Sitting outside, in the back yard, Jack and Fiona are at Costco with my husband. I have to take a break, reflect on what I wrote this morning. It’s almost spring and flowers are beginning to dominate bare branches, I love winter flowering trees. I love the moist ground, still wet from winter rains, the decaying leaves, the new bugs and spiders, old webs that didn’t get knocked down in the winter winds, and the sun feeling closer than it has in months. I think of fertility and my experience. I wonder why I clung to beauty and that it was the goal for so long. I have judged myself daily, comparing myself to an unrealistic idea of what is beautiful? Fertility is beautiful. Being born into a beautiful new thing. I am so far from that sweet smell newborn babies have. I am so far from that beauty because I was not fertile. The image of healthy, glowing, pregnant woman? Or that sweetness of just having given birth sweet smell of placenta, baby poop, an open vagina, all bloody, sweat, and the image of the beautiful woman and her beautiful baby lying on her chest? I wanted that. I wanted to be that woman, just like a flowering winter tree, bringing new, undamaged life into the world. Natural and unscathed, “it happened so quickly, we barely tried” I would say. After the birth I would be glowing, my picture would get 1000 likes on Facebook. I would have taken the naked pictures when I was pregnant, and I would be allowed to share them on Facebook because I covered just the right spots and a naked pregnant woman is a subliminal message that propels mankind. This post would get 2000 likes. I would be a Goddess. Why are we obsessed about this? About being this? Why was I? Why was I ashamed that I could never be that goddess, my uterus broken, I was up in age, I shouldn’t even be trying to have children, “It’s not fair to the children for women to have IVF at 39, they won’t live a long enough for the child.” I read this once on Face Book. I was so upset by it and it became my truth. I was disgusting.
Category: art
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I went to Fiona’s IEP yesterday. Everything went smooth, she was offered the same services as she received last year, attendance at a Total Communication preschool and speech therapy. Fiona is right on track with most of her language skills. She’s having trouble producing letter combinations of letters she can not hear, which is normal for children with hearing loss. They must memorize how to make the sound through speech therapy, the hope is that they will eventually know how to make the sounds. I asked if it will be easier to do once Fiona can read and they said “definitely”. I mentioned Fiona attending a typically developed preschool a few days a week next year to prepare her for kindergarten and the representative from her school district thought it was a great idea. I said, even if Fiona can’t hear or understand a lot of what’s going on, I was reassured that it was still beneficial, socially and to prepare her for kindergarten, the hearing world. I had forwarded the piece I wrote about Fiona and my upcoming IEP to the meeting attendees. They commented they were surprised I had so much anxiety about the IEP. They assumed I assumed Fiona would get the same services again. I didn’t know. After I left the meeting I realized Total Communication wasn’t brought up many times, and when it was I was the one bringing it up. I didn’t have a chance to gloat about my graduation from the beginning series of sign class and that now I’m an intermediate signer! I am so glad I was introduced to sign language and that I had the opportunity to take a great class. It’s the best way to fully communicate with Fiona, using both sign and auditory. I realize they are preparing Fiona for the real world, and they do train teachers in mainstream class rooms how to best teach deaf and hard of hearing. The class room experience is adjusted to make it as optimal an environment for a child with hearing loss as possible. And I know in the real-world people won’t know sign language or that they must get eye contact with Fiona for her to understand what they are saying. Fiona misses things, constantly. I wonder, why should she have to be in a non- total communication learning environment at all? She’s going to have such a more difficult time learning the same material? Fiona can’t rely on her hearing aids and FM system 100% of the time. She deserves to get the lessons as efficiently as all her class mates. The only way that deaf and hard of hearing kids get equal education is with a deaf and hard of hearing teacher. This will give them the best chance of succeeding in college and getting a good job and making it in the hearing world.
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“The white man is bad, he’s making the black people work for free, they are slaves” I say. “Remember”, then I stop, I was about to remind Jack of the clip of news he walked in on, that I turned off immediately, but not soon enough for Jack to ask me questions. “Why are those people doing that?” He asked. “Because they are racist, the guys in white are bad.” It was the morning after the Charlotte riots, when the white supremacists were upset because the city of Charlotte, NC, decided to take down a statue of Andrew Jackson, because he was a slave owner and the statue is a symbol of white supremacy that was erected after civil rights were won. Theory being, to keep the fear of what was, of southern white privilege. I don’t like using the words black people, white people, I never have. I’m white and live, unfortunately in a very white county. My kids are turning four years old and I’ve taken them across the bridge to the East Bay or to the city as many days of the week as possible. I don’t want them living in a white privileged bubble, even though that’s where we do live. As I read the story of Harriet Tubman, a book Jack picked out at the book store yesterday, I am having trouble simplifying the story enough for four-year old’s. I don’t like saying “Black people” because I’ve never talked like that, as if that were something I needed to point out. I try to read the story, which is an amazing children’s book, all about the underground railroad. Jack and Fiona can understand hiding and escaping. Harriet Tubman was a hero, rescuing people. “Are those bad people” Jack asks during the underground railroad scenes. “No, some white people were good, are good. They helped the slaves escape.” Slavery is a horrible story, as I sit here and write this I start to cry. Terrible things happened in our country. I change the subject from skin color to freedom, civil rights, and how important it is for them to vote when they turn 18. Jack says, “and when we turn 5 we’re going to kindergarten.” I end on Harriet Tubman was a hero and you guys can be heroes too. Protect civil rights, equality. They both understand what equal means and give me many examples. They get it. I wanted to explain to Fiona she is getting services for her hearing loss because of battles won for people with disabilities but I think that she’s too young for that lesson. It’s hard to know what kids are ready to learn about, but they are curious and want to learn. I am bad at filtering information, I just hope they don’t think all white people are bad! But I think because of our countries history and living in such a white county it’s natural to have suspicions and I would rather my kids know when someone is being racist than ever think it’s o.k. to talk bad about someone because of what they look like.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 