Link to Iowa County Almanac

http://iowacountyalmanac.blogspot.com/

 

Fried Eggs, the GOP, and IVF

 

Wendy Gilbert Gronbeck

 

Men of the GOP, I know your feelings are hurt. It must be terribly hard to accept that sometimes a syringe works better than your manly parts. How embarrassing to be outperformed by a turkey baster. Is this why Linsey Graham looks so sour and Mitch McConnell so befuddled? If your wife is stepping out on you with a turkey baster, I certainly understand why you have taken up arms (and your other manly parts) to wage war on Petrie Dishes.

 

Long ago you made it clear whose problem infertility is. It’s those women–losing their pregnancies, failing to conceive, walking around with incompetent cervices.

 

But for heaven’s sake, guys–you can do better! You are selling yourselves short. You haven’t begun to take this far enough. Did you know that many fertilized eggs (aka young people) are flushed out naturally during menstruation? Come on, Gyn Masters, I’m sure you know that. All us women washing away the well-crafted products of your manly parts, month after month, year after year? The Vatican says keeping embryos alive is “opposed to human dignity,” and woe unto you if you destroy one. That leaves women with a tough task, expelling unattached embryos every month, worrying about their dignity, performing itty bitty CPR. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are children and if you destroy one, you can be charged with wrongful death. So, it is incumbent on you GOP incumbents to put all menstruating women in the pokey.

 

You can put an end to this. How? For starters, you should jail all menstruating women, though some of them might call that respite. And, you could set up inspection stations, sift through things, rescue those little expelled kiddies.

 

One more thing: while you’re all up there in our business, would you mind providing some of those more mature embryos with school lunches, affordable healthcare, and a decent education? And remember to wear your gloves, boys.

 

 

 

 Link to my story in the Bangalore Press:

https://bangalorereview.com/2024/05/still/

Neuterville

 

Non-Fiction--really

 

I grew up in Neuterville. My dad was neuter. My mom was neuter-er. We were as genderless as my doll, Dee Dee Diaper, who had a pinprick hole between her little bowed legs. When I squeezed water into her mouth from the plastic baby bottle, it ran right through onto the ground, but none of us ever peed. Certainly no one pooped or farted. Also, no one in the family wore underwear, none that I ever saw, even in the laundry, because you learned to tuck it down underneath out of sight. My mother gave birth four times but was never pregnant. How could she be, here in Neuterville?

 

For two decades, I completely avoided being naked. I got dressed underneath my nightie, then whipped it off. At bedtime, I put my nightie on over my clothes, then took my clothes out from under. I never saw my dad in an undershirt nor my mother in a slip, because we were never naked. We were neuter. We lived in Neuterville.

 

Not coincidentally, our pets also lived in Neuterville. When Fang mounted the neighbor’s Cocker Spaniel, my mother told me they were playing hopscotch. They were really good at it. When our neighbor girl with the unfortunate name of Rosy Dix, sprouted breasts and appeared at the lake wearing a two-piece bathing suit-but only the bottom piece -  I was banished from the beach.

 

Even in Neuterville, a girl eventually turns 13, and here’s what happens. You are minding your own business in your bedroom, doing homework. Your social studies book is open to the chapter “How the Pilgrims and The Indians Became Good Friends.” You have your PJs on. Your grandfather’s homemade radio, fashioned from a kit, sits on your desk. You wear the same Bakelite headset your grandpa did in 1920 and listen to Jack Benny on Sunday nights. Suddenly, your bedroom door opens. You catch the briefest flash of your mother’s face, and she sails an LP record right over your head and onto the bed and slams the door. Even Donna, the dullard next door, would be curious about this event, so I take off the headset, walk to the bed and pick up the record. It’s in a plain, dark blue jacket with a sticker that says Chelsea Michigan Public Library. Printed in large white letters were these words: “What Every Young Lady Needs to Know.” Even the Princess of Neuterville knew what that meant.

 

But, here was my problem: Let me explain the layout of our house. My bedroom opened to the living room. In the corner of the living room was a grapefruit tree my dad had grown from a seed. It got really tall which made him very proud, and he couldn’t bear to prune it back, so he cut a round hole in the ceiling tile and let it continue growing on up into his bedroom. That wasn’t my problem. In the other corner was the Barkalounger where you’d have to sit carefully to avoid flipping over backwards. That wasn’t my problem either. My problem was in between the tree and the recliner. It was a large walnut box on long legs with brass feet and a cloth front--our HiFi record player. Now you see my problem, me living in Neuterville and all. Imagine playing “Everything a Young Lady Needs to Know” in the living room, right in front of my parents who thought all a young lady needed to know was she better not ever get nekked, pee, or go swimming with Rosy Dix.

