I'm not going to ask "what next?" ever again.

I figured we needed some lightweight banter from Gracie before I jumped into what fresh hell has broken forth here in the wintery southern hemisphere this past week. Grace is a breath of fresh air, no?

Let's see, where to begin? First, a shout out to my good friend Little Miss Sunshine State. She and I are currently competing in a "who's on the worse run of bad luck" contest. If you'd like to enter, you'd better come up with something more exciting than what we've got. She's so much better than I am, though; she actually knows how to serve up fresh hot hell and make it sound pleasant and serene.

Roseola. That's what Stella's three-day fever of 103-104 was. It was followed by a nice, good, two days of rash. And then she was fine. My husband was just about over his week-long cold at that point, when it became clear that Grace and I had caught it. He went to the pharmacy and bought extra tissues and cold medicine. Then it got a little nutty.

Sunday was Stella's baptism. It was lots of fun, very nice. Hours of preparation and hours at the church. Lots of picture taking. Lots of smiles. Stella looked marvelous. But somewhere in the midst of my adrenalin, I knew something was not right. I felt tired, weak. By the afternoon, every time I ate or drank something, I felt nauseous.

(I know what you're thinking: she's pregnant again. Well, no, no such luck. That explanation would be oh, so simple.)

By Monday, I was thinking I should fast. Clearly something was up and I just needed to give my body a chance to purge itself and then start over. By Monday night, my body started involuntarily purging my digestive tract. On Tuesday morning, I decided not to eat anything and stuck with a few glasses of warm water. Some apple tea. Then about mid afternoon, a banana and cinnamon tea. Still, something was not quite right. I fell asleep.

Fast forward to that evening. I know something is very wrong. I'm having very bad abdominal cramping. No one is home with me and Stella, so I nurse her at 7p, lay her down in her crib, and pray she falls asleep. And she did. And then I lay on the couch, moaning, trying to visualize a focal object as I breathe through pain. Trying to imagine myself wrapped in a protective cocoon and relax my muscles. Trying to stop whatever is happening.

At 9p, Grace came home. I told her to be quiet so Stella wouldn't wake up. I couldn't stand up for more than a few seconds without feeling faint. My brother-in-law (who gave Grace a ride home) asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I said, no, there's no need. And really, at that point, I believed that.

Really.

The truth of the situation is, I have been trying to stay out of the hospital for twelve months straight. It's a modest goal, don't you think? It's been at least five years since I was able to do that. Every time I think things are wrapped up nicely and that I'm healthy and can go about my merry way, WHAM! Something hits me upside the head and there I am again.

This week, on Tuesday night, it was that around 10p I broke out in tiny little red bumps all over the top of my thighs. I took benadryl. It kept spreading, up my torso and around to my back. My sister-in-law came home (an RN no less), took one look at my legs and asked, "what is that?!?!" I guessed maybe allergies. My husband came home a few minutes later. The look on his face said it all. I took a second dose of benadryl and a shower. Then I laid down to rest. Still, stomach cramps, body rejecting everything in my GI tract, and hives spreading everywhere, from the tip of my head to the bottom of my feet.

By midnight, I told my husband to take me to emergency. By the time we got there, I couldn't walk anymore. By the time I had been triaged, I couldn't sit up anymore. It's the only time in my life I can remember thinking, 'Don't let me die right now.'

Three hours later, and lots of injections and blood tests later, the news came: I've got some infection.

The last time this happened to me was November 2009, while I was on antibiotics because there was some uterine infection of leftover placenta. After I saw my allergist, I was left with the same thing I had before: this isn't something from the outside that's causing this reaction, it's on the inside. My body has some infection and it doesn't know what to do, so it does everything it can to get rid of it. The problem is, it's killing me while it's trying to get rid of the infection.

But, what's the infection?

The last piece of evidence came by Wednesday morning. Those horrible stomach cramps? Period. Way too early. WAY too early. By this point I realized, I gotta call my reproductive endocrinologist and find out what's going on inside my body. The office scheduled an appointment for me the morning after we return home.

I'm hoping for the best. Next week Grace is having her wisdom teeth removed. I have to sort things out with the insurance adjuster as per our car accident of exactly four weeks ago. I need to plan Stella's first birthday party, taking place less than two weeks from today. I'd like to take some time to go to the pool with the girls, maybe trim boxwoods in the back and transplant some to the front yard.

But I've got a sick sinking feeling, somehow I've got to be ready to accept that I may have to schedule a surgery for myself in there.

Almost Christmas

I am notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. People are never sure what I need, what I will like, or what will be exactly the right present. My mother usually buys me a bunch of stuff that she thinks I need. (I'm starting to realize this gift-giving trend of hers is feeding my fashion emergency.) This year when my mother called to complain about my lack of telling her what I wanted, I told her that it would be so easy. I'm one of those people who walks into the stores at Christmas time and falls apart at how many cute little things there are that you could put around the house. It seems like I never have enough to decorate to my heart's content. So I told her to just go to the store, pick out some really fun decorations, and then send them along.

A few days later, I received a package in the mail. Inside was a reused box that was light and packed full. I opened it up anxiously. Inside I found two throw pillows, both red with an angel covering the front, edged with frilly old-fashioned lace.


My mother included a short note explaining that the pillows had been made by a woman in our church while I was growing up, Mrs. Martin. Since I had been close to Mrs. Martin as a child, my mother thought I would like to have the pillows. She even offered to take the lace off if I thought it was too much for my taste.

As I looked closely at the stitching on angels, I remembered that Mrs. Martin had taught me to do the same on a yellow potholder I made when I was seven. I struggled to keep each stitch the same length, wishing I could make my stitches as uniform as hers were. The stitching she had done on the pillows was just as precise as I remember it being so long ago. If I took a quick look at the pillows without knowing where they had come from, I probably would have missed the huge amount of work put into the task. At one time, all that Mrs. Martin held in her hands was some raw fabric printed with angels and spools of thread. What she produced out of those materials was truly beautiful. And the process by which it became the pillows I held in front of me was a labor of selfless love.


I was very grateful to receive the pillows. I wanted to keep the lace exactly as Mrs. Martin had sewn it there. I felt like when she made them so many years ago, maybe she thought of me a few times. Maybe. Maybe she had a sense that I would get them some day.

I'm trying to remember that each act I commit has long lasting effects that even I cannot imagine. Long after I am gone, maybe someone will be blessed by something I did. Of course, it's possible that I could have the opposite effect on someone by being selfish. That's a sombering idea that makes me want to make the most of every moment of every day.

Lately I've been 'cranky,' as my family members would put it. Sure, I could give fair explanations for why. A surgery, some lingering pain, and a reminder that the holidays always makes depression worse for me. Still, when I am able to see past my own needs, I want to give back selflessly. Especially to my family. To my daughters and my husband.

Long after I am gone, I will be lucky if my great-grandchildren even know what my name was. They definitely won't know anything that afflicted me like surgeries or depression or just too hectic of a life. But maybe, maybe if there are some loving, generous, giving things I can do in my lifetime, those same great-grandchildren might benefit without even knowing it was me who made it possible. Or even who I was.

Merry Christmas, all. Make every moment matter. Peace.

Guns and racism and censorship and drama and education. What's that? You think I'm being controversial?

Some of you may remember that about a month back I wrote about the selection of the annual musical at Grace's high school, Annie Get Your Gun, and whether the arts should be censored for teenagers. I argued that the arts should not be censored for teenagers and that parents alone should be held responsible for addressing their own values surrounding controversial issues at home. There were no dissenters in the comments. I was surprised. I expected at least one of you out there to say I was off my rocker. You really all agree with me? You believe that the public schools shouldn't limit access to the arts?

I bring this up now because one person who read the post emailed me directly and told me I was wrong. Dead wrong. On Monday, after we finished our family celebration of Children's Day, I read my email and received a message from a parent at Grace's school who had been forwarded the URL of the post. And it wasn't just any parent; it was the parent who had raised the objection to the choice of the musical in the first place. She corrected some errors I had made in the original post (there is an amendment to that post now). She also revisited the issue of how the school should be responding to Native Americans and women being marginalized in Annie Get Your Gun, as well as firearms being glorified. Since she presented her points in an email, unfortunately those of you reading the post wouldn't have the benefit of her comments. I thought it would be fruitful to revisit the issue again in order to give voice to an opposing view.

