The Butler’s Gift

‘Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.’  The Butler said that early in our marriage before he’d fully grasped what living with a writer meant.  

The morning walk

 And that’s what I’m thinking about while Big Nose sniffs grass beside the path in hope my attention will lag long enough for him to sneak into the verboten copse.  Verboten because local gentry feed pheasants there so they can later blow them to smithereens.  Local poachers feed deer there for the same purpose but tend to leave carcasses behind for Big Nose’s pleasure.  The latter is more a deterrent to me than the former.

My attention is diverted to the other side of our path where a track runs through knee-high crops.  In the middle of that track, what looks like a large bird.  Not the right colour for a pheasant – about the same shade of L’Oreal that I use.  We’re a bit far afield for my neighbour’s chickens, but the oval shape and colour, a chicken is what my brain tells me it is.

Said chicken turns its head and transforms into a fox, oval because it's sitting down.  A cool metaphor, but my optical prescription’s a bit hefty, so I give the image a moment to settle and yes, it’s definitely a fox scanning the field, unaware we stand thirty yards away.

Big Nose's moral dilemma

Big Nose catches the scent and tracker extraordinaire that he is, dashes into the off-limits copse.  A cue for any responsible dog owner to bring her Big Nose into line.  Right.

Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.  

Granted, I was plotting someone’s murder when he said it, but even so, not what you expect from a lay person. I laughed.  Not in derision, but in the pure joy of how wonderful that remark was.  Kinda sweet that after the long years of knowing me, he still believed I had a soul. 

More remarkable that he believed in any god, let alone an all-loving one, because his work routinely had him with a weapon between his legs and the hope between his ears that his aircraft wasn’t shot out of the sky a la pheasant before he could help put Humpty Dumpty pieces of young people back together again.  Or watch Afghan children die. 

So the two of us together, the Butler and me, I knew my compromises, all the pheasant and fox hunts I didn’t moon, all the plants in neighbours’ gardens untouched by midnight relocation, all the people who’d caused him pain still taking in air when I knew of places on the moors . . . what was the Butler’s experience, sharing space and a life with someone like me?  And if a wife’s plotting turned into murder, how would the Butler respond?  How would anyone?

Fortunately for the loathsome in my life, I explore these type questions via my writing rather than scientific method. 

Conor (played by Gary Goodyear, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

 I created Conor O’Donovan, Irish Catholic ex-pat in a country where not his skin colour but his accent makes him a target.  Where being called his nationality equates roughly with being called stupid.  He’s the second of nine children, his mother’s favourite until his youngest brother dies.  Then he becomes the sin eater for the family.  And he continues to be the sin eater for the rest of his life because hard as he tries, he can’t be heterosexual, he can’t meet his children’s expectations, he still believes in immortal souls and an all-loving God who says if only he were a better son, a better doctor, a better officer, a better father, a better partner, everyone else around him would actually stop all this sinning.

Bert (played by John McMahon, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

Enter stage right, Bert Statler, Conor’s shadow.  Bert’s also gay, but from a US military family, in the Navy himself during the death throes of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, so still living stealth.  His long-term partner has recently transitioned male to female, and though they’re still together, Bert feels abandoned.  But to Bert, that’s life, isn’t it?  You’re created by a fuck, spend your whole life getting fucked, and your funeral costs fuck someone else out of their inheritance.  The world doesn’t suck because of Bert, but because the world sucks.  Sometimes to dilute the suck quotient for someone else, you have to sin.

Conor is who we’re all told we should be.  Bert is the part of us we never admit out loud, sometimes not privately to ourselves.  Their friendship in some measure, represents the polarities between the Butler and myself, but also a polarity intrinsic to me as well – my struggle to be socially acceptable (stay out of jail), contribute to society (be able to afford the things I want), continue to grow as an individual (find new ways of staying out of jail and getting what I want).

The irony is that, before I married the Butler, I wrote about other people, my keyboard the conduit for stories gifted to me as a trauma therapist.  Once my life was shared, my writing became about me.  Disguised as a tall, lanky gay southern male who cuts people open for a living, I finally tell the truth.  And I’m able to do that because one day a long time ago, the Butler feared for my immortal soul.

The Butler & Big Nose, on the fox track headed toward the Verboten Copse

Identity, Transition, Fox Poo

If we’re being precise, I’ve been a trans-parent (someone with a transgender child) for over thirty years, but I didn’t know that until about twelve years ago.  The only amazing thing about my part in all this is that although I accept the concept, I still don’t understand.  I often create trans characters in my writing, but I can only write what I’ve witnessed, not what I’ve felt, experienced.

