A Time to Laugh

Write. Let no one hold you back. Let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don’t like the true texts of women — female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.

Helene Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”

I’ve rediscovered Hélène Cixous this week — that Jewish French feminist who encourages women to “write the body.” Since men have been writing their body into the logocentric language for millennia, the most assertive and powerful thing we women can do is write our own selves. The most assertive and powerful thing I can do is write my own self.

I read Cixous for the first time at IU and laughed out loud along with the rest of my female classmates. While the men just looked confused.

It’s nothing personal, gentlemen. While we adore you individually, we agree that as a group . . . well, there are some issues.

I always said that I would teach Cixous at BJU someday. With a class of all women — no men allowed. They have Preacher Boys class, right? Surely they’d let us do that, right?

Well, I never got that far, of course. Teaching Malcolm X as an exemplar rhetor at BJU still does give me some street cred, yes?

To write. An act which will not only “realize” the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal; it will tear her away from the superegoized structure in which she has always occupied the place reserved for the guilty (guilty of everything, guilty at every turn: for having desires, for not having any; for being frigid, for being “too hot”; for not being both at once; for being too motherly and not enough; for having children and for not having any; for nursing and for not nursing . . . ) — tear her away by means of this research, this job of analysis and illumination, this emancipation of the marvelous text of her self that she must urgently learn to speak. A woman without a body, dumb, blind, can’t possibly be a good fighter. She is reduced to being the servant of the militant male, his shadow. We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. Inscribe the breath of the whole woman.

It’s taken me this long to read the entirety of the documents leading to and following our forced resignations from our former employer. The three-year-old emails and letters from our pastor especially. I just read them for the first time.

And now I get it. The best explanation for my boot from our church comes from Cixous.

An act that will also be marked by woman’s seizing the occasion to speak, hence her shattering entry into history, which has always been based on her suppression. To write and thus to forge for herself the antilogos weapon. To become at will the taker and initiator, for her own right, in every symbolic system, in every political process. It is time for women to start scoring their feats in written and oral language.

Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away — that’s how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak — even just open her mouth — in public. A double distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language only that which speaks in the masculine.

I’ll never forget that final meeting with our pastor. I insisted that I join them. Grant, of course, didn’t mind. He’s a thorough egalitarian. He respects me. Like my dad and brother too. And here lies one of my blindspots. Because I’ve been surrounded by strong, intelligent, respectful men my whole life, I assume the same about other men. But my men are rare. Very rare. I know that now.

We were in Starbucks, and during the discussion, Grant sat on his car’s key fob and his trunk popped open. So he went to fix it, and Danny and I sat there waiting.

And there it was. That face. That same face that the glad-handing politician had at my front door. That same face that the man had who stole my parking place when he saw my belly swollen with life. He was scared. Terrified. Of me.

That look has haunted me for three years. I took it personally. No more. Now I understand what he was afraid of and why he tried so desperately and so illogically to get me to stop writing. Cixous explained it.

She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history, first two levels that cannot be separated.

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VERSUS

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Happy Birthday, Honey! You are missed! I can’t wait to kiss my darlin’ again!

Happily remembering our twenty years together!

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I’ve been meaning to tell this story too. This is a little earthy, so if you’re uncomfortable with stuff and would rather assume I’m just a immaterial blog on a screen, skip this post. I won’t be hurt.

I hate doctors. I do. I was trying to explain this to my G.P. the other day, but I had strep throat and could barely talk. I’ve picked him because he’s not an alarmist and he’s pretty just factual about stuff. So it’s a good match for me. But I see that white coat, and I freak. Here’s why.

I’ve talked about my several-year-long journey through crappy doctors starting with the little gem who tried to tell me my foot didn’t hurt. I’m still incredulous at her abusive audacity. What kind of doctor tells a patient something doesn’t hurt? She did it several times about many different maladies, so it wasn’t a fluke, but a habit. Anyway, I got through that, and we started talking about starting a family.

We had one pregnancy begin on January 30, 2000 and end on March 3, 2000. We had another begin on October 1, 2000 and end on July 7, 2001. And in 2002 — around the year anniversary of Elise’s death — we had another little life begin. That little boy was not meant for this world. I know that now because he was Trisomy-10, but I had a sense then. I wasn’t just spotting early on; I was bleeding. Badly.