 

Post Script: Girl from Neuterville marries man from Let It All Hang Out. They live happily and awkwardly ever after.

No Exceptions? Really?

 

The nurses on our oncology unit cared for cancer patients but also cared for mothers who were losing a pregnancy or who faced terminating a pregnancy gone wrong. Why the oncology unit? Because the last thing a mother losing her baby needs is to be on a delivery unit where she will hear crying babies and joyful laughter. We were accustomed to dealing with loss and grief, so they were sent to us.

Sometimes these mothers were suffering a miscarriage; sometimes the baby was malformed and would die before or after birth; sometimes it already had died. In some cases, this was a danger to the mother. Although some babies might live a few minutes if labor was allowed to continue, they might suffer pain and air hunger during that time.  

A baby born dead or who died just after birth was always treated with respect. Parents were given a little knitted hat that the baby had worn. Families were given a certificate to acknowledge the birth, including footprints that might be a quarter inch long. When possible, a photo was taken. They were encouraged to hold the baby for as long as they wanted. Sometimes we wrapped the babe in a blanket exposing just a heel or glimpse of skin because the rest would have been too disturbing to view. Sometimes, it needed to be fully covered if the anomalies were extreme. I doubt most people shouting about such issues in the political arena could imagine such human anomalies. Most of these pregnancies were greatly anticipated, some were the result of procedures to overcome infertility. Sometimes families opted out of these support measures.

We saw brave husbands sit by their grieving wives, knowing they would go home empty-handed. I also remember those distraught fathers who sat in the waiting room with the couple’s other children. He might be holding a toddler on his knee and watching his other children. He might be struggling with how to explain that no baby will be coming home with them.

In the worst-case scenario, this father and mother faced a gut-wrenching decision about letting the pregnancy or labor continue or ending it. Sometimes a mother’s future fertility was threatened if she continued to struggle against a pregnancy gone wrong. Sometimes the mother’s very life was threatened. Imagine someone saying to that father, sitting with his other children, that the mother must continue such a pregnancy even if it kills her or causes her physical and/or mental damage. I never heard a physician pose such a choice. I certainly never heard anything remotely akin to “No exceptions for you!”

Imagine some politician bursting into the room and saying, “I will make the decisions for your family.” Imagine a politician saying, “I will decide to let this mother to these other children die to save a baby that will live for just a few minutes.”

 No exceptions? The ignorance! The arrogance! The utter mean-spiritedness! “No exceptions” is not born of love or concern or any reasonable resemblance to Christianity. At best, it’s the result of misinformation and at worst, the result of a corrosive desire for power and control. It’s also a sleazy means of pandering to a political base for personal gain. “No exceptions” is anything but pro-life.

Maybe this issue doesn’t seem pertinent to you right now. Just wait until people who use such strong-arm tactics set their sites on something you do care about. It’s only a matter of time.

If you want “no exceptions,” how about equal public education, equal health care and equal school safety for all children–with absolutely no exceptions. That, my friends, is pro-life.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.*

Recently I attended a community forum on physical, verbal, and emotional abuse of vulnerable people, including spouses, partners, parents, and children. The house was full with about 50 women and 3-4 men. As we listened to personal stories told by brave survivors and sage advice from experienced counselors, my eyes swept the audience. All I could think of was where the hell are the concerned men? Where are the men who work with and bowl with and joke with these abusers?  

Of course, all abusers are not men. There is woman on man abuse, man on man abuse, and woman on woman abuse. I’d venture to say the vast majority of cases involve men abusing women. 

We heard a lot about what women who witness abuse of a friend or relative should and should not do, and it was very helpful. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone is out there educating men, especially young men and boys, about what to do when their buddy or colleague is the abuser. (It was gratifying to hear that some schools have classes on relationships that cover abuse. I am guessing they talk about how to better handle anger. I wonder if they cover what to do when your high school friend is abusing his girlfriend, when you are the witness, not the abuser.)

You can find a few articles online directed at men who suspect or know a friend is an abuser. They offer the same advice that is given to a woman whose friend is being abused.

·      In private, get the abused person’s permission to talk with the abuser.  

       You  could make things worse if you barge in uninvited.

·      Explain you are speaking because you are concerned, as a friend.