Big Nose Dog and I were taking the dull walk that day, a shorter trek squeezed in between rain showers.  The venture seemed ours alone – not even the buzzards had appeared.  While Big Nose sniffed every blade of grass in Yorkshire, I walked and waited and walked until my mind wandered to identity.

When I was in undergrad learning my developmental psychology, we were taught that identity was the task for the teen years.  If we think about ourselves as teens or about teens we know, it’s all pretty embarrassing.  You might be forgiven in feeling that adolescence should happen where there are no witnesses. 

But is that really about identity?  I don’t think so.  (And Erik Erikson rolls over in his grave.)  Teens know who they are (as much as anyone can know anything in only a dozen or so years).  They aren’t exploring identity, but how that person they know themselves to be will interface with society.  Which is why there’s so much rebellion about it. 

Anyone who’s lived through raising a toddler has witnessed their surprisingly strong personality emerge from what used to be a cute, burbling enfant.  And to be honest, when my son told me he was my son, not my daughter, I felt really stupid because it was so obvious that my child had never been a little girl.

And yet what many teens learn is how to subvert their identity in order to be accepted by the society that will sustain them for the rest of their lives.  We dole out pink passes to girls and blue to boys, put more money in military than education, reward beauty and athleticism over brains or innovation.

We all make compromises in order to get on, so why transition?  Why not just suck it up?  Transitioning isn’t an easy thing.  Not physically, psychologically, medically, socially, financially.  It can be dangerous.  It can be fatal.

So Big Nose has found something delightful to roll in, making little growly sounds of joy.  I let him, because he’s a dog, not because I appreciate smelling like fox poo.  That grey, solitary landscape around us is apt for 2014 as the Year of Rejection for my writing with the only reward, a dog who smells like shit.  For a brief moment, I think perhaps I should go back to my day job.

And then somehow all this connects me to my son, fiercely brave in his right to be.  Identity is the only thing we’re given to get through life.  A divine gift, perhaps.  Something brutally inevitable, the power of ME . . . well, a person just has to do it, don’t they?

Read These Liebster Blogs!

The best part about having my blog Liebstered, is passing the Liebster torch on.  There are so many kickass blogs out there to choose from, but nominees have to have less than 1000, 300 or 200 followers, depending on differing versions of the rules.  

Here's Lorraine Reguly's write up the rules.

It became quickly apparent that I am too stupid to know how many followers a blog has.  Rather than cry in my oatmeal, I’ve relied on number of Twitter followers, choosing folk with less than 1000.  I have tried to nominate blogs that haven’t been Liebstered yet, but if I have double dosed someone, I do apologise.  I’d love to read your answers to my questions but you are released from trying to find ten more people to nominate.

My ten Liebster Nominees, in no particular order:

Teagan Kearney @modhaiku

http://writingmynovelnoworkingtitleyet.blogspot.co.uk/

Teagan’s blog is what it says – essays on the act and art of writing, an update on her WIP, a bonus Haiku, helpful links – all packed into one post that connects with someone who writes like she’s already your friend.  You’ll keep going back to this one.

Emma Peachy Hall @peachyemma

http://peachyemma.blogspot.co.uk/

It says at the top of Peachy Emma’s blog that she writes whatever is in her head.  Her head is an interesting place to be and it’s wonderful she invites us into it.  She makes the everyday into soulful reading.  The type of blog I want to click hot cocoa mugs with.

Carol Hedges @carolJhedges

http://carolhedges.blogspot.co.uk/

On the other hand, Carol’s blog is to be read with a glass of 14% ginger wine.  An intelligent, well informed and expertly honest blog, she’s the writer (grandmother, historian, political activist, researcher) to have your back in life’s dark alleys. 

Lora O’Brien @loraob

http://www.loraobrien.com/

Lora writes about Irish spirituality in the most down to earth, easy-to-connect-to way I’ve read.  This is the real McCoy, writing knowledgeably about a part of life we often keep to ourselves.  Bolshie, thoughtful, helpful, real.  A definite MUST read.

Jane Turley  @turleytalks

http://www.janeturley.net/

 Irreverent, honest, funny as hell.  The irrepressible Mrs T takes on motherhood, writing life, farm animals and fashion styles of the literary powerful.  Jane can pack more pizzazz in two paragraphs than I hope to fit into my entire life.

Jennie Gillions  @jengillions

http://theinspiredmadman.wordpress.com/

Jennie admits she’s ‘not precious about my mental health,’ which makes this the perfect blog for the info junkie with interests in mental health and history.  She lets the facts tell the disturbing stories without embellishment.  Addictive stuff here.