Because I was a special case after my stillbirth, my excellent G.P. sent me to Highlands. It was a disaster from beginning to end.

They did an ultrasound, but it was still too early to tell anything for sure. So they went for the usual HCG testing. They take a blood draw and see the levels of HCG, and then they wait two days and repeat. In a normal, viable pregnancy, the numbers double.

I saw Dr. Stoner. I’ll just sum up my impression of her with this: beware of the OBGYN with loooooong fingernails! She came into the room jabbering the usual line describing HCG testing. Mind you — I saw this little well-manicured genius in 1995 during my last go-round with crappy doctors. Then, when I asked her why I wasn’t having my periods, she said, “Because you’re not ovulating.” No kidding, Einstein!

And this time, in 2002, she was on heartless autopilot again. In the consult, I mentioned my previous two losses and specifically my stillbirth. And like something right out of a SNL skit, she tried to cover her ignorance about my OB history by sneakily thumbing through my records. And she continued blathering.

They took the blood and I went home, still bleeding. I came back two days later for them to get more blood. I asked them specifically, “When will I hear the results?” The phlebotomist assured me, “Oh, by lunch time. No worries!”

I went back to my summer job on the BJU campus. I worked in my office and Grant did too a few floors down. We both waited by the phone. Nothing. Still waiting. Nothing. I called them, and, of course, got nothing but the voice mail (they never picked up the phone). I left my name, my SS#, and my phone number.

Finally at 5:30, Grant and I decided to go home. Since Highlands was closed, we assumed we wouldn’t hear now for the rest of the night. Grant went to Lowe’s to get some mulch. I stayed home to get dinner ready.

And then, when I was alone, the nurse called. Dr. Einstein’s assistant. She said in a very chipper tone (and I remember every word), “Well, Dr. Stoner left the office before she could see your test results. But I have them here. And they don’t look good at ALL! So we’ll call you in the morning to schedule a D&C. . . . You okay?”

Read that again. Read it with a fake-happy tone. Now imagine being on the other end of THAT after all the terrifying stuff I had been through. The sum of her comfort was “You okay?” That was it.

No! I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t anywhere near okay. But what are you going to do about it? What do you care? What do any of you care? What kind of jerks are you over there? Have you even read my file?

I instead just said with all the sarcasm I could muster, “Oh yeah. I’m just greeeeat!” And hung up.

Grant came home and I told him the news. I gotta say that that’s always the worst part — telling those that you love that you’re going to go through Hell again. It was the worst part of Elise’s death — telling my parents. I didn’t want them sad. And now I had to tell Grant.

He was mad. Just mad. So, he did his therapeutic thing: he mowed the lawn. And I called Sarah, my sister-in-law. God bless her! Seriously, she did exactly what I needed. She went into nurse-mode and talked me through it. She reminded me of reality. She kept me sane. She said, “No. You don’t schedule a D&C. Those tests could be wrong. You wait. You get more tests. It’s not over yet. Do you hear me???”

So with a new persistence, the next morning I waited for the phone call from Highlands. I was going to tell them what Sarah had said. I waited. I prayed. And I waited.

Nothing. They never called. So I got on the horn and got their voicemail again and got huffy: “I have been waiting all morning for the phone call that you all promised. When are you going to call me? I have an unusual situation here that you all don’t seem to realize! I’m supposed to be getting CARE, and I’m getting NO CARE from you all. You’re causing me stress, not relieving it!”

Lo and behold! They called!!! But they called Grant. They said, “Hahaha — we were calling her social security number.” And I’m supposed to trust them to read test numbers when they can’t tell the difference between a Social and a phone number?

When I finally got to talk to a person, she said that Stoner had ordered more HCG testing (not the D&C that little Nurse Chipper had concluded). I said, “No. I don’t trust you all. I don’t need this. I’m going elsewhere.” Click.

Well, I had severed that dysfunctional relationship. Now what was I going to do?

And I’m not kidding you with this next part. This is exactly what happened.

I sat at my desk and prayed. Where am I going to find a doctor? I don’t know what I’m doing. God help me.

I pushed away to get up to get the Yellow Pages and the phone rang. It was my sister-in-law. She had talked to a friend who had also experienced a stillbirth. Whose niece babysat for a Maternal-Fetal-Medicine doc in town. And she had gotten me an appointment for that Thursday.

