La bella luna

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

I love the moon and I still haven’t lost my fascination with it, still seek it in the sky, and always feel better for seeing it. As a girl, I especially loved when the full moon would shine onto my bed pillow and I could sleep in the moonlight. Riding in the back seat of the car, I would silently talk to the moon as it followed us home.

The man in the moon never made sense to me and I don’t think I’m alone --  not with so many moon goddesses so beautifully named:  Selene, Jezanna, Britomartis, Chang-O, Hina, Artemis, Quilla, Diana, Kaguya-hime, Ix Chel. I never really thought of the moon as a deity, but more as a gift from a deity to ease fears in the dark, a night light hung in the sky to better see the beauty of the world, reminding us that we are loved.

I birthed both my children on a full moon. Now, decades later, I can still remember the feeling as my first labor began:  the sobering realization that there was no reverse, no way back, no stopping, only going forward until we were done, on the other side of it, and changed. It didn’t feel so much like being out of control, more acknowledging that I was following into unknown territory, led by my laboring body.

I’ve never been surfing, but the metaphor is apt:  stay on top of the wave to not let it overwhelm, to avoid wipeout. Really, riding a contraction with one’s breathing is not any more unlikely than riding 8-foot waves on a surfboard. But I was lucky; my labors were short. It’s easier to surf successfully for five straight hours than for 20.

At the critical point of pushing the baby out, I felt another energy assisting me. I later could only describe it as a state of grace. Different from the endorphin rush, the relief, the utter joy of birthing a child, this grace energy seemed another wavelength and of an origin outside myself. It felt like light -- not blinding sunlight, but cool, reflective moonlight.

When I held my daughter seconds after her birth, she looked straight into my eyes with an expression of deep concentration, and she was glowing with this very soft light. My son’s birth ran into some complications, but all resolved itself in the last few seconds. Again, the need to push was accompanied by what felt to be cosmic assistance that provided measured calm in the urgency of the moment.

As I held my son for the first time, he stretched an arm onto my neck and opened one eye to look at me. He’d had a rough trip; I told him he’d never have to make that difficult journey again. We rested together; he nursed and I felt him relax into sleep.

That evening, the moon was as full as can be, shining brightly in my window. I had a lot to tell it.

Into that good night

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

I’m now retired, but my job required a bit of traveling -- nothing like Willy Loman, but enough traveling to keep life interesting. One night I had retired for the evening in a New York City hotel room, when it occurred to me that this was something my mother had never done in her life. Most definitely not a clinging vine, my mother had been a resourceful and gifted woman who had nevertheless never done this simple thing -- been on her own in a hotel away from home.

The same could be said of my father. Both my parents were from a time when one made the best of life’s exigencies. It sometimes took all their attention to respond to fortune’s quite outrageous slings and arrows. By watching, I learned from them to roll with life’s oscillations and to get up and on with it, even after everything blew apart.

Neither my mother nor father had held a grudge against their lives. I’d never heard rancor about what happened to them -- the turn of fortune’s wheel, the cards they’d been dealt -- either individually or collectively. My parents had often lived reactively, at times too burdened to do much more than get through a day, but they always came back; they kept the ability to rebound, kept a basic and fierce love of live.

That is how I knew each of them was dying -- when first my father and then, nine years later, my mother lost interest in life. For both, it happened in the second week of a hospital stay after suddenly being near death. Each realized, when stabilized and out of acute crisis, that the body could not come back one more time. That had been the pattern in my family -- someone almost dying, but recovering in what seemed like resurrection. They escaped, lucked out, and we all rejoiced that we hadn’t quite yet needed to live with death, get to know him, share our meals with him.

My father, whose poor heart could not keep up with the blood’s relentless flow, had said in disgust, “I figure either you live or you die.” His heart’s weakness limited his life so much it wasn’t worth living. But when I replied, “I think you live and you die,” he looked at me intently and then relaxed, as if he’d finally remembered some important detail he’d been trying to recall but that had been eluding him.

My mother, exhausted by a fever, repeatedly asked me, “What do you think, honey? What should I do now?” I think her question was whether she had any decisions left, whether living or dying were up to her. Her face had the same expression I’d seen on a raccoon injured by a truck -- confused that the body was not behaving as it should, unsure whether to thrash in panic or close one’s eyes in acceptance. I stroked her hands, her brow, and kept answering, “I’m not sure you need to do anything right now.” It seemed to satisfy her; she patted my hand and said, “Then I’ll just wait.”

When my father died, I felt my soul had been burned, as if with a brand. All at once, I worried about my husband or my young daughter dying. At my mother’s death, the finality hit me; I realized I had never experienced life without my mother’s heartbeat in the world. The night before the funeral, my sister and I read aloud to each other passages or poems that reminded us of mom and dad. Then we, orphans now, made warm milk and honey to drink.

As the blessing of sleep came, I felt wrapped in great, black, feathered wings -- a loving, warm, and silent embrace.

