Vol. 25
Essay | Now Read This | Poetry Corner | Nature Nook |
A friend recently said, “You’re not really an adult until both of your parents have died.” Obviously, this isn’t technically true. And obviously, plenty of people grow up without one or both parents, or exist in more complicated family structures.
Having very recently experienced the death of my dad, 25 years after my mom died, it still got me thinking. I have felt a sense of being untethered since dad passed. Not adrift. It’s more of a severing that sometimes comes with pain and sometimes an airy, free feeling. Oftentimes both at once.
I find myself wanting to tell dad about funny things that happen, or rant about stories in the news, or just share bits of my life that I want him to know about. Then there’s the small, familiar knife to the heart that results as soon as I remember that, oh right, he’s dead. I can never speak to him again. It’s familiar because I went through this with my mother so many years ago, and too many friends to count. And I know it’s a feeling that will wax and wane in time, becoming less a reflex and more a blurry sort of “I wonder what they would have thought of this,” when it occurs at all.
Right after dad died, I remember thinking, “Well, fuck.” I remember thinking, “Does this make me an orphan?” I remember thinking, “Well now I can write my memoir without having to worry about how he’ll react.” I remember thinking, “I wish I’d finally gotten around to interviewing him about his life and recording it, like he did with his parents.” I remember thinking, “Our last conversation was me asking him to send money to pay a bill for my sibling in rehab.” He died suddenly, with no time for goodbyes or better conversations or resolutions. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Mom died slowly, over months (or years, depending on how we define it). This is also how it sometimes goes. I was just shy of my 16th birthday when she passed. She was 50. I lived in shock for at least a couple of years after that, all while determinedly, desperately grasping at adulthood. I was already a pretty independent-minded kid but there’s nothing like the sudden death of one parent, the emotional distance of the other, and a sudden move halfway across the country to really catapult you into self-sufficiency (or the perception/delusion of it).
This time, with dad, I am in a wildly different place in my life. It’s not the same, not the shock to the system that came with mom’s brain hemorrhage while I sat daydreaming in math class. He was 75. Retired for several years. Living in comfort with a woman he loved and step-children and grandchildren abounding. Settled, after everything.
But there is a noticeable change in how I feel about myself and my life, even still. This is, I recognize, very normal.
I chose a different path than my parents and that of many in their generation. I’m not marking adulthood by having children or staying in the same job for decades or buying a house (although, to be fair, my dad didn’t buy his first home until he was in his 50s–the perks of being a minister and living in free church housing). The march into “adulthood” has, for me, been more like a very gay hokey-pokey. Turns out there is no one way to do it, no straight path. That’s what it’s all about.
Without a blueprint, without a map, every severing is all the more destabilizing, I think. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s incredibly queer. With few expectations, I can try just about anything, explore every possibility. And I am blessed to have an incredible chosen family in my life–people of all ages and life stages–helping me navigate these uncharted waters and cheering on every new discovery with me. We do this thing together, glorious individuals inextricably linked.
So maybe not an orphan after all.
There were important things I tried to tell my dad when he was alive, but he wasn’t always great at listening and responding when the topics were difficult or personal. I can look back at a long email I sent him just a couple of years ago, unloading some long-held grievances. I asked for further engagement, opened the door for when he was ready, and never heard back.
To be fair, I didn’t push it, either. Sometimes you’re raised to make darkly humorous jokes about a situation and move on without really getting into it. Sometimes you’re just tired and think you have more time to come back to it later and suddenly there is no “later.”
Life goes on until it doesn’t.
Are we ever really “adults?” Part of my brain definitely still thinks I’m a precocious, smart-ass 12-year-old who wants to see and do and try and talk about everything. Part of me is also a very tired, “I have seen too much,” grown-up. The “adult” feels like a construct, a necessary edifice that handles paying taxes and running the errands that are demanded of us by modern society.
The “adult” is useful, but I’m determined not to let them overwhelm the other parts of me. I love that precocious 12-year-old with all my heart. I love that tired-ass, more fully realized grown-up, too. They’re both needed.
