Legacies of Radical Mothering

“We can learn to mother ourselves.” Audre Lorde, 1983

All mothers have the potential to be revolutionary. Some mothers stand on the shoreline, are born and reborn here, inside the flux of time and space, overcoming the traumatic repetition of oppression. Our very existence is disobedience to the powers that be.
At times, in moments, we as mothers choose to stand in a zone of claimed risk and fierce transformation, the frontline. In infinite ways, both practiced and yet to be imagined,  we put our bodies between the violent repetition of the norm and the future we already deserve, exactly because our children deserve it too.  We make this choice for many reasons and in different contexts, but at the core we have this in common: we refuse to obey. We refuse to give into fear. We insist on joy no matter what and by every means necessary and possible.
In this anthology we are exploring how we are informed by and participating with those mothers, especially radical women of color, who have sought for decades, if not centuries, to create relationships to each other, transformative relationships to feminism and a transnational anti-imperialist literary, cultural and everyday practice.

“We don’t want a space where kids feel that only adults can imagine ways to strengthen our communities and protect ourselves against the Architects of Despair,” Sora said, “and we don’t want adults to feel that either. We want to create a space where all of our imaginations help each other grow; but we realize that kids might get bored from sitting still the way that adults tend to do, so we set up the play room with toys and games.”  Regeneracion Childcare Collective 2007

Sometimes for radical mamas, our mothering in radical community makes visible the huge gulfs between communities, between parents and non-parents, in class and other privileges AND most importantly the wide gulf between what we say in activist communities and what we actually do. Radical mothering is the imperative to build bridges that allow us to relate across these very real barriers. For and by radical mother of color, but also inclusive of other working class, marginalized, low income, no income radical mothers.

“Parenting and being a role model to kids in your community is important because they will be the activists of tomorrow.  And they will be our gardeners and mothers and bakers. They will question our generation, they’ll write their own history, create new forms of art and media.” -Noemi Martinez 2009

We find the idea of the “bridge” useful because we believe that  the radical practice of mothering is at once a practical and visionary relationship to the future IN the PRESENT, a bridge within time that can inspire us to relate to each other intentionally across generation and space.   We also acknowledge the not-so-radical default bridge function of marginalized mother in society.  How our children in particular get walked all over in terms of public policy that criminalizes our mothering and movement spaces that claim to be creating a transformed future without being fully accountable to parents or kids.

“I came into the Third World Women’s Caucus when it was well under way.  The women there were discussing the caucus resolution to be presented to the general conference.  There were Asian women, Latin women, Native Women and Afro-American women.  The discussion when I came in was around the controversial issue of motherhood and how the wording of the resolution could best reflect the feelings of those present.  It was especially heartening to hear other women affirm that not only should lesbian mothers be supported but that all third world women lesbians share in the responsibility for the care and nurturing of the children of individual lesbians of color…Another woman reminded us of the commitment we must take to each other when she said ‘All children (of lesbians) are ours.” -Doc in Off Our Backs 1979

We see this book as a continuation of the accountability invoking movement midwifing work of the 1981 anthology This Bridge Called My Back in that it:
a. is the work of writers who see their writing as part of a mothering practice, as not career, but calling and who believe that their writing, and their every creative practice has a strategic role in transforming the possible world.
b. contextualizes contemporary radical mama practices in relationship to socialist and lesbian mothering practices experimented with and practiced in the 1970’s by writers including Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, Third World Lesbians conference, Salsa Soul Sisters, Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers
c. seeks to speak to those who participated in that earlier practice and who have been informed by it as a primary audience, and to connect those who have not have access to that work to it

We invite submissions including but not limited to the following possibilities:

*Manifestas, group poems, letters, mission statements from your crew of radical mamas or an amazing group from history
*Letters, poems, transcribed phone calls between radical mamas supporting each other

*Accounts of your experience as a radical mama

*Your experience raising children as a trans mother or parent
*Raising children in a transphobic world
*Your experiences as a single mother
*Raising genderfree babies

