First Week of School, Last Week in Afghanistan, and I Don't Know What to Say About Texas

So I'm reading the Journals of Beatrix Potter right now...it's super interesting...and at almost 500 pages I'm going to be reading it for awhile so you will likely hear more about it. But the thing about diaries if you've never read one is so much of them is the mundane day to day of whatever world the writer is living in. So there's lots of little asides and anecdotes about politics and famous people and just this 1880s world she exists in. And it occurs to me...most of us are NOT qualified to talk about the politics of the time we live in. We aren't subject experts and there's a lot to keep up on. But we do it anyway because we are simply trying to deal with the world in front of us as we see it right now.

So here's what was happening in my world and in the big world (Betsy Ray in the Betsy-Tacy books calls it the Great World which is fabulous) this week. First of all, it was back to school yesterday. I don't know what to say about that that hasn't been said elsewhere except that it felt good. He didn't want to go but had such a wonderful day and that felt good. I feel good about this teacher. And it's so nice to see him at dropoff and pickup just talking to and getting to know again people he hasn't seen in almost two years since he was a tiny kindergartner. I know that school being in session remains controversial with the Delta surge happening and I know some people have decided not to risk it and that's their right but me...I'm trying not to focus on the risks. They exist, we're doing our best to mitigate them as is the school, but fixating on them would help exactly no one and also he needs to see me be excited about him going to school. And I am. I have learned it is not a straight line back to normal...it's a winding one full of questions of what is normal and what does that look like and what should that look like, but on the road back to normal is school and that was this week. I think it's possible my brain is too tired to really reflect on school or maybe it is too new or something. I will say I have been very much looking forward to updating this blog so perhaps being on a schedule is good for me but my brain is tired because I am starting later than I wanted to on account of having to spend some extra time tonight settling the dog because James was not allowed to have her in his room because he was not being nice. (When all is well they sleep together in James's room and I think they both sleep best that way.)

So not really knowing what to say about school I turn to what is going on in the Big world (I can't call it The Great World right now, would that I could.)

I read a book this week called Ground Zero by Alan Gratz, a book for the 10-14 crowd about 9/11 and its aftermath. The book is set half in New York on September 11, 2001 and half in Afghanistan on September 11, 2019 and as such it is a pretty grueling read right now. I'm not old enough to remember Saigon in 1975 but I have heard tell. My parents hosted refugees from Vietnam in their home in 1975 and 1976. I have met them. I don't know how desperate you have to be to cling to the landing gear of a plane as it's taking off or hand your baby to a stranger over an airport barrier but what will happen to those people under the Taliban has to be horrific and I'm incredibly tired of the conversation being which U.S. President is to blame. (I'm pretty sure it's all of them.) I want the conversation to be about how horrible life is going to be for the Afghani people and if we can't fix that (the President says we can't, I have to believe him because he has better advisors than I do and they as a group should know more than I do) how can we stop it from happening again...how do we avoid another scene in another airport some time decades from now? I don't have an answer to that but my heart simply breaks for the Afghani people and for the military families who have lost so much in twenty years of war and I just want to cry tears for the world.

There was also a hurricane...horrible situation in Louisiana/Mississippi and now it's in the tri state area with record flooding in Philly. Oh, yeah, and northern California is still on fire so there's that. I was never the person who looked at my son's Class of 2032 T-shirt and said, man, I hope we (as in the human race) are still here by then but I am that person now and I HATE it. I'm an optimistic person by nature and this current climate is killing my optimism and might be killing who I am. I look at pictures of toddler James and I feel like I was an entirely different person back then.

And then there's Texas.

Since I'm keeping this for posterity I will outline briefly. You in the future can Google or whatever it is you do for the details. Texas passed an incredibly restrictive abortion law that essentially banned all abortions after six weeks (for the uninitiated, 5-6 weeks is the normal time frame when women find out they are pregnant) AND provides incentives and bounties for people to rat out their neighbors for getting abortions and doctors for performing them. It's really bad. That said, I feel like memes that say we should airlift women out of Texas (as people are, or were at least, being airlifted out of Kabul) are really disingenuous. Yeah. The situation for women in Texas right now is really bad. But really shouldn't be compared to what the Taliban is about to do to the women of Afghanistan.