The concerned parent and I agree on the core issues, like the problems stemming from children having access to firearms and the desensitization to racial and gender-based discrimination when it arrives in subtle forms (or in any form, for that matter). Despite this common agreement, from reading what she has written to me, we disagree on how minors should be educated about these issues. I take it to be my role as a parent to educate my child at home as to what values I hope for her to take as her own. The other parent believes that some collective body should make those decisions for all students and all of them should be taught those values at school. For instance, this parent wrote to me in her email that fake firearms, such as those used as props in a play, are a public health risk, plain and simple. Since this is fact, we should never allow guns to be used as props in a school building since the presence of firearms anywhere constitutes a public health risk to all exposed (most importantly, minor students). Further, if arts containing firearms are present in the school, it is the responsibility of the school to educate students about gun control. In order for these actions to be made, some appointed authority would need to endorse these decisions as fact. If individuals hold a different opinion from that which the authoritative group decides, too bad. Now, while it is true that the majority of voting adults in our community support gun control, I'd say that the issue is a far cry from a closed-book issue. I mean, if we were suggesting that high school students in a public school located somewhere differently, like, say, in Oklahoma or Texas, should be taught that gun control is the only policy that will do, I can imagine that there would be some vehement vocal disagreement. So rather than bring controversial two-sided arguments to the school system to render a verdict on, I prefer that the educational system educate students about the issues and leave the verdicts up to parents.

So that's gun control. For me, I err on the side of protecting individual rights. I may not exercise my right to have a firearm at home, but I want to be very careful about limiting the right altogether. Maybe it's the American in me. Maybe it's the southerner in me. Maybe it's my experience in rural parts of the country that makes me feel this way, you know, places where it's useful to have a firearm because if someone untoward drives into your farm up to no good, you can meet them at the door with your rifle aimed just in case law enforcement doesn't show up before the ruffians do.

But on a broader scale, what about other topics? No one who commented on my original post indicated that they thought the educational system or some other authority should have the right to limit students' access to the arts, no matter what the content. Really? You guys think that sex and rock 'n' roll and rap and all the rest should be available to teens?

Do you think we should have rating systems on movies and television and music, keeping minors from their consumption, or do you think that kind of censorship is ok?

Birth control? Abortion?

What about argumentation that the sex industry is liberating?

What about expressions of disgust for the government?
What about expressions of disgust for opposition to the government?

War? War protests?

Gang warfare? Legalizing all mind-altering substances?

All of it? You all think that all of this information should be openly available to teens to digest for themselves, hoping that their parents or guardians will help guide their thinking in order to prevent societal chaos?

In all fairness, in the comments of my original post, Angelawd qualified her support for my position by writing "I do believe all ideas and materials should be appropriate for the age, and for the individual. Some kids are able to handle more reality than others." That sounds sensible. But now we have to ask, what is appropriate for teenagers? And what if some of those teenagers are able to handle more reality than others? How do we teach them all in the same school? I'm sure there are things that some of you think the schools should not allow students to access, aside from those things that are illegal. As you can see from my laundry list of questions above, Annie Get Your Gun is nowhere near as controversial as we could get.

I'll give you the behind the scenes to why I think parents should be the ones making these decisions at home and teaching their children those values at home. I've lived in four very different regions of the US: South Florida, Central Texas, Southeast Michigan and Washington, DC. You can imagine that the mainstream values in each of these locales differed considerably. But whether or not I shared those mainstream values, that was what my community would endorse in the educational system. Along the way, through my own education and in taking part in my daughter's, I realized that it was not the values that were taught in the schools that were important. What was most important was that no matter what the majority of concerned citizens around us valued, my daughter would learn from me the things I believed were correct. For myself, I wish I had gotten the benefit of other viewpoints and opinions than the ones I was taught at school. For my daughter, I've realized that my involvement in her life as a parent is far more important than my involvement as a mover and shaker in her community. But once someone else has taught your child a value, sometimes it is difficult to teach your child something very different.