*Stories of resilience and oppression as welfare warriors

*Reflections on enacting radical mamacity at different ages
*Motivations for/obstacles in your practice of radical mothering
*Conversations with your kids
*Rants and rages via the eloquence of a mother-wronged
*Your experience of radical grandmothering

* Parenting children through radically queer and loving modes of support, community, belonging and resilience

* Your take on reproductive justice

* Parenting from inside prison

* Extended family (both biological and chosen)

* Life as a disabled parent

* Gender socialization and Parenting

* Raising Biracial children

* Raising First World children

*Self-interviews, interviews with other mamis

*Birthing experiences
*Ending child sexual abuse
*Mothering as survivors (survival and mothering)
*Mothering with and without models
*Mothering and domination
*Mama to-do lists
*Mama/kid collaborations…
*Radical fathering
*Overcoming shame and silence in the practice of radical mothering

*Ambivalence, paradox, emotions, vulnerability

*Experiences of state violence/CPS

*Balancing daily survival

*Everything we haven’t thought of yet! Take a deep breath and WRITE!!!!

This anthology will center the writing of mothers of color, low income mothers and marginalized mothers. If you have any further questions, feedback, suggestions feel free to contact us as well.

Please send submissions via email to:
alexispauline@gmail.com
maiamedicine@gmail.com
and china410@hotmail.com
or via snail mail to
P.O. Box 4803 Baltimore Maryland 21211
by April 1, 2011.

Word Count: 6,000 words or under

Please also send your bio (a short paragraph or whatever size you like) with the understanding you can update it if your piece is accepted in Jun

for the past year i have not been a community organizer.  and in that time i have thought a lot about what is community, what does it mean, and what is its value.

and one of the things that i have come to see is that for me, community is complicated.

–we are always in community.  community with our fellow human and other sentient beings.  with those that we interact with.  with the universe, with the stars, with the dust.

–what that means is that we have a relationship to the rest of the universe.

–those relationships are not necessarily supportive or beneficial.  they just are.

–when we identify certain people as our community, we are defining a border, an inside and an outside.  and what are our criteria for that border?  how fair are those criteria?  how human are they?  how steeped are they in social access and comfort?  and how would those who are outsiders answer those questions about our borders?

community has moved into the background for me.  in the foreground i see myself supporting individuals.  and really this is how i have been an effective community organizing.  i focus on one person at a time.  building a relationship.  it is intense work, especially for this introverted self, but it also doesnt drain me the way that working with groups does.
when i am working with groups, more than a couple of a people at a time, group think and dynamics start to play in more and more.  hegemonic practices become more entrenched.  group stability and cohesion become more important and flexibility and innovation become less of a priority.  that border between inside and outside becomes more defined.  passive aggressive behaviour begins to seep into the relating.
in part it is because our little egos, the ‘i’, always feel a bit small and partial, and want to feel whole.  and being part of a group, a ‘we’, lets us feel whole, and we become addicted to the feeling of belonging, and fight bitterly to hang onto it.

but as i said before, community just is.  we dont have to hang onto it tightly.  we dont have to be loyal.  we dont have to pledge allegiance to anyone or anything.

our survival is not based upon how tightly we hold onto community but by how open we are to understanding the community we are in.

it is not our borders that protect us, but our inner strength.  and our willingness to love ourselves despite the odds.

and to be honest i want more than survival.  i want freedom.  and if you aint free, then i aint free, and vice versa.

and as i said before freedom cannot be based or dependent on anything.  not even community.  because if we need community in order to reach our freedom, then that freedom aint really free.

and if we aint about my freedom, about our freedom…

then what the fuck are we about?

