Keeping the Peace and other Thoughts

So, not too long after my blog post about my views on abortion (which I maintain) I declared a truce with a family member with whom I profoundly disagree on the subject.  Put simply, I did not wish to threaten our relationship, such that it is, by pushing the issue. My father instilled in me the notion, at an early age, that while friends and colleagues may wax and wane, family is forever, and whenever there's conflict within the family, the responsibility falls to the younger member to bite his or her tongue and let it go.
Oh man, is that ever hard when it comes to gender politics.
My extended family is, by and large,  very conservative and very Catholic. When my mother refused to have me baptized as an infant (which came up when, at her baby shower, she received a christening gown) several members of my father's side of the family insisted that my mother was putting me in danger of hellfire.  You can imagine, then, how most of the family feels about abortion.  Most people are only casually pro-life, in that they certainly would not condone the practice in the lives of anybody they know, and they certainly wouldn't vote for someone whose platform emphasized being pro-choice, but they're not especially militant or vocal about those beliefs.  There are, however, a few members of my family who are extremely vocal about being anti-abortion.  In fact, one could argue that their zeal for fighting abortion is a defining aspect of their characters. 
This puts me in something of an uncomfortable position. I am absolutely opposed to legally restricting a woman's access to abortion, but that doesn't mean I think abortions are a great thing and should be simply the easiest medical procedure to get.  I believe they should always be a port of last resort, and I believe we as a society have a responsibility to do what we can to reduce instances of elective abortions... but banning them won't do shit.  All it would do is turn it into a back-alley operation, risking the health and safety of women and girls all over the country.
That said, my pro-choice stance certainly doesn't define my character, and it certainly doesn't define my political views.  Hell, where abortion is concerned, I tend to lean much more towards the center than most of my peers with whom I agree on other political issues.  I care much more about LGBTQ* issues, gender equity, and fighting poverty than I do about abortion.  I don't especially care for the policing of women's bodies, but I genuinely believe that if women are lifted out of poverty and are able to negotiate social power structures, a lot of the underlying issues that lead women towards elective abortions would fade.  I know I would be a lot less worried about getting pregnant if I was more financially stable and if childcare were more affordable.
At any rate, when I initially called the truce on issues of abortion, I backed off on my more direct social media posts on abortion.  I'd linked the family member with whom I disagreed to this blog, called the truce, and moved on with my life.  Initially it almost seemed like he too had backed off from more inflammatory posts, but as time has gone on, both he and his wife have gone back to posting increasingly more inflammatory anti-abortion messages.  The ones that get me the most are the ones that make theological statements that basically line up pro-choice messaging with satanic messaging, or the ones declaring that atheists are bound for hellfire.  As a pro-choice, progressive Christian who has studied medical ethics from a theological perspective (although I'm certainly no expert) it's so, so hard for me to not jump in the ring and make counter arguments.  Instead, my partner gets to hear these counter arguments, during which he dutifully nods before hugging me and reminding me why I called the truce in the first place:
1. My family is the single most important thing to me.
2. There are more important things to argue about.
I would rather save my words for more fundamental theological arguments, such as our responsibility as Christians to serve everybody, and all the many, many times the Bible calls us not to horde our worldly possessions, but to share our bounties with those who have not been given the same bounties.
It saddens me to think that the Church is waning to such a degree because of the hatred in the hearts of a few.  I see so many people my age who are so hungry to make the world a better place, who have so much energy, but who lack the institutional organization and focus to actually get shit done.  We're a generation waiting on the world to change.  The Church could serve as that focal point to help organize young people to go out into the world and do the work that needs to be done-- to feed the hungry, to heal the sick in body and mind, to shelter those with no place to call home-- after all, this has been a defining mission of the church since its inception.  Yet, because we as Christians have allowed ourselves to be defined by our own, modern Pharisees, my brothers and sisters have turned their backs on the Church... many have turned their backs on Christianity altogether. 