·      Remember the good parts of this person as you speak

·      Use I statements. I have noticed–. I have seen–. I’m worried when I 

       hear–.

·      Allow for possible misunderstandings

·      Avoid confrontation, threats, assumptions. You are not there to rescue 

       anyone. That decision must come from the person being abused. If it’s an 

       emergency, though, call the authorities.

·      Allow for pauses so the other person can speak

·      Be willing to simply start a conversation. You don’t have to solve it right 

       now. And, be willing to revisit it. Don’t give up, even if it’s just to let the 

      abused person know when they are ready, you are there.

·      Most importantly, understand the risks you face. They can go well beyond losing a friend. Talk to an expert on how to proceed before you act.

Who is going to men’s service clubs, fraternities, fraternal organizations to talk about this? Who goes to places where men work, worship or play to teach them how to identify abuse and how to approach a friend or colleague?

Here are the stats from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

·      An average of 20 people experience intimate partner physical violence every minute

·      1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence and/or sexual violence

·      1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner

·      1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner

·      1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner   

Think about this. Next time you’re in a movie theater, imagine cordoning off ¼ of the audience; that’s how many people are being abused. Look at the people around you at McDonald’s or in a posh restaurant; on average, 1 in 4 of them are being abused. 

It’s pretty darn likely that eventually we will find ourselves witnessing an abusive situation, so this was an important community forum. But, we need both men and women to shoulder this burden. Men deserve the same education on what to do and what not to do if they suspect their friend or colleague is the abuser. What if your friend’s wife has bruises, claims to fall downstairs a lot, wears long sleeves and sunglasses at inappropriate times? What if your buddies are joking about and demeaning women, using abusive language, talking about a potentially abusive colleague? Do you go along? Quietly walk away? Or, do you start a conversation?

Men should not be sent out there uneducated on the subject, but they should be educated and sent out there to get involved. This is not a woman's problem. The responsibility is on all shoulders, including those brawny ones.

*This quotation is attributed to more people than live in my town.

  Feel free to take credit if you want to join their ranks.

Installment #2     Calling All Crabby Old Women

 

Under Any Condition? Nope.

How often do you hear a gushing newly-betrothed or newly-married person on TV say, “He/she completes me.”

Oh, please. Pass the anti-emetics. Honey, if you ain’t complete, you should not be offering yourself up to someone else. What part of you needs completing? If your partner isn’t complete, run. Run like hell. You wouldn’t take your car off the assembly line and say, “I’ll just finish that myself, thanks.” You’d be heading for a big wreck for sure. Why accept someone who is incomplete? This doesn’t mean you need to find or be a perfect person, but if a person is not fully baked in truly important areas, step back and reassess.

You can bet the next thing gushed will be, “He/she loves me unconditionally.” Well, good grief, why? If you and your bud don’t care enough about yourselves to have conditions on your relationship, why not? Does this mean you will accept any treatment? Does unconditional love include abuse? Disrespect? Refusal to takes steps to change and improve things? Of course, you won’t ever find someone or be someone without any warts. But, some warts aren’t warts; they are malignant and do not have to be tolerated unconditionally.

Relationships have conditions, rules, boundaries. On a good day, they are mutually agreed upon. If that doesn't work out, you still can be a loving person and step out of the path of weapons that are not born of love. You do not have to pass those very unloving tests of loyalty. Sometimes, taking leave of the relationship may actually preserve the love.

I shudder to think how many people suffer because they have swallowed those trite lines that were dreamed up by an inexperienced, clueless script writer on his or her first job at the Lifetime channel. New wedding vows:

I got warts, you got warts. After careful examination, I find you to be pretty much intact. I will continue to work on improving myself as best I can. Since we both promise to work on things together, let’s have a go at it.

Cue the romantic music.

And that’s why I won’t be applying for a job at the Lifetime channel.

  

Installment #1     Calling All Crabby Old Women

Women and Children and Men First

     When I hear a news report about a disaster and the reporter says the casualties included “women and children,” that irritates me.  Of course, when children are caught in natural disasters or the crossfire of idiot adults acting badly, it is especially tragic. But, this “women and children” thing implies that the tragedy is especially sad because women and children were victims. Is it less tragic to lose a son, husband, or father than a daughter, wife, or mother?  Men’s lives are equally valuable, and it’s equally tragic when they are lost. I get that when the boat is listing at 45 degrees, it should be “children first.” It’s past time, however, to retire that “women and children” thing. It devalues our menfolk.