In the end, I’m determined to live Drag Race star Raja’s very queer motto for getting older: “As long as I’m aging, it’s always going to be fucking fun. If I’m gasping for air, there better be a fucking disco around me.”
Here’s to the great cosmic disco of humanity: often messy and loud, colorful and diverse, rarely dull, full of possibility and good music and people fucking in the balcony and sometimes dying in the bathroom, but always, always full of painfully beautiful life.
Now Read This.
“Why I Keep My Eyes–and My Mind–On the South” [Tressie McMillan Cottom for NY Times Opinion - PAYWALL]
We like to look to the horizon instead of to the soil because we bury the people we do not care about in the South. It is where we have put migrants and poor people and sick people. It is where we put the social problems we are willing to accept in exchange for the promise of individual opportunity in places that sound more sophisticated. But the South is still a laboratory for the political disenfranchisement that works just as well in Wisconsin as it does in Florida. Americans are never as far from the graves we dig for other people as we hope.
“The Holocaust Isn’t a Feel-Good Story for Christians” [Noah Berlatsky at Everything is Horrible]
The Holocaust is best understood not as a triumph of Judeo-Christian values, but as a struggle between (mostly) Christians over (among other issues) just how vicious persecution of Jews should or should not be.
“Trans Adults Officially Being Detransitioned In Missouri: ‘I'm Scared And Don't Know What To Do’” [Erin Reed at Erin in the Morning]
Transgender adults are officially being pulled off of their medication in Missouri and forced to detransition. A new ban targeting trans care statewide is one of the cruelest in the country.
Poetry Corner.
A poem for National Poetry Month and our ailing nation:
“Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” by Kathy Fish
A group of grandmothers is a tapestry. A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: a bewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of visual artists is a bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of musicians is — a band.
A resplendence of poets.
A beacon of scientists.
A raft of social workers.
A group of first responders is a valiance. A group of peaceful protestors is a dream. A group of special education teachers is a transcendence. A group of neonatal ICU nurses is a divinity. A group of hospice workers, a grace.
Humans in the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a target.
A target of concert-goers.
A target of movie-goers.
A target of dancers.
A group of schoolchildren is a target.
Nature Nook.
I had a very good bird-nerd week. On Monday, I went out for a walk over my lunch hour hoping to catch a photo of a brown thrasher that had been singing its little heart out that morning. As I walked slowly and quietly through the scruffy patch of woods near my house, a much smaller bird fluttered by and landed on a branch just a handful of feet away. I pulled out my camera and snapped a few shots, noting that the small yellow bird appeared to be a warbler of some kind–early, I thought, since warblers don’t tend to show up in Wisconsin in any great numbers until later in April and into May.
I also couldn’t tell what type of warbler it was–yellow, but with marked black streaks on its wings. I’m certainly not a warbler expert, but it didn’t look like the ones I’d expect to see in the area (yellow, pine, etc.). I turned to the collective knowledge of the Feminist Bird Club, posting the photos and asking for input.
The excited answer: a prairie warbler!
These are extremely rare in Wisconsin, turns out. They’re not in decline as a species, just mostly make their migratory homes much further east.
The finding caused quite a stir on the local bird boards after I uploaded it to eBird. Since then, dozens of eager birders have come out to our little patch of woods to see the prairie warbler for themselves. I’m told he’s hung around for several days, much to the delight of my fellow bird nerds.
Check out this handsome lil’ fella for yourself:
If you’re interested in dipping a toe into birding, it’s a very approachable/accessible activity and great fun! Learn more and get some good beginner tips here, then head to your local Madison Public Library Branch to check out a birding backpack, courtesy of the Feminist Bird Club. Then check out your local birding group, like FBC, BIPOC Birding Club, Madison Audubon, etc. and head out to one of their events to get to know fellow birders and learn from a group!
Til Next Time.
Thanks for reading! Hit me up with questions, comments, suggestions, and tips on great hiking spots. And please feel free to forward this email to a friend and/or hit that subscribe button. xoxo