Read that all again. Did you see what God did? Did you see how He wrote that story? I was just getting up to get the phonebook to go doctor-diving, and He not only pointed me to one, He got me an appointment.

What followed was truly startling. Because that doctor — Dr. Chapman — treated me with professionalism and honesty. The news she gave me was the same as I got at Highlands essentially — my baby wasn’t meant for this world. But they had their eyes wide open to my past, they held my hand through the pain, and they treated me as an intelligent soul, not just a voice mail message.

God was carrying us through all that. I know it. Even now, however, I still panic when I see the white coats. I’m learning to get through that, but it’s hard too. It’s another instance of Jesus hugging me through the pain.

I’m the youngest child of two youngest children. And with all those aunts and uncles and cousins (that’s my next oldest cousin Camille up there standing with me on my porch in 1973), I’m the only one in the extended family who wasn’t born in Detroit, Michigan. But my South Bend birthplace still hovers around the Great Lakes. Still in the blustery North. Still where Falls are the loveliest in the world. Besides the roly-polies I used to torture in my tire sandbox and the earthworms I used to divide with a stick (in order to help them multiply), the autumnal hard maple trees are the only flora and fauna I remember from that home at 1601 Byron. Those beautiful trees.

We moved to Tulsa when I was seven. A very well-appointed house. 5008 South Lakewood. That house was the neighborhood developer’s rambling ranch. No basement, which floored my Dad: “Where do I store stuff?” But a sunken bathtub, four bathrooms, a courtyard, terrazzo floors, three ovens and eight burners . . . it was enormous. The southwestern rough-hewn-turned-gaudy-elegance decor threw my mom’s cautious mid-century “colonial” sensibilities. Her serene French blue never fit with those hot orange sinks. Yes, I said orange sinks.

The yard — a.k.a. kid-dom — was good. It was flat. It was angular. The cat hid under the canoe. The dog escaped under the fence. And I swam with the Barbies in our small above-ground pool. Dad grew strawberries. One winter’s two inches of snow and ice gave Steve and me a whole week off of school (sending these Michiganders into peals of giggles), and he pulled me on an old South Bend sled down the street. One December while watching “The Return of Noah’s Ark,” a tornado headed our direction driving these obedient Detroiters into the only windowless room in the house — the gold-leaf-papered “powder room.”

But gee whiz — it was hot. Oh, hot. Hot, hot, hot. I hate hot. It was so hot. Mom tried to do the usual petunia thing in what was the original owner’s changing-colored-lights-and-fountain display at the corner. Yes, I said fountain. Anyway, somebody (maybe us, I don’t remember) had filled that fountain with potting soil, and Mom tried to do petunias. Dad tried to nurse a Camellia in the courtyard — my very own flower, I always figured. Nothing flourished. Nothing flowered. It was completely brown all year, at least in my memory. It felt brown.

Except for one visit to a local civic garden in Spring 1978 to see the azaleas and the grey-purple weeds we used to pick for our mothers after the evening church service, I remember only dried-up, hay-colored brown in Tulsa. Hot, dry, and brown.

In 1978, Dad lost his job and interest rates soared to double-digits. “Mrs. K” — Dad’s dad’s second wife — had recently died, and Dad had inherited property up in the Detroit suburb of Warren — including 11685 13 mile road. On that half acre lot was the house-that-Henry-built when he was 25. A tiny brick farm house. So that 1978 Fall, Dad moved ahead to Detroit. Steve went to BJU. And mom and I held down the fort in Tulsa until that house sold.

Dad would house-hunt up there by himself. But with the new college tuition and the terrific interest rates and inflation and all the joys that were 1978, it wasn’t looking hopeful. He’d cry on the phone to mom — dreading taking her from that opulent nest. But they together decided that the best thing to do was move into that little farm house in Warren. From 4 bedrooms to 2, from a three-couch-minimum family room to a basement, from a slate courtyard outside our front door to a busy Taco Bell next door.

When we arrived that early November, it was other-worldly. Snow covered the front stoop. I hadn’t seen snow like that in forever. I hadn’t seen a stoop like that either. Cove ceilings. But it was November. We hibernated. I was the new kid at school. We looked for a church. Our mini-schnauzer got fatally attacked by two dalmatians.

One snowy afternoon after church as we walked up that stoop, Mom announced cheerfully, “Look! Crocuses!!”