I sat down on the exam table with my back up against a wall in the closet-sized exam room at my university's student health clinic.  I'd walked-in for an appointment that afternoon after having a chaotic, sleepless night, and making one of those 3 AM phonecalls every daughter makes to her mother at some point in her life.  I was a mess.  I hadn't slept in days, although not for lack of trying, and after six months of desperately trying to hold myself together after the death of my father, I'd reached my breaking point.  I had a full course load with tons of reading and the attention span of a small rodent.  What's more, even when I could focus on a reading long enough to finish it, I came away with little understanding of what I'd just read, why it was important, and how it all fit into the overall goal of the class I was taking.  I couldn't stand to be by myself, because when I was alone with my thoughts, I felt like I was weak, that I had not achieved enough productivity, and that my father would be ashamed of my floundering.  So I spent most of my time surrounded by friends, most of whom had never known my father or really understood our relationship, and many of whom I'd only made since his death.  I wasted a lot of time hanging out with friends, and I'm still not sure how beneficial it was for me.  On one hand, I desperately needed to feel like I belonged... that I was part of a family. I love my Mother.  I really, desperately, love my mother, even though our relationship has been a never-ending quest for her love and acceptance for me... but from a thousand miles away, and with few phonecalls and very little day-to-day interaction, I had no real sense of being in a unit with her.  I was lost and alone, though, and at 3 AM, who else could I call that had any sense of obligation towards me?  My last voicemail from my dad had been automatically deleted by the phone company, and even if it hadn't, I couldn't respond to his request to call him back.  So I called Mom.  I told her I hadn't slept in forever... that I'd eaten, but not for at least six hours... that I was exhausted and not sure if I could really pull-off this semester... that I was so far behind I didn't think I would ever catch up... that I couldn't focus... that I felt like a complete and utter failure and I was tired of living this way.  She told me I couldn't give up on school.  Go to the doctor.  Get some meds.  Take those meds.  Go to a therapist.  Buckle down and get through the next few months and then it would be over.  Then I could move on.
So there I was, all two-hundred forty five pounds of me, describing to the nurse my symptoms and circumstances, and that I wanted to discuss with the doctor my insomnia and depression.
The nurse nodded, wrote some stuff down, then handed me a pamphlet for the University Counseling Center's version of Weight Watchers.  Were it not for the fact that I'm more melancholic than aggressive in my outrage, I probably would have taken the opportunity to point out to her that it's probably not a good idea to fat shame somebody already suffering from depression, including and especially if that person is suffering from postmortem depression after a parent died from heart disease (of which, you know, the biggest single factor is this crazy shit called stress).  She asked me if I was on a "weight loss program" because clearly I was obese and that was my biggest problem.  Forget the reason I had walked into that clinic.  I numbly responded that I did an hour of cardio three days a week and a half hour of strength training twice per week and did yoga.  She raised an eyebrow and said, "uh-huh" before telling me the doctor would be right in. 
For the record, the doctor was much more helpful and didn't discuss my weight.  At all.  Clearly, my problem was that I was suffering postmortem depression and insomnia, and that I felt very isolated as a midwesterner in the deep South who had lost her most tangible connection to home the same day she lost a parent.  He advised me on ways to try and deal with my insomnia without medication and prescribed some very mild anti-anxiety medication and referred me to a counselor he knew at the counseling center he thought would jive well with me.  He reminded me to avoid caffeine, especially after noon, and to avoid naps after 2 PM.  He told me to come back and see him in a month, to see how things were working and he assured me that even though I felt like the most fucked up person on campus, to trust him when he said I wasn't.
That doctor saved my life.  I still didn't make as clean and triumphant a return to my normal self.  Shit, I still haven't.  I still grieve every day.  When Father's Day rolls around (aka Tomorrow) I still feel a little weepy.  I still spent a slightly abnormal amount of time staring at my drink when my cousin (my dad's goddaughter) twirled around the dance floor a week ago with her dad while a cheesy song played about how Fathers are the first men who really love their daughters and how much trust it takes for them to give those girls away to other men.  I'm still dealing with that grief in a very real way, and what's more, I'm still dealing with all the things in my life that were thrown into chaos the day my father left this world.... and all that is not wrong.  Is it maybe depressing for some people that I write about/talk about my father so much?  Sure... but I talked about him a lot when he was alive.  Is two years a long time to take to "get over" a death?  Maybe, but considering that I spent the first six months after he died desperately trying to keep plodding on so that I could get through college, get my expensive, but mostly ornamental, degree,  and THEN and only THEN deal with what had happened, I'm thinking two years plus really isn't that bad... and why do I even have to "get over" it in the first place?  What the hell does "getting over it" even LOOK like?  The fact of the matter is that my relationship with my father was definitive for me.  He was my best friend, my adviser, my crisis manager, my confidant, and made the best galabki I've ever had.  He was the family historian-- my tutor in what it meant to be part of our family.  He taught me how to deal with people, how to ride a bike, how to use a table saw, how to plant a rose bush, and how to make a pizza.  He taught me how to do a lay-up, how to adjust my volume during a speech to keep people captivated, and how gentrification works by taking me to Detroit's Indian Village when I was learning to drive. ("I could have bought one of these houses in the 70s for a pittance, fixed it up like I fixed up our house, sold it in the 90s, and bought a farm to retire on before I hit fifty.")  He gave better fashion advice than my mom.  He believed in me and my inherent human potential more than anybody else in my life.  So yeah, it's taking me a while to adjust to not having him in my life. Sorry, guys, but that's my reality.

I didn't embark on this post with any one thesis in mind.  I feel like there's a lot of things I could point to as a teachable moment... about health and wellness care and medical ethics, about fat shaming, about bereavement, about what it means to be a family, but seeing as Father's Day is upon us, I'll leave y'all with this:
We all have relationships that are definitive for us.  All the crap out there about how we as individuals need to be strong and define ourselves only as we are without our relationships having any bearing on that is just that-- crap.  Human beings are fundamentally social creatures... and tribal ones at that.  So this Father's Day, think about the great people in your life, men and women, who define for you a piece of your being.  Think about them, reach out to them, and make sure they know how much they mean to you.  The last words I said to my dad before he died were "I love you," and for that, I am eternally grateful.

