MONDAY

Hey kids! I realize last week I said “oh, man I dodged that bullet” when I had the time down wrong on the parent/teacher conference, but that was a harmless expression.  Now we are talking about actual bullets that come from real weapons.  I realize half your friends are angry teenagers wearing black carrying backpacks, but learn to have a more discerning eye.

TUESDAY

Hello lovelies! Let’s go to the park after school today! Not the actual park outside (#allergies) but the one inside a fast-foot restaurant where I can watch you at every moment (#pedophiles). Go have fun at school and be sure to enjoy every moment and smell the flowers (but not too closely because of the pollen).

WEDNESDAY

Hey Sweetcakes! A super-resistant flu strand is going around (thanks to the overuse of antibiotics) so this time I’d like for you to power wash your hands with bleach-vinegar wash three times and you’re going to be drinking  a concoction daily of apple cider vinegar mixed with elderberry flower before and after dinner.  Don’t complain about the fact that it tastes like you’re drinking pool cleaner.  Consider it a blessing I’m #alloverit with your health.  And you are forbidden to eat the stupid Sun chips your friend Mike is giving you at lunch.  Just because they include “sun” in the name doesn’t mean they are whole grain or come from the earth or are blessed by nature or won’t give you diarrhea.  Those little buggers are just Doritos with a souped-up title.

THURSDAY

What-up kidlets!  What a great day!  I thought today after school we’d head downtown to look at all the women who are gripped by poverty and have a raging heroin problem.  See how their hair is falling out and they look dazed and confused? That’s all the drugs.  Please don’t start vaping and using those things that look like flash drives even though the vapor smells like cotton candy.  I know in the movies drugs look fun and breathing in green apple vapor seems okay, but it’s a gateway to heroin, bad teeth and a life in prison.  You have nice shiny hair.  Don’t ruin it.

FRIDAY

Howdy, my favorite children! You managed to not get shot, killed by a bomb, and I see you aren’t doing heroin!  Way to go!  Let’s go grab a sweet treat at the bakery.  Let’s also talk about how the wheat germ has been hijacked in America and how they pull all the inner guts out of the original grain so that we don’t eat a solid amount of fiber and how our diet is causing a massive obesity epidemic and causing a ton of people to have celiac.  Yikes-a-mundo! Let’s maybe get a gluten-free muffin or perhaps some hummus and carrot sticks?  Vegan soy ice cream is a solid alternative due to your food sensitivities and eczema.  YAY!  I love spending my afternoons with you guys doing fun normal things parents and children do!

SATURDAY

What’s up, kiddos?  I know we watch a ton of movies that glorify violence and murder (hey, whatever!) but let’s not do the one thing that brings extreme enjoyment to humanity (sex? Ack! I can barely speak the word!).  Seriously. You’re too young and protection is difficult for adults to talk about.  Condoms are creepy! How can we talk about safety in the bedroom at your age?  You’re barely out of diapers! Plus, you’ll fall in love with some young punk in high school and trust me, he isn’t going to give you what you really need in life running a used-car lot.  We encourage you to do other things for fun, but NOT heroin or eating doughnuts or playing with guns and I’ve already expressed my distain for sun chips.  What about Monopoly?

SUNDAY

You know what?  I’m not sure I care.  Just play on your electronics all day in the dark of your bedroom if you want to.  You’ll get tired of it eventually.  Everyone hates one another.  Trump is President.  Felicia just got half a million bucks from her ex-husband as a settlement and is in Hawaii while I still work at this crummy bank.  I think we should all go out and eat greasy burgers and binge on Netflix and curl up together.  Can I just tickle you like the old days?  If I have to eat another carrot cake cupcake made with whole wheat flour I’m gonna hurl.  They are not even cupcakes at all, amIright?  I am done trying to protect you.  You’re twelve years old.  You’ll figure it out.  Your father and I are going for a long stroll downtown and we are going to drink champagne for no other reason than we aren’t divorced and we still like to laugh at each other’s jokes.  I mean it’s Sunday afternoon. You’re alive.  We own a home. There’s frozen pizza in the freezer and a phone if you need to call 9-11. There are cookies on the counter.  Feel free to pig out.  Take a nap.  We love you.  But we are done with the helicoptering.  Frankly, it’s too exhausting.  You’ll be just fine.  Right?  What is that I hear?  All you want is Sun Chips and no more vinegar smoothies?  Fine.  At least you aren’t doing heroin.