Now, that's a more lengthy version of my stance and I'm still sticking to it. But I really want to hear from the rest of you. Think about it. Are you willing to have your children hear information that you vehemently disagree with in order for them to hear a balanced view? Or would you rather they be educated in line with your own values? Are the arts (literature, drama, music, visual) any different from social sciences or physical sciences? How does religion play into this, if at all? What do you think of the education at the college level?

~~~ For those of you out there who want more controversial discussion, stay tuned. Monday I will finally publish a post that has been rattling around inside my head and in various drafts for over a month. Annie Get Your Gun raises issues of racial discrimination; I have been wrestling with the marginalizing of biracial couples and mixed race children. ~~~

That's a bit too personal

So over there on the left sidebar have been sitting the results of a brief poll I took during July. The question asked was simple: "Here at my blog, do you think I should delve into discussing issues that might hurt people I care about, even if such ruminations on my part might help me be a healthier person?"

It's something every blogger has to decide for themselves. Of course, the slant of a blog tends to dictate some of this; if you're writing a foodie blog, you're less likely to find yourself at a fork in the road where you must ponder the question. But if you're like me and write a blog about yourself, your past, your parenting skills, the way you were parented, your children...these things tend to smack you in the face more often.

I've decided not to write stuff that here that I wouldn't want someone to find because the bottom line is, sooner or later someone will find it. However, I could share some things without pointing fingers. And a bit of my thoughts without giving away all the secrets. And reveal things without risking hurting others.

I write a lot about political commentary and religion. Not that those two are necessarily intertwined, but they can be. And they have been intertwined in my life. And their intertwining oftentimes causes me to react.

I realized over the past couple months that I am not reacting to politics or religion primarily. If I meet someone who is devoutly religious, I don't damn them in my mind. If I talk to someone with differing political views than mind, I don't instantly judge them and write them off. Rather, most times when I sound off on an issue here at my blog, I am reacting to the source of these opinions. And many times the opinions are coming from...my mother.

I know, I know, I can imagine what you're thinking. This is everyone's plight, I'm just another middle-aged mom with a mother who is critical and disagrees with everything I value. I can't tell you how many times I've read bloggers who have banged out tomes on the same train of thought. But for me the friction I experience with my mother has a deeper root than her being a little cranky and irritable and disagreeable. Recently I realized, I don't have the strength to tolerate the banter. Why? It's because of the mixed past I have the source of the banter. When I get these emails from my mom, I don't hear "I disagree with your politics;" I hear, "I disapprove of you and who you are." And so I blog about the issue, believing it's the politics or the religious overtones that are at stake. But that's not really what's bothering me.

CoffeeYogurt has a great blog. Go visit it. I mention it here because she's a psychologist and there is one small tidbit there that will make you laugh. In her comments, she set the text to read, "Tell me about your mother..." Perfect, eh? I've never told her about my mother (I don't think), but man, if I did, I could say a lot. So thanks for the continual source of amusement for me, CoffeeYogurt!

OK, so to the point. What has this got to do with my blog and my decision not to discuss issues that could be hurtful? Well, I realized that some of my ranting here is a little out of place. Do I believe God exists? I don't know; I'm a trained scientist, so I don't know how to even answer a question that can't be answered through research. So I'm not an atheist. Would I ever consider going to church again? I would, especially if I found a church that was "right" (and I don't mean that in the US political sense). It's just been hard to find that. Would I ever lean to less liberal politics? Hell, yes. I value equal rights and a strict separation of church and state (even if the state church is my own), however, I'm a bit concerned about liberal use of money these days. For the record, I was concerned about it when it was a Republican administration that was spending so much too...

So I think I'm going to stop using this blog as the outlet of my frustrating relationship I have with my mother. I don't know why she sends me the messages she does or why she says the things she does. I've decided not to engage the conversation with her anymore. And I've decided to stop letting these messages affect me too. Including composing whole posts for my blog in order to vent my frustration.

Anyone out there who thinks I may get my emotions bottled up and burst one day due to the lack of venting, don't worry; I have a therapist ;-)

Where were we? Ah yes, I remember.

My husband was gone to Brazil from the 12-21st. If you'll recall, before leaving he told his (soon-to-be-born) daughter just not to try any funny business until he got back on the 21st. She complied perfectly. However, yesterday in the evening of the 22nd, a little over 24 hours after he got back...

I started having contractions that wouldn't stop. Every 3 minutes. By the time I called triage at the hospital, they said 'Come in NOW.' And that we did.

We came home this morning at 3 or 4 am after quite an adventure which included among other things: one botched IV that left a huge bruise on my right hand, one good breathing treatment due to a sudden onset of asthma and a baby girl still in utero who decided those few hours in the hospital were the moments to REALLY practice her soccer skills (what, with dad back from Brazil and all). Finally the contractions lessened in frequency and there seemed to be no other immediate health risks to attend to. During the whole time I just kept thinking, 'I can't be having this baby now. I mean, look at my husband....'

...who was barely able to keep his eyes open. His past week consisted of crazy travel itineraries, the death of his father, working all the funeral arrangements out with some help from our newly adult nephew, mourning, and trying to make sure everything was ok here in the US with me. When we got to the hospital last night, he phoned his sister from the triage room because he hadn't even gotten the opportunity yet to call her and tell her he had arrived home safely. It had been a long week, what with his father passing away and all....

Yesterday, we went to mass in the evening in honor of my father-in-law. Seven day mass. It's a cultural tradition in Brazil -- have the funeral the day after the death, mourn for a week and go to mass seven days later. When we arrived home from mass, me still wearing my black, the contractions kicked into overdrive. And thus we found ourselves at the hospital all night. However, before all this ensued...

While my husband was gone, my bestest best friend came in town for a week. She was great. She took care of everything. It was great to see her and visit. I was grateful for her to be here. She even indulged me in a haircut and coloring, a photography session done by her at my house and many lovely dinners. I indulged her in one home-baked cherry pie. Which reminds me...

A couple weeks ago I promised a post on the paucity of cherry crops in Michigan, the state where the annual National Cherry Festival takes place. That post never came. Ah, well, what am I going to do? I think I'm going to make another pie this weekend, so if you're lucky I'll remember to take pictures and post them here. But until then...

Pics of a very pregnant lady with a fabulous new hairdo:



34 weeks yesterday. Still with baby inside. Just stay put, little girl, ok?

Could you give me your opinion?

To any and all readers who find themselves at this, my personal blog:

I am having some time in my life to introspect lately. I know, you're thinking, 'Heather, isn't that all you do given how this blog reads?' Well, not exactly. I mean, sure, I try to think through things and make sense of them in a way that makes the facts around me and my emotions come together. But I don't always feel like I get to an 'a-ha' moment. You know, like when you see things in a way that you never saw before?

I rant about God a lot. I also rant about politics sometimes. And, as the title of my blog reveals quite transparently, I ruminate over my childhood. I got some issues with my self esteem. And now, NOW, I find myself able to reflect on this stuff more. It's coming together in ways I didn't see before.

Here's the controversial part I find myself unsure how to deal with, the part that I need your input on. I could easily write days and days of posts on what is on my mind re: self-actualization. But (and it's a big 'but'), that would require me to dish out some details about people I love. No it's not my husband or my daughter, but it is other people who really matter. Several of my bloggy friends out there (hi, bloggy friends!) have recently had the experience of having someone find their personal blog and go a little ballistic on them. I'd like for that not to happen. Still, something inside of me is tempted to dish out all this stuff because I think it would help me reason through all of it.

Can you give me you advice, and can you vote in my poll on the right, about whether or not you think I should delve into these issues and risk some emotional outbursts should the relevant parties ever find and read this blog?

Thank you, all.

Trolling about

I have a troll. Not here. The trolls have not cruised my blog. No, I have a friend on facebook who is a troll.

The funny thing is, I don't think he knows what it means for me to say he is a troll.

He's the husband of an old friend of mine, a friend I'd rather do without. The last time I had any communication with her, this is what I wrote. Since then I've had a surgery, sold one house and bought another, moved, and gotten pregnant. None of this seemed like something I wanted to share with her. I hope that all of you out there reading are coming to the same conclusion I am: there is no friendship left there.

So back to the trolling husband. He's not a loser, quite the opposite. He's someone who's had life delivered on a silver platter to him, and he likes to think of himself as better than others. He's well educated, comes from a wealthy family, and has settled into quite a comfortable life for himself and his wife and children. Everything is great. Except his personality. He's one of those people who is arrogant to a fault. He sees no reason to be compassionate.

On facebook, I am somewhat cautious with my public comments. The people I want to keep up with are disparate, to say the least. They range from my daughter and a few of her friends to my mother and sisters to friends of my husband that I know only through work to radical bible thumping conservative Christians to radical leftist ACLU-supporting liberals. There's a certain balance I want to maintain in an image that all of these people see publicly. What I say in more homogenous circles to them may be more expressive and opinionated, but I am somewhat cautious in the larger light that is my public facebook image.

Yesterday, when I heard about the decision of the California Supreme Court to uphold the decision of the voters on Proposition 8, I posted the following status message on Facebook:

"Will the state of California recognize same-sex marriages that were performed in other states like Massachusetts or Connecticut?"

It was actually a genuine question. I wasn't fishing for comments or trying to stir up controversy. The only comment came from the husband of my not-really-a-friend:

"Is this an issue for you and your husband?"

*sigh* Like I said, trolling. More unfortunate, it reveals a sad truth about his values system. Don't stand up for the rights of someone unless you personally stand to lose something.

I couldn't let the comment stand unanswered. I added the comment,

"On many counts, no, but it is a relevant question for other people I know."

It's also a relevant question for people I don't know. It is a relevant question period.