One Millenial's Comments on Abortion

I grew up in a very rural town in Michigan.  There were more churches than grocery stores or gas stations.  In my county, it was considered pretty much a given that it was meaningless to run for a local office with a "D" pinned next to your name.  What's more, the vast majority of my family is Catholic.  So, based on those indicators, it would be pretty easy to assume that my stance is pretty firmly anti-abortion... and, to some extent, you would be right.  On a personal level, I find abortion to be at the very least cruel and at the very worst damning.  Unless I was literally carrying an already completely inviable child, I would very likely do everything I could to avoid an abortion.  Like most Christians, I consider human life sacred.  My Sunday mornings growing up consisted of waking up early, walking to church with my Dad, then going home to eat breakfast while watching the Sunday Morning political circuit and having lively discussions with both my parents.  I was part of a very small group of political nerds at my high school, and I had the pleasure of studying under teachers who represented a broad spectrum of social and political beliefs, ranging from free-range hippies to thinly-veiled neo-fascists and theocrats.  Now, of course none of these teachers really "forced" their views on their students, but I genuinely believe that it is impossible to discuss most of the "core" subjects taught in public schools without betraying at least a little of whatever political views one holds.  All this is to say that, considering my provincial background up until college, I have the pleasure of saying I have benefited from having a lot of different ideas about a lot of different issues flung at me over my childhood.
As a college student, I've taken many classes specifically because I wanted more of those ideas flung at me.  I like being challenged, and I like having my existing beliefs challenged.  I've never been especially dogmatic, and even at my most rigidly religious (in the sense of daily practice) I've always had the opinion that proselytizing my personal beliefs 24/7 by scolding other people for their lack of righteousness is not going to get me any more inner peace or bring my God any more joy than diagramming every sentence in the Bible would help me understand its core messages. (Surely, there must be someone out there who has already done it anyway) One key course in both challenging, forming, and reforming my views on many issues, was a class I took on Medical Ethics from a Religious viewpoint.  We studied and discussed the views held by certain religions (nearly always included were what I like to call the "Big 5": Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism) related to a variety of serious questions in medical ethics.  We discussed issues ranging from euthanasia to life support (and the removal thereof) to organ donation (and selling) to, yes, abortion, and lots of places in-between.  My main takeaway from the course: whatever your beliefs are, if there is a legal channel to make sure they are known and which will reduce liability on the part of the doctors, hospital, and your next-of-kin, by all means, make sure it is squared away, no matter how young and itinerant you may be.  Living wills are for everybody.  I was surprised, in many cases, by how many different perspectives can exist on a single ethical question. 
Onto the meat of the day: abortion.  The primary question that defines, for most religions, is when "ensoulment" occurs.  In other words, when does a fetus go from being a blob of cells which can barely be distinguished from any other mammal, to being a "person?"  For Buddhists, for instance, ensoulment occurs at conception.  This makes the Buddhist stance on abortion pretty firm: abortion is equivalent to murder, and murder of a human being is the worst thing anybody can do because a human rebirth is incredibly precious.  It is only in human form that a person can strive for, and theoretically achieve, Nirvana.  To cheat anybody, even a fetus conceived during rape or incest, at the chance for Nirvana, is just plain wrong.  For nearly every other religious group, though, there are varying levels of consideration for abortion.  Most Western traditions, until the 20th century, generally had fluid notions of when ensoulment occurred, although the key indicator was usually when a pregnant woman first felt the child move in her womb. 
My personal view actually became more conservative as a result of this course.  Before the course, I was pretty radically pro-choice, not in the least because of a lot of angst I had over seeing girls I'd grown up with, a few of whom I consider close friends, get pregnant and have children waaaaaaaay before most people my age would be comfortable with even the idea of parental responsibility.  Had I gotten pregnant before taking that course, there's a very real possibility that I would not have "chosen life," as so many of my pro-life friends, family, neighbors, and random people driving minivans with too many bumper stickers advertising their righteousness, would say.  However, since this course, my views of my own ethical conduct regarding abortion have evolved.  Odds are, as long as my partner and I remain unmarried, I would probably, in discussion with him, elect an open adoption, preferably with somebody I already know and trust. (I actually have a mental list of the first five couples I would go to)  Would I have a shotgun wedding in a maternity gown?  No.  I don't feel like "whoops!  We got knocked up!" is a wise foundation for a marriage, and I believe that the longer a couple stays together before starting a family, the better able they are to adjust to and recognize the changes and challenges of parenting.  Personally, I would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to ensoulment.
My political alignment regarding abortion has evolved since that course, albeit with more subtlety than my personal views.  Largely, this is where my parents' influence comes in... I've always had more pragmatic views on a lot of issues, because my father, an engineer, raised me to do my very best to remove my emotions as much as possible from major decisions... to let numbers and research and a very careful, methodical weighing of options guide me to the most effective, reasonable conclusion.  Therefore, the whole "pro-life" versus "pro-choice" argument as it presently exists does very little for me.  Technically, I still consider myself "pro-choice" because I don't believe in foisting my religious beliefs on others as a matter of policy, and there are many serious ethical concerns with banning abortion (ie, doctors being unable, through red tape and bureaucratic nonsense, to perform medically necessary abortions on women whose lives are immediately threatened as a result of their pregnancy, resulting in the deaths of people's mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters) however, because I do have ethical concerns about abortion itself (and, in some cases, abortion providers), I don't really believe in not making an effort  to reduce abortion rates.
Therefore, my number-one political issue, at least attached to abortion, doesn't deal directly with the performance of abortions or the banning thereof.  Rather, I support a varied approach at reducing the many elements that result in a woman seeking abortion.  I see abortion as a symptom of other social ills: lack of social support for parents, especially mothers; rape; lack of access to contraception; lack of varied, scientifically-founded sex-ed; social and economic factors that lead young people to wait longer to marry; lack of a culture of strong marriages; and especially, lack of economic opportunity for young people. Studies have shown that access to contraception can reduce abortion rates.  Makes sense to me, based on personal experience.  A very dear, very close friend of mine, became pregnant in high school.  She was sexually active, although had only ever had one partner, her first serious boyfriend, and she wanted to go on birth control.  However, she didn't have a car to personally drive the 30 minutes to the nearest public health office, and she knew there was no way she could talk to her parents about going on birth control.  So, I offered to take her to the public health office myself, and promised to go through the exam too, so that she would feel more comfortable.  Because there was only one OB-GYN serving basically twenty different health centers within a hundred miles, (due to lack of funding) the vast majority in Detroit and Flint, we had to make our appointments several months in advance.  When the day came, a blizzard hit, making the roads impassable.  My friend assured me that she would suck it up and try talking to her mom.  She got pregnant less than six months after that.  Now, the resulting little boy has indeed been a blessing, and she has since married the father of her son and had a daughter with him as well, but, especially for the first couple of years after that happened, I had some serious guilt.
In terms of fiscal policy, a lot of conservatives shy away from providing public funding for contraceptives.  As it was often said during arguments over Obamacare, "Why should we pay for young women to have sex?"  Put simply: young people are not going to stop having sex just because they lack access to contraceptives.  Instead, they're either going to have to spend their own money on contraceptives, or, as is often the case, just not use them. The result would likely be increases in instances of STDs and unwanted pregnancies.  If young people become parents before they're more established in their careers, or even before they have jobs in the first place, they face serious logistical obstacles to getting jobs and establishing careers in the first place, due to their parental obligations, they are not going to be as economically productive.  That lack of economic productivity results in both decreased revenues at all levels of government, as well as an increase on how much they end up costing the government in entitlements.  The solution isn't to decrease funding for public health and education programs to force those young parents to either somehow make it with the cards stacked against them or become second-class citizens.  Rather, if we pay for those young people to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place (and make sure they know how to use those resources and where to get them), the government can increase the odds of avoiding having to spend money on entitlements down the road, and potentially increase potential revenue, eventually evening-out or even profiting-from that initial expense.
From a cultural standpoint, we have a real problem with marriage.  As a young person, most of the messages I received from outside my immediate family was that marriage is a drag.  The only cool thing about marriage, according to the media, was having a wedding... a big, extravagant soiree well worth tens of thousands of dollars.  May as well throw a party, because from the moment you return from your honeymoon, if not sooner, your marriage will be pure misery.  You will fight nonstop.  The sex will be awful.  You will have all these completely ridiculous expectations and responsibilities, and odds are, within five years, your wedded bliss will conclude in a nasty, messy divorce in which at least one member of the family will be completely screwed.  Lucky for me, I had a pretty good marriage to serve as a model for what it can be.  Were my parents perfect spouses for each other?  Not always.  They fought sometimes, usually cyclically, and whenever my mother's thyroid levels fluctuated. Was their marriage something out of a tv show?  Nope.  Not at all.  However, they did both grow as individuals as a result of their relationship, and they made it work, even when folks around them believed they were on a slippery slope, and at the bottom was divorce court. I saw how being together healed them as individuals.  I, therefore, see marriage as a natural, highly beneficial state of being.  Is it for everybody?  No.  Does it have a serious image problem with most young people?  Definitely.  The biggest obstacle, in my mind, to entering into and maintaining a solid marriage is one of finances: There's a ridiculous amount of pressure to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a wedding.  If the whole shebang is paid for by parents, that's a different story, but that doesn't happen very often anymore.  So, that leaves the burden of a very, very expensive party on the couple... money that could be better allocated to saving for a home.... speaking of which...
We Americans have a real issue with housing.  Yeah, it burst our bubble good and screwed the economy over, but we also just have a problem with having housing that really does not fit our needs nor our budget.  In the basically suburban town I live in with my partner, finding an affordable single bedroom apartment (which we see as being all we really need or would use) is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Quick.  Go look at Craigslist.  Select any random US City.  How many single bedroom apartments can you find that cost less than $500 per month?  (I still follow the guideline my late maternal grandmother told me she was taught growing up during the depression: Never pay more than 1/4 of your income on housing. If a couple makes a combined $2000, roughly full-time minimum wage, that puts the cap for rent at $500)  How many of those have access to public transportation? See what I mean?  When a young married couple has to strain to pay rent, there will almost certainly be more strain on the marriage.
What does all this have to do with abortion?  The lack of stable relationships and high financial stress on young people contributes to a young woman's sense of hopelessness when confronted with an unwanted pregnancy.  Marriage, in a sense, provides more security for that young woman.  If she's in a legal union with the father of her child, she stands a far dimmer chance of being abandoned by that man simply because he is afraid of fatherhood.  They can better pool their resources.  If that marriage isn't already strained by undue financial stress, the extra expenses of parenthood can be better managed.  All in all, strong marriages make strong individuals, and that makes parenthood less frightening... or at least makes it more of a team sport.
Of course, a larger pool of better paid jobs, and access to education and training to prepare for those jobs (especially if it doesn't come with a hefty pricetag and house-level debt) can also reduce abortion rates.  A woman who can provide for herself and her child regardless of her marital status is less fearful of an unwanted pregnancy, especially if she has access to quality healthcare services and paid maternity leave.  Moreover, she is likely to have better health care access in the first place, allowing her greater access to contraception and reproductive healthcare. 