I see the wisdom of eternities
in ample thighs
belying their presence as adornments
to the temples of my sisters
old souls breath
in the comfort of chocolate thickness
that suffocates Africa ’s angels
who dance to the rhythm of the universe’s womb
though they cannot feel its origins in their veins

Blessed am I to be love in the temple of my own skin
my nappy centre kisses the sun
in a harmony divine
devoid of the ugly that does not know this as God
but the sons of oppression
never gave sisters
loaves to feed the hungry fury in their bellies
nor did they teach them to fish for spirit

So I pray
to the voices that whisper in my soft curves
for the lionesses of my blood
to hear the songs of the cool reeds
to feel the green blood beat of cataclysm on their breasts
and to know the embrace of freedom
in nourishing silences
where their radiant ebony vessels
are reflections of their souls

poem cc L Mashile
Poetry Africa

I found out from my acupuncturist that the state of Michigan is considering requiring it’s citizens to get a doctor’s referral to go to an acupuncturists. So, in other words, rather than hearing from a friend that she went to acupuncture and that person deciding to give it a try too–Michigan wants to make it so that you have to go to a doctor first, and then, if the doctor is willing to actually give you the referral, you can go to the acupuncturist.

Many people who know about the history of midwives in the U.S. know why this is such an extraordinarily bad idea. But for those who don’t know that history–what this particular requirement would do is first and foremost, place an incredibly unfair burden on those people who don’t have health insurance. Those who are unable to afford a doctor would simply have yet another health alternative option removed from their already limited health arsenal.

In other arenas, it takes yet another independent profession and forces it under the control of a medical establishment that has proven already–it simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t *prevent* ill health, and in many ways, it actually encourages it. Again, to point to the midwives–as the process of birthing has become more and more medicalized, more and more women are becoming criminalized and subjected to unnecessarily violent births. Women who make the choice to refuse a cesarean (which is in a woman’s legal right to do) are getting children taken away for not submitting their bodies to the procedure.

The lives of the women are considered less important than a medical procedure.

Acupuncture is not necessarily subject to the same experiences. Until the community acupuncture model came to Michigan, it was something (and still is) something that simply isn’t widely available–and was only affordable to an elite group of people and/or people who were lucky enough to have insurance that covered the practice.

But now we have the community acupuncture model. We have dedicated women (interesting, huh?) who are finding ways to make the practice of acupuncture affordable and available to those people who are literally poorest of the poor. Detroit, for example, has an unemployment rate that rivals the Great Depression. It has people who simply don’t have the money to go to a doctor. Who often don’t have the 15$ it takes to go to acupuncture. Who are those people that everybody talks about–those ones who die from untreated cancer–because they didn’t have the money to go to the emergency room. A family member of mine had this happen–by the time he finally was vomiting blood and unable to work, he went to the Emergency room. About a month later he was dead.

We live in a system that deals with health care of poor and uninsured by keeping them out of the doctor’s office and hospital until they are dead. Then it pats itself on the back for it’s cancer treatment rates.

Community acupuncture models, while maybe not equipped to cure cancer–can extend the lives of people who deserve to live. I still get weepy when I read this story of a working class cancer stricken man interacting with community acupuncture. I think about my relative. And I wonder–How would things have been different? If every week he spent $15 dollars getting a treatment. Would the cancer have been so violent? Would he have had a few more precious weeks with his kids? Even a few more days?

Would he have been in so much fucking horrible pain at the end?

I’ve talked for a long time about what community acupuncture has done for my health. For those where it simply doesn’t work–it doesn’t hurt, either. Unlike so many medicines and doctors that at the best are struggling to do what they can, and at the worst, simply don’t give a shit. And it’s doing more than the system that doesn’t work. That simply doesn’t work.

This is a practice that deserves to expand and grow and become a regular part of every person’s life (if they want it to). Michigan’s new law would take away my ability to go to acupuncture–it would take away my daughter’s right to sit and take up space while she gets her health taken care of–it would make it impossible for all the thousands of people in Michigan who are out of work and without insurance to even *consider* getting help for their bodies.

Michigan has fucked with it’s citizens long enough. It needs to make self-referral to acupuncturists legal. And allow those of us who are regularly denied health care by the system they say they should be regulating acupuncture to find health and healing in a space that honestly really and truly does care if they live or die.

