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It’s All About Ethics

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on May 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Last week I was helping the Bug study for a science test on human reproduction.

She was learning about puberty, menstruation, and sex. There was not an ounce of self-consciousness or body shaming in my beautiful granddaughter, who is only one inch shorter than I am. I can vaguely remember my big sister Kay filling me in on such things. It was certainly not in my Catholic school’s 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th grade curriculum. However, the Bride was taught about reproduction in her public school, albeit mostly about anatomy and to fear AIDs as the latest STD. I’m happy to say my Grands are the children of doctors, who never shied away from difficult questions.

Then the Pumpkin who hears everything, asked how old you have to be to have a baby?

And I immediately thought about an Ob-Gyn who did her best with a patient, and her state medical board reprimanded her. They fined her $3,000 – for saving a patient’s life. They came very close to taking her license away. Would you think this doctor must live in a developing country? Wrong; this courageous woman physician lives in Indiana where there is a Republican AG, and she had the audacity to perform an abortion on her 10 year old patient.

“The board cleared Bernard on two other counts, determining that she did not improperly report child abuse and that she is fit to practice medicine.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/27/abortion-doctor-indiana-caitlin-bernard/

We tried to answer the Pumpkin’s question, but honestly we were stumped. Sure once menstruation starts, the uterus is signaling its ability to carry a fetus, but when is it advisable? Certainly not in the teenage years, right?

Dr Caitlyn Bernard followed protocol. She reported the procedure involving a minor in the time frame required – three days. This speedy reporting process has been determined to help police find and prosecute a rapist, a child rapist – which they eventually did. What exactly did this doctor do wrong? She spoke to the press about it. She spoke in generalized terms to a reporter about her patient’s age and the consequential influx of young girls to Indiana from Ohio after the Dobbs decision. Even the Chair of the Board called Bernard a “good doctor.”

There was no HIPAA violation, all docs talk in general terms about their interesting patients. So long as a patient isn’t named, or identified, doctors have freedom to speak. But telling a reporter that a child had to cross state lines in order to receive life-saving care is a bridge too far?

Dr Bernard’s patient is the same age as our Bug. She aced her science test on the last day of school, and will be turning 11 this summer. Of course I didn’t bring up the Indiana court case while studying human reproduction. I didn’t talk about an extreme Christian anti-woman agenda in our home state. Instead I suggested we all go to the movies!

It was my first time back to a movie theatre since the pandemic. Three generations of girls / women sat through all the ads and trailers, I told the Bug how it used to be full-length cartoons before a movie in my day… and I immediately feel ten times older every time I say something like that. Note to Self – “When I was a girl…” must be eliminated from my vocabulary! Then the movie started, and the thrill of being surrounded by strangers in a dark cavern returned.

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” unfolded in classic pre-teen angst. A rising 6th grader (just like the Bug) must leave her grandmother, Kathy Bates who was channeling Grandma Ada to a T, her friends and her NYC apartment and move to the suburbs. The actress playing Margaret, Abby Ryder Fortson, even resembles the Love Bug with her piercing dark eyes. Her first prayer is pretty concise – “Please don’t let New Jersey be too horrible” and we laughed though southerners didn’t get the joke. Bras and menstrual periods were discussed willy nilly. Margaret has decided she must choose a religion, Judaism or Christianity? And she learns how to navigate new friendships.

If only our country could learn how to keep religion out of politics.

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Silent No More

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on May 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

On our walk to the Farmer’s Market this weekend, I asked the Bug if she knew what a group of giraffes is called? You already know that I’m a collector of fascinating words and phrases, and I particularly love the terms for groups of animals – the collective nouns. Like a “murder” of crows, or a “flamboyance” of flamingoes. But did you know our family has a thing for giraffes?

I’m not sure why, is it because they have the longest necks or the biggest hearts of all land mammals?

When I was a child, my foster sister took me to the circus. I was too young to remember much, but I would look at that fading black and white picture of me, in my ‘circus’ ie fancy shoes, all the time. I looked so happy. Maybe that was the first time I ever saw a real giraffe. I made sure to take my children to the Big Apple Circus every single year. And now I head straight for the giraffes when we accompany our Grands to the Nashville Zoo. My fantasy safari trip is to the Giraffe Manor, where I could feed a giraffe from my breakfast table!