I see all of these various efforts as much, much more productive in terms of reducing abortion rates than waving around gruesome images of stillborn fetuses or partial-birth abortions.  However, their biggest impediment, in terms of promoting, is that they don't really appeal to people's emotions, and really, that's probably 90% of the abortion debate.  Every. Single. Day. when I log onto facebook, somewhere in my newsfeed is an outraged post about abortion.  Conservatives are pissed off about baby-killing sluts killing babies.  Liberals are pissed-off about anti-scientific, slut-shaming theocrats imposing their archaic rules upon their precious uteri.  Libertarians are just plain pissed-off about everything.  My biggest frustration? Try to have a reasonable discussion with any of those groups about the serious ethical and policy issues presented by their view, and possible alternatives that still maintain the core of their cause without necessarily alienating the other side, and it turns into a bloodbath.  I piss off the liberals in my life, albeit nowhere near as much as the conservatives in my life.  Do I sometimes overstep?  Oh hell yeah.  It comes with being opinionated and having limited time to flesh out a real, substantive argument when I'm checking facebook during my twenty-minute break at work.  However, this ideology of the question of abortion being a zero-sum, black and white debate is bullocks.  It prevents everybody from being able to move forward, in a meaningful way, so that everybody receives the maximum benefit while reducing overall pain, suffering, and loss of life.  We need to stop existing in echo chambers and learn to listen, really, listen to each other.  At the core of each side's arguments is a nugget of truth... and we can all benefit from being challenged a little.  It makes us better.  It makes us stronger. And isn't that really what America is all about?

Coming of Age during a Recession and its Implications on Traditional Gender Roles, or: Honey, I'm Home. Yes, of Course I'll Make Dinner.