Sportin' Life was right

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

What is it with this “mean girl” thing? Why are we focusing on stupid teen-aged behavior? Is high school really the most formative experience we have had? Why feature such ugliness in everything from films to news stories? As with two-year-olds having tantrums, doesn’t the attention only make it worse?

There was a time when women were portrayed as only competitive and catty with other women. I’m thinking of Clare Booth Luce’s The Women, which is as much a betrayal as what the collaborators of Vichy France did. The repeatedly told story about women was that they are never friends, but nasty rivals -- with the exception of the too-good girl, who usually dies as a plot device -- think Beth in Little Women or Kay in Stage Door.

Were women really like this? Are these portrayals true reflections? To paraphrase Jane Austen, all the stories have been written by men -- or, in the case of Booth Luce, by women who aped alpha male behavior in order to have their power.

It ain’t necessarily so. I have seen, and been privileged to have in my life, profoundly deep women friendships, filled with humor, honesty, and loyalty. These “girl friends” are exuberant, irreverent, creative, caring -- and being in a group amplifies all these features.

I have been with a group of four friends, waiting in line to buy ice cream one summer evening, when a woman came up to us and said, “Can I join you? You’re having much more fun than the people I’m with.” And we all laughed together until the ice cream was gone.

I have been among 11 women in a Reiki training who, when one of us spoke of a fear, all surrounded her to put a reassuring hand on her, to provide safety and comfort, to protect her. Women friends give me inspiration, solace, encouragement, joy. We have rejoiced over births, wept over cancer, laughed at ourselves, stood up for one another. Life would be barren without them.

I’m thinking this is another case of vandalism, this trashing of women’s friendships. Women friends nurture one another, so the big lie (tell it often enough and people will believe it) says women are opponents. It’s the classic switch -- substitute something for its opposite. The most obvious of these? Freud’s penis envy. (I know subsequent students of psychology have broadened his theory to the metaphorical level, but initially it was just about the penis, literally.)

When I first heard of penis envy, I wondered if it was a joke. Really, considering what a penis can do and what a womb can do, which body part might logically be met with envy? A womb is the source of new life. Having such power is something to be revered, respected, or, if one is fearful and ungrounded, resented. There could absolutely be womb envy, but penis envy is a complete reversal of the facts.

What other reversals do you suppose are out there?

Ole!

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

After seeing Carmen, the 1983 flamenco dance film by Carlos Saura and Antonio Gades, I started taking flamenco classes just to satisfy my curiosity:  how does the movement feel? From the first, flamenco seemed to suit my body and way of moving, but there was something else, something I only understood when I saw it in dance class. 

Every woman there, no matter her age, size, shape, or ability, was transformed with even the simplest flamenco dance movement; each woman at once moved as if she felt herself to be beautiful. It was something to see, looking down along the rows of women, all facing the mirror, and each suddenly bright with the sense of her own beauty. I’d never seen it happen in any other dance class, nor any other gathering of women.

This is one of the most attractive aspects of flamenco for me -- that it celebrates a real woman’s body. Not the flat coat-hangers of American ballet, women who dance flamenco, with as much strength and endurance as ballerinas, are beautifully and roundly shaped. Their hips and breasts don’t slow their dancing, or get in the way of the movement, or interrupt the line of the choreography. Flamencas dance intricate steps with precision, passion, and intense womanly beauty. And they are still dancing well past the usual retirement age for dancers.

In 1985, I attended a dance performance in New York of Carmen by Antonio Gades and his company. Lead dancer Cristina Hoyos danced Carmen onstage, although she had a different role in the 1983 film. (There is a wonderful scene in the film that you know is based on a real encounter: Cristina confronts Antonio about his choice of Carmen, whom he is asking her to train. He says that the dancer he chose has what he wants; Cristina nods and sighs, saying, “Yes, she is young.”)

Cristina was a brilliant Carmen, nearly on fire. And though she did not dance the title role in the film Carmen, she danced the leads in Blood Wedding and El Amor Brujo, the other two films in that astonishing trilogy. In all of them, her dancing is electrifying, her presence regal, her body strong, slender, and curvy. 

Twelve years later, in 1997, Cristina Hoyos brought her own dance company to New York City. It was clear that she encourages and develops talented young dancers in her company; she still does so, at age 66, featuring them and no longer serving as star dancer.

But in 1997, she was the star. At the dance concert, I was sitting in the sixth row. When Cristina Hoyos came onstage, I was shocked, then relieved, then grateful to see her 50-year-old body. It was a beautiful body, but not a young one, with a thicker waist, visible abdomen, and heavy upper arms, which she neither flaunted nor hid.

I got the feeling she’d worked all her life to become strong enough for this body, that she’d earned it. When she danced, she was better than she’d been twelve years before. She was beyond electric; she ignited the air. Her dancing was profound, a revelation of what it means to be human. It carried the wisdom, the weight, of a mature woman, and it took my breath away.