Sunday Morning ~ Leaving Footprints

Ukayenda siya phazi; ukasiya mlomo uupeza. ~ If you leave a place, leave your footprint; if you leave your words, those words will find you. 

~ Chewa proverb

February 28, 2021

Hi Everyone,

I have said many times that I felt like I was born into the wrong century. I longed for a simpler time when healers used what resources they had, families grew their own food, horses were used for transportation. I collected books about pioneer women, loving the stories about making soap, foraging for edibles, spinning yarn and knitting sweaters by firelight. I romanticized all this as a kid, never considering the dying in childbirth, frigid, heatless nights, or skinning a squirrel for dinner as part of the idyllic dream. All the discomforts or dangers seemed like fun. The close knit family would weather it together with compassion and resilience! They’d always agree on how to cope, share the work willingly, nary uttering a cross word! This fantasy clearly emerged from my early readings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but deep roots grew from it. My readings, though they included the hardships, did not penetrate my romanticism. It seemed a long wonderful adventure and those discomforts among the travels just part of the story, transient and worth it.

But the story was so incomplete.   

Working as a young midwife, I started looking at it a little differently. I imagined women in labor on the prairie, their closest neighbor two miles away, their husband out hunting for weeks at a time. I imagined the howling winds and loneliness. Childbirth is scary enough when you’ve got a full support team around you. How did those women cope? Many of them, I learned, went stark raving mad. I started realizing women had little say in family decisions, no one to advocate for them, kids were hungry and exposed, they lived on cold dirt floors. What did I find attractive?

I’m older and wiser. I’m trying to balance my good memories and fantasies with learning the true history. I loved the story of Martha Ballad, the Maine midwife in colonial, revolutionary times. Her diary talks of long and sometimes dangerous travels to homes for births, making herbal concoctions, growing vegetables, fertilizing them with manure from her pigs. She stayed at homes for days to nurture women after the birth, often receiving pay in sugar or cornmeal, tea or flour. She wove with her daughters and nieces. She had quilting bees with women neighbors and friends. I ate it up. Her stories of getting to births at night on horseback were the ultimate. She knew her profession, a calling, and went about it without question. I wanted to be her. I wanted to weave my own dishtowels and grow all my own food. I wanted to saddle up my horse and take off for a distant home to attend a woman in childbirth. The adventure was too alluring. She wrote about falling through ice while crossing a frozen stream. Her diary was filled with stories about getting to the birth, as if that were more important than the birth itself. She documents the weather every day as life would be completely dependent. She could only attend the birth if she could get there, so, of course, weather was important. We’re so removed from that, even with increasing extremes. 

The history of midwifery in this country has been focused on Mary Breckenridge, another romantic figure, who started the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky in 1925. I found the notion of living in the mountains, carrying supplies in saddlebags as I took to the trails absolutely fantastic. Oh, the romance!  Attending to poor families in dire straights, making their lives a little more comfortable and safe. Yes, I thought that would have been just the right fit for me. But, I learned recently, turns out, Mary Breckenridge was a white supremacist. She was the granddaughter of a vice president, daughter of a congressman, and was educated as a midwife overseas where midwifery was an integral and accepted part of the medical system. Midwives existed in the United States then, thousands of them actually. But they weren’t recognized because they were not educated as part of an accepted, segregated, regulated system. Black women, slave women, immigrant women, indigenous women were attended to by midwives of their communities. But they were prohibited from accessing our medical system, therefore had no formal credentials. Their outcomes were better, their infection rates lower, as were their maternal and infant mortality rates. Yet, once Mary Breckenridge established the first school of midwifery in Kentucky, immigrant and black midwifery students were prohibited from attending. The Shepard-Towner Act , ostensibly meant to improve the public health of communities, proceeded to eliminate community midwifery and local healers altogether. Despite their valuable role with non-white, non-anglo-sexton populations “untrained and uneducated” midwifery was systematically eliminated. Their years of clinical work and apprenticeship was deemed worthless. Their role in delivering care to women who had no other option was crushed.

I’m part of this system. I am white and had access to higher education. I had opportunities afforded me that so many traditional midwives have not. Our system set it up that way and I benefited. When I was in Peace Corps and worked with Malawian midwives, I felt a calling to do this. I watched and learned from those women, their deep connection to their community, their  skill in emergencies, their excellent outcomes with so few resources, though they had a fraction of the formal education I had. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to come back here and save women from a system I felt had gone all wrong.

Midwifery schools are small. I was only one of seven graduates in my class. There are few schools in the country and the cost is prohibitive. Multiple studies show improved outcomes  when women are cared for by trusted caregivers. Midwives have consistently filled this need. Yet, in 1921 there were 100,000 midwives, and in 2021 there are 11,000, our white system eliminating most of them.