Both my fiance and I are solidly millenials. I was just starting college when the stock market collapsed.  My fiance was an upperclassman in high school.  We've both tried to work through college, and we've both, at one point or another, had serious doubts as to whether taking on thousands of dollars of student loan debt was worth a sheet of paper that probably wouldn't even guarantee a job.  While I've had relative success at finding and keeping jobs, the "mancession," has hit my fiance pretty hard.  The result has been that, although neither of us feel that it is his Godly-mandated purpose in life to be the breadwinner of the family, there is a very real possibility that he simply will not be able to do that.  Many times, we have sat up at night discussing what we felt "marriage" was about and how it would make us feel if, say, our marriage wasn't like our parents' marriages.  Both of us agreed that, in some ways, we definitely want our marriage to deviate from the standard set by our parents' marriages.  While my parents' marriage lasted up until the day my father died, over twenty years, the pressure my father felt to be the quintessential "breadwinner" definitely put undue pressure on him, especially in lean years, and meant that we probably took longer as a family to invest in my mother's education and career than we would have if they both hadn't had the notion, at least for a while, that it would be better for my mother to be the more domestic partner.  In all reality, my father had a lot of skills and interests that would have made him a phenomenal stay-at-home dad.  He was an excellent cook, a very skilled gardener, and a definite homebody.  He regularly told me that he really didn't feel the need for friends outside his family, that he would rather spend every day with me than with any of his colleagues.  My mother, on the other hand, can't stand to be cooped up, and spoke of her time as a cloistered housewife with intense disdain.  She's a woman who needs to be outside the home so she doesn't lose her mind.  My fiance's parents, on the other hand, seemed to strike a more balanced approach from the get-go.  They both worked, simply because they didn't have the luxury of having enough money for one of them stay at home, partly because they had three kids.  Because the course of my parents' marriage forced them to rethink their ideas about marriage and gender roles, they didn't prime me for any specific model of marriage or femininity.  If anything, they prepared me to be fully independent, and so to be able to fill whatever role I need to in order to make a relationship work.  I view that as one of my greatest assets given to me by my parents.  Personally, I feel just as comfortable with the notion of being a stay-at-home mom and fulltime housewife as I do with being a career woman.  My biggest concern, as a woman who hopes to one day be a mother, is managing the logistics of those duties which biology pretty much dictates as being mine, while also managing a career, if my husband cannot make enough money to support us.  I know I want to breast feed for at least the first six months of my children's lives, if at all possible, but working a standard 8 hour shift five times per week necessitates that I have access to a breast pump, privacy, refrigeration, and long enough and frequent enough breaks to pump according to my schedule, and a short enough commute that I can safely transport said milk from my workplace to my home.  I have no doubts that my fiance will make a phenomenal, nurturing father, who will be willing to do as much childcare as is needed of him.  In my present career path, though, the odds are that I will need to ask him to do a LOT of childcare, potentially limiting his own career, and, since I am much farther along in my own career, advantages of being older notwithstanding, odds are that, unless he decides to join the Army (an idea we've thrown around a lot) or embark on some other career that has the potential to amply provide for a whole family (provided my own frugality), we will likely be depending on my income.  This presents some definite problems where our families are concerned.  As enlightened as my mother likes to consider herself, she's still enough of a traditionalist to look down her nose at a man who does not work outside the home, while I have no problem with my fiance being a househusband.  As for his family, they're still mostly traditional, Southern country folks who would consider far more trivial things far more scandalous, though we have the advantage of his sister's strong rebellious streak and career as a bartender as a potential foil to make us look much, much more conventional and boring.

And perhaps that's the most important point.  The economy may force us into nontraditional gender roles, particularly where our marriage is concerned, and indeed, we may very well not be remarkably unusual in that respect, but as two white heterosexuals with a stated goal of 2-4 offspring, the desire to one day own a home, and engage in such mundane pursuits as attending little league games and dance recitals, we really are far more traditional than society gives us credit for.  Our overall goals aren't all that distinct from the goals of our parents.  The difference is that we don't assume that one of us must, or indeed, will be able, to occupy the domestic sphere, although we would certainly prefer to have that option, particularly when our children our young.  We don't see those traditional gender roles as being necessarily good or bad, so long as they help a couple to realize both their individual goals and their goals for their family.  Some women just aren't prepared to be authoritative breadwinners, and so conforming to the traditional role of submissive wife and mother comes quite naturally to them, but for other women, being forced to fulfill that role is a waste of their God-given talents.  On the other hand, some men naturally fill the role of authoritative breadwinner and protector with ease, while others would be perfectly happy to care for home, hearth, and offspring, so long as they didn't feel emasculated in so doing.  Most people, though, have the capacity for either role, or for neither, depending on the gifts and talents they bring to a marriage.  I feel very strongly that motherhood will one day be a very, very important facet of my life, although the way that is realized will depend, quite profoundly, on my family's economic position in upcoming years.  If my fiance is able to break out of the rut this "mancession" has placed him in and thrive,  I would be very willing to set aside my career in favor of providing childcare and maintaining our home.  However, I'm not willing to set aside a career that may bring my family more economic prosperity just to fulfill a social construction of motherhood that doesn't jive with the reality of here and now.

My Shampoo Hurdle

I'm slowly coming clean.

I really, really struggle with hair products.
See, I have this really annoying straight, fine hair... but I have a lot of it!
So, when I use stuff meant for "thin" hair, my hair usually reacts by either turning too big or too dry.
Same goes for when I use products meant for "oily" hair (since, you know, my hair shows grease really easily).
So, I end up spending a lot of time on a hair see-saw... Hair looking too flat and greasy? Buy something to add volume!  Great, now my hair is Southern Beauty Pageant big...and still a bit greasy... Buy something to fight oil! ....Aaand now my hair is dry and flat and splitting.... BUY SOMETHING TO REPAIR IT! ...and now my hair is oily again.  Dammit.  Part of me is very, very thankful I usually wear a bandana to hold my hair back at work, so I don't have to worry about bad hair days... another part of me would desperately like to go back to when I sported a Rachel Maddow that simultaneously got me hit on by a lot more ladies and got me the occasional hate glare from blue haired biddies... Life was so much simpler then... if it was a little on the greasy side, nobody noticed... they just thought I got a little carried away with my pomade. (Joke's on them: I don't like adding extra products to the mix because... well... why complicate an already complicated matter?)  On the other hand, I decided when my dad died to grow out my hair before I get married... more as a sort of arbitrary way to make sure I wasn't just using a new domestic relationship as a cure for my grief than anything else...so for better or worse, I'm stuck with long tresses. (On the plus side, I did a little research, and if I can stand keeping my hair long as long as I'll need to in order to do so, I could sell it for several hundreds of dollars, although honey-brown hair isn't in as high demand as, say, dark black or blond hair)