There are times in life that are suffocating.  When something hits you like a brick in the gut and all the wind is forced out your throat.  For a moment, or maybe days or weeks, you wonder.  Will I breathe again?  Will I even be able to move again?  Your husband had an affair.  Your child is found to have a drug problem.  Your father had a heart attack.  You have cancer.  Things that you did not expect and come from nowhere just come barreling into you– unwelcomed and damned pieces of truth – that cause you to just take rapid breaths in quick succession and walk around the living room in concentric circles not making any damn sense.    And you want to scream at someone, rip something up, throw something against the wall until it shatters.  Anger is the only tool at your disposal because you simply have no other emotion that matches the intensity of this thing.

I have been in this place.  A place of awakening where a veil around you that is torn, a bubble popped, a world that you worked so hard to create for yourself that is peaceful and calm is somehow ripped apart and is scattered like little shards about your feet.  A darkness streams in like something from a Harry Potter film, a wind that you cannot see, a cold that you cannot hide from.  And you wrap your hands around your arms and sit with the brick in your gut in the freezing rain and think “this is not what I had planned.  This not the world that I wanted.  This is not the life that I expected.”

I’m on the other side of that wall with my hand placed on the mortar, speaking to you.

It’s hard to figure out a pathway through sometimes.  You have to sit inside the darkness of that truth, flipping over in some hard bed or pacing the floor and thinking about how you can possibly move forward.  What is the future of this.  What is the next step from here.  How can I survive yet another thing.

In times like these, I pray.  Not an eloquent prayer of love, or some lofty-sounding plea, but a desire to simply be held.  Held like a child, how an infant needs swaddling or a baby wants to be curled up sleeping next of his mother’s bare and bonding skin.  I simply pray that I’ll make it until the morning, that the light that is invisible to me will someday be seen, that I will be able to sleep through the night and get up the next day, alive and breathing.

After all, we don’t have the luxury of breaking down.  Children depend on us, work is waiting on us, clients are calling us.  We have to get up and let the hot water practically burn our skin in the shower and we put on our suits and smiles and mascara.  We nail that speech or that project or that work to be done.  And then we fall over again after, in the hotel room of our life, just collapsing from the weight we have to carry.

But can you see it, my friends inside of this box?  The gift this carries with it that you do not realize?   The ability to carry on in such times is a powerful thing.  The power we have to compartmentalize and move forward and do the hard work that needs to be done even though our inner child is hurt and wounded is hard. This itself is a form of perseverance, and what it says in the book of James about building up endurance through hardship is true.  To know that we are hurt, but to get up and move, and to trust that God will work out all evil for his ultimate good.  To trust that God has our best interests at heart despite all the darkness, and that ultimately light will enter in – this is true power.

The other day I was filled with dread, to the point where my heart rate rose and I had to pull over to the side of the road.  An image of a friend’s daughter filled my heart. She is a former drug addict and is fresh in her recovery, and it plagued me.  I sent her daughter a message, and prayed for her safety.  I didn’t know what was happening but I felt an urge to send her some telepathic message, to intervene for her.  I prayed that God would give her strength to say to whatever evil she was facing to stand down.  And words came upon my heart so strongly.  Stand down, bad influences.  Stand down, apathy.  Stand down, little voice in her mind that said she’s a worthless ugly loser of a girl and that she wasn’t worth sobriety.  Stand the fuck down.  It continued to hold me though the grocery store, and in the aisles between the peanut butter and the paper towels.  I assumed people would think I was on bluetooth as I muttered STAND DOWN through the aisles. Over and over and over.  Maybe I was speaking to her.  Maybe I was just speaking to myself.  After about five minutes, the feeling passed.  I stopped praying and went back to buying cans of sparkling water and pondering why there’s so much flavored coffee.

But it made me think how so many people are aching.  And at times, it is I who aches. I’m no hero.  But I can say with certainty that I know, and I understand, what this feeling of helplessness feels like.  So many times in my life I have wondered how I could possibly move on.

But I did.  And I will continue to do so.  Because I believe that dark nights of the soul are part of us.  They forge us.  They burn a hole in us that will eventually heal, and we show people our scars so that they will gather strength from our suffering. And we find a way through this night to a morning where we put on our shoes and lace them up tight.  Because life can’t break us.  It can’t ruin us.  It can only push us down for a time.  We are able to get back up and keep on keeping on.  We won’t let it win, this ugly darkness.  It won’t win over us because we keep on saying, over and over into the dark night, into the wind that chills and freezes and makes our teeth chatter, to evil so dark that it scares us to our very bones,

Stand down. You are not welcome here.