I don't know what to say about Texas. I have a complicated history with the abortion debate. I used to be really...no...that's an overstatment, I don't think I was ever *really* antiabortion...I was antiabortion but I didn't feel strongly about it. I believed what Sunday school teachers said and thought babies with a heartbeat were bad targets. I understand more now. I have more nuance now. And I got that by LISTENING. I listened to the stories of women who had lived before Roe, women who had to go outside the borders to get abortions, women who feared unintended pregnancies would cost them their jobs, their long term life goals, all of that. I listened to women who have walked that line of "viability" (it turns out fetuses don't magically go from totally dependent on the womb for survival to completely able to survive outside it with the flip of a switch at 24 weeks, there's a lot of gray area there and not great outcomes for many babies and many parents have to choose between deliveries that give their babies the best chance of survival (even if it's not awesome) or ones that protect the mother's organs and make future pregnancies possible (imagine making that choice. I've met people who have made that choice.)

I wish there were fewer abortions...if I'm being honest. I wish more fetuses had the chance to become babies. But I also know it isn't always my decision and I've never met a woman who took the decision to have one lightly (there may be women out there who do and that's their choice as well, women I've met who've made the decision have struggled with it and done the best they could do.)

The other thing I've learned is abortion isn't new. It goes back...well as far back as women have been delivering babies. Midwives from centuries ago knew how to end pregnancies. This isn't an invention of modern times. The body itself created a mechanism for getting rid of pregnancies that weren't viable, evolutionarily that's probably why women menstruate.

What I'm over the top sick of is the toxic rhetoric. Rhetoric that rarely centers the woman making the tough choice, rhetoric that forces people into black/white and fanatical stances on the issue (because to waver a little bit is blood in the water for sharks and if you agree with the other side of the debate you're either a murderer or a fascist, so that's fun.) I want medical decisions to go back into doctors offices and out of courts and protest rallies and MSNBC.

I do get the other side. If you genuinely believe that every abortion procedure is like shooting someone in the head, then two things are true: first, I'm not going to change your mind and second what you are doing, blocking clinic doors and passing crazy laws, it makes sense to you. 

What is lost is the real people. I remember a Black woman voter being asked about her opinion on a white female candidate. She said she wished that white women spent as much time caring about feeding and educating her babies than defending her right to not have them. And FOR SURE I wish the right spent half as much time protecting babies who have already been born rather than the ones who haven't really formed into babies yet. It's not going to change. There's big money in keeping people mad about this issue. I know the history. It isn't about women or babies and it's utterly heartbreaking. The people who are protesting and standing in the street...they believe what they say. I may not agree with them but I think I can understand them. The people who are riling them up from the top. They don't care. They are interested in money and power and they are full of shit.

So that's where we are this week. In school, out of Afghanistan, and at each other's throats about an issue we won't move anyone on. It's...very hard to stay optimistic.

My highlight this week, though? Beloved children's author Todd Parr had an online program to celebrate 20 years of his book It's Okay to Be Different and Max and I went when James was in school yesterday. I didn't really know what Max would think. He listened to the story for a bit and then got up and walked away. I thought, cool, he's three, his attention span is short. But that wasn't it. He grabbed a Todd Parr book (how he knew where one was I have no idea, we only own like one) and brought it back to the computer so he could read along. It was seriously adorable.

Media consumption: other than the books I've already mentioned, I'm reading Breakfast With Neruda which is this lovely and beautifully written teenage love story about a bookish teen who lives in his car and the girl he falls for...I'm only about halfway through it but I already want the sequel, it's lovely. And when I'm done here I'm going to go watch some Golden Girls.

Today I'm grateful for my kids (I may not do a lot right, but having them here is one thing,) fresh baked biscuits, clean sheets, dog snuggles, reading Beatrix Potter with Max, and zucchini bread.