So, as part of my adventure into saving money and trying to live a more sustainable life, I tried out making my own shampoo.  I hate the term "homemade" because in my mind, that implies "made from scratch," and let me tell you right now: I have no patience for soapmaking.  None whatsoever. Instead I rely, for all of my DIY cleaning and personal care products, on Dr. Bronner's liquid castille soap (I prefer the almond scented, since it lends itself to being used by itself or in combination with essential oils) as the base for just about everything... except my laundry/dish soap... then I use their bar soap.  Anyway, I found a recipe and tweaked it just a bit for my particular hair situation... Here's the base recipe:

1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup liquid castille soap
1/2 teaspoon jojoba oil
5 drops choice of essential oil

Mix thoroughly in bottle.  Shake again before using.  Use as any other shampoo.

For my own recipe, I substituted almond oil for jojoba oil, and used about 1 full tablespoon, because I've found castille soap to be excessively drying for my hair. My essential oil of choice was Geranium oil, partly because I just like the combination of Geranium and almond (I use a mix of almond oil, shea butter, and geranium oil as a body butter.  It's pretty divine.) and partly because I read various sources which suggest Geranium oil is good for fine hair and for promoting hair growth.  So, I set to my mixing, then, when I took my evening shower, took it for a test drive.
 The lather was promising, and the scent was, as expected, pretty divine. It rinsed out easily, leaving my wet hair feeling smooth, but disconcertingly "squeaky."  This normally doesn't bode well for my hair, as it usually results in dry, straw-like hair. However, once it air-dried, I found it to be soft, supple, shiny, and although not as full as I would prefer, not terribly flat.  I'm sure if I were to put it in curlers, it would come out looking quite beautiful.  My partner agreed with my quality assessment (I seem to be constantly using him for informal, single-blind trials) so, we'll see how this goes.  Maybe my days on the Hair See-Saw are over.

I'm not betting on it though.