photo

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(threew’s).flickr.com/photos/paulsimpson1976/5086239029/in/photolist-8KsiEn-9H62cp-6eGkqn-6eLtto-gnR22E-cKkhK9-b8XxBx-bFapve-aduEYK-aZBUye-q2K9FT-8Fg7wM-cjf8xs-q3xkgK-aN7qyF-8iJtru-ryRP4Z-as9qGx-ZXLx8n-7L4M9m-Y1em43-8BeNoN-caR8tq-7Lphqd-Xjknsz-4dCmx4-r2hi5y-bAqeP9-UBQEpo-c5gmPw-gcRrMd-9W2TUo-5i11AS-61pcSS-dCAqrH-5hygTA-cjhDRh-azCpmj-XmtJFu-5xP7Hs-azCpm9-5v4D74-tmWCR-9jX3Pw-7JaQvb-5htVfK-kGjpq3-5i4DBD-6DPVqE-au2jhs

Loosen up that corset, Gertrude

Ladies and Gentleman,

Thank you for being members in our prestigious club.  We pride ourselves in having the richest, most distinguished, most polished residents that enjoy golfing, sneering, gossiping, day drinking, tennis, and apparently eating a lot of beans.  We love you.  But, we had a little issue last year at the charity gala we’d like to bring to your attention. Don’t be alarmed.  We received all your letters about how we over-salted the potatoes.  We won’t make that mistake again!

But there was an issue that bubbled up that needs to be brought to your attention. It appears that a small minority of you felt it was appropriate to release certain gasses that may have put others in imminent harm.  Both the Darling and Stevenson families had to leave early due to breathing difficulties from such a large load of methanol released into the air. Dr. Darling is our biggest patron and has an issue with smells.  He is now asking for us to use lavender dryer sheets for the golf towels, and of course we have to oblige. Please don’t make us pander.

Such gasses, which we will simply refer to as “dissonance” to our otherwise harmonious air, likely exited the cavities of several of our patron’s bodies, causing a volatile odor in the ballroom. The wait staff said it was hard to refill tea glasses and take up dirty plates from tables due to the sulfur-like odor they described as smelling like “a skunk who ate a bad batch of lobster topped with a feces crumble.”

The scent varies from person to person depending on his or her biochemistry, bacteria in the colon, whether or not a person has class, or is named Larry.  According to a local flatologist, such gas contains nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, your self esteem, oxygen, and some methane.  Many of these compounds are highly flammable, and our fire chief insists upon the strict adherence to our fire code.  We can’t have any possible fire hazards with this many sternos burning on our buffet tables.

Now listen here. We realize that gumbo was a poor first course last year.  We will also strive to never again serve steamed cabbage and will stick to more basic foods that won’t cause your rear end to light up like a blow torch.  But you must do your part.  If you feel something rumbling and gathering up steam, please eat some cheese, squeeze all the body openings or cavities that might have some relation to this potential toxicity, and don’t move until the urge passes.  Even if there is a fire drill.  Especially if there is a fire drill.  By moving, you will add to the problem.

In sum, please control yourself in this year’s gala.  The planning committee worked very hard on this year’s theme, which is “A starry night.”  That is representative of a clear night so that you can see the stars and they don’t want it to turn into a cloudy misty night that smells like rotten eggs. If you must let one rip, please go out on the golf course and wait until the wind is blowing in an eastwardly direction toward the town house of Michael Stevens, who failed to pay his annual dues but is the only tennis pro in the county who will work for free.

We thank you for your patience and we are looking forward to an evening that reeks only of expensive perfume and money.

Yours most truly,

The Riverdale Country Club

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photo:

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NPR:  Today we have with us the head of environmental policy under President Trump, Larry Stewart.

Larry: That’s me!

NPR:  Yes, we know it’s you.  We invited you.  We see you here in the studio. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to speak with us about climate change.

Larry:  I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

NPR:  With regard to climate change?  Do you not understand what that phrase means or are you just confused as to what’s going on generally?  It’s Studio 11B.  You’re at NPR.  Your name is Larry.   You used to be the lead singer of Restless Heart, a country band, but now you apparently run the nation’s top environmental agency.

Larry: Look, I’ll make this brief. The President has informed us to open up land and fields to oil companies for drilling.  It’s that simple. We are opening up our hearts and minds and welcoming in the money. Don’t try to stop me, the boy’s on a roll.

NPR:  This is a drastic shift in policy translating into a bill in Congress or is it just the whim of – wait what?  Who’s trying to stop who?  What boy?

Larry:  Just trying to make American great again.

NPR: Look. I realize this is tough but let’s try to focus on the fact that references to climate change appear to be scrubbed from government websites.  Can you comment on this?

Larry (laughing): Nobody scrubbed anything about this thing you reference that we should not talk about.