The only thing left to do, I resolved, is to add the application "Send Trolls" and send this guy an orange baby troll. Then I'll modify my facebook settings so he and his wife, my not-really-a-friend, will have a unique group of their own, "trolls," in which they can see very little about me and have no permissions to comment.

On this Mother's Day

I can't remember the last time I spent Mother's Day with my mother. My two sisters and I live in entirely different places geographically from one another and none of us closer than 1500 miles to our mother. So though she may travel to see one of us on Mother's Day, if we invite her, even if she did this every year, I'd only see her once every third year. This year, she's at home in Florida with my dad. On Wednesday, they will both come here and visit with us. For Mother's Day, I sent her a card, I'll make her a cake to be ready when she arrives, and I'll call her this afternoon. Yesterday she and I spent two hours talking on the phone.

She and I are like most mother-daughter pairs in our demographic. We drive each other a little crazy. We've said things to each other that were really mean throughout my life. I went through years where I decided I just would never ever like her, understand her, or have any kind of meaningful relationship with her. But in the last couple years, I decided to revisit all that. She's a likeable person, even in the midst of things she does that drive me crazy. So despite the things that I could say negatively about our relationship or about her personally, I think I have to dwell on the positive.

Why? Because she's my mother.

The best stories I could tell you about my mother are the things she does in private when she's not "on" for the public. It's those moments behind the scenes, when the perfect hostess fudges details while saying things like, "oh, shit. Well, I'm sure they'll never be able to tell." I'm sure Martha Stewart has these moments too, but not when the cameras are rolling.

Yesterday we talked about how all Muslims are liars and agents of Satan, President Obama is not a Christian and has never done anything remotely reminiscent of what a Christian would do, that Rick Warren is a wolf in sheep's clothing because now he endorses gay marriage (he actually doesn't), and that most assuredly the United States will fall as the most powerful nation on earth and Armageddon will undoubtedly ensue. We also talked about a new book she's discovered, The Element, that she's giving to every one of her children, how she's wondering how my sister's kids will fair at Catholic school next year after being exclusively home-schooled for five years, and how she thinks babies shouldn't share a bed with their parents. Ever. And they definitely should move out of their parents' bedroom quickly as soon as they can pull themselves up because they might wake up and see things. And we talked about a cute blanket she wants to make for our new baby. She also asked me to explain how our baby will figure out that everything has two names and which name she should use (like, how does she figure out that the cat is "that cat" and "o gato" and that those are the same thing).

I like her because I can talk to her for two hours and she doesn't get bored or boring. I know I do things and say things that make her crazy. So I can put to the side the things she does and says that make me crazy.

Happy Mother's Day, all.

Marriage: Part Deux

Maine just legalized same-sex marriage. Even as their legislators were debating this briefly before they voted, the question of what impact this has on religious institutions was raised. On Wednesday NPR reported, "Republican Sen. Debra Plowman of Hampden argued that the bill was being passed 'at the expense of the people of faith. You are making a decision that is not well-founded,' warned Plowman."

This gets me thinking. What is it exactly that makes a marriage a marriage? There are so many possible answers to this question.

When I separated from my first husband and divorce proceedings were well under way, I told my dad I wanted to go on a date. He, being someone who believes strictly that marriage is an avowed relationship, the vows of which cannot be violated within that covenant, quickly replied that of course I wouldn't do that because I was still married. Huh? Under what definition of marriage? For him, the legal documentation of marriage was the bottom line as to whether one was married or not. For me, when the marriage vows of my first marriage were broken and both my ex-husband and I took action to sever that avowed relationship, it was done. I wasn't married anymore. I mean, for legal reasons, like whether I had health insurance I was married. But for purposes of fidelity? For issues that GOD cares about? No, I wasn't married.

This leads me to an interesting question: if you are a religious person and you think marriage has something to do with vows and God and sacredness and all the rest, what role does the state have in this? Does it even matter whether a marriage is legal with the state if the vows were true? And if there were no vows taken before God, then does that mean the marriage is real?

Some sects of religion are very clear on this. Take the Roman Catholic Church for instance. Either you are married in the church or you aren't. If you aren't, then you are not married in the eyes of God. It matters not what the state recognizes, no matter what state that is.

When my parents came to some important milestone in their marriage (25 years or something like that), they got talking about how they didn't have a copy of their wedding license. And then it occurred to my dad -- he couldn't remember actually getting it signed by the clergy who performed the ceremony or taking it to the courthouse. The consequence? They might not be legally married. He joked about it. They thought it was pretty funny. My mom decided to find out where it was and get to the bottom of the issue. She got a copy, framed it, and gave it to him for their anniversary. But my reaction at the time was, who cares? So, you might need to do some paperwork to make legal and documented what has existed for decades?

For the purposes of the relationship, I just don't think the paper trail is that important on these things. My husband and I were married in an episcopal church in the United States and filed it legally with a county in Maryland. Then almost a year later, we got married again in the Brazilian embassy in Washington, DC. See, we needed to have our marriage recognized in the country of my husband's citizenship, and a court document from a county in Maryland didn't cut it. In the end, it was less work to get married again at the embassy than it would have been to have the Brazilian Feds recognize the paperwork that existed from the United States. And then, as if that wasn't enough, my mother-in-law brought a copy of our wedding liturgy and our wedding invitation, all in Portuguese, to her priest and asked whether our marriage was recognized by the Catholic Church. Her priest is a good man, I tell you. He told her not to be overly concerned with the matter, that God sees true love. He also told her that if the two of us came to him, he would bless the union. We haven't done that yet, but we may very well do so in order to let all the friends and family in Brazil get to celebrate our wedding, as well as make it possible for our children to be baptized in the Catholic church. (More on that issue much later!) But you get the idea...being "lawfully and spiritually bound in matrimony" is taking years at this point. So when did we get married? Are we married? When will the marrying end?

For me it was when we took our vows in the episcopal church, the first time we did it. The second time we did it at the embassy, there were no vows, just a lot of paperwork and admonishment of what this meant legally for us both. If we get married again in the Catholic church and in Portuguese, that might be yet another meaningful event in our relationship. A way to say I still feel the very same way I did the day I married you.

So...what is your definition of marriage? Can you define it neatly and discretely? Or is it mushy and gray for you? I know that for people who do it once and it stays forever, and they only have one church and one court to deal with, it can seem like a very simple deal. But for me, when you get into the nitty-gritty of the whole thing, it isn't so clear anymore.

Back to my reformation

For Lent this year I gave up judging Christianity on the basis of the behavior of Christians, and on trying to define myself spiritually relative to my experiences with my family. Lent is over, so I suppose I could go right back to my old behaviors. But I think the point of these "sacrifices of the flesh" is to grow spiritually as an individual, thus to indulge after Lent was over seemed out of place.

This week, however, has been a hard one. The world seems to be full of Christians behaving badly, and being quite confrontational while doing so. I've been thinking all week about whether to write about this stuff. I just didn't want to react; I wanted to inspect my own self in light of these headlines and see where I was in my own growth.

The leading headlines that are relevant to the topic at hand:

• Miss California, Carrie Prejean, after boldly speaking out against same-sex marriage during the interview portion of the Miss USA pageant, becomes a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage. Only days later it is revealed that she posed semi-nude as a teenager for a modeling photo shoot.
• President Obama chooses to recognize National Day of Prayer in United States and has his press secretary to announce the recognition in a press conference, acknowledging that the president begins each day in private worship. The stark contrast of this private recognition of the role of prayer in one's personal life to the spectacular and very public way that President Bush recognized the day during the previous eight years drew great criticism from conservative Christians and conservative Christian groups.
• Bristol Palin, the teen mother of her own 5-month old son and daughter of the governor of Alaska and former Vice Presidential-hopeful Sarah Palin, gave a series of interviews and made several appearances as the teen ambassador for the Candie's Foundation which works towards the goal of lowering the incidence of teen pregnancy in the United States. Her peers note the discrepancy and relative hypocrisy in her message, as well of contradictions in her statements at various times during the last few months. Some even say she is just a tool of her mother, spitting out rehearsed lines that comport with her mother's political agenda of abstinence-only education.

It's likely that at least one of these issues has sparked some thoughts in your mind in the last few days. Clearly by listing them all here, I've been unable to ignore any of them. But what do they have in common in my thoughts? Why bring them all together here? What does a beauty queen campaigning against gay marriage have to do with a president praying in private or with a teen mother preaching abstinence? They all have to do with the politics of religion and social issues associated with conservative religion. For me, it is difficult to ignore these things because it brings up many things I dislike about religion.

Still, there's the Lenten deprivation, a sacrifice that I would like to keep up. I'm trying very hard to separate the sin from the sinner. I would like to look at God without God being damaged by the actions I see done by those who claim to follow him.

But I'll say this about all this stuff in the media. It's hit home with me. I don't like the way things are painted as black and white in the world, right and wrong, and anything that criticizes what is wrong must be right.

I see Carrie Prejean and I see someone who is opportunistic, and right now opportunity is being a conservative Christian beauty queen. I don't see depth of conviction, no matter what that conviction is. This isn't right at all. But because she said she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman only, she is considered to be a devout and righteous person, one who is heralded as a hero, a champion, a woman of deep principles.

I see critics of the president as foolishly grasping to his actions this week as being anti-Christian and anti-prayer. Quite on the contrary, his actions are completely in line with the teaching of Jesus Christ. Consider Matthew 6:5-8, the passage that immediately precedes the text commonly known as The Lord's Prayer."