What you can do to help:
Sign this letter to send to Michigan legislators (even if you don’t live in Michigan! Or you haven’t used acupuncture!)
Forward this post
Read about why community health models are essential to revolutionary movements
Support community acupuncture clinics in your own state/Country!
Read Ouyang Dan’s post
Read Jaded Hippy’s post

(papas of color, feel free to chime in as well)
(ETA: actually, any damn body who has any sort of influence over young boys of color–please chime in!!)

the thought of being hungry scares me. it terrifies me, actually.

when i forget to eat a meal or don’t have the time or have a changing body that requires an adjustment period (i.e. pregnancy, depression, etc), and i am forced to spend time recognizing how hungry i am, i spend half of the time close to tears, the other half of the time angry at the world.

it’s made me realize, yes, i do eat to hide from myself. to self medicate.

but what is it in me that i am trying to hide from?

you know, there’s so much armchair therapy in the world that gets to decide why women overeat. we are in unhappy marriages, we are mad at our mothers, we are working unsatisfying jobs, we are stressed out…but i’ve never once seen any Oprah show, Dr. Phil show, etc–not one, that has ever addressed the fact that sometimes–you overeat because you’re scared not of yourself…but…of being hungry. your scared of being hungry…because you’re scared of being hungry.

what it is like to be hungry–not to miss a meal, but to miss several meals, and then only get a small meal to “satisfy” you:
your stomach hurts, you get lightheaded. you can’t concentrate, you get the sweats and then the shakes. smells and sounds become especially intense. you get headaches and things that didn’t bother you or don’t bother you when you have a full belly make you snap. as in, screaming yelling hitting snap. you are very aware of portioning out “energy”–you know you have enough energy to make it through work and pick up the kids. if the kids start to give you shit or you have to stop to put gas in the car, you know you won’t make it. so you think through–what are routes you can take to get home that will use the least amount of gas? you send the kids to bed early.

i have not been this type of hungry since i’ve had kids–so the above is speculation that i’ve played over and over in my head, obsessing about. i was single working at a restaurant when i was that kind of hungry. and i look back now, knowing what i know and i think: you know, thank god that the people who are most hungry in the U.S. work jobs that they don’t have to think to hard on. when i was so hungry i could hardly think, it was ok, because you can cook twenty hamburgers, three orders of eggs, six chicken sandwiches and endless french fries all while sitting on “coast.” you can shut everything out and just coast. let your body take over.

i remember one time though, when i sat in the parking lot of the place where i worked and cried. for about three minutes and then stopped because i didn’t have the energy to keep crying.

crying because my car wouldn’t start, and i knew i didn’t have the energy to stand around for hours waiting for somebody to start it–or find a way home.

i sat in that parking lot until somebody saw me, and asked if they could help.

i didn’t have the energy to walk back into the restaurant and ask a coworker for help.

i am so scared of being in that place again.
when i feel my stomach growling because i ate a light lunch and it’s an hour before dinner…i get scared of being in that place again.

i told somebody on twitter once–hunger is the PTSD that rape has never been for me. don’t get me wrong, i was traumatized from my experience(s) with sexual violence. but with sexual violence, there is the illusion of control. i lock my doors at night. i “picked a good guy” to partner with. i learned not to trust men until *I* decide it’s the time to. illusions of control, i know–but effective enough to keep the demons at bay.

hunger…follows you. it’s in you. i know what it’s like to be a hungry mother, even though i never have been. at least not in that way. when i go to sleep hungry–because i am following the “weight loss’ advice of not eating for at least two hours before you go to bed–because i am trying to respect my body and it’s needs and it’s not so much that i want to lose weight but because i know eating a full thing of ice cream before i go to sleep is not exactly the kindest thing to do to my body….when i’m trying to be *good* to my body…i feel like sobbing the whole time. like i am trying to hurt myself. like i *am* hurting myself. like i’m not safe, and i’m abandoned and nobody cares if i live or die. because that’s what hunger is–it’s a reminder, a reminder that exists inside your body every single moment of the day, that nobody gives a shit if you live or die.

how does a person reconcile that? how does a person lock the doors to hunger?

buddhism has offered a solution for me here. it encourages you to “sit in the places that scare you.” learn that space. learn yourself in that space. i was listening to a buddhist lecture today about ‘making friends’ with haints. meditating in the physical spaces that terrify you–buddhist monks/nuns have been known to go into burial areas where skeletons are still visible above the ground and meditating for hours, days there.