NPR: We know that minds may differ, Larry, but can we not all agree there is at least the existence of an environment on our planet?  That we have in the past had some studies in regard to this issue? Can you comment on this at all, Larry?

Larry:  I find that you are using my name quite a bit in your questions.  I’m not sure if this is meant to throw me off.  But I’m a hard-hitter and believe that big dreams can exist in a small town and I’m not sure why everything has to be right or wrong.

NPR:  Those are Restless Heart lyrics, Larry. Why are you quoting us music lyrics when we asked you why the government is eliminating any reference to climate change?

Larry: That rock won’t roll.

NPR: Is that some reference to our earth?  As in the earth is a rock and it won’t roll?  Because it does roll in the sense that it’s spinning.  You do know about this, right Larry? That the earth spins?

Larry: It’s a freedom that we all wanna know.  It’s an obsession to some, to keep the world in your rearview mirror while you try to run down the sun.

NPR: THAT IS ANOTHER SONG LYRIC.  We have google, Larry.  Did the President just pluck you from Kentucky and put you in the government overseeing all of our environmental policy when you know zero about the environment?

Larry:  I don’t like your tone.  We are defunding you.

NPR:  I apologize.  I let the sheer absurdity of the situation at hand get the better of me.  But the EPA doesn’t have any authority or jurisdiction over funding for public radio.  Why would you even say that?

Larry: We owned this town.

NPR:  WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO QUOTE COUNTRY SONGS TO ME. YOUR GLORY DAYS ARE OVER.

Larry:  I run the EBA and I can do what I want. I’ll have you know I was a very big deal in 1986 and the mullet was a stylish haircut.

NPR:  It’s the Environmental Protection Agency, Larry. Not sure what the “B” is for.

Larry:  Say what’s in your heart.

NPR: Okay we’re done.

Recorded on January 11, 2018

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photo:

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Click HERE to go to Belladonna Comedy and read my new humor post on how to properly use a slow cooker.  This is a very funny humor website written exclusively by women and it has some really funny stuff on there.  Check it out! And keep on being slow!

An example of a cookie that no one should strive for. Who spends 20 minutes on one freaking cookie that looks like your grandmother’s quilt?

Seriously it’s insane.

Stop it.

Volunteer at a homeless shelter or something. Watch a movie.  Stare aimlessly into space dreaming up new ice cream flavors. Anything.

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Expectations.  I look at them.  I manage my life against them.  They are the bane of me.  The ruiner of things.  A destroyer of hope.  When we plan out our lives in accordance to some lofty expectations, we will not only likely be disappointed and regretful, it’s almost guaranteed to be so.  We will constantly look back and think what if and why me and the dreaded “but this is not the way I had it planned.”  Of course it’s not the way you had it planned.  Who plans disaster and divorce and cancer and death?  Who plans to make ugly sugar cookies or burn toast?

Maybe it starts in childhood.  If you have a good one, you want to repeat it.  If you have a bad one, you want to replace it.  You have a certain map in your mind that lays out the future of your life, and when it goes off course you can either learn to correct it or just sit and cry. Many times you course correct.  You think of yourself as brave and clever and keep going new directions.  Until one day you hit your limit of turns. So you sit and cry, for no other reason except you are so damn tired.  Changing things takes a lot of work, especially with a brain like mine that sees things in predictable chapters.

I was practically born in church. The comfort of hymns and carols and preachers saying things is strangely calming to me.  It brings back memories of my mother stroking my hair in the church pew.  It brings back nights of my youth running around the halls and playing games.  And it brings back the peace of Christ when all else failed. Some people don’t see this.  To them, God is the keeper of a far-away and elitist circle that has power and influence, and if you aren’t inside of it, you’re out of it. I suppose I am inside of this circle and can’t see it, how the collective people of believers may come across to those on the outside.  But when people close to me see my faith as foreign, it’s hard.

I was practically born a lawyer.  I knew from a young age I would plow forward to law school, form arguments, write things.  When I was in college people sometimes asked if I thought of music as a career and I’d say “oh no, not me.  I’m going to be a litigator and go to trial and #winthings and #beatpeople and #stealtheshow.”  Although I didn’t say it that way.  But power and winning is intoxicating.  Today, I’m a transactional lawyer and my goal now is not to win but to simply solve my client’s problems.  I’ve learned after all these years that stealing the show is simply living in the background sometimes, doing the right thing, consistently. A win for the client can be at your expense if necessary, and compromise really is the way life works.  If I could only see how the real world worked back then in law school, the way honor and ethics and being true to your word is the only win that matters.