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Seems to me that President Obama's predecessor, the one being heralded by conservative right Christians right now, was, in the words of Christ, "babbling like a pagan." So no matter how much you want to say negatively about President Obama, if you are a Christian and you want to judge him on his practice and upholding of the faith, you have to applaud him this week.

As for Bristol Palin, I feel so much pain watching this girl. I see her and hear her and I believe that she doesn't understand the words that have been fed to her to parrot back to the public. I wish she could take some time to examine her own thoughts and ideas, that she could reflect on everything that's happened so far in her life. Once she's gotten a chance to do that, then she can begin to form her own genuine values, not the ones she inherited from her parents and her parents' political stances. It may be that she comes to the conclusion that abstinence only education really is the best choice and only foolproof choice in preventing teen pregnancy. But when she comes to that conclusion on her own, it will be apparent from her ability to logically argue for it in public and not contradict herself.

I want to hear the calm voice of a conservative Christian who realizes the truth of these three situations. It's not that Christian values are under attack this week, or that we are witnessing innocents become victims of the vicious words delivered by sinful, selfish liberals, or that the leader of the country is a wolf in sheep's clothing, pulling the rug right out from under the feet of those who herald the moral compass of this country. No, not at all. It's that people are jumping on whatever the latest sensational headline is, listening to a sound bite, and attacking without ever really thinking about the deep truth of the entire situation.

Marriage

I love that first line.

"Mah-wege. Mah-wege is what brings us together today."

How benign. I don't think you could say less about marriage in one sentence.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about marriage. Yesterday on facebook, a friend of mine from middle school posted a little ditty that included 25 unfinished sentences. The task is to finish each sentence. Number 10 was "Marriage is..." Her answer was "...a nice concept." She's a single mom who's never been married. When I got to that item myself, the only answer I could come up with was "...not for everyone." A few items later I decided not to post the list anywhere or email it to anyone. I just couldn't answer all those questions in an honest way that I would be willing to share with anyone.

It's a dicey issue to talk about marriage. I don't think anyone arrives at adulthood without a preconception of what it's supposed to entail. A lot of adults end up in unhappy marriages, broken engagements, relationships that might end up in marriage or not, or divorced. There's a whole other segment of the population who says they'll never get married, regardless of how committed they are to someone. And this only touches the segment of adults who can legally get married in the first place. The right of marriage is largely denied to gays and lesbians, and it used to be denied on the basis of race. According to some state constitutions, interracial marriage is still banned, although I don't know of any recent instances in which those laws were enforced. Needless to say, I think there is a great deal of variance with regards to how each of us conceives of the institution of marriage.

For myself, I decided at a very young and naive age to enter into my first marriage. I was 18 and it as my first serious boyfriend. Though the relationship was very bumpy, indeed, a little less than 3 years later we got married. 8 years after that, we were getting divorced. And a few years after that, I was getting married again. So it seemed appropriate when my husband and I sat down for premarital counseling with the priest who performed our wedding ceremony that the first question she asked of us was, "why do you want to get married?"

There was silence for a few seconds. I sought clarification. "In what sense? Like, why do I want to marry this man? Or now? Or at all?" She said I could answer it any way I liked, with any information that seemed important to include. The point is, the answer wasn't just some cookie cutter thing I could spit out. In reality, I saw the decision to get married as my decision to enter into an avowed relationship with another person. In front of everyone we knew. Including my daughter. There really was no point in doing that unless what I said that day was something more than what I had already said to him. More than that, I had gone way past the point in my life where I believed any romantic relationship should necessarily go ahead into marriage because, well, because that's just what people do, right?

For me, I think marriage is something that is sacred, not fool-proof. You don't go into marriage thinking this is the last step and now everything is roses; you go into it realizing that now you have committed to a much deeper level of sacrifice for this other person. Luckily, if you do it right, both parties make that commitment. Though I have largely forgotten that the dialogue took place, this is how I knew my first marriage was over with no hope of real reconciliation. In the three days between my believing everything was rosy to my telling my first husband that I wanted a divorce and an end to our relationship, I asked him a lot of questions about his commitment to me and to our marriage. It was clear that the vows he took when he married me no longer applied. None of them. Regardless of how you feel about vows and their binding quality, his were null and void in his mind at that point. Thus, our marriage relationship ceased to exist. This was also how I knew later that he wasn't being as honest with others as he had been with me. When word got back to me that I was the one who had refused to go to counseling and work things out, I knew it was bunk and that someone was rewriting the situation, because no relationship existed at that point to "work out." If one's husband tells them he doesn't have any feelings about whether they live or die, that largely indicates that their marriage vows are dead.

I guess the point that I want to make now is that marriage is not a solemn vow that nothing can undo. It's a promise that two people make to each other, a very solemn promise. When I made that promise, both times I got married, I had an understanding that the promise was mutual. If the other party came to the point that they no longer intended to keep that promise, then the whole thing was gone. And so, my answer to the priest during that marital counseling session circled around this. I told her that I decided to marry this man at this time because I believed with all my heart that the vows we would take at that time were mutual and that we both had the commitment to uphold them in the way they were worded. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn't have married him.

I'm sure I'll come back to this again. Like I said before, I think the way each person views the institution of marriage is different. What I've said above goes for me in my marriage; I don't assume other people agree. So I'm interested to know, what are your ideas about marriage? Have you thought about it deeply? Have they changed as the result of a previous relationship you were in? Let me know, I would love to hear.

Multiculturalism and being American

On this St. Patrick's Day, it just so happens that my thoughts have been primed to talk about emigration to the US. As it turns out, the most recent ancestor of mine to emigrate to the US was a great-great-great-grandfather on my father's side who came straight from Ireland. I don't know much more about it than that. I don't even know his name or what part of Ireland he came from. But I do know this: it's been a long time since anyone in my lineage faced discrimination in the US on the basis of race or language.

Not so with my immediate family. My husband is an immigrant to the US. Now when I put it that way, it makes it sounds like he scraped together his pennies from an early age, dreaming of the day he would cross the seas and arrive at the promised land where he heard that all his dreams would come true. But that would be a fairly bad characterization of the whole thing. Before he decided to come to the US, he had a good job, he had a master's degree, and he spoke three languages fluently. His life wasn't bad at all. When he decided he would leave the country of his birth, he was trying to decide whether to continue in his graduate studies in the US or Europe. The US turned out to be the better option, and so he came. Though he says the US ain't bad, it's not like he sees it through rose-colored glasses.

There were some drawbacks for him in emigrating the US. Let's take racial discrimination. He grew up as the privileged class - white male. Sure, he wasn't wealthy, but he was a good student and nothing really held him back but maybe irrational government policies. As soon as he arrived in the US, he realized he was considered to be part of a racial minority. Bummer. And there was also the thing of speaking English with a foreign accent. It didn't matter how fluently he spoke or how perfectly he understood the situation, there were always times when people assumed he was stupid or uneducated because he wasn't a native English speaker.

What must it have felt like to be Irish at the time when being Irish held some stigma? You opened your mouth and people assumed you were stupid and uneducated. Your name gave you away.

Last night my mom and I were talking on the phone. I don't know how it happened so fast, but the conversation moved from what baby furniture I was buying to how immigrants today don't teach their children the values that immigrants used to consider essential. Those values are (1) to work hard, (2) to behave properly, and (3) to do things the American way because that's why the family came to the US in the first place. She said she couldn't figure out why the hispanic immigrants' children didn't understand this. It never occurred to her in the conversation that my child-to-be would be considered one of those children she was talking about.

I'll just say this in my mother's defense -- she has a remarkable ability to maintain certain views of the world despite the fact that the current reality may conflict with that view.

I made up my mind long ago that I wasn't going to try and enlighten her on this stuff. While we were talking, I mentioned that the teens she was talking about, the ones who were bilingual and were latino, might be second or third generation Americans, having very little connection with any culture other than American. I also asked her what American culture was if it wasn't what hispanics experienced (currently more than 12% of the US population is hispanic). I also briefly mentioned that it was possible that only one of these kids' parents were immigrants, and that some of them may have ancestry in the US going back to the Mayflower. (Huh? Multi-ethnicity? Bi-racial? WHAT?)

My husband's and my kid(s) will be bilingual and have an indisputably Latin surname. It's hard to say what ethnicity they will be pigeon-holed into based on their appearance alone because in addition to having a latin background, they also will have strong northern European genes and some native (South) American and African roots. They're going to look like the new generation of American kids, the ones who don't necessarily have two parents with identical backgrounds, the ones that American Girl doesn't make a doll for. If they swear that they have Irish roots, which is true, they may be laughed at as much as Barack Obama is. But Barack Obama is more Irish than I am.

So Erin Go Bragh, or whatever they say in Ireland on this day, top of the mornin' to ya, and all the rest. Five generations have passed since my last forefather left that motherland and all I've got to show for it is a handwoven Irish wool scarf that I wore to work today. My mom ordered it for me from a catalog five years ago. For me, St. Patrick's Day in the US is really about how your culture is important to hold on to. So don't expect the Cuban-Americans and the Puerto Rican-Americans and the Mexican-Americans and the Colombian-Americans to start shedding their Latin ways and acting European just because the Irish and the German cultures are currently accepted in North America. As for us in our house, we'll celebrate with some green cupcakes tonight and then move on to the next holiday, Holy Week and Easter. Because I'll tell you one thing, the Irish Catholics don't hold a candle to the Latin Catholics when it comes to doing the Easter thing. If you're going to observe Lent, for God's sake celebrate Carnival for a week before Ash Wednesday and then live it up 40 days later on Easter. (Heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy, how the Irish Catholics do St. Patrick's Day in such a drunken way anyways since it's always in the middle of Lent? Hmmmmm......)