Living on a Prayer

Today, I laid down and cried.
I'd just come home from a pretty stressful day at work... the type of shift when you know, from the moment you walk through the door, that it's just going to be one of those days.  We had a pretty busy lunch rush, and had some contractors come into the store, in the midst of the rush, to move the door chime in the kitchen.  Well, they were different guys than the ones who had been doing the tinkering, and so they needed their hands held by our general manager, so I was left in charge, with two spot-on workers (one of whom, however, was a delivery driver, so he couldn't stay in the store for the duration of the rush) and one slow and inexperienced worker in my charge.  We did the best we could, but I'm still new enough to management that I was definitely feeling the heat and praying our GM would come and relieve me of my post through the end of lunch.  We got through it, but by the end of the rush, we had cleaned out almost all of our prep and desperately needed to get it done so that we didn't start running out of product.  Plus, we still had a food order to put away, cleaning to do, stocking, and all the other minute details that customers never notice until they're not done.  So, I was a little stressed, to say the least. 
My allergies have been acting up for about a week now, so my throat has been getting dry much more easily and I can't project as well when I'm trying  to communicate on the line... plus, my nose has been alternating between being painfully dry and runny beyond control.  It's seasonal allergies, so I know I'm safe to work, but it's very hard to work with food and the public with a bum upper-respiratory system.  Work I must though, seeing as I took off Monday to regain my voice, which had been cracking and squeaking at work on Sunday, and I was scared to death I'd lose my voice if I pushed it much farther.  Monday wasn't a paid sick day.  Folks in restaurants don't get paid sick days.  Those are for people with salaries.  Nope, as hourly workers, a "sick day" translates directly to hours of work that must be made up later in the week, or else that's money lost.  After all the deductions in my paycheck for income tax witholding, Social Security (which I will probably never see), Medicare (ditto.), Payroll taxes, and so on, my real wage is a little under $7/hour.  That's actually an improvement.  I used to make $6.50 an hour in real wages.  (Bear in mind, I do get about half of the money held from each of my paychecks back as part of my tax refund, but that's little comfort on payday)  So, if I miss an 8 hour work day, that's about $50.  If I were sick enough to need to see a doctor, that's another $40 just to be seen.  Throw medication in there and you can see where the expenses add up fast.
I've been supporting both myself and my partner, who was let go from his job after his mother died at the end of last April.  He's had some work, but precious little.  The security company he's been working for has not been getting as many contracts as they used to, mostly due to poor management, and that means fewer chances for him to work.  He's been putting in all the applications he can, but he hasn't had a single interview.  He's a good worker, and takes direction well, but he doesn't have a lot of work experience because he's young and, like was my case, his parents didn't want him working while he was going to school, and he went to college because everybody told him that was the smartest, most reasonable thing he could do, even if it meant taking on a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Luckily, we don't have that much debt.  In fact, compared to the national average, our debts are fairly small.  Between the two of us, we have less than $50K in student loan debt, and less than $2,000 in credit card debt.  If we both were working full time at minimum wage, between the two of us, we could make $27K annually after taxes.  Based on our present living conditions and our fairly bare-bones budget ($1,200 per month), that would leave $12K annually we could allot to paying down our debts.  As it stands, come August, we're going to be moving into a new apartment and paying 40% less rent, and since it's a smaller apartment, the utilities should be lower as well.  The problem is getting to August.  Now, if we could find someone to sublease our current apartment, get some friends and boxes together to help us move, and so on, we could, conceivably, move earlier, but we live in a college town, and spring is the wrong damn time to be looking for someone to take on your apartment.  The point is, we're in a bad way financially, but not because we've been irresponsible.  We did everything we were told to do.  We went to college.  We got jobs.  We lived frugally.  We don't smoke.  We don't drink. I cut his hair myself, every month, in our laundry room.  I stopped getting mine cut after I got all of it cut to the same length.  The only frivolities we spend money on are condoms and the occasional trip to McDonalds.  We haven't been to the movies in over three months (and then, it was because we were both working full time and it had been six months since the last time we'd gone).  We keep our thermostat set low in the winter and don't even use the A/C in the summer.  If we buy anything new, it's usually from Goodwill.  If a new video game comes out that we would like to play, we trade in as many games as we can to get it (or at least bring the price down low enough that we can just skip some other luxury... like maybe cut the meat out of one of our meals), and I have an Etsy shop and a Fiverr page to try and nickel and dime a little extra cash here and there.  I've taken great care to plan our meals so that they're as filling an nutritious as possible for about $100 a month.  I started withdrawing funds from my Kiva account, which I started putting $20/month into my Freshman year. As loans in the third world get repaid, I get a little bit more to eek out a living.  We still live better than many people in many parts of the world, and for that I am very, very thankful.  We've been lucky that, in spite of my working with the public, I managed to dodge the flu this year.  I give credit for that to my making sure I get enough sleep and my very, very careful management of our diets. 
Nonetheless, I'm scared.  The grace period on both of my credit cards is over, and I have one (thankfully, small) private student loan for which payments are due beginning next month.  I'm still waiting to find out about my general student loan repayments, but in the meantime, forbearance is a blessing.  Has my own credit been destroyed?  Yeah, at least for a while. Everything is in my name, so my partner's record is clean. Like I said, once my partner can find work, even if it's minimum wage, we will be fine.  I don't want to get handouts.  I don't want food stamps or welfare.  We don't have kids.  We're young.  We have strong backs and sharp minds and if someone will set us to work for what the federal government deemed was a fair wage in the 1990s, we want to earn our keep... and we don't want that aid, not because we don't believe it should be there, but because we recognize that funds are limited, and we would rather the money be there for people who need it more than us... people who aren't physically or mentally capable of work... people who have kids... people who have elderly family they take care of.  We just have us.
If I'd never gone to a four year college, I wouldn't have this debt hanging over me.  If I'd started working in food service at the ground floor and ascended at the rate I have in the last three years, I'd probably be looking into higher levels of management by now... but I wouldn't have met the love of my life.  If  I hadn't been willing to cover both of us, I wouldn't have had him to come home to.  He may not be able to work much, but he's good to me.  He washes and massages my feet when I come home from work.  He started learning to cook so I wouldn't have to after having cooked all day for complete strangers.  He soothes me when I'm stressed and contentedly listens when I rant about things and people that frustrate me.  I would not be able to throw myself into my job like I do without his emotional support.
Today, I laid down and I cried.  I curled up on our bed and I wept.  My partner came in and asked me what was wrong, and I told him.  Like a deluge, all my fears and insecurities about our state of being leapt from my tongue.  I told him how I felt like a failure.  How I was so ashamed that I couldn't make payments.  How every little moment of luxury I'd allowed myself to enjoy-- the $20 meal at a Mexican restaurant a month earlier, the trip home to visit my mother, the $1 wine cooler I'd had.  My engagement ring, which we'd purchased when he and I were both working full time (A simple topaz and diamond ring that cost $100)-- every one weighed on my heart as a waste, even though they raised my spirits so much.  I told him I was so tired of my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night being about money... that I knew God would provide, but how I desperately hoped He would provide just a little more.  That part of me, a quiet, small part, couldn't bear the thought of the precipice upon which we stood and would rather die than endure potentially falling off that precipice. 
Then it came: his quiet, calm offer: to walk away.  By my own admission, he was the source of my present financial state.  If the only one I had to shelter, feed, clothe, and cure was myself, my wages could do that.  If, when our lease was up, he just moved in with his family and I lived by myself or with roommates, my wages would be more than enough for my existence to be maintained.
I almost couldn't believe my ears, and without a moment's hesitation, came my response:  No.  I need him.  The only effect would be moving the burden of providing for him to somebody else, which just is not an option in my mind... and anyway, I'd already committed to our spending our lives together, maybe not officially.  Maybe not legally or in the eyes of our families and community, but in my heart,  have already ceased to imagine a life without him.  Eventually, either by the sweat of my brow or by his, we will come out of this darkness.  When we do, when we will be stronger for the battles we've fought now. 
I don't think we'll ever be rich, and in my heart, I never want to be financially wealthy.  I don't want seven mansions and a yacht.  I don't want to have buildings named after me.  I don't want to be on the cover of magazines... not because I don't have ambition, but because those ambitions are not what would bring my heart joy.  I want enough money that I can live without fear of losing the roof over my head.  I want enough money that I can support a family.  I don't want excess.  I just want enough.  Anything beyond that is frivolity.  Anything beyond that is for God.  I would not live in abject poverty, but I would not live with more than I need. 
The last time I spoke with my father before he died, he told me: life is not stuff.  His greatest joy was the thought of retiring and having enough money that he and my mother could live out their last days in their home, and that he could garden all day, every day, whenever it was warm enough, and show his eventual grandchildren how to tell when a rosebush needs pine mulch.  This would be possible with enough money, but not that much. He told me that I would probably work, all my life, making somebody else rich... but that wasn't the point.  The point was that my labors would, in all hope, give me the ability to live in comfort, if I had the wisdom to appreciate what I had.
And what do I have?
Not much.  In all truth, I don't own anything.  I have things, but none of them are valuable enough to count for anything, not financially.  The roof over my head is not mine.  The clothes on my back were almost all used by someone else before I got them.  I am, at all times, one very bad day away from losing everything I do have... but I have a partner.  I have a partner who loves me and who wants, desperately, to see me happy... who would rather walk out of my life than have his temporary dependence on me cost my happiness.  With him, I have the hope of one day having a comfortable family.  Yes, we are financially poor, but we are, in essence, the living personification of a crappy Bon Jovi song.  Someday, things will change. 