And I was born a control freak.  As a child, I’d tell my sister what to do.  I’d tell my mother how I thought things should go. I actually told my piano teacher enough already with Beethoven and perhaps we could work on composition rather than just playing things other people composed.  That was the day my mother quit spending her hard-earned teacher salary on piano lessons. But the fact is, I do know the way to line a sugar cookie and flood the icing.  I do know how to write a brief to make it compelling and persuasive. I do know how to make a wonderful crock of split pea soup with ham.  And I know what is best for all the children of the world that belong to all people all of the time.  Or I don’t.  After living these years, I can say with certainty that my way isn’t the only valid way.  I can see how my controlling tendencies can be misunderstood and misinterpreted, and just flat-out wrong sometimes.  And for someone into #winning and #nailingit and #lawyering and #prettysugarcookies, it is hard to be wrong and to be flexible and to admit that I don’t have all the answers.  It’s not just hard, it’s exhausting.

So today I look at expectations and say to them, “I give in.”  I cannot keep up with you.  I don’t have the perfect situation and the perfect life and the perfect body and the perfect image of what I expected.  Because expectations mean that we feel we are in charge.  We are not.  We are one hundred percent without a shred of doubt not in charge of what happens around us in this crazy life. Thank heavens.  We’d probably screw it up even worse.

I have a very good life with so many wonderful things.  And so do you.  What I have learned is that out of the most barren fields, sprouts can grow. Out of the most unexpected of places, a child was born to save the world.  Out of the most confusing of pathways, Jesus came.  Out of a family that is different than I expected, a career that looks different now than it did back then, a life more adjustable than I ever imagined, and more life twists than a pretzel, here I am. Standing up.  Moving forward.  Living.

Sometimes you just have to let it all go, the image of things, and look at what’s in front of you.  Maybe it’s a huge turd or a diagnosis or crying that never seems to end.  Step over the turd.  Acknowledge that you have this sickness and get the best help you can.  Let go of the anger.  Tell people you are trying out for a new play and you are trying to get the crying scene down. You are #noquitter.  Embrace the turns, because it’s the only life you get.  If you don’t keep moving with the pathways, you run face-first into a tree.  And then, no one will be eating your beautiful sugar cookies because you’ll have oak-print on your face spitting acorns out of your mouth and can’t make it to the kitchen.

So cry until you’re done and then stop it already.  Get up, wipe your face, and stick a smile on it.  After all, ugly cookies are still cookies. They are from the heart.  Your kids gleefully dump sprinkles on them.  Nobody I know hates cookies.  Whether it’s grief or Lyme’s or cancer or divorce, you can do this.  One step, one left turn, one day at a time. Let go of your bullshit expectations.  To me, that’s really the definition of #nailingit. One cookie, one foot, one turn at a time.

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photo:

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Do not tell me it’s only a mental health problem when people shoot up churches and country music crowds like it is a video game series.

Do not tell me you’re shocked at our current headlines when you see movies where people’s heads explode like fireworks and all the television on all the stations glorify crime and violence and anger and greed and revenge. It’s funny when, in The Kingsman, all the people die. I mean, after all, it’s a cute guy who happens to be in the secret service, avoids the bullets, and has sex in the end.  Pass the popcorn.

But we are what we consume and what we eat and what we soak up like sponges.  We are not driven to madness, as these shooters are, but we are part of the problem.  To distance yourself, to put up a shield and do nothing about it, only exacerbates it.

We cannot continue to wring our hands and simply hope that love prevails. The fact is, we have to live out that love.  We have to be extravagant and diligent and roll up our sleeves and do the hard work to change our world.  After all, love is not just a feeling, but a verb. Even in the Biblical narrative, Jesus walked and healed and did actual things.  We have to stop just talking about it.

Yes, the Texas shooter was crazy.  The Vegas shooter was crazy.  They are crazy in that sane, normal people do not just shoot and kill innocent people. Insanity, after all, is when your illness is so severe that one cannot distinguish reality from fantasy, when someone can’t conduct themselves in accordance with their own will, when one lacks all impulse control or does not understand the consequences of their actions.

But if asked, I’m sure these two shooters actually were aware that the bullets they fired would, in fact, result in death.  They knew the year, and the name of the President, and the fact that they had breakfast, their birthday.  They were not the typical definition of crazy in that they were unaware of their surroundings.

More than crazy is the concept of evil, a sinister urge that runs through all of us.  Evil causes a man to beat his wife, beat a dog, hurt a child, rape a woman. Evil is the snake the slithers in the grass, that whispers to us in our darkest hours.  Go ahead and hit her.  Give in to the rage.  Show him who’s boss.  Get your guns and blow their fucking brains off. You know you want to.

