A giant multinational furniture company decides to erase images of modestly attired women to appease Saudi Arabian autocracy. And where is the outcry from women all over the world?
Feminism is dead. If not dead, useless, if this egregious act of dehumanizing women produces no response from us.
I went to the company website to protest and was directed to ask “Annie” a question.
I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t answer. She has probably been erased.
Last year I had not yet written an obscure self-published memoir called Just: a story of the lost and found.
I was not on Facebook. I was a private citizen wading through the havoc and grief caused by our decision to adopt a boy who would rob us all of our innocence.
My birthday is a watermark. Three years ago I did not know my children were being abused. We found out the weekend of Columbus Day 2009.
Rough memory
It stalks through family
Pictures, movies
Dates and times
No one is safe from it
The dark ominous
Scowl of truth
I have given myself some birthday gifts:
The gift of freedom from what people think
The gift of mobility
The gift of prayer (to the God Who Indeed Lives)
The gift of preservation and strength for my children
I have walked away from people I wanted to trust because they did not fight for my children
I fought instead
So it will be strange for me today, my birthday because I do celebrate these years–this gift of a broken life redeemed.
And I bless my God, my Friend for this new community He has given me
In place of the years
The locusts have eaten
To understand the old woman
Walking down the quiet street
Tonight with a baby
Sleeping in her arms
You would have to look
Back to a room
In a borrowed house
Wooden floors/old carpet
And chairs from a garage sale
Heavy with layers
Of paint the two children
Small, shocking
Red
Hair they match each other not taking
Time outs in those beat up chairs/rooms/carpet
Years I don’t just
Wanna forget
Wanna unravel
Why he could hurt me so much
For so many years
And hurt my babies too?
They wiggle off the chairs
Again and again
Hold them the caseworker says
Hold onto them
I think
Until I had to let them go
Once
When you were still a boy
I walked with you
Into cool water in a dying light
No deeper than your waist
Although the gulf itself
Stretched for miles
Out forever
When I draw words for hell
I get them from Sartre
Not Jesus
Or Dante
Like lighting a match
To draw fire
This room is airless enough
The faces of it’s inhabitants
Never vary/a rictus of pain
I wonder…
Are you as afraid as I am
Of the little things
That last
Forever?
And the possibility
That there will be
No way out.
Used to
Take it for granted–
Rain come down
But now I don’t.
When the sky darkens
I hold still
Lightning snakes
Across the sky
I rejoice
Thunder calls out
The name of God
Alive still in the world
Rain falls
And I take nothing for granted
Splendor falls in a million pieces
Of refracted light
Makes gray avenues live
Each drop happy patter
From impossible clouds
Trees solemn in waiting
Doze above this parched earth
Gathering in it’s hands
Luminous pools
Of water
The story involves a baby swatting a vase which then rolls off a table to the bench below. The vase is visibly chipped by not shattered.
We mourn for a few seconds
That we could not fix it
That we could not have snatched it from the edge
The kids watch for my reaction
I tell them, that is why we buy vases from Goodwill.
Peace.
I know that this simple event is crucial for us because my reaction provides traction for my kids. What I did not do or say reflects my priorities as much as what I did.
My child is the treasure. All the vases in the world are not as precious as one dear little child.
The rest is dust.
Sometimes I should keep my mouth shut and I don’t.
Sometimes I need to open it wider.
I have a vision in my head
Of all the scenes I haven’t made
Brought to me in part
By the ones I could not avoid.
You wanna say
grow up!
Get a life!
Get a job!
An education!
But most of all
You wanna say
watch out!
There are dangerous curves ahead!
You are young and stupid and don’t know what you have effing got yourself into
Teething
Colic
Nightmares
And an endless stream of
Naptimes
Precious
You gotta listen
precious!
’cause that kid you are gonna have
Deserves the life you wanted
As well as the one you threw away.
I am interested in the language of this article. Dooling admitted? How about revealed or detailed or spoke of? The Times writer’s use of the wordadmit reveals the strong (and erroneous) stigma attached to the victims of sexual abuse.
Dooling is telling us in no uncertain terms that the strongest, fastest, tallest members of our society are the routine and silent victims of sexual abuse.
We need to admit that we are failing to protect children. We need to admit that the silence and the stigma hurts us all.
Isaiah 28:20 (NIV)
The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.
I maintain
That poetry
Is what prophets write
When ordinary warnings
Fail
Prophesy
How you will be
Good
Preach to me
About tomorrow
Whether it will rain
And we will all
Be swept away
By all the things we never said
Before the invention
Of the rain
-bow.
Isaiah 27:1 (NIV)
In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.
No, it is the child
Raised in a shambled house
With the dark monsters of uncertainty
Humorless play fellows
I want to say
Promise me
You will not hurt
This living child
This eternal being
Already bound
For sorrow