the point is not to make the fear go away–but to recognize the fear for what it is. an emotion. an emotion that may feel more viscerally real and overwhelm you in a way that other emotions don’t–but still, an emotion. (and i say this clearly and loudly: fear of being hungry is SO no the same thing as actually being hungry. i am talking from a PTSD point of view here, NOT as a person living in being hungry)

i decided a while ago–i am brave enough to do that. or, more accurately, i admire and want to be like people that are that brave. that is the courage that will one day make this fucked up world worth living in. people who are brave enough to sit in the fear of hunger, allow it to soften them and connect them to hungry people–they are the answer.

and so i sit with the fear. and i try to breathe through it. and i last for about ten minutes before i am hurting to much to go on.

but three days ago, it was only two minutes. and three weeks ago, it’s was on a few seconds. and three months ago, i refused to even talk about it.

baby steps. little teeny tiny baby steps.
but steps all the same.

Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:

BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget you

Featuring:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and more

With video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more

November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

November 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of funds

In this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.

Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.

Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.

Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.

For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com

The person I was talking with shared a personal account of this “cult of personality” phenomenon, and then followed up with these questions:

This phenomenon is why I needed a long break from the beloved community. I think we sometimes consume each other b/c we are so passionate (and maybe desperate) about finding people that affirm us in, how does lorde put it, the beast that is america? But when we have folks that know how to be visionary, how can we support them to do that but also understand that they are still people just working it out? How can we nurture a self awareness about the roots of hateration in our community, how it may be deserved b/c someone is genuinely acting out unaccountably, but how it may also be driven by our own insecurities and desires.

This reminded me so forcefully of several interactions I’ve had with various really prominent women of color organizers. Namely, one interaction I had with Chrystos–she talked about how uncomfortable and shitty it feels to have people assuming they know you because they read a book of poetry. How they put you up high, and then enjoy watching you fall.

It reminded me of my own interaction with a woc I met one time–who I had *worshiped* for years, and then when I met her, she was ugly, stinky, and mean. Yes, you read that right, ugly. Stinky. And mean.

It reminded me of the power several really influential and important women of color have had over me (and others) because they “Changed My Life”–and how they could’ve really abused and harmed me (and others) if they wanted to (i.e. Roman Polanski). How there is/was no community mechanisms set in place to prevent that sort of abuse from happening, and only a limited set of mechanisms to “report” abuse that had happened.

It reminded me of how I hate hate hate hate HATE going to conferences and meetings and the such where my primary identity will be “brownfemipower”–because I’m Ugly. Stinky. And more often than not, mean. I wear sweats and t-shirts, forget to brush my teeth, and only occasionally remember to comb my hair.

And I’ve had that happen–a starry eyed dreamer comes running up to say hello–sees what I really am…and…sort of…hm. Pauses. Says hello. But–that edge of excitement is a bit tempered.

And I think about how in many ways, I’m so glad I never met Gloria Anzaldua–because I would’ve been that starry eyed dreamer, so so so so so excited to meet the woman who Changed Everything for me. Humping all over her, building her up, all the time, her knowing–I am not this story line bfp has created about me. I will never live up to what she dreams about me.

Oh, and Audre Lorde–how I would’ve licked her shoes–when what I really would’ve wanted, and which I’m sure she would’ve enjoyed much more, is to tell her I thought she was nitpicking on porn versus erotica. And that I wrote my own thesis. And that as an equal of hers, I’d like to see if we could organize a conference or something where Latina and black women come together and talk with each other about sexuality.

But, Audre is Audre and what other choice do we have but hump all over, worship and admire, obsess and meditate on our heroines?

That’s why I was SO excited to read what my friend had to say, especially this part:

How can we nurture a self awareness about the roots of hateration in our community, how it may be deserved b/c someone is genuinely acting out unaccountably, but how it may also be driven by our own insecurities and desires.

