Honoring the All

As a young girl I grew up with parents who came of age so to speak during World War II. My mom graduated high school in 1945 and four of her brothers served. My father had three brothers who served as well. When I was a kid I never heard anything positive about the women who served this country. All I ever heard was silence from my mother and the most horrible, misogynistic, hateful and degrading comments you could ever want to hear from my father. He knew every horrible doggerel regarding the different branches of service that women were allowed to enter and he repeated them quite frequently. They were sluts and prostitutes and whores. It was demeaning and disheartening for a young girl to hear over and over again. Sadly my dad was not alone in his campaign to demonize these brave women. It was a cultural and societal disgrace. 

Approximately 400,000 women served in different roles in different branches of the military during World War II. 543 died in war related circumstances and 16 died from enemy fire. Several women spent time in both German and Japanese prison camps. I recently watched a show that highlighted the WASPS. The Women Air Force Service Pilots. These women flew planes to air bases and wherever they were needed, when they were needed, so that male pilots could be freed up for combat duty. They often flew them straight off the assembly lines and they had to be able to fly a number of different air craft. During the war 38 of these brave women died serving their country. The woman in the photo above is Gertrude "Tommy" Tompkins. She is the only WASP still unaccounted for and has been missing for almost 75 years now. I was very impressed by these women and very touched by their losses.

A good friend of mine calls me the "keeper of lost souls" and I take my duties to the dead and especially on Memorial Day Weekend I take it very seriously. All the way down in the very depths of my soul I believe that all souls should be respected and honored. No one should be forgotten. All of those lonely stones in the older parts of cemeteries with no one to tend to them makes me very melancholy. I know they are not there and I know the stones are just markers but think about what that says about us as human beings. We live our lives, we touch thousands of other lives by our very existence in the this world, we laugh, we love and eventually we die and we are placed in the ground with a stone to mark the spot and we only continue to live in the memories of those who knew and loved us and one day they will be gone and all that's left is a piece of marble and a name. 

Where I am going with all this rambling you ask? I am not discounting the thousands upon thousands of brave men who died fighting for this country. They should be honored with every fiber of our beings but so too should women like Gertrude Tompkins. She and all female patriots should be honored in death as strongly as they were maligned in life. We should put this right and tell the stories of ALL the brave human beings who have died in service to something greater than themselves. Here's to the men looking to find Gertrude Tompkins. I hope you do so soon and she can be laid to rest with the honor she deserves. So on this Memorial Day let us salute all the souls out there who have passed into our memories but still live in our hearts, both the military and the civilian. Namaste Gertrude. I honor your memory and your sacrifice. 

Sometimes It's Okay

This my friend Mr. Llama. I just go with the fact that he is a he. I am not really sure since I have never gotten up close and personal with said llama. I just randomly picked a gender because I am afraid to go up to the house and ask the people about him because I am afraid I will in turn wind up on the ward. Because, you see, I intentionally seek him out to make sure he's okay and I talk to him He does not really talk back which I am thinking is a good thing, but we chat. I ask him how he is doing. He stares at me like I am crazy and chews grass. It's a nice relationship. I tell everyone how cool he is and so he's sort of a celebrity amongst the people who tolerate my weirdness on a daily basis. Now lest you think I discriminate I also talk to the cows, goats, sheep, possums, vultures, birds and whatever else I might encounter out in the country. 

I think one of the reasons I like Mr. Llama is that he just seems so Zen all the time. He is so calm and serene and still. The reason I am waxing poetic about my llama friend today is that this has been one of those rare, weird, days where I am very calm and very still. They do not happen often as my anxiety is usually a 24/7 drama fest. I may seem calm on the outside but I guarantee you things are going nuts on the inside. Every once in awhile, though, my brain, or the universe, or whoever, cuts me some slack and gives me a day of calmness and stillness that I never take for granted. 

Normally being quiet and still and restful does not work for me. I get easily bored and restless and like to beat myself up for not doing anything productive. I am slowly realizing that I need to knock that shit off. It's okay to not constantly be progressing somewhere. Enough Karen! It is okay to be lazy and nappish and just hang out around the house and chill. Once it warmed up some the boys and Kitten Face and I have been enjoying the open windows and the fresh air, even if it is laden with so much pollen it makes my head feel like it wants to explode. That's okay...that's what Nasacort is for anyway. 