The Sandwich Bandit

When I was just-barely twenty one, I began working for a popular, internationally known and franchised sandwich shop.  The particular one I worked in was also, conveniently, located inside a grocery store that, while being one of the most profitable companies in the history of that mattering, is also known for its more ridiculous patrons.  So, it only made sense that occasionally, bizarre things happened.  Mostly those bizarre things involved silly outfits and the occasional creeper commenting on how well an employee made a sandwich and then asking for that employee's phone number.  However, this one is special to me, because it also illustrates an important lesson in dealing with "the public."
It was a fairly normal evening at the sandwich shop.  I was still, more or less, a trainee, learning the ropes on night shift.  We closed fairly late compared to a lot of other restaurants in the conservative Southern college town I called home.  I was just draining the tea urns so that they could be scrubbed-out for the next day when a most curious individual graced our threshold.  Had she been standing, she would have stood at around six feet tall, but instead, she rode one of the store's complimentary mobility assistance devices, a noble grey steed that hummed cheerily at her behest.  Her voluminous backside spilled over the sides of the ample seat of her steed and her contact-enhanced amber eyes glared wildly in contrast with her ebony skin.  Her ears and eyebrows were bedazzled with long rows of metal studs while a chrome ring hung from her nose like a bull.  I turned to greet her with a, "Welcome," and "How may I help you?"
"I ordered two of your full size meatball subs earlier, and they weren't fresh," the woman declared.
I apologized, and asked her if she would like to speak to my shift leader.  I fetched my coworker from the kitchen, where she was doing dishes, and on the way back to the dining room, explained the situation.  When we arrived back at the front of the store, my coworker calmly asked the woman what her complaint was.
Again, the woman declared, "I ordered two of your full size meatball subs earlier, and they weren't fresh."  My coworker apologized, and asked if the woman had the receipt from the transaction so she could issue a refund.
The woman sat back and lowered her chin slightly for a moment before raising it defiantly and declaring, with a scowl, "No, my niece was the one who got the sandwiches for me.  Can't you just make me fresh sandwiches?"
My coworker and I looked at each other warily.  The number one issue at our store was food cost.  The owner of our store, an investor who owned most of the locations of this particular franchise within a 50 mile radius, had a laser focus on his bottom line, and so, we were always being chided by our manager for placing one too many tomato slices on a sandwich or not spreading-out the lettuce more.  To that end, the notion of making two sandwiches, ostensibly for free, was out of the question, even if it was what the customer wanted.  We would try to call our manager, we told the woman, and while my coworker manned the phone, I set myself to continue cleaning the store, partly so we would not fall behind and have to stay in the store later than necessary after close, but also to escape the death glares of the woman riding the Rascal.
Minutes passed like hours, not in the least because every 60 seconds or so, the woman on the Rascal inquired, with increasing anger, "Ain't you got your manager on the phone yet?" to which I would reply, "My shift leader is in the back on the phone with her right now."  The woman began to pace atop her glorious steed, making figure eights in the dining room, and all the while glaring at me as though she were mere moments from rising up and shanking me with her car keys.
Finally, my coworker emerged from the office, walked up to the woman, and declared, in the way all service workers do when explaining a policy they know will displease a customer, "I'm sorry, but unless you have the sandwiches from earlier and a receipt, there's nothing we can do but apologize."
The woman's nostrils flared, and her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel of her steed. Her lips pursed before she declared, "You're both useless," before speeding out of the store.

The whole situation had been fairly bizarre, but we concluded that odds were, she was probably trying to just get a pair of free sandwiches.  I posted on facebook about the strange encounter, but thereafter we closed the store like any other night.

A few days later, I was visiting a friend of mine who worked in another store of the same type in our town.  I told him about what happened.
"What did she look like," my friend asked.  I told him, and he began laughing.  Curious, I asked him what was so funny.
"Oh, that's the Sandwich Bandit," he said, "She tries to pull that story every time she sees someone who looks new... it's always meatball sandwiches, always purchased by her niece, and always more than one.  She's tried it on me a few times, and always when we're busy, hoping I'll just give her food to avoid a scene.  She probably won't come back though.  Like I said, she only tries it with new people, so you should be fine now."

Two weeks later, as I was cleaning the sandwich line and refilling bins of vegetables, I was surprised to see, gliding over the threshold, none other than the Sandwich Bandit.  I greeted her as I would any other customer, hoping she was just in to get food and pay for it like any other customer.  She glared at me, her nostrils flaring, and declared, "I sent my niece in earlier to get three full size meatball sandwiches--"
"You can stop there ma'am. Let me guess, they weren't fresh?"
"No. They weren't."
I smiled, "Well, ma'am, do you have a receipt?"
"No."
"Do you have the sandwiches?"
"No."
"Well then, ma'am, just like we told you when you came in two weeks ago and it was two sandwiches--"
"I couldn't have come in here two weeks ago.  I was out of town."
"Ma'am, if you want, I could go get my phone, pull up facebook, and show you exactly which day you came in.  I posted about it on facebook so my friends would know our refund policy."
I could feel the burning contempt the Sandwich Bandit felt for me at that very moment.  It filled the air.  Sharply, she snapped, "Let me go get my niece."  Then, slowly she backed out of the store, glaring at me all the while, her Rascal beeping like an eighteen wheeler.

She never came back.