Cheryl Harrington  @cheryl_cch

http://kannonsgarden.blogspot.ca/

Cheryl’s is another blog which brings the reader into her world and quickly makes you feel at home there.  She writes about writing and reading, how books weave all aspects of her experience – family, health, home – into a congruency of life.

Saschk Drakos  @siniharakka
http://saschk.blogspot.co.uk/

It wouldn’t be fair to exclude this guy.  Saschk doesn’t blog often but when he does, he pulls the internal out of his literary hat and makes it a visual, palpable, no longer to be ignored vibrant aspect of life that breathes with relief at being acknowledged.  Read him.

Amy Mackin  @MkingWriting

http://amymackin.com/blog/

Although she’s so much more, I always listen for one voice when I read her blogs – the child from The Emperor’s Clothing.  Through her writing and reading, Amy speaks about the human condition in all the many aspects and roles that she meets on her way.  Lovely, lovely blog.

So there’s my choices.  I hope they soon become your favourites as well.  Now, questions for the new Liebsters!  Post your answers on your blog and send me the link.

1.  What is the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

2.  Do you need contact with people in order for you to create?

3.  Does (your) despair have its place in (your) happiness? 

4.  Give me a link to a recording of your favourite piece of music.

5.  Talk about the relation between mental health (good or bad) and the creative act.

6.  Recommend something for me to read that you haven’t written.

7.  Give me a link to something that you have written.

8.  Is there a moment you can remember when something happened or you had some thought that changed things for you?  If so, tell that story.  If not, what could have changed everything?

9.  What is THE most amazing thing about human beings?

10.  Write a summary of how you see yourself.

Thank everyone who’s dropped by today!  

My Liebster Award

Anne Goodwin (run right now and read her Annecdotal blog) put a lovely surprise in my message box this week – a nomination for the Liebster Award in blogging.  It's a wonderful pay-it-forward exercise for those of us immune to going viral, a declaration from another blogger that your own words aren’t in vain, PLUS an imperative to connect with other bloggers.

My first task as a Liebster is to answer Anne's probing questions:

What surprised you most about your blogging experience?

How difficult it is to write honestly.  There's always an element of feeling exposed with a new blog post.  The second most surprising thing is that I've not been flamed, considering some of my content and that trolls are easily activated.  I've been well treated by my readers, which perhaps means there's safety in a lack of numbers (having fewer followers).

To what extent do you blog for your own entertainment versus for the benefit and/or entertainment of your readers?

Honestly?  Yes, Lora, honestly.  The phrase, 'for the benefit and/or entertainment of' doesn't resonate with me in this context, any more than it would apply to stopping by a neighbour's house to chat.  Having said that, the core of social interactions is to connect for our benefit/entertainment and/or the benefit/entertainment of others.  So it's there for me, but in what proportion, I'm unable to say.

I started blogging because an asshole agent said he didn't read submissions from anyone he couldn't Google, thus all writers should blog.  For my first year (2013), I committed to a weekly post, even when sick.  Even when disgusted with my lack of literary progress.  Even when other bloggers/writers who'd started around the time I had, were flying past me.  As mentioned, it was emotionally challenging, so after the New Year, I've let myself write when it happens, in order to explore the reason for ME to blog, keeping in mind the goal of slotting myself into a regular posting schedule once I get my land legs again.

If your blog were to come to life, what form would it take?

A garden with all the wonderful plants, trees, animals and insects that I love the most, plus a few that have never been seen outside the confines of my own skull.

How does your blogging voice differ from how you present yourself in "real life"?

It's edited!

Which words or phrases do you most overuse on your blog?

I probably swear too feckin much.

Which famous person would you most like to visit your blog, which of your posts would you most like them to read, and why?

Margaret Atwood, but she'd have to read them all.  Not letting her off the hook by giving her a choice sample.  Why Atwood?  She'd be honest without pussy footing or brutality, which is the only type of feedback that I understand.

If you could invite a fictional character to write one of your posts, who would you choose and why?

My initial reaction was, I'd choose the poodle in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, because I wanted to know the whole story, but then decided it would be too horrible to read, so bring on Liesel from The Book Thief.  Wouldn't you love to hear what she has to say about what her life taught her?  I would.

If time and money were no object, where in the world would you like to go to research your next post?

Paris.  No question about it.  Send me there today.

As a consumer of blogs, what are the main factors that entice you to read on?

The first paragraph gives an idea of where the post is going, even if the post starts with a story.  The blogger's voice sounds like a real person, makes that virtual connection with the reader. Content is also important, probably the reason I decided to read the blog in the first place, but I'll read a post that's outside my sphere of interest if the writer has grabbed me with the first paragraph and voice.