And just perhaps, if we’re honest, to a lesser degree, we’ve all been there.  Perhaps it provides a moment of satisfaction when the act is done.  It’s the revenge that gives Clint Eastwood all the good lines.  Puts the high school cheerleader in her place.  But it is the classic double-edged sword, because when you make a deal with the devil you’re the one who loses.  It’s not Hollywood.  It’s someone’s grandmother that got shot, blood seeping out like tears.

This is not an urge that manifests overnight.  It’s a slow burn from off-white to grey to pitch black, born over years of abuse and torment and the feeling that one is utterly and hopelessly alone.

Enough.

This country has more gun violence than any other country.  And yet we are the richest, the most advanced, the most prosperous, dare I say the most beautiful.  And yet we’ve allowed this pulse of evil to grow stronger, richer, more desirable.  We underfund mental health care, and we make people feel stupid or weak if they need to be on medication or go to therapy.  We glorify violence, we endure molestation in the church, and men simply aren’t allowed to cry. We have grown to a place where our women must stand up stronger, bolder, fiercer.  We are no longer protected and we must learn to protect ourselves.

So do we have a mental health crisis in this country? Yes. Can angry fellows can simply obtain a semi-automatic rifle and shoot people if they get mad enough, which unnecessarily magnifies the damage from their rage? Apparently.  But make no mistake – we also have a crisis of evil.

We have to be the change. It’s not going to happen from the top down.  We can’t rely on our current administration or government or church hierarchy. It starts with us. We vote. We can be kind. We can ensure better lives for our children.  We can reach out to someone who is struggling and simply be extravagant with our kindness.  Love the unlovable.  The invisible. The untouchable. Be absolutely fearless in our generosity of heart.  And yes, we can take tangible steps to limit the access to weapons that can fire on multiple people simultaneously.  We can do this with our collective voices.

Would that help change the heart of an angry white guy in Texas? Would that reverse what happened? No.  Those lives are gone.  But future men and women, mothers and fathers, janitors and presidents and teachers and lawyers – they are just toddlers, full of heart and hope, full of smiles and jars of smashed peas.  We owe it to them to take the lever, the big one that is life that we have to hold with both hands that measures good and evil, and pull with all our might toward good.

Sit with your family and think of how you can send an anonymous package to someone in your neighborhood.  How you can help someone who is feeling lost.  Invite someone to eat with you that you wouldn’t normally talk to. Look around and think of how to be active in love.  Can you afford Starbucks? Then pay for the person behind you in line.  Can you carve out an hour of your week? Volunteer.

It starts with us.  All of our lives depend on it.  We as a nation, as a people, should accept nothing less.

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photo:

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You guys know that I like to write funny things.  I like to write heartfelt things about love and God and butterflies. Okay maybe butterflies are a bit dull.  I rarely get on a soapbox.  But today, I feel like delving into something that I just can’t shake.

Last night I watched “Battle of the Sexes.”  I took my 14-year-old bonus daughter.  I am all about women’s empowerment, showcasing how a woman in a man’s world broke barriers and succeeded. I am a lawyer, and have had to face my own gender barriers working my way up the ladder.  I understand the frustration of being paid less, considered less, working harder and under-appreciated.  And I love tennis.  I was prepared to watch Billy Jean kick ass and take names.

And as an aside, although I am a heterosexual woman, I do understand that people are attracted to different people than I am, and in the era of the 1970’s it was not as understood or accepted to be gay.  I can understand and have sympathy for how hard it would be to live in an era where you feel misunderstood and unaccepted, ridiculed for being who you are.

But what I saw in this movie was not just a lesson in women’s empowerment, or how hard women before us worked for equal rights.  What I saw was an attempt by screenwriters/directors/producers to show that infidelity is sometimes, under the right circumstances, when someone is “living their truth,” – okay.  If it’s following your heart and if it’s simply because society won’t accept the person you truly love, we can all just wink and say that it’s fine.  Because love wins.  Our hearts want what they want.  It’s sexy to see illicit and almost irresistible love scenes.

I refuse to accept this narrative. 

The fact is, infidelity is never okay. Despite the excuses and circumstances. Despite the fluttering of the heart. The commitment of marriage is more than just paper. It means something.  There are times marriages end, and new relationships can blossom after that first joining of the flesh has healed.  They can start on solid footing, rooted in shared experience and commitment to each other.  But when a relationship starts in secrecy and lies, usually no good will come about as a result. Why is this lesson not revealed? Are people to experience the hard truth in real life but watch how different it turns out in an imaginary screenplay?

