. I worried that the top-down (authority-heavy) leadership style necessary to the military structure would influence his thinking here too, and that it wouldn’t play well in the more complex authority systems of the academy. And when I was told that my initial requests for maternity accommodations had been denied, I felt like my fears were being confirmed. This no doubt made me defensive at our meeting. It no doubt led to my reading the situation as hostile and bigoted from the outset. Maybe this impression is unfair, but nothing he’s done so far has challenged it. So though there are probably other ways to read this (and trusted friends have tried explaining his perspective in ways that don’t amount to blatant homophobia), I feel unable to see anything but bigotry in his behavior.

So here’s what happened:

I requested a meeting because he denied the requests I sent to him via my immediate supervisor. I asked that I not attend that meeting alone (that some faculty member come with me), but I was told that it would be best if it was just the two of us. I should have listened to my instincts and insisted on a third-party witness. I deeply regret not doing so.

When I first arrived at the meeting, this person told me that he was denying my request for a less grading-intensive course (a fact I already knew, and had accepted), but that he would comply with my request for a once-a-week night class, for which I was (and remain) grateful. This means that we won’t need childcare once J goes back to work, as I’ll work from home (“work” might be optimistic) during the day and leave to teach once J gets home at night.

In addition to my request for an evening section of a less grading-intense course, I had requested to be allowed to have my class covered for four weeks (coverage which I would arrange myself) after the baby was born. So this is when things got bad. He said this was “unreasonable.” I allowed that I would be willing to take less time, and asked, “how many weeks would be reasonable?,” to which he replied “zero weeks, zero weeks would be reasonable.” He then reiterated that it was “unreasonable” of me to request ANY time off after the birth of my son. In an apparent attempt at being conciliatory, he then said that since, if I were sick, I could miss one week of class, he would permit me to miss one week in this situation, but that I was NOT to consider it maternity leave. I said I wasn’t comfortable calling in sick right after my son was born, as doing so would demonstrate a total lack of integrity (and I didn’t want to say I was sick! I wanted to say I had a new baby boy!). He commended me for having integrity, but said that calling in was really the only way.

I then brought up the maternity leave offered in my TAU contract.

[I'm blessed to be in a program at a school where grad students are unionized. Super blessed. Having contacted my union before this meeting, I learned that the TAU contract allows for five teaching days for maternity leave (so, two and a half weeks if you only teach two days a week). My union insisted that there was nothing about the wording of our contract that would preclude me, as a non-birth mom, from partaking of the leave, and that, moreover, many departments had been much more accommodating than this policy required, so I shouldn't assume that I would only get what was mandated.]

I relayed this information to my superior, who replied that not only would he not be MORE accommodating, he had no intention of offering even THOSE five days because I am not physically carrying this child, and thus have no need of maternity leave of any kind. He made clear that maternity leave is for delivering mothers only, and, again, that it was “inappropriate” of me to think that it might apply in my case.

During our brief conversation, he stated several times that I “clearly believe [I] deserve special treatment.” He likewise noted repeatedly that “being an adult means learning to balance home and work life.” Though he does not even know me (and though my performance here has been strong), he implied that I do not know how to strike such a balance, and that I need to learn. He then made a false comparison, asserting that he would rather be home with his children instead of meeting with me, but that he is “an adult with a job to do.” When I asked if he had a newborn at home, he said that he did not. The difference here, of course, is that I was not asking for accommodations beyond the first few weeks of my newborn’s life.

By this time, I felt extremely uncomfortable being alone with him (and I sensed myself becoming emotional), so I said that I needed to temporarily suspend our meeting until someone else could be in attendance. I promptly left.

This meeting was deeply troubling on several levels:

1. Many “adults” secure maternity or paternity leave. The fact of doing so is not evidence that they are immature in some way, and it’s horrifying to think of people in power who believe that parental leave is something “adults” don’t ask for.

2. I believe that the implication of his tone was that I’ve used my sexuality to my benefit (used it to justify “special treatment”). I do not believe that I have ever been privileged by my sexuality, unless privileging includes: not being able to report sexual harassment in the military because to do so would “out” me, being discharged because I finally did report that harassment once it resulted in my ex-girlfriend being sexually assaulted, having my life threatened in a hate-crime automobile incident, having to go to Boston to be legally married, and having no legal protection in this state, or with regards to this child. I think that this man’s implication that I am “used to special treatment” is absurd. Moreover, I don’t feel that requesting a few weeks off when a child is born is “special treatment” to begin with. If the request cannot be met, that’s one thing. But implying that I would only be so privileged because I’m gay is deeply offensive.

3. I was later told that the motivation behind his treatment of me was an order from his boss that he adhere to policies so that his decision in this situation would not be precedence setting (i.e. no other lesbian non bio-mom would be able to argue that she deserved leave because I had gotten it). This is offensive enough in that ANY PARENT should be afforded at least a modicum of time and recognition when a child comes into their lives. But even if this excuse were sufficient, I don’t see how it justifies his behavior. If orders were the underlying reason for his behavior, he’d have cited those policies in our meeting, and explained his logistical or legal inability to support me. No such justification was offered: not one policy, not one “this is complicated because” explanation. Instead, he belittled me repeatedly, which is not treatment I ever expected from my department. It’s hard to believe that his dismissive treatment of me had nothing to do with my sexuality, or my position as an NGP, or his assumptions about what these things mean vis-a-vis parenting responsibilities.

The ensuing weeks were ugly. My dissertation director went to bat for me – and he got me permission to secure two weeks of coverage after this little one is born – but since all of this was done quietly (almost as a gesture to get me to be quiet), it feels like anything but a victory. Though I can’t imagine being back in the classroom with a two-week-old, this is the best I’m going to get, so I’ve accepted the terms. What hurts even more than having only two weeks, however, is that in accepting these terms, I’ve had to be silent about the treatment I received in this meeting. I’ve had to let it go. No one will ever say to this man: “Your treatment of her was horribly disrespectful. She takes her work extremely seriously, and she’s been a strong asset to the department. There was no reason to belittle her request. Your actions indicate a level of bigotry that we don’t want here in our department. We don’t treat people that way. We don’t see her as less of a parent than her wife. We won’t tolerate sexism and homophobia hidden under the cover of policy.” He gets to tell me that I have no right to even ASK for maternity leave because I’m not having a child, and there’s nothing I can say in return. I have to see him almost every week. I have to accept being treated so disrespectfully because he has power, and I have none. And for the sake of moving forward, I had to forsake the one power I did have (my union). It shouldn’t have gone this way.

It isn’t humility that this requires. Humility is what it’s taken to begin to accept my body’s limitations. To accept that I won’t carry a child to term. This was humiliation, and I’ve been asked to accept the weight of that as mine to carry. So I’ve done that. And I’ve felt gross about it ever since. And the bottom line is this: It’s not this person’s fault that I’m insecure about my role in this child’s life, that I already feel robbed of so much, that I come into this feeling vulnerable, in need of reassurance, in need of support and acknowledgment. It’s not his fault that I feel all of the fears Lyn writes about in her recent post. But it’s not not his fault either. We are all complicit in a society that reductively decides who real parents are, whose presence a baby requires in those first formative moments, and who is expendable. This man told me that I’m expendable, and that it’s “unreasonable” for me to think of myself in any other terms. Policies, chains of command, and state laws aside: that was wrong. And it’s made me bitter not to say so.