Then there was this book: “Tall Blondes” https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/tall-blondes-introduction/2253/

And I was hooked. Because I thought my daughter was a tall blonde who seemed to float on her field hockey team. She had such long legs as a pre-teen, very similar to the Bug, and she would always take the balcony view of things. Mature beyond her age. And because she had volunteered with Planned Parenthood during high school, in her days at Duke she became the unofficial reproductive health dorm advisor. The Bride is a feminist raised by a feminist whose motto was “Our Bodies Ourselves.”

Also having a sex therapist for a grandmother didn’t hurt.

Speaking of sex, or rape actually, I’ve been keeping a watchful eye on the E Jean Carroll rape trial against our twice impeached insurrectionist ex-president. She was a relationship columnist in NY at about the same time I was writing a column for a newspaper in NJ. We are approximately the same age, in our 70s. The Bride was mid-teens in the mid-90s. And this morning I read that Carroll called herself a member of the “silent generation.”

“I am a member of the silent generation … Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain.” Carroll testified last week that Trump’s attack caused a decades-long trauma in her life. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/01/e-jean-carroll-trump-trial/

And she’s right. We were taught to make jokes. to smile, to shrug off a man’s advances. If you complained about workplace harassment you would lose your job. This is why I believed Anita Hill. When the new car salesman came on to me in my early 20s, I just looked at his wedding ring and said frankly NO, but thanks anyway. After all, it was just us all alone taking a test ride in a car he wanted to sell and I wanted to buy; I knew enough not to make him mad. Otherwise, I might have become a Dateline statistic.

I didn’t report his advances to the car dealership.

This silent generation of women was a group of humans I didn’t think I was a part of, after all I attended consciousness raising groups. I started a new moon women’s group at temple and invented my own menopause ritual. But back then, when Trump raped Carroll, we women thought we had to be as tough as the guys. There was no crying at work, or in baseball. And I can certainly imagine a rape taking place at Bergdorfs, in a very fancy dressing room, and the woman not wanting to call attention to her assault at the time. Especially if it was a powerful man, wielding his power with his (insert appropriate appendage). Because we were also told it’s his recollection against ours – and his always wins.

Mr T’s lawyers didn’t count on the fact that Carroll DID tell some of her friends. She even kept the dress. So she wasn’t so silent after all. Oh how I wish I could be a fly on that court room wall today.

And just in case you thought giraffes were silent creatures, you’d be wrong. They seem silent to our human ears, but they communicate via a low infrasound. How else could they hide their babies while they forage for leaves? How could they move towards a watering hole en masse without communicating? And although some like to call a group of them a herd…

I prefer a TOWER of giraffes! Here I am in my happy place.

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Tornado Warning

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 18, 2019| 2 Comments »

Last night I hopped into my Lyft and the driver, who looked nothing like his picture, told me there was a tornado warning. We had one of my three best Lyft/Uber driver conversations on the way home from a quick bite with the Bride. What he didn’t know was that before our supper an actual tornado of creativity had touched down in Nashville. “City of Girls” author Elizabeth Gilbert landed in her “Commonwealth” dress at Montgomery Bell Academy to talk about female sexual desire in the 1940s!

She passed out bottles of champagne to her enchanted fans, the lucky ones celebrating a birthday yesterday, along with the most perfect combination of wit and wisdom I’ve ever heard about navigating this life in the female form. She wanted to explore the lives of promiscuous women, those girls throughout history who never played by the rules. And she was lucky enough to find a living nonagenarian, “Norma” was an old showgirl who wasn’t ashamed to talk about her experience with men over the years and her five abortions. Did she never want to marry? Does she regret not having children?

“Who wants to f— the same guy for sixty years?” 

The audience was laughing, clapping, cheering… Norma had had affairs with John Wayne and Milton Berle. But it was the author herself who delighted us. Gilbert practices brutal honesty; she calls it being on an “Integrity Cleanse.” Her previous partner, a woman named Rayya who recently died of pancreatic cancer, was an addict who treated honesty like a surgical tool in her sobriety arsenal. So Gilbert carries on being true, because it’s so much easier than deceit.

“Truth has legs. It’s the only thing that will stay standing at the end of the day,” she said.