It pained me to see Billy Jean make feeble excuses of “this feels wrong” and “what would my husband think” and then give in to her own desires.  I get that affairs happen, and people make mistakes.  We are all sinful human beings and make some terrible mistakes. But instead of using this narrative, that we are all flawed and have to live with consequences of our own actions, or even showcasing the fallout due to these actions, it was almost glorified.  In real life, kids are hurt.  Hearts are damaged.  Trust is broken.  Baggage is created.  Drinking ensues.  The fact that Billy Jean was having feelings for a woman somehow made this action justified.  It’s not an affair if it’s a woman loving another woman.  Her clothing designer, clearly gay, was basically saying “hang on – someday we will be able to love who we want” and everyone seemed to cover for her as she carried on this extra-marital love affair with the person she was not married to.  And when her lover returned in the end after a short hiatus, it was a romantic gesture.

This is not about gender for me.  It was about how a story is portraying an affair to be acceptable.  How Billy Jean repeated that “her husband was a good man.” And yet she continued to make decisions that hurt him, over and over again. I would be equally as uncomfortable if she had an affair with a man.  Betrayal on any level is simply hard for me to watch.

At one point in the movie, her husband showed up unexpectedly.  The clothing designer gives her a heads up, but her husband discovered what was happening regardless.  This blond, nice-looking, affable man was almost a heroic, angelic figure that didn’t get upset, wasn’t heartbroken, wanted her to still be successful, and at the end smiled at Billy Jean’s lover as if it was all okay.  When Billy Jean was sick, he even offered to call the lover in to make her feel better. He was like an emotionless Ken doll that just smiled through it all as if it were nothing. He continued to stand by Billy’s side, believing in her, standing by her, as if this was just a minor distraction. Not once did he raise his voice, act hurt, scream or yell, act heartbroken.  Despite one scene where he hung his head as he walked out of the room, no major problems resulted.  And at the end of the movie before the credits rolled, it showcased how Billy Jean divorced her husband, married a woman, and everyone was happy. From what it seemed, especially because the movie-goers don’t know that much about Billy Jean in real life, you just assumed she married the woman she had an affair with. It indicated her husband remarried and had a family, Billy Jean was the godmother, and all ended up well.

Billy Jean won the match!  She found true love! Everyone cheered! And the bowl of popcorn was empty.

In real life, away from the allure of Hollywood, affairs rip apart families and marriages.  They tear at people’s egos and self-confidence. They can emasculate and wound.  There is therapy and tears and a complete re-building of the spirit.  This is not an action born from love, but born from selfishness. In real life, the woman that Billy Jean King was with filed a lawsuit over what she considered lost profits, and it publicly outed King as gay, which caused King to lose a massive amount of money in endorsements.  This woman who, in the movie was supportive and “only wanted the best for Billy Jean,” sued King to try and get half her estate, argued she devoted her life to King’s career and got nothing in return.  This was not the beautiful end that the movie displayed.  And the woman that Billy Jean ended up with permanently was not the woman she had an affair with, although that’s the way it appeared in the movie.

I firmly believe that a relationship rooted in secrecy and lies never has the foundation to create a life-giving and stable relationship long term.  It matters not to me if it’s a woman or man, what matters is that the choice was made over and over to ignore vows, eviscerate trust, and continue to disrespect the man she promised to love and honor and obey until death.

Sometimes people make hard decisions, like not walking down a path they might have chosen under different circumstances.  Because making good decisions is not always easy. But it’s necessary to teach our children to stay true to commitments, not believe the lies that Hollywood is telling us about blindly following what we feel at the time to be good.

Despite this, my 14-year-old bonus daughter loved the movie, found it empowering and uplifting, and left with a bounce in her step.

We were quiet as we walked to the car. But I couldn’t sit there and say nothing.  I expressed my pain for the infidelity, the secrets, the allure of what in the movie seems good but in real life can be horrific. I also expressed how being a feminist does not mean men are evil, or that all men are like the men in this movie, and how her father is an amazing feminist and supporter of equal rights and that’s one of many reasons I love him.  And there are times when in fact I defer to him as the head of the family, and this isn’t always wrong in a healthy supportive relationship.  She said nothing in return.  I don’t know if my words had any effect.  I felt like I was just babbling.

There were some good moments in the movie about women being brave and standing up for equality.  Stick it to the man who think’s you’re a pig.  I’m a woman, after all.  But, the infidelity, in my mind, overshadowed this. And for this I was sad.  As a woman, as a professional, as a human being who has seen the pain of this issue.  We have to live in this world, but we don’t have to be hoodwinked by it.  We have an obligation to set the record straight when we see something as clearly off-based and off-kilter as this.