What else do you wish I'd asked you and how would you respond?

Come over for cake, Lora!  I'd be there in a flash (and is it chocolate?).

After this Q&A, I'm meant to post the rules, but they seem to evolve as the Award makes its travels.  Check out Lorraine Reguly's take on the rules and decide for yourself what they are.  

I'm also meant to nominate other bloggers and supply them with my own questions, all of which would make this post ungainly.  Anne broke her Liebster duties into two posts and I'm following her lead, saving the rest of my assignment for next week.

While I'm looking for likely victims worthy bloggers, mind yourself.  You could be next!

Bootleg Shame

Whitney Thore

Whitney Thore is a dancer who, in her late teens, inexplicably gained a lot of weight.  By the time she received a medical explanation, the emotional damage had been done.  She did overcome it, though.  Still obese, she puts videos of herself on You Tube and does street dancing to promote positive body image.  In this interview, she said she didn’t know loving oneself could be so subversive for a fat person. 

http://uk.screen.yahoo.com/video/playlist/barcroft-media-videos/fat-dancer-campaigning-body-positivity-105804392.html?vp=1

I postulate that society considers self love subversive for all of us.

I thought myself clever, giving up self doubt for Lent, even concluded in my last post that it made me a better person.  As the Lent Prohibition progresses, however, shame speak-easies crop up all over my psyche, remind me of how many times I fell flat on my face.  It’s actually shocking, the negative messages contained in one human skull, and how few come from actual Bad Things I Have Done. 

F’rinstance. 

After a party we gave, a guest apologised for not spending more time with me.  I smiled that sweet smile Appalachians give when someone says something stupid.  Although he’d spent most of the party in another room, he’d managed to criticise my weight three times. 

His rude comments, exhaled breath that I inhaled. 

Speak not of Tuilleries

I run into a friend after spending my birthday in Paris.  She pushes my trip aside so she can talk about her life.  Not particularly interesting aspects of her life.  The same old, same old.  Whether she considers me a bore or is a crap friend, her message is clear. 

Shut up, Lora.

I am silenced.  I am erased. 

Then there’s the mother of three special needs children that folk around here say mollycoddles her kids.  They also call a man weak because his mentally ill ex-wife keeps taking him to court.  This mother and ex-husband, victims of circumstance yet unable to evoke sympathy from their neighbours.

Why?

We’re not weak.  We don’t molly coddle.  Who cares if you went to Paris when I had a nice ramble across the moors? 

Too fatolduglyskinny

The unfortunate consequence is that some people stop talking because we can’t be bothered to listen.  Other people won’t be in family photos because they’ve been told too many times how fatolduglyskinny they are.  Folk in dire circumstances stop asking for help because they’ve come to realise it was their fault anyway.

This has been one of my most difficult Lents, trying to fight the demon Self Doubt.  I’m not able to say what is true about myself and what is protective salt thrown over someone’s shoulder to land in my open wound.  For the moment, I feel displaced from my life, from my Self. 

Silenced.

  

Labels & Lent

Flight or fight.  Decisions.

Her eyes widened a fraction of a millimetre, the tiny jaw muscles tight as she calculated the distance to the door combined with her age versus  my own, her adrenaline extrapolated exponentially to my lack of anticipation, and predicted the likelihood of her escape. She thought she could make it.

You expect more than that from your GP.  Or I do.  Still.  After all these years.  Fat, dumb, happy, that’s me.  But the thing is, the Butler’s taking me to Paris for my birthday and feck me if I’m not having a good time.  And in order to do that, I need to be heavily medicated.  Which is a whole other story, but this GP looked more likely to hospitalise me than give me drugs.

So I say, ‘I used to work with children and some of them in the Asperger’s spectrum had this same inability to habituate certain sounds and vibrations.’ 

Ah, a manageable label delivered with big words.  I most likely wouldn't throttle her with the blood pressure cuff.  She gave me some beta blockers and now the world is safe again.  Everybody breathe deeply.

I don’t know if I’m on the spectrum, although if it’s a spectrum, I guess we’re all on it, but I proposed (tongue in cheek) to the Butler that people should be nicer since I have a label.  This wise ass remark made me decide that for Lent, I would be nicer to me.  No self doubt.  Just for Lent.

18 Things Creative People Do. Photo Andy Ryan

Don’t get me wrong.  Self assessment is a powerful tool.  Without it, you’re a narcissist.  Being disappointed in oneself leads to improvement.  Writers do this full time, I suspect.  It’s as I read recently, creative people ‘fail upward’.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/creativity-habits_n_4859769.html

But self doubt can become a constant negative voice inside our heads that we accept as reality. 