Oh, how I needed Gloria Anzaldua to talk about “What makes a real chicana!” Oh, how I needed to have a Chicana say skin color wasn’t what “made you.” Oh, how I needed to hear another Latina confirm how language had distanced her and forced her into the borderlands.

Oh…how I needed to know I had the right to call myself what my own community said I couldn’t!

And yet…as I continue to write through the years, as I continue to teach, as I continue to interact with young girls…I see more and more, that the point is not to tell people “I, bfp, believe in you!” but to expose where the resources are, and what the methodology is, so that people can say that to themselves. To ask the question that never gets asked, especially not to girls of color–what do YOU think? And then show “I am ok with whatever you answer, even if it’s the all time most irritating answer in the world, I don’t know!”

So…knowing all this–who I was, who I am, what I needed, what I still need, what I am working through, what I never wanted, but got anyway, what burdens I have placed on other women, what burdens have been placed on me–and how unchecked power (whether given or wrested away) always always corrupts….

What is the role of the “creator” (i.e. the artist, the movie maker, the writer, the photographer, the speechifyer, the thinker…) in the middle of all this mess?

What is the ethical way to deal with power as it is given to you, what is the ethical way to “give power” by community members?

How do we confront the fact that we often eat our “hero/ines” alive even as we often allow our hero/ines to eat others alive? How do we get real enough about “power” so that mechanisms CAN be created that might prevent or slow down abuse/rape–and so that survivors are always always ALWAYS prioritized over our own insecurities and needs?

The article says you are working as hard as you can to get back as much as you can. As you are doing all that PT and rehab, can I offer you a glimpse of my life as a disabled dancer? The most powerful moment of performance I have ever had was an outdoor gig at a high stakes venue. You’ll remember the difficulties and joys of dancing outside: being dazzled by the sun, yet frozen by any wind, the joys of the outdoor stage, the likely absence of wings, the absence of customary lighting, a sound system which both gives and takes the music you are accustomed to hearing. All that set against the freedom of the fresh air and the beauty of the sky and the trees. This performance had all of those aspects and an even scarier moment: an audience of over 900 people.

And boy, could they see us sweat, hear us breathe, sense our effort. They were so close that I could have touched them. So close that there was no hiding. So close that I worried. Outdoor stages don’t have ramps, but they built one for us. I pushed up that ramp (trying to keep a neutral face) as my entrance approached. Sound check had been fine, but nothing had prepared me for the density of all those bodies. I barely recognized my cue. READ THE WHOLE THING

I thank you deeply, WCD for sharing pieces of yourself with us–and to your grandma, hugs and love and songs as she moves where she needs to go.

“You can’t go out,” she kept saying. “I have to keep you safe. The street in’t safe.” And how I wanted to walk. I wanted to escape that apartment that we were in hour after hour, day after day. I couldn’t eat because I hadn’t moved. I couldn’t breathe because we couldn’t risk opening the windows. But I wanted more than to walk away from my work; I wanted to pull on my jogging shoes and run. It wasn’t safe. I didn’t know it then — I thought she was exaggerating — but overall crime rates in my grandmother’s neighborhood were shockingly high, even for the early 90′s. So, we couldn’t just walk.

I paced the apartment. I started a routine. I would jog in front of the window. “Don’t open that. Get away from there. They can’t know you are here.” Then, I would walk back and forth, reimagining the sweat of frustration and cabin fever as the aerobic burning of calories. I was studying and writing papers while staying with Grandma. Grandma, I recall, knew how to walk; she got on her tiny rowing machine — a device that someone had left in payment for the clothes she had sewn. “One foot in front of the other,” she called, laughing at the delicious irony. We exercised together, but I felt cooped.

I was studying hard for qualifying exams. I had gone through sheaves of notes and was still poring over my appalling scrawl when one night she tapped me on the shoulder. It was humid and hot, a typical East Coast summer night; we had no A/C, the neighbors added their music to the stultifying heat. She waggled what we in our family call the “Jamaican finger” (don’t ask) at me: “We goin on de street,” she declared.