Is it a baby or isn't it?

A week ago I was in ER all day. I woke up in the morning on Thursday with the migraine I had had since midday the day before. I had been taking the prescription pain reliever approved by my obstetrician for 16 hours, but still, no relief. It was getting worse. It was clear I was in a "pain-on-pain" situation with the migraine and something more radical needed to be done. After consulting with obstetrics over the phone, they told me to go to the ER, that they were waiting for me. I was there until 1 or 2a on Friday morning.

I hate going to the ER. I have a goal to go 12 months consecutively without needing to make a visit for myself. Yet in 5 years running I haven't been able to achieve this. While I was there last week, I was reminded that when you are pregnant and at the hospital, people jump through hoops for you. They are careful. They consult with every specialty they need to. The resident who was primarily dealing with my care asked lots of questions. She listened to my heart and the baby's heartbeat. And then she asked casually, "is this your first baby?"

The farther along I get in this pregnancy, the more and more I find myself having to confront my miscarriage two years ago. By the calendar, I was roughly 10 weeks pregnant. And there was an embryo inside, make no mistake about that. But somewhere around 7 or 8 weeks, it stopped developing normally. At least, that was when the doctors detected that it was no longer developing normally. In retrospect, I should have realized things were really wrong early. But it wasn't until I actually started the spotting and having pain that I was convinced, this is over.

If that pain and loss wasn't enough, the aftermath of the pregnancy worse. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance with Grace accompanying me two weeks after the miscarriage with severe abdominal pains. The ER staff couldn't figure out what was causing the pain. My gynecologist got all the records and saw me the next morning. Before the pregnancy, my periods were bad with all sorts of abnormal symptoms. When they resumed afterward, the symptoms were much worse. I was having breakthrough bleeding almost constantly and severe pain. For three months, I was in the process of transferring my medical records from one doctor on the East coast to one in Michigan, deciding it would be best to follow up on the miscarriage with the current doctor, then move everything in a clean way to the new doctor. By the time I saw the doctor in Michigan, it was clear I needed surgery for fibroids and most likely endometriosis. The fibroids were undeniable and eventually required two surgeries to treat satisfactorily. There was a small bit of endometriosis which they were able to remove laparoscopically, but the big bad news other than the fibroids was andenomyosis, a condition that roughly corresponds to the weakening and deterioration of the uterine wall. I won't go further than that. I'm not a medical professional and I ask my doctors a lot of questions. If you have concerns about your health, go see your doctor.

But back to my miscarriage. I mourned this miscarriage for well over a year. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back I am astounded at how many signs were there that indicated I was not myself. I was unmotivated, lethargic, over-emotional, and sad. Granted, during this same time I was taking a heapload of hormones and narcotics to deal with my other issues, but even after all the medicine stopped, I had recovered from my surgeries, and I had a clear head, I realized I hadn't really gotten over the miscarriage.

Back to the resident. "Is this your first baby?" It wasn't the first time I've heard the question in the last few weeks. Someone casually asked me the same question just yesterday. My answer to the question is no, this is my second; I have a daughter who is 15 years old and this is the second baby of mine. But that feels wrong. It's not my second. Two years ago, there was a baby there, one that many photographs were taken of, one who came out of me and one that I saw. That one was the second, right? I know that's not what people are asking. They want to know do I know about having children or is my body behaving like this for the first time. So really the answer to the question doesn't change at all whether or not I say this is the second or third baby. Still, it seems like I'm leaving something out to just say that this is my second baby.

If the one I miscarried two years ago wasn't a baby, what makes this one count as a baby yet? If I miscarried today, it wouldn't survive. So in that event it's not a baby and it never was?

This is why I get so frustrated when I talk to people about what counts as human life or not. In the context that people are asking whether this is my first baby, very few people would say that this is my third baby. They want to know, provided that this pregnancy continues and this fetus survives, will this be your first experience with a live baby outside of the womb? Quite a different question.

Last November, just a few weeks before I got pregnant this time, I had an idea about what happened in the last pregnancy I miscarried. I don't consider that baby to have lived its mortal life. It didn't even get a chance. The biology was screwed up and whatever potential it had to be a person was botched. So does that baby just miss out? No, I thought. That baby just didn't get a chance at it yet. I don't know what it was before or where it hung out for a few years, but that baby exists as a person. When it was possible to give that person a body that worked, then it would get a chance at mortal life. So it was a matter of waiting.

I know there are women who think that every miscarriage they have is a person who was lost and is now an angel in heaven. So when you ask them how many children they have, they say something like "2 girls, one boy, and 3 precious angels in heaven that I can't wait to be reunited with when I meet my Lord." I can't even begin to say that. I cannot accept that I have children who I will contribute nothing to. That miscarriage was a person who not only was taken from me, but deprived of the very experience that it is to be human? To breathe and to be touched? To move? To have eyes? No, if this was a person, then this person didn't get anything. Not even the experience of a mom and dad.

So does this mean the baby I am carrying now has the personhood of the child I was pregnant with two years ago? Maybe. I hope so. It's what I'm holding to. But I can't say this for a fact because it would be arrogant to suggest that I hold this ultimate knowledge and truth.

I can't tie up the whole thing neatly with a ribbon and pretend like I know the ultimate truth of life and death and existence and personhood and all the rest. Such is the fodder of philosophers and theologians alike. I am neither. I'm just a woman who's trying to cope with a loss and not just accept what someone else says because it worked for them in coping with their loss or something else. I realize that the way I've conceptualized of this would imply all sorts of other things, things I also don't know the truth about. But insomuch as none of it can be proven, I see no point in arguing over it with anyone.

When dealing with life and death and loss, there is no right or wrong. There is the way each person can successfully walk through the experience and deal with it.

Fatherhood part 2: Parenting through time and few words

My dad is a self-described plugger. He has Scotch-Irish roots, from a long line of those who emigrated to the United States during the 18th and 19th century and settled in Appalachia. His clan continued to migrate southwest and settled in Alabama, some a little over the Georgia border, where most of them continued earning their bread and butter through farming, some well into the 20th century. He was raised in a culture that says you work hard and look out for those in your family. You don't turn your back on them, no matter how bad they do you. You may need to take few steps away from one of them for a short while if they seem like they're taking advantage of you. But you don't ever close the door to communication. Always be willing to take another look at your kin and be compassionate in their time of need.

We have three girls in my family. I was the third. I hear that the pregnancy was a hard one. When my mom finally went to the hospital to give birth, she spent all day at the hospital hardly being noticed. She wasn't in active labor, the doctor just told her to go there. Sometime in the late afternoon/early evening, my dad was told there was no way the baby would be born any time soon. He decided to leave and go get something to eat. She never went into active labor until the last minute. Sometime around 6p, my mom called for nurse and said, I'm going to have this baby. I was born at 6:30p, much to the disbelief of the entire staff. (Don't ask; my mom has some amazingly horrific stories to tell about what happens when you can't help but give birth even though you're not fully dilated and the contractions are coming so fast you don't even get a chance to catch your breath, much less control your breathing.) My dad says he got a burger, then went to the library to read and fell asleep. When he woke up around 7p, he went back to the hospital and he found he had a new baby girl. I didn't get named for a week. To this day my sisters tease me and call me "the baby" because indeed, that's what I was introduced to them as.

From my perspective, I was the troublemaker in my family. I spent most of my growing years listening to my mother tell me how, when my sisters were my age, they were so much more x than I was. Fill in "x" with whatever positive character trait you can think of: hard-working, disciplined, obedient, kind, aware of the world around them, Christ-like, conservative, respectful, well-behaved...

Consequently, Heather caused a lot of disruption. Many, many parent-teacher conferences. Sunday School teachers and youth pastors and choir directors were always requesting some kind of intervention. I would try a lot of stuff, like putting together outfits I knew they would never let me wear and sneaking them to a friend's house for a sleepover, someone whose parents I knew would never say anything because they weren't so strict. I listened to music that I knew my parents didn't approve of. A few times they asked my oldest sister to address the issue. She would explain how she made the choice not to listen to some music because of the ungodly messages they contained. I listened, bored, and gave her the chance to talk. And then I continued buying my tapes and records, eventually CDs, and recording what I wanted to when it came on the radio. I bought the single to "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince when I was in 7th grade. The flip side was "Erotic City." The cashier at the record store told me that it was pretty explicit and maybe I should think about not listening to it. Well, that was enough to get me interested.

How does a plugger deal with a youngest daughter who is like this? My mother lectured and yelled and told me all the ways I wasn't measuring up. But that wasn't my dad's style.

There were times when his patience was pushed to the edge. It came when all three of us girls were completely out of control and my mother was pulling her hair out. He would raise his voice and yell. When that happened, we all knew the worst had happened. You didn't yell back. You quietly went to doing whatever it was that you should have done in the first place. But this was a rare occasion.

For the most part, he parented by spending time with me.

When I was in preschool and he was in town (he was an airline pilot), he would ride my mom's bike that had the kid-carrier on the back to the preschool. When he got there, he would strap me into the carrier and take off towards home. Every day I fell asleep during the ride home and he reached back and cradled my head in his hand and arm until we got home.

When I was in 2nd grade, I went to school on the bus by myself since both of my sisters were in middle school. The bus dropped me off at the front of my neighborhood. Sometimes he would meet me on his bike. I was too old to ride on the back of the bike by then, of course. So he would ride to my bus stop and steady my bike next to him with his free hand as he rode. When I got off the bus, we would put my book bag and my lunch box, sometimes my violin too, into the bike baskets and then we rode home together, each on our own bike.