Too blue.

F’rinstance, I’m knitting two cardigans for Paris.  A normal person would buy something there or if pressed, knit one.  Me, I knit two.  And during the whole operation, I critique my work.  Too bland.  Too blue.  Buttonholes not where they should be.  Meanwhile, the Butler reacts to my knitting as if I’m spinning gold from straw.  To him, it’s miraculous that I can twist a couple of sticks and out comes a cardigan.  Who cares what colour it is?

Oh.  Yeah.  Right.

A friend of mine is doing 100 Happy Days – the challenge to post a photo of a reason to be happy each day for 100 days.  That’s the ticket with this Lenten vow for me, to look at myself and what I’m doing through happy eyes, so to speak.  Not – well what can you expect from someone with a label – but, it’s good that I exist.  I, who sing badly and often dance as I’m getting out of bed, who reacts to the Butler bringing me a fox skull with a rib breaking hug.  It’s not just alright, but good that I can’t remember to dye my hair and don’t cook and periodically dig up parts of the lawn for pumpkin patches and other inexplicable endeavours.

Too bland.

Sometimes it’s difficult, not sliding into Bad Lora mode.  Sometimes I have to say, ‘It’s just for Lent.  You can rag your ass after it’s over,’ to prevent myself from jumping on some inadequacy. 

The effort is worth it, because as I search for a belief in the beauty of my lesser components, I find more reasons to be happy.  To feel lucky with the life I lead.  And I actually think I’m a nicer, better person for being treated kindly by my inner critic.  Even if it’s only for Lent.

Wheelbarrows and Flowered Bums

When I was younger, some of my male friends had an inexplicable compulsion to define femininity for me.  It seemed arrogant, speaking as an authority on something they couldn’t possibly experience, like Stephen Fry saying women don’t like sex.

I’ve only recently come to understand that feminine in our culture equates to what is sexually appealing to heterosexual males.  Masculine is based on what heterosexual men are comfortable having around them in the locker room – i.e. something that won’t give them an erection.  No one else really has a say in the matter.  Not even Stephen Fry.

Kind of a waste of resources, wouldn’t you think, basing cultural norms on such a small portion of the overall population?

A few years ago when the Butler and I first viewed the house we eventually moved into, the agent stopped outside a door with a look of glee and said that beyond this magic threshold lay my room.

I’m thinking really cool writing space, lots of bookshelves, kick ass windows with kick ass views, maybe even a window seat and a priest’s hole . . .

The Butler in his kitchen.

She opens the door on an enormous kitchen and the Butler goes, ahh!  As he ran his fingers over the 3 oven Aga, I actually thought, where’s my room?  And then I realised this was my room.  I don’t have the penis so I get the kitchen.  A woman in my fifties and still that stupid. 

After we moved in, a man came by to fix the damp and saw our wheelbarrow.  You’d think I’d been sacrificing small children in the Butler’s new kitchen, the state of the man’s dismay.  How could I have insisted my husband go about his work with a pink wheelbarrow and its untamed polka dots?  The binary presumptions in his reaction boggle the mind.

A clean version of our wheelbarrow.

For the record, the Butler chose  pink.  But how did a wheelbarrow become a totem of gender?  Or how did a colour?  Or polka dots?  Or any nod to beauty? 

One dark winter’s morning, the Butler put on a pair of black jeans and headed off to work.  A colleague pulled him aside to let him know there were black embroidered flowers on his back pockets.  He was wearing my Gloria Vanderbilts.  The Butler said, ‘Yes, aren’t they nice?’ and went on with his life.

(I wondered why a guy  checking another man's ass worried about flowers being there, but that’s another blog post.)

The rules in play here are stifling.  And while I’m not about to bang a drum for oppressed white heterosexual males, isn’t this entire gender juxtaposition constricting for everyone?  And to what purpose?  If it made sense, maybe I’d behave myself.  Or maybe not.  Let’s not get giddy on silly notions.

I would suggest that we stop laughing at men who buy tights or scowling at women who voice opinions, that we let our children choose colours they like and toys that inspire them.  Let men cry and women rage, stop thinking anything’s gender appropriate unless it has a biological basis to it.  Like toilets with seats or trousers with front zips.

Who got what?

In the mean time, here’s a photo of this year’s Valentine pressies.  Which is for me and which is for the Butler?  Two perfect expressions of love, and isn’t that what’s important – that we each feel worthy and cherished, even when flowers are embroidered on our bums?