I sighed, frustrated. She’d been at my back all day: “Are you done yet?” I’d tried several times to explain the complexities and competition of academic life to someone who left school at fourteen to be a seamstress. Her family couldn’t afford the education for her to be a surgeon; she figured sewing clothes was the next best thing to sewing bodies. I didn’t want to stop; I was getting somewhere. Finally, however, I saw the hurt, hope, and mischief in her eyes: we were going out.

My grandmother is a lady of style. She has CLOTHES. She made them all herself in glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy style. She needed only to see it once, and she could make it and several variations on it. I found her in the closet looking for a visor and sneakers. She bundled on several layers of mismatched clothes. Rags that she would rather have used as dusters. “We goin’ on de street,” her voice said, as she tossed me some things neither of us would be seen dead in.

I barely recognized her. Gone was the strut that came with her heels and in its place an urban shuffle. Head down, sneakers up, she snuck down stairs and on to the sidewalk. Nonplussed, I copied her. “My gran,” she nodded to anyone who made so bold as to speak to her. And we walked. Across the road. Into the wetness.

The first time, we hit a MacDonalds for fries. We were bad. Then, it was ice cream — double bad. Her eyes glowed. Then, I tried chocolate tofutti (god knows why), but somehow that didn’t sit well. “Need to take a cleanse,” she said, holding her stomach. Over the course of the summer and, indeed, the summer after that, we ate every flavour of ice cream that the shop-rite could offer. She didn’t like strawberry, but vanilla and chocolate were fine. Caramel was only OK, but mint chocolate chip was special. Her neighborhood didn’t have much. I learned that Burger King had terrible fries, that KFC was worse; MacDonalds and Wendys passed muster. We walked from apartment to store and back. That was our routine.

My grandmother’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. She’s at that point. It could now be quick (interesting that quick is the Old English word for “life”), or it could be weeks. Months, it probably certainly is not. She’s significantly disabled and on top of that has several intense medical conditions that prevent me from caring for her; she lives in a home in the community where she spent the last 25 or so years of her life. She used to have friends and connections who would visit her. I live across the country; I didn’t want her to be alone in California, away from the voices of folks from her part of the world. I wanted her to be among the people whose lives she affected, who brought her work — people with whom she worshipped and broke bread.

Her doctor said today that her life has no point. I was too stunned to respond; I politely thanked her for her help and hung up the phone. The doctor meant in the medical model, of course. A life has to have a function or a reason to have a point. Grandma has had no “function” or reason to live for years, apparently. And in addition to external stimuli and connections, she also meant that Grandma has no internal motivation to live (not sure how she could tell that).

It’s true that Grandma’s body has changed and that she doesn’t live as she used to or even see the people she used to. Her friends have died or gone to their own residential care centers. Her facility is not easily accessible by public transit (sigh); most of her friends depended on the bus. Simultaneously, Grandma herself has become less able to travel. I would have liked to move her closer to me, but I didn’t recognize the window of opportunity passing. I should have moved her while she was in the period where she was still able to interact with her friends. Medically (as opposed to disability), she is no longer able to handle either a commercial flight. Nor does she have the health or life skills to adapt to life in a new place. She is too disabled by her most aggressive impairments and too sick from other illness. Moving her across the country poses (so I have been told) a significant risk to her life. So, Grandma has stayed on the East Coast. A friend of the family visited/s often and was/is a local contact.

As we walked in the heat of summer, I learned about her wishes — perhaps her fears were her fears or perhaps they were her illness speaking. Either way, the woman who once had wished to be a surgeon wanted no medical interventions: no knives, no tubes, no drugs. Her faith — a hyper literal form of Christianity — was an important strand in her decision-making. God would call her when He was ready. The body is a shell: burn it. Don’t sit and watch me die. I want no fuss. No party. No mourning. She would be ready to move on.

Who knows what should be counted as a reason to live? Who knows what counts as medical care and intervention? Principles are one thing; circumstances are another. Would she, in extremis, change her mind? Would a feeding tube become desirable? Could we resuscitate her?

Do Not Resuscitate — check.
Do Not Hospitalize — check.
No Extraordinary Measures — check.

“Believe and you will receive. Doubt and you go without.” — OK, Grandma — check.