I’m glad women like Billy Jean King fought for equal rights for all of us.  And I think people love who they love, and can have very healthy and strong relationships with anyone they choose if they start off in truth and dignity.  But I’m not glad when films glorify relationships based upon secrecy.  What is in the dark will always at some point find the light, and when it does it can rip apart and ruin lives, souls, and relationships.  This is truth, not a movie script.  In real life, it doesn’t always have a happy ending.

Right now I am on a plane, headed to the rich crust of scenery that is Northern California, seated next to a handsome middle-aged man who is reading the paper. There is nothing abnormal about a nice-looking man reading the paper on an airplane. But I’m struck by the ring on his left hand, just wrapped around his finger like it’s nothing. He is nonchalantly reading an article about Britain’s gambling problem and there is a large photograph of a woman wearing a leather sport blazer from Saks Fifth Avenue. It is an odd blazer because it looks like it’s a letter jacket from our high school days, but it’s covered in fur and the woman looks like this is all perfectly natural. Like she needs to eat something and if she just casually models this jacket by a famous designer she’ll get thrown a crust of bread, so she does this one last thing to survive.

And now you think I’m just staring at the paper and this man’s ring and the advertisements from Saks Fifth Avenue, which may seem strange because that is what I’m doing, but not all at one time but instead in short little bursts. Because I am stealth like a spy or federal agent or a woman in love.

I am also watching a little girl, no more than 3 years old, a few rows ahead. She’s sitting on her father’s lap facing backward with little round puffy cheeks that make you want to squeeze them or nip at them or plant little wet kisses on them. There is something about children and puppies that makes us want to do this. She’s eating pretzels and looking around the cabin, because children have the unique ability to enjoy the moment, and right then she was likely tasting the salt in her mouth and watching things just for the sheer joy of doing it. She wasn’t at all worried about landing or what is for dinner or whether she needs to wash her hair. I love children for this sense of presence about them.

Sitting in a plane is an exercise in patience for me, since I don’t like to sit for long periods and I always wonder what people are thinking.   All these brains wrapped up in all these bodies with thoughts firing off in all directions. If I could only see the thoughts like lasers shooting from their minds, it would be like a spy novel where the hero navigates the maze of it all while descending down toward the coveted diamond. I could dodge the red lines all the way to the bathroom in front of the aircraft, maybe even doing a flip or turn in the process.  And yet it’s all trapped and locked up inside of people so they just sit and read and watch football games on their laptops like they are empty.

But people are not empty. It’s just that they must sit and wait until the ride is over.   They can’t exactly jump out the window or nuisance everyone by dying so we all just sit and wait, noshing on pretzels and sipping on sparkling water with lime.

I steal glances at this man beside me, casually wearing a band on his finger, and I am still caught up in a haze. The type of haze after surgery when they give you pain medication and it just washes through you and you think life is good again and you have a strong urge for chocolate pudding. Except I’ve not just had surgery which makes all things better because I can walk around and buy books in the airport and stretch my legs without searing pain. I still want chocolate pudding sometimes, even though that’s juvenile.

I may someday grow weary and my mind may drift and I will be demented, confused about lifting a spoon to my mouth. So I try and sear certain things into my mind so I will not forget them. Like the moment my daughter looked at me when she was six months old, in her pink pajamas with rabbits on them, and I thought “my God she’s talking to me without using any words.” I cried and cried and thought I could never be more happy. I sewed that fabric into a quilt and I touch it sometimes, because of the power it holds. And there’s the moment when my son chewed up a little book and his face was beaming with pride, his hair thick and blond and curly. And the day I first met Mark and we ate at ABC Kitchen in New York City, amidst the sparkling candles and love bubbles that form in one’s stomach upon meeting the person they will someday marry.

All of these scenes will likely pass by someday before I die in a montage of life moments, the pink pajamas and the chewed-up book and Mark’s face, lost in space and time, trapped in a brain full of lasers, boucing around.

Today is one of those moments, looking at this man on a plane reading the paper with a wedding ring on, the ring I slid onto his finger less than two days ago, clutching my mother’s antique lace handkerchief covered in snot.  And it is commonplace to see now, as if it were always meant to be there. And maybe it is, this love, this life, this everyday moment. It was meant to be like this, as I will remember it, one of many things sewn upon my heart.

Right now I am on a plane, off to my honeymoon, off to new adventures, off to anywhere, really.  It doesn’t matter.  I’m with him, the man reading the paper with a ring on his finger.  The life I joined.  The life that sits beside me and within me.  I am just sitting here with laser beams bouncing around in my brain, noshing on pretzels and sipping on sparkling water with lime.