I’m looking at the legacy of leaving footprints and how that affects future generations. I’ll start teaching a class at the local college in a few weeks. I’ve taught it before, the history of midwifery, but this time I will have a better perspective. I hope this may lead, in a very small way, to a new path and new footprints on sturdier ground.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Look Without Eating 

Maso sadya. ~ Eyes do not eat.

~ Chewa proverb

February 21, 2021

Hi Everyone,

I wonder what it is like to spend forty days alone in the desert, thinking, deciding what to do with your life, no distractions aside from the scorpions and snakes. I wonder if you’d look at a cactus, (if, indeed,  it is the kind of desert with cacti) and appreciate it’s beauty, wonder how it survives with so little water, how it can make such a beautiful flower or nectar with so little to sustain it. I wonder if you’d ponder these things. I wonder if you’d walk or just sit. How much water would it take for you to have the energy to walk? Would there be a hallucinatory period when things became clear and you’d know exactly how to play the cards you’d been dealt? What would it be like to have no friends to call, no one to bounce things off of, no one to ask sage advice? Would it be terrifying, or just sad? Or maybe I’m projecting. Would it be tranquil, or just a relief?

I’ve never been able to get myself to meditate. I never really learned a technique but also never tried too hard. Many times I’d decide to sit myself down, committing to spend time every day learning to quiet my mind. I’d always give up within a few days then feel like a failure and a quitter. I can’t seem to sit still or find the sweet spot of harmony. I can be contemplative but I think that’s a different thing. 

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. I wonder if this is what you’d think about if you spent forty days alone in the desert? Who are we and what are we doing here in our temporary non-dust state? I wonder if you’d consider what role you’re supposed to play? That question seems to imply a pre-determined fate, which makes me wonder… If the instructions for our responsibilities as humans are really so unclear that one needs to spend forty days in a desert without food, maybe we should reframe our thinking.  

When I want to make decisions about life, I usually walk. So far, it hasn’t failed me. I walk wherever I am, doesn’t matter. I just like to keep moving. If I were to walk in a desert, however, this would be the time of year I’d prefer. Indecision is uncomfortable for me. It makes me want to walk. I wonder how far I could walk if I didn’t eat or drink. How far does one go with the fasting thing? The rules are a bit fuzzy and open to interpretation. I get hungry quickly but I’m sure I could overcome that sometime within the forty days. At some point though it would probably feel better to just sit. But then the bones in my butt would get sore on the hard dry ground. Or maybe I’d sit on a rock so my knees would be at a comfortable angle. Or maybe I wouldn’t care by then. 

How would I mark the end of forty days? By the angle of the sun? By the amount of water I had left in my flask? Or by some internal clock that dings with the message, “Time to get to work!” Would I then get out there and organize? Would I point out all the injustices? Or open up possibilities to those who never believed they had any? Would I dope slap some anarchists or leave them to their own immolation? Does meditation and fasting give you energy for all this? I wonder if I’d wander out of the desert, staggering, resigned to play the cards I’d been handed, roll up the rags on my arms, point out a few things that could be done better, and try to make good on my new insights and resolutions. 

After forty days where do you even start with nourishing yourself? Would one crave chocolate and good wine? An orange off an ancient tree?  Or maybe, one would find a lap for their head and someone to listen to tales of forty days in the desert, a cloth with sweetened water dripping into their mouth. 

In my leadership class in college the professor told us that every answer is inside us. Finding yourself in a situation with no one to consult should not feel lonely or frightening. The answer is within, you only need to learn to tap into it.

It’s all in the reframing.

Balance. 

Know deprivation as well as abundance. Then look but don’t eat.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ It’s Our Door Now

Mpatseni tione cakhalitsa galu pa khomo. ~ Give it to him, let us see what made the dog stay at the door for such a long time.

~ Chewa proverb

February 14, 2021

Hi Everyone,

I was just starting my freshman year in college when Nixon was pardoned. I was sharing an apartment with three other women and on the afternoon of the announcement one of them burst through the door screaming, “Do you believe this?!” I floundered for a moment wondering why she was so upset then tried to get a little outraged because she was. But, in all honesty, I didn’t care that much. To me it was like the football team losing. I mean, I wish they’d won, but I wasn’t losing sleep over it. I listened to my roommates express their disgust, and admired them for how much they knew about the whole thing. I was devoid of details and context. I believed Nixon was bad but understood none of his crimes or how they may affect me. The next day I walked into the Philosophy department to turn in a paper and saw signs of protest on professors’ office doors in big, bold, colorful letters, screaming, apoplectic. Their outrage at the pardon was shocking to me. The urgency seemed out of place in this quiet Catholic college. I remember thinking I’d been ignorant of something earth shattering. I didn’t understand it.  