When I was a bit older and he had an errand to run, he'd ask if I wanted to come along. If I shrugged it off, he'd press a little more and say something like 'it'll do you good. You can take a break from [whatever I happened to be doing at the moment]."

About the time I was starting middle school, he started playing backgammon. He tried playing everyone -- my sisters, my grandfather, my mom -- but no one seemed to want to keep it up. I asked if I could try. Within a few games, I was hooked. We played that game faithfully every day he was home until I left for college. I never found another opponent who was any good; neither did he. Sometimes we would play up to 10 games at a time. When we started he would say, "we will play until Mama calls you to come help her with dinner. When she calls, you have to go straight to the kitchen and help her with what she needs done." Sometimes I would be in big trouble at school for not doing my school work. He would come in and say we could play one or two games, and then straight to the homework. Sometimes my mom would have been fussing at me for days about slacking at something. On those days he would say we could play a few games, but only if we did so especially quietly. If my mother heard the dice falling on the board, she would surely come in and fuss at me about what wasn't yet done.

Through the bike rides and the errands and the backgammon games, he would ask me different things. He would ask me what I saw myself doing as an adult. He would ask about my friends, or what I liked doing most during a day. He would ask me about people I didn't like so much. The point was, I never saw it coming because I thought the point of us being together was just so he'd have company or so we'd both get some enjoyment out of playing a game or something.

Sure, he came down on me when things were bad. If I really messed up badly, he laid out strict rules as to how things should be done in order to get me in order. But in the end, he reminded me that these rules were in place so that I could get back to a balance in life, a way to get to have free time and enjoyment after the work day was done.

I realize now that I learned much more by the calm times I spent with him than any measure of discipline or lecturing he gave me. I am much more the kind of parent who talks too much and doesn't listen. Hopefully I can get past this and start parenting through the time spent in casual conversation, rather than through lecture after lecture.

Feminists opposing abortion rights

I came across this recently:

http://www.feministsforlife.org/

I've read through a great bit of what this movement has to say. I only know one person who is really invested in this ideology. It catches my attention because it doesn't strike me as endorsing the same brainless banter that usually encircles anti-abortion movements. Yet I can't wrap my head around it.

You know where I stand on this stuff. But I'm curious on your take. Did you know about this stance? What would you say if someone you really believed was a thoughtful person said that this best characterized their stance on feminism and on reproductive rights? Is this threatening? Naive? Creative? Empowered? And yes, I am AM interested in differing views. I'm truly trying to understand this movement and if it can be embraced outside of a religious framework.

From my mother-in-law

She is a wonderful person. She is dear. She is someone who keeps on keeping on, no matter what life throws at her. She is eternally accepting and loving. She wants only good health, wealth, joy, and happiness to come to all those she loves. What more could a daughter-in-law ask for?

When she traveled to the United States to attend to the wedding between her son and I, she brought with her in her luggage saints medals and pieces of paper on which she had written prayers and bible verses. My mother, who made my wedding dress, sewed them into the hem. In her written prayers, my mother-in-law asked for a husband for two of her daughters, and a child for one of them. She also asked for a child for me. This ain't just voodoo, friends. She earnestly prayed to God about what blessings her family would have. After she prayed and heard God, she wrote down what she heard and got the medals of the accompanying saints. She went to her priest and asked him if it was ok what she was doing, had she heard God right and all. Then he blessed the medals and the pieces of paper, which she brought all the way to the United States to be sewn into my wedding dress.

Since then one daughter has had a baby. That baby will be two-years-old in a few months. About two and a half weeks ago she got the news that another grandchild was on the way. This will be grandchild number four for her. Of course she is happy, as happy as she could be. She is effusive in her joy. She sends good wishes, good health, prayers, love, kisses and hugs to me, my husband, and to Grace.

But make no mistake: she takes these sentiments seriously. She's not fooling around and saying these things in insincerity. She means business when she sends her blessings thousands of miles away. So along with her blessings, she told me to read the following passage. Get out your Catholic bibles, friends and neighbors, because this ain't included in the protestant canon. Today's reading comes from Ecclesiasticus, the fifteenth chapter.

1 Whoever fears the Lord will act like this, and whoever grasps the Law will obtain wisdom.
2 She will come to meet him like a mother, and receive him like a virgin bride.
3 She will give him the bread of understanding to eat, and the water of wisdom to drink.
4 He will lean on her and will not fall, he will rely on her and not be put to shame.
5 She will raise him high above his neighbours, and in full assembly she will open his mouth.
6 He will find happiness and a crown of joy, he will inherit an everlasting name.
7 Fools will not gain possession of her, nor will sinners set eyes on her.
8 She stands remote from pride, and liars cannot call her to mind.
9 Praise is unseemly in a sinner's mouth, since it has not been put there by the Lord.
10 For praise should be uttered only in wisdom, and the Lord himself then prompts it.
11 Do not say, 'The Lord was responsible for my sinning,' for he does not do what he hates.
12 Do not say, 'It was he who led me astray,' for he has no use for a sinner.
13 The Lord hates all that is foul, and no one who fears him will love it either.
14 He himself made human beings in the beginning, and then left them free to make their own decisions.
15 If you choose, you will keep the commandments and so be faithful to his will.
16 He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer.
17 A human being has life and death before him; whichever he prefers will be given him.
18 For vast is the wisdom of the Lord; he is almighty and all-seeing.
19 His eyes are on those who fear him, he notes every human action.
20 He never commanded anyone to be godless, he has given no one permission to sin.

Now, I'm the kind of person who takes this all in stride. I'm not even going to start trying to figure out exactly who "she" and "he" are, nor deciding what is included in "all that is foul" or what "fire and water" refer to. But nonetheless, this is what my mother-in-law sent to me as a blessing when she first found out about my current pregnancy. I put it here for posterity of the record, and we'll see if we can make heads or tails of it as the days and weeks and years go on.

Ash Wednesday

Lent is here. Here's what I'm giving up for the Lenten season:

• Deeming Christianity a religion that has few redeeming qualities due to the prevailing social values associated with most who practice the religion in the United States.
• Concerning myself with my spiritual state as it relates to other members of my family of origin.

These seem to be things in my life that are interfering with any relationship I might have with God. The explanation of the first sacrifice can be found in some of my previous posts. Instead of making you go through all of the posts tagged "God and Religion" to understand it (if you want the explanation), here are the "best hits" on that topic that I think sum up my feelings about flaws within the Christian church.

more women going to hell (May-30-2008)
If I were ever to consider praying again, it would be at times like these. (Aug-30-2008)
Hypocrisy (Oct-8-2008)
Gay marriage (Nov-13-2008)
Searching for love (Nov-14-2008)
God and Me (Feb-11-2009)

The point is, I think I need to get over the problems that people on earth create if I think God is God. The question of whether I think God is God is one I just hold out there; it can't be answered. There's no way to prove whether God exists or not. So I'm just living in suspended disbelief and going with the whole thing on faith. If God exists, then there's a philosophical argument that leads me to the conclusion that God must be unflawed and good. Given this, the flaws that exist in a religion that claims to follow God are the flaws of people, not God.

That's about as philosophical as I can be in one sitting, so let's move on to the next sacrifice of mine for this Lenten season. This one is much more of an emotional issue. I've recently come to realize that my family is somewhat entrenched in conservative religion. Only a few short months ago I thought differently. I thought maybe my mother was the only one who was still doing that 1980s religious right stuff. But there's a new brand of conservative religion that has swept through my generation and I didn't recognize it. It's the kind of Christianity that permits Sarah Palin to say she's a feminist. Well, it seems that I'm the only one in my family who thinks WAY outside the box on social issues as they relate to Christianity, much less the one who has the guts to question the whole enterprise as a valid pursuit. In such a climate, I find myself judgmental, deeming people to be short-sighted, simple-minded. Shallow.

Now, I'm going to be careful here. When I first started reading blogs and blogging myself, I quickly saw a big hole bloggers sometimes unknowingly dig themselves into. You put a blog out there in the vast sea of the world wide web, you're anonymous, and you're venting. You say all kinds of things. About your mother and your brother and your neighbor. And your boss. And then...someone finds it. It spreads like wildfire. The next thing you know, everyone you never thought would find you blog is reading post after post, becoming more and more incensed by the minute. Given this, I'm not going to go on here about my family and how I disagree with their views in general, much less their individual views on God and religion. As it is I'm already a black sheep given my views on God and religion, and the members of my family don't know the half of my feelings. The last thing I need to do is to start bad-mouthing each of them on my blog as well.

But what I put on my blog and what I do in my every day life are two different things. If I spend two hours on the phone talking to someone and debating whether contraception should be readily available based on what God intended for mankind, and then spend the next two hours angry about that, what have I accomplished? How have I grown?

The point is, I not only stunt my growth by doing this, I regress. I find myself running the same angry speeches through my mind and, in the end, I don't solve anything. If there's one thing about my family I can say for sure, each one of them is just as vehement about their beliefs and just as convicted to argue over their truth as I am about my beliefs and opinions. Further, I find myself defeated, feeling like an outcast. I feel like it's not ok to disagree and it's not ok to be a dissenter. Eventually, I feel devalued merely by engaging in the mental activity of considering how my values and beliefs differ from those of my family's.

So in moving towards the purpose of growing as an individual and pursuing a relationship with God, I am giving up being judgmental for Lent. Instead I will focus on me and how my values work in a relationship with God.

a question for all those out there who have been in a stepfamily

The first stepfamily I had any interaction with was the one my ex-husband built with his now-wife. During those early days, the stepfamily consisted of the two of them as they moved towards marriage and my daughter Grace. Pretty quickly, Grace had a step-aunt (who was a mere year older than she was), a step-uncle (who was in high school), step-grandparents, and a step-great-grandmother. Aside from the fact that all these relations were gained while Grace's father was actually still married to me, the whole thing confuzzled me a bit. Is the step-relation transitive?