You might as well do it now, or do it later. Why not just get it over with, put truth out there on the table so we all can breathe? She tells us she didn’t grow up this way. Her early life was unconventional yes, still she is aware of her privilege. If you want to hear about her eccentric father, who was a Xmas tree farmer in New England, you’ll have to listen to one of her podcasts!

Gilbert writes herself love letters every day – Why is this happening to me? – How can I manage? – What is the problem – When will it end? And her answer is mostly the same – “I’m here, and I’ll always be here with you – we’ve got this – it will be alright.”

It sounded like a woman praying, but she knew her answers would always be found deep inside. In a way, writing this delicious book was an antidote to her grief after losing Rayya. She had to step back into the creative river, even though she felt weighted down by her loss. She didn’t drown. She wrote like “…a drunk person running.” 

I was aware of the irony in last night. There I was, sitting next to my reluctant Bride, who was inspired to finally take the plunge and get married to her adoring and patient husband, while reading Gilbert’s book, “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.” And there on the stage was the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, who fell in love with her best friend and ended her marriage to her husband in order to care for Rayya. And here we all were inside an auditorium in a boy’s school on a humid and rain-soaked night.

But love is love. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” a quote from “Committed.”

Here is one of the last gems  she threw out last night ladies. “If I’m all up in your business, there’s nobody home to take care of me.” I mean, how true is that? Getting into bed last night I thought about my family – the Flapper was certainly unconventional, and my sister Kay, an original Lipstick feminist.

“City of Girls” hit the number 2 spot on the NYTimes Hard Cover Fiction Best Sellers List this morning only 2 weeks after publication! I couldn’t get a decent picture last night so I lifted this one – here she is in her Commonwealth dress with that author and bookstore owner, Ann Patchett! A new American Gothic. Thanks Parnassus Books and the Public Library Salon @615 for an unforgettable evening.

Happy Pride Month everyone!

IMG_5714

 

 

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Sexy Day

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, science, tagged , , , , , , , on February 28, 2018| 1 Comment »

Bob has returned from the sexiest city in the country. The Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance (EDBA), a group that looks at ED performance, held their summit at Caesar”s Palace in Vegas! One of the young doctors at the conference told Bob that his book on ED management was her bible during her first tour as a director. Last night, Bob said he just doesn’t “get” that city, it’s all fake news. Plus, he doesn’t gamble.

We kissed hello, and I said goodbye. The Bride and I were off to a family forum at the Love Bug’s school on “Raising Sexually Healthy Children.” The Groom was still at his conference so I was invited, and of course I was the only Nana in the group. There were only a few dads; still, we represented a diverse range of opinions and concerns about sex. Ranging from the nitty gritty of “What and When,” to how can we keep them safe in the age of smart phones and social media.

My take-away for raising a sexually healthy adult (ie imagine your child at the age of 35, which of course, I didn’t have to do) is that you stay positive about anything they may ask  you. For instance, instead of immediately saying, “Where did you hear that?” in an accusatory voice, you begin a dialogue with your child. Staying available and open as a parent means they will keep coming to you for advice instead of their peers and/or porn. At least until they turn 16.

Ideally, you should present the facts to them in an age appropriate way.

Our culture has a way of making sex shameful. In fact when the Bride was young, she had exactly one year of sex ed in school, and it was all about STDs and HIV/AIDs. Bill Clinton and Ken Starr were duking it out when the Rocker was in middle school. One fundamentalist Christian mom looked at me and said, “We can thank our President for teaching our children about oral sex.” So I guess we can thank Mr T for teaching our grandkids what…?

Do you know what the average age of first sexual intercourse is in the USA? I didn’t! It’s 16.7; but I guess that depends on what the definition of “Is” is… The speaker recommended a book to start this journey on positive/holistic sexuality with your child titled, “It’s Not the Stork” by Robie H Harris for 4-5 year olds. If your child hasn’t been curious about sex by the age of 7, this is a good way to start the conversation.

The Groom returns home today triumphant! He was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine as the lead author in a study on the use of saline vs balanced crystalloids in the ICU. He’s been interviewed on our Nashville NPR station and the local news programs, and if that’s not sexy. I mean. It’s like winning the Oscar in medicine!

I remember the Bride twirling around at 3 in her twirly skirt, saying, “sexy” over and over again. I asked her what sexy means, and she said “Beautiful!”

My favorite flowering tree, the tulip magnolia, is in bloom and spring is in the air.  IMG_2318

 

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