I listened to the impeachment arguments Saturday, and though I expected the eventual outcome, I still had hope. I went for a ski on the carriage trails when it seemed like they were hours away from conclusion. When I got back to the car and turned on the radio I heard McConnell speaking and thought, wait, this is his voice but this can’t be him. He would never say all this. I had a ray of hope. Could it be that all the evidence, the footage of the violence, the sound arguments had awoken a conscience in him? I started to drive slowly thinking justice would prevail! I listened, confused, wondering if I had the voice wrong? This couldn’t be him! He was saying everything iI wanted to hear! Could there be another senator with that same accent and tone? I was certain it was him, though. I know and dread that voice. Oh, please, please, please I thought. Maybe this could really happen. Then he got to the part about voting to acquit and I saw the scheme. My feelings for him reached a low I did not think possible. Snake in the grass. Playing everyone the fool again. I thought back to my roommate barging through the door screaming. I get it now.

I think about the ski patrol, AAA, surgeons, firefighters, all those whom I’ve depended on to help me, how the very thought of knowing they exist is a comfort. How much easier my life is when the plumber comes when I call, the snowplow clears the road, the bank teller deposits my check. I think about how we depend on so many to do their job. And now, blatantly, forty-three senators have walked away from their responsibility to protect the citizens they represent. Bone? Meat? Noose? What makes them sit by this door?

This door is now ours. We decide whether it opens or closes. Our future depends on this door. 

As I prepare to spend a week with my granddaughter, I think about wanting to protect her from all this. I want her to read about it in history books not live through it with my anxiety and fear. So I force myself to shift my thinking to a better future where we work to make this story a thriller with a just ending. I will read her the story of the green sweater the six year old Polish girl took to the sewer where she hid with her family for fourteen months. We will knit this sweater together while learning more about the holocaust. The sweater survived and the girl survived. I believe we will, too. 

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Family, Bones, and Gratitude

Cibale ndi pfupa, siciola. ~ Being related is like a bone, it does not rot.

~ Chewa proverb

February 7, 2021

Hi Everyone,

One winter’s day when I was six I looked up at my father and said, “Daddy, I want to do that too.” We were standing together at the bottom of a small ski slope where my older brother was skiing with a friend. We watched them come down the slope looking ecstatic. I watched my brother descend, strong and confident, and I looked up and said again, “Daddy, I want to do that, too.”  I was not a brave kid. I was shy and afraid of my own shadow. I rarely asked my father for anything. But, I remember that day, pulling on his arm, pleading, “I want to do that, too.” 

We stood together, my father and I, watching my brother go up the rope tow which looked like a mechanized clothes line on a pulley. From where we stood we could see the top of the hill where skiers got off, ready for their next joy ride down. Some skiers held the moving rope with one hand in front and one behind, as a sunbather raising their chest to the sky. Others held on with both hands in front, bent at the waist clutching the rope for dear life. If skis left the track it was curtains, the crumpled body falling in a heap, everyone behind quickly jumping off lest they fall onto the tangled mess. It was like slapstick comedy and I found it hilarious.

Perhaps my boldness that day was a test; I adored my brother and wanted to be strong like him. Maybe it was the fun everyone seemed to be having, but I stood there on that Sunday afternoon in my little red jacket, looking up at my father begging to be part of this club. I remember him looking down at me with a smile. A smile! I may have even been holding his hand. He said, “Really? You want want to do that?” I remember being happy. He was happy. We went to the rental shop, got outfitted with boots, skis, and poles, and out we went, neither of us knowing what we were doing. At the top of the hill my father took off and I didn’t see him again. I started down the hill after him, immediately terrified as this actually required some skill!  I planted my butt on the slope and went straight down like I was dragging a parachute. My memory is that bodies were all over the slope and I sailed between them miraculously avoiding collision. I stopped at the bottom before a long snaking line waiting to get on the rope tow and looked around for my father. I finally found him talking to someone, obviously unworried about me. I asked, “How did you get down here so fast?” He laughed, “I started and couldn’t stop!” he howled, then bent over laughing like this was the best day of his life. I loved it. It wasn’t the skiing so much as my father being happy. We were having fun together. My knitted mittens were caked with snow, the boots hurt my feet, and I was scared to death to get on the lift, but, it had been my idea, and even at six I knew better than to throw in the towel after he just dropped some money on me. In the years to come he’d tell the story of our first day on the slopes as something he wanted to try but having this six year old attached to him didn’t think he could. As soon as I expressed interest, he jumped. It was the beginning of a long love affair with a sport and a time when my father and I coexisted contentedly.  

I have memories of waiting in ski shops for hours while he bought skis, boots, and poles. I remember standing to get measured, listening to long boring discussions of bindings and edges, watching glamorous people in colorful sweaters and stretch pants, and dreaming of being like