I worked some out in the yard and discovered a cute birds nest. I listened to all the birds singing their happy spring songs. I listened to the mourning doves trying to get frisky. They are making a nest under the awning, over my front door, again this year. I watched one of my boys (turkey vulture...it's a long story) sailing on the air currents overhead and informed him I was not dead yet so he moved on. I watched the carpenter bees hovering around the tulip tree in the back. It's finished blooming but they still hover anyway and when they get close enough you can hear the hum of their wings. I wondered at the amount of traffic that comes down my alley...it's weird. It's not a street people. 

I sat in my patio chair with my bare feet on the concrete and was just quiet and still for the longest time...just taking it all in. At one point I noticed I was rocking in my chair and that was okay too. For one brief, shining moment I was actually living in the moment today. Being mindful and living in the moment seems like it should be such an easy thing to do but it's really not. There are so many distractions. My brain being the primary culprit. But today has been gloriously calm and centered and awesome and for that I am so very, very grateful. Maybe my brain and I can build on this day and make our lives better because today, even if it's just for today, I have felt calm and centered and alive. I have actually felt unabashedly happy and I am not going to over analyze. I am just going to let it be. Well done me! Namaste Karen...you have earned it.

Results of My Non-Scientifc Study and Some Other Related Neuroses

The results of my non-scientific survey are in and for the week I was called "sir" a sum total of 5 times. I think that's probably a little more than normal because I just got my hair cut but I think 2-3, depending on my interactions with the public, is about average.

Let's ponder this shall we. Yes, I keep my hair really short. No, not because I want to look like your brother Bob. (Someone actually told me that in a casino once) I keep it short because it's easier to manage and if you have ever seen my bad hair videos you will know what I am talking about with the bad hair. 

Do I try to look manly? No...this is just my face. A combination of genetics and hormonal dysfunction have caused me to look more like your brother Bob than your sister. My mother was not overly feminine and she did not wear a lot of makeup, none most of the time. Thus, I have never, ever had makeup on this mug unless it was acne cover up. That is a whole different tale of woe. If you look closely at this picture you can see the subtle changes beginning that were to come from years of too much androgen in my system and my cousin will tell you that even at this young age I HATED dresses and wanted them off me as soon as possible. I was what they euphemistically called a "tom boy".

Why don't you wear more feminine clothing? Ah...here we get to the heart of the dysfunction. From a very early age...actually probably pretty close to the photo's age...around 3 or 4...I learned about predators. And no, my dad for all his faults was not responsible for this. He would have blamed me and called me a slut and that would be why he never knew what happened to me. So from a very early age I discovered that to be feminine meant you were an easy mark for predators so I tried to camouflage myself. It was not safe to be pretty. It was not safe to wear pretty dresses. It was not safe to be vulnerable. It was not safe to be a girl. Sad...but true. 

As I got older I wore boys clothes for a couple of reasons. One reason was well understood by me and that was that boys clothes fit me better because I was a big girl. I have never been delicate boned and have been heavy most of my life. That's a whole different blog of trauma right there. The other reason was not so well understood by me until just recently. I knew that other than the gender appropriate undergarments I wanted nothing to do with women's clothing. That section of the store still makes me fell awkward and creeped out. It borders on a phobia that's how bad it is.

Recently I read a story by another survivor of sexual abuse and she talked about the years she spent trying to hide herself away and it suddenly dawned on me. I don't wear two t-shirts because I am self-conscious of my neck. It's to bury my cleavage even further in the dark so no one will notice it. I am creeped out by women's clothes because the whole idea of being feminine to me translates into making myself easy prey. That being said I am not transgender either. I have never had a desire to be a man. I have spent my whole life just trying to stay off their radar. This may seem silly to you because to see me now you would not think I was attractive to men or an easy mark. I often joke that I have a head start on a mugger because first he has to figure out my gender and then he has to decide if he really wants to tackle me. It's all a façade to protect the little girl you see in this photo. 