     Also, grouping women with children implies equivalent helplessness, and that devalues we womenfolk. It perpetrates the notion that women are childlike and in need of protection (and therefore easier to treat like children no matter their age.) Please! Women are carrying weapons across the desert and wielding scalpels during brain surgery. That is not “dew” on their foreheads.

     If my ship is sinking, men do not need to step aside and help me hoist my hoop skirt over the railing. Maybe I’ll want my chance to be heroic and help some worthy gent save himself. On the other hand, maybe I’ll want my chance to fend for myself and race him to the rail. None of that should depend on which side of the shirt the buttons are sewn on.

     I heard an NPR reporter use the phrase “women and children” to show that some tragedy was especially egregious. I asked NPR about that. They said they have addressed this outdated custom, but once in a while it slips by the editor. I wasn’t the only crabby one, I guess.

     And just for the record, yes, it’s very nice when people hold doors open for one another, all genders aside. Whoever gets there first and is able to open the door should. Whomever benefits from this kind gesture, just say thank you. Save your crabbiness for something important like “women and children first.”

INTERSECTIONS

PART6

No, I Didn’t Have Favorites, but . . .

 👬👪👫👶🐈

The Family Meeting

By the time a person needs hospice care, it’s more than likely his family has been in crisis for a long time. Often, the main caregiver is bone weary and nervous about handling things at home. It’s not unusual for an out-of-town family member to arrive, not having seen the ill person for a long time. She may be shocked at his appearance, might even start questioning the difficult decisions that have been made. It’s unlikely everyone in a family is on the same page about moving to hospice care. There may be many opinions on where the person reside, who should be caregiver, whether to hire help, and so forth. It’s all perfectly normal. Different ideas and approaches can be magnified in stressful times.

One afternoon, a hospice social worker and I were on our way to an initial visit. We were to explain our services and, if the family so chose, admit them. The first visit almost always is challenging. Many families never talk openly about what is happening; that makes discussing hospice services a bit like tap dancing across a mine field blindfolded. This particular family had a terminally-ill dad in his sixties, his wife, and eight (count ‘em­–eight) adult children plus a stadium full of grand kids. We were a titch trepidatious after being told they would all be present for this visit.

The front door opened to a sea of welcoming faces. The dining room table had been pushed aside and folding chairs were set up in rows all the way back into the living room. Dad was lying on the couch and waved at us. We were given two chairs up front facing the family. One son introduced everyone in the group and explained each person’s role. This one would chair the meetings. That one was in charge of legal matters. The daughter to our left would be the primary caregiver, and the one to our right would coordinate shifts of family members. The eldest grandchild would grocery shop and two others would cook and clean. One son managed medical appointments and transportation. They presented us with a list of all of these contacts and their phone numbers. Then they invited us to begin our spiel.

We weren’t novices, but we hadn’t seen anything like this group. They signed on, and before we left, we asked if we could hire them!

It’s easy to remember the difficult, challenging, dramatic family situations. It is truly rewarding when one can nudge such families toward a better place and provide the resources they need to do what families do best. This time, however, we were privileged observers of a unique three-generation tribe that was prepared, mobilized, and organized. Their good vibes could have powered a small city.

Some days, it seems as though the whole world is crumbling, and people in droves have lost their collective mind. Everyone is shouting. It’s nice to remember that here and there, dotting little cul-de-sacs or nestled at the ends of quiet country roads, there are houses with these everyday heroes. They are stepping up, handling the impossible and the unfair with grace. Just ordinary people. This holiday, let’s have faith and hope that these quiet superstars are out there and will prevail.

Striking a Minor Chord

Have you ever been in the minority? Not the kind of minority where you had options and chose a dissenting path. Not when you voted against the majority on your HOA board. Or PTA or departmental meeting. I mean the kind you can’t choose, deny, leave behind, hide, abstain or retire from. The community I grew up in was 100% white, Christian, conservative. (Oddly, there was a small lake adjacent to ours with a 100% black population, and that is an interesting story for another day.) As a child, my most exotic neighbors were a Polish couple who escaped to Michigan after WW II. It was not until I went to college that I lived in a more diverse community, and it wasn’t all that diverse.