The second stepfamily I experienced was the one my husband and I built. Up until recent days when we realized a new member would enter our family this year, the stepfamily consisted of me, my husband and Grace. My husband was easily adopted into our extended family, as he's the only uncle my nieces and nephews know. And since I'm the only wife he's ever had, his niece and nephew that were college-age before I met them face-to-face readily call me their "tia" (aunt).

But there was a bit of a glitch when it came to his family's relation to Grace. Would my husband's mother be Grace's step-grandmother? Ah, no. No way. See, there's a language-specific explanation and a cultural explanation for this. The relation of "step" in Brazil is not exactly a nice one. There's a word for stepmother and stepfather, as well as an extension for stepdaughter and stepson. But it's not exactly something that's used if you like the person. Usually a "madrasta" (stepmother) is the woman your dad married after he cheated on your mother and left your family. A "padrasta" (stepfather) is someone who settles for less, that is, marrying a woman who's already been married and had children with another man. Stepfathers are virtually nonexistent in Brazil, at least as far as identifying themselves as such goes.

When talking about Grace in Portuguese, my husband refers to Grace as my "filha" (daughter) or his "filha." But never, no way, not in a million years, would he call her his "filhastra" (stepdaughter). It would be an insult for both of them. It would communicate that he doesn't consider her his own, that she is out of his care, that she is a bastard child. Whereas I'm sure that what I've given so far you makes you believe Brazil has the most sexist culture in the world, one thing is for sure -- a young girl who doesn't have a father to look out for her in that culture is in for a difficult time. For my husband, though he realizes that he is not her father, his role in her life is to protect her and provide for her as if she were his biological daughter. To do less would be like throwing her to the wolves.

Now, on to the rest of his family. When we visited Brazil the first time, we attended mass with my mother-in-law. She was beaming and so elated that we were there with her. She did what all proud mothers do, she introduced us to every single one of her friends and acquaintances. She made sure we met her priest. She brought us to the icons and prayed for us while holding our hands. One of her good friends approached her smiling, saying that this must be her son and his family. My mother-in-law introduced each one of us. Her son, her new daughter-in-law, and her new daughter-in-law's daughter. The friend said to her that she must mean her new granddaughter. My mother-in-law wanted to be clear and said that she treated Grace like a granddaughter but really, Grace wasn't her granddaughter. Her friend said plainly, "she is your son's daughter, so she is your granddaughter." End of story.

Grace is a cousin to my husband's nieces and nephew. Grace is the niece of his brother and sisters. And when Grace talks about them, she calls her aunts and uncle "tia" and "tio," and she says her stepfather's nieces and nephews are her cousins. Granted, this is after one of my sister-in-laws teased her mercilessly for days about being Grace's "tiastra." This would be about as bad as calling her one of the evil stepsisters from Cinderella. The word "tiastra" doesn't even exist; my sister-in-law made it up just to be funny and call attention to the ludicrousness of her being anything other than Grace's aunt.

Now, in our stepfamily, we get the advantage of a language and culture that pushes us into dropping the whole "step" label. But I ask you guys out there, what's the connotation of "step"? Is it negative in American culture and in English? Beyond this, how far does the label go? Like with the little sister of Grace's stepmother, I feel like it's just silly to call her a step-aunt. I mean, if she were her aunt, it would kind of be a family joke that two girls that are of the same age would have an aunt/niece relationship; but under the circumstances, it just seems like Grace should either call her an aunt, a friend, or her stepmother's baby sister. And when Grace used the term "step-great-grandmother" for the first time, I just about burst out laughing. If she's a great grandma, then just call her a great grandma; if she's just someone related to your stepmother who you hardly know but you need to give a name to, why not just refer to her as your stepmother's great grandmother?

I have an enormous extended family, going several generations back and expanding by the day. By some miracle, we actually all keep in touch. When I explain how someone is related to me, they are either an aunt or uncle, or a cousin. We don't worry about anything other than that. If the cousin happens to be the age of my grandmother, I just call them by their first name and add "Miss" or "Mister" out of respect. Further, I don't make exceptions for people who are the children from a previous relationship not including one of my blood relatives. All those people are just cousins.

For me it seems like the whole "step" label should go only so far. Yeah, use it when you need to clarify things, like when people ask why my daughter doesn't speak Portuguese since her father obviously is a native speaker. But outside of this, does it really matter to my sisters-in-law that Grace's DNA doesn't resemble theirs? Not really. But since I was never a kid with many step-relatives, I'm putting the question out there for you guys to vet. What do you think? How far is it reasonable for the label to apply? How distant of a relative? For how many years?

Am I a Christian?

Here's a question I hate for people to ask me:

"Are you a Christian?"

For those who know the answer to this question for themselves, the response is clear -- either yes or no. And I suppose most people who have given the question serious thought know their answer -- either yes or no. But I'm an exception. I have given the question very serious thought, and I don't know the answer.

On facebook there is a field you can enter for "religious views." I've looked through what people put in this field. Few people leave it blank. Most of the Christians put either "Christian" or the specific denomination of Christianity they subscribe to. There are a handful of people who are part of more independent evangelical movements who get creative. They put things like "I love God!" or "Jesus Follower" or "Jesus is my Savior and Friend." I think identifying your religious views this way is intended to separate a relationship with God from the more negative association with religion. The idea being that first and foremost, a relationship with God stands, and the religion that forms out of those with a common belief in what that relationship entails is secondary.

Back to me. "Are you a Christian?" I guess the answer is simple for most because it boils down to a few brief questions about Jesus and one's relationship with Jesus. Jesus is God, and either you have the "right" relationship with Jesus (thus you are a Christian) or you don't (thus you are not a Christian). But what makes it the "right" relationship is a matter of great debate among Christians.

My mom subscribes to a doctrine of predestination. The issue is interesting if you're into theology and such, but otherwise it's pretty much a moot point. She really believes that the legitimacy of person's salvation in Jesus Christ should be in question if they don't believe in predestination. So....that eliminates a lot of people who, for her, are not really Christians. Let's move on to an issue closer to home, one I've brought up here more than once. What is the role of women in a church? In a marriage? As a parent? As a single adult? For some Christians out there, the answers to these questions can be a deal-breaker. If you don't know and obey the Godly teachings of men's and women's roles in the kingdom of heaven, then you may not be part of such a kingdom. An even more sensitive issue? Homosexuality. There's some Christians out there who don't consider homosexuality a sin, and in fact some of them even condone child adoption by gay couples and same-sex marriage. But for a lot of Christians out there, this just goes to far. If you're speaking in favor of homosexuality, you can't be a Christian. And if a fellow brother or sister in Christ comes to you and points out your error and you still don't turn from your sinful mistakes, then it is doubtful that you are a Christian.

There are other issues than this, hundreds more. I just list these to give you an idea of how tough it is for me to figure out what the real important issues are in deciding whether I'm a Christian or not. When someone asks me if I am a Christian, I never know what the right answer is because I don't know what the real deal-breakers are. I don't pretend to know the right answer, and a lot of people more educated than I in theology and Christian religion have told me that my ideas of what makes someone a Christian are wrong. So, I guess the gospel according those people says I'm not a Christian. But still, I'm not sure.

In my mind, I've been debating whether I even have a relationship with God to begin with. My conversations with God in the last few weeks have ranged from, "I'm not sure whether we're even meant for each other" to "I'm not sure I can get into this knowing that you're really powerful and all and I'm, well, not." I really don't know how to talk to God or (dare I say it?) pray to God, because most of what I was taught was something like being a Jedi. There's a weird kind of way people within Christianity practice prayer as a kind of manipulation of that which they cannot alter by their own power. My mom says she gets upset if something's going on in my life and I don't tell her, because then she didn't have the chance to pray about it. So, like, what, if she had known, she could have practiced her voodoo Jedi-magic to try and persuade God to do things the way she thinks they should go? I told God, I can't do that; I just cannot do that. If having a relationship with God means that I use God's power for something I want, then that seems really twisted. So I'm not doing that at all, and if God holds those kinds of relationships then I can't accept this whole thing.

Ash Wednesday is two days away. Aside from hearing about how everyone in Brazil is partying up until this day, Ash Wednesday marks the start of the Lenten season in the Christian church worldwide. As I understand it, I'm supposed to, if I'm a Christian, consider some way in which I will deny myself something. I'm supposed to be thoughtful and reflective, and consider my relationship with God. Jesus did the same thing during his 40 days of fasting in the desert, praying, and also being tempted by Satan. I'm not even touching the Satan part, 'cause I got enough to wrestle with just with God.

One Lenten season when I was in middle school, my church sponsored this churchwide 40-day program with tasks to do every day. There were big things you had to do, like confront someone in their sin. You had to give up something you loved. You had to keep a daily log of your thoughts and then share them with a teacher or parent. After 2 weeks, I stopped it completely. My mom made me feel like I was sinning for not doing it. I felt sort of badly, but not badly enough to pick it back up where I left off. That's the last time I observed Lent in any material way.

My husband and I and Grace are going to attend Ash Wednesday services at a local episcopal church that practices Christianity as it most closely resembles my beliefs.

So, what to give up? What to sacrifice during this season? I tend to think that for me it's got to be less about material things and physical things. I could do something like give up Coca-Cola or coffee, or sugary sweets. I could even give up indulgences like eating out or junk food. But I'm not inspired by these choices because giving up those things doesn't hold any further significance for me other than making me feel deprived. Instead, I feel like the sacrifice should be more emotional, something in my thoughts, or a commitment towards some change that will better my mind and soul, not just my body. I'm not sure how to make that more precise yet, but I want to make it more concrete and set a real goal for Lent. Ideally, it would be something that makes me more able to understand my relationship with God.

I've got two days to go, so I'll think some more.