That adorable, vulnerable, sweet little girl is still buried somewhere in me. She is still fearful. She still tries to hide herself behind her size and her jokes and the rest of her camouflage. She still keeps most men at a good distance. She still puts a barrier up out in public and if there are men around she will become more closed off and more wary and will put up her wall and make herself even more masculine. Like a sort of gender chameleon. Because to be noticed is to be vulnerable. To become prey. It's a feeling I just cannot tolerate. 

So. Here I am. You can call me "sir" if you want. It bothers me more than it should but it's okay. You can look at me weird in the women's bathroom and you can yell at me that I am going into the "wrong" bathroom. It bothers me but that's okay. Because I am protecting that little girl in the photo from more harm. She has been through enough. 

Putting a Little Punt in for Reality

A good friend and I were discussing the world in general yesterday and because we are reasonably old and vaguely wise we came to some conclusions that will not really be a surprise to anyone. They are not earth-shattering but I think some things need to be said and a plea needs to be made.

Okay...here goes...PUT DOWN THE PHONE...okay I feel better now. It's not just phones though and I am including this device, my kindle, my TV, my phone, any and everything that disconnects me from what is real. 

Now, lest you think I am one of THOSE people who pontificate about how they have read 12 million books and would never own a TV because they are just so not cool. I have a big ass, HD, smart TV that I spend way too much time in front of watching some stuff that is entertaining and informative, some stuff that is just sport...a lot of sport, some stuff that is just mindless and some stuff that is way too dark and I need to leave it alone. I have a long history with TV. 

My first babysitter thought the secret to babysitting was to prop my up in front of the TV all day and go about her business. I mean she literally had to prop me upright with pillows because I was less than a year old and could not sit up on my own. So I have been staring at those images all my life. And as my friends will tell you...if I am really engrossed in something I will not only not hear what you just said but I will not even have heard the sound of your voice. 

The problem with this and our fascination will all things media related...especially social media related is that we create these weird illusions that this stuff is "reality". All media, including print media, delights in convincing us that there is this perfect world with these perfect people who look perfect and act perfect and it's all a lie. When we were little we were fed these images of what a family should look and act like and then blamed our parents when our reality did not match "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver" etc....
It strips the humanity away from all of us by not showing our human habit of messing stuff up. We make mistakes. We are not perfect. We are human beings and we judge ourselves and others by the misdirection of the media.

Now do I think the media are all liars and out to get us and spreading "fake news" everywhere?  No people...I am not getting into politics or even religion. I am simply talking about the day to day bombardment of our brains with imagery not of our own making. The little things, the subtle things...the things we do not even notice. 

What worries me is that we are becoming more and more tribal and less and less connected to the world at large. My personal struggle is that I am an introvert by nature and all these distractions simply enable me to become more and more introverted and less and less connected to my family and friends. I have noted a few times lately that people I only vaguely know are more knowledgeable about my cousins than I am. That was a wake-up call. What am I doing? Am I just too lazy to make the effort to be more in touch with their lives? I have often said that I would ditch social media if not for that fact that I would lose all touch with my cousins? Is that really true? Am I really that lazy that I can't be bothered to just call and check on them? 

I don't think I am alone here. I think a lot of us are becoming more and more introverted and withdrawn into our own tiny tribes. The media, both left and right have done a lot of damage in polarizing us into these camps. Into these tribes. We don't trust one another if we are not in the same tribe. We are more judgmental and more cruel to those who don't think or believe the way we do. We have lost a lot of openness. Our brains are constantly bombarded with all this information and all these images and we are all on overload and in danger of shutting down.

So this is a plea for everyone to try just a little bit to accept our imperfect reality and embrace what is actually real. Put down the devices and go outside. Touch a tree. Look at the sky. Really LOOK at the world around you. Meet a friend for lunch. Talk to one another. Embrace the fact that we will never be perfect and give your brain some room to accept other images of real things and of real people and real emotions. Free up some space in your brain for things much more simple. The sun streaming through the window on a winters' day. The little poodle farting on your lap. Try to be more present in the moment. We need to shut down and re-boot people. We need to breathe.