Twice in my life I have been in a true minority position. Both times were short-lived, so I cannot claim a real understanding of the life-long struggles of someone who is seen and/or treated as different or less than. I barely sampled that sense of not belonging, not having a voice. I knew I’d be going back to my safe and comfortable life. I only sampled a bit of the fear, self-consciousness, and uncertainty felt by members of minorities in our society. We might be more tolerant if everyone experienced this now and then, perhaps going to minority camp for a couple of weeks every summer.

The first experience was in grad school when a friend and I received a grant from WJBK in Detroit to produce a film. The University of Michigan was trialing a program to bring students from small black colleges in the south to the Ann Arbor campus for a few semesters. We proposed to document one young black man’s experience coming to an affluent, predominantly white campus. We approached a participant with this proposition: he would be interviewed in Ann Arbor and in South Carolina. We would drive to South Carolina to visit and film his campus. He would get a free ride back for a long weekend with his friends. He signed on.

These were not the days of iPhone videos. We had a lot of equipment in large cases, long cases, heavy cases. Tripods, studio-sized film cameras, and cans of film. We stuffed my partner, our volunteer, and me plus our suitcases into a Karmenn-Ghia. (One degree removed from a Match Box car.) I, being the shortest, was twisted like Gumby, poured into the spaces in the back seat around the equipment. It was one long trip, and we drove straight through.

We were shown to dorm rooms, and our volunteer disappeared to spend the weekend with his friends. We strolled the tiny campus; you easily could see from one end to the other. We were the only two white people on campus, at least as far as we could see. My co-producer took off for a bit, and I went to my room. It was a second story room that looked out over the commons area, right over the entrance to this lovely brick building. I opened the window, sat on a window seat, and watched the students walking to class, chatting, doing the usual student things. Then, across the commons I saw  a long black limo enter the main drive and wend its way slowly to a spot just under my window. It stopped, and a crowd materialized, streams of excited students from every direction, all gathered around this car. The car door opened, and a tall, handsome black man in a perfectly tailored suit emerged. He was greeted with cheers as he climbed the steps below my open window and turned to face the crowd. The top of his head was now about10 feet below me.

I knew exactly who this man was. I had heard him speak in Ann Arbor. Radical rhetoric, eloquent, confrontational, exciting. He had stood on the steps of the Michigan Union. I had been walking to class when I stopped and had to listen to him. I was mesmerized, stunned at how bluntly he spoke about racial issues. Now, I was about to hear him speak to a very different kind of audience. He soon had them laughing and clapping. The one line I recall most vividly had to do with white women who wear bright red lipstick so they can find their own skinny lips. I sucked in my own skinny lips and slid slowly down off the window seat and out of sight. This experience gave me a tiny taste of what the young man we were filming experienced every day in Ann Arbor. In school, at work, shopping, driving. Just a tiny taste, but a memorable one.

Decades later, just a few years ago, I found myself in a van with 8 Jewish women from New York, a Rabbi from Israel, the Rabbi’s brother, the van driver, and an armed guard. I had never been on a trip that required an armed guard. It was a Jewish heritage tour, and we were in Lodz (pronounced Ludge) Poland. The buildings in the old neighborhood we were visiting were covered in hateful graffiti. Before we walked anywhere, our guard strolled ahead to assess the situation and then trailed after the group. Faces stared at us from upstairs windows, and not in a welcoming way. If we wandered the slightest bit, the guard nudged us back to the group like baby ducks. We walked down a narrow alley to search for the house of one participant’s grandparents. We were walled in. That is not a feeling I will soon forget.

A few years after adopting a child with dark skin, we were traveling from Iowa to Florida and found ourselves traveling across Mississippi. We were running low on gas, but there had been no gas station for miles. With the needle nearly on empty, we left the highway to see if we might find a small town. Only a seriously naïve white person would have thought that was a good plan back then. In about twenty minutes, we coasted into a wide spot in the road with a few houses and one ancient gas pump. I can still feel the fear that pulsed in my chest as people stared into our car. Truly, it felt as though we had wandered onto the set of Deliverance. This fear is what parents of children of color feel every day around the clock. Every minute. This is not a history lesson; even today, this same gentle, honest son cannot shop for chips at a convenience store without being followed by the manager. He cannot drive past some police officers without getting a stare I never experience.

I know some people scoff at the phrase “white privilege,” but most of us acknowledge the privilege of getting a good education, a fair a chance at a job, and freedom from unjust treatment by law enforcement and courts. What I have learned is that I take for granted some other privileges as well: day to day peace of mind, a sense of belonging, freedom from constant vigilance, freedom from anger at all of the above. I am grateful for the few moments when I was educated by these experiences.