I tried to make sense of this event. What? What’s that? A flower? What kind of flower grows in the snow? But we didn’t plant it? . . . Oooh! Look!! at that color!

That was just the beginning.

What erupted in that over-stuffed, tiny homestead was amazing. It was Eden. Mrs. K had been a pretty good gardener herself, but in her declining years, the place had become overgrown. After the snow melted, these spontaneous blooms would erupt. Flowers I had never seen except in books. Hyacinths, daffodils, tulips — these were just the start. Just the appetizer.

Apple blossoms. Grape vines. Irises. Dill and mint. A patch of lilies of the valley so big I could roll in it. A field of cat nip that would send a pride of lions to rehab. Two snow ball bushes that had been in front of my grandparent’s barn. But though the barn had been razed, the bushes remained and had grown taller than the house. My Barbies camped there for days under the canopy of the largest antique-white spheres of blossoms I had ever seen.

And the lilacs. Lilacs! See that tiny little sappling in front of my grandparents on the stoop? That May in 1979, when we came back home from Greenville with a newly-minted BJU sophomore in the family, that dark purple lilac was wide awake. Oh. That smell. The color. The surprise.

From the opulent terrazzo floors to the tiny portable dishwasher, from Tornado Alley to blizzard watch, from stone, lighted fountains to a rusty chain-link fence. Those were tough transitions for my mother. But for me? I really only remember going from hot, dry, and brown to breezy, muguet, and purple. I remember picking a pear right off that tree in the back of the lot with nothing left by the time I got to the back door except the juice on my chin. I remember Steve building a snow cat with me. I remember our new puppy playing fetch with the green apples. I remember Spring.

So every time I see the hyacinths popping up in my now Southern garden, I think of that little respite from a house payment my family enjoyed back then in that homestead-in-the-middle-of-the-city. Those pretentious columns of blossoms are like a bow on God’s present of the world. It’s Spring. And this is His world!

Or, conclusively, peel an orange. Do it lovingly–in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.

That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore, it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.

I just had my hands wrist-deep in chicken grease. The house is smoked up because a stray drumstick wouldn’t behave within its rotisserie prison. The counter top displays my weapons — shears and tongs and forks and even a dismantled coat hanger I thought I could bend into a skewer. I was wrong about that.

I could just throw the whole bird in the oven. But I don’t. My better half despises baked chicken. Hates it. And so I wrestle with the legs, cutting off what is misbehaving, splattering my party shirt with poultry goo, tripping over a licking-the-floor schnauzer, and opening windows upstairs and down. I dream up the broccoli salad he likes. The cole slaw recipe he prefers. The carrots my boys would choose. We’ll see if my efforts are successful in 30 minutes or so.

My kids think I am the best cook in the world. I’m not. . . . Well, I’m okay. I rely on pancake mix and low-fat turkey sausage enough to know that I’m no Martha. But I regularly get, “You make the best sausage in the world, Mommy!”

You have no idea how wonderful that feels. Because I know it’s not the food that they are enjoying. And it’s not just Mommy. It’s both. It’s the combination: the full tummy and the full heart.

My dear 86-year-old Dad insists that his mother was the best cook ever. My mom always retorts to me quietly, “She really wasn’t, Camille. She was terrible!” But Dad still goes on and on about the steak that was as tough as shoe-leather and the fried chicken Grandma made after she boiled the bird for its bone-broth value.

I realize that Mom’s right. But Dad’s right too.

Our world is an orange peel hanging on God’s chandelier. It’s good because He loves it and us. Just like boiled-and-then-fried chicken. Just like that dissected rotisserie project smoking up the downstairs. . . . at least, I hope.

There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace. There, too, is the necessity of his work: His tribe must be in short supply; his job has gone begging. The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presences or absence of the loving eye. Turn a statue over to a boor, and his boredom will break it to bits–witness the ruined monuments of antiquity. On the other hand, turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little, and its numbed surfaces prickle with feeling.

Isn’t it amazing how God loves us when a pack of trolls were bored to tears with us and let us fall into disrepair?

I rediscovered this little song recently by Mr. Rogers, “It’s You I Like.” Remember it? If we can put aside the Gen-X visceral gag reflex we have to all children’s programming, this is one beautiful song. This is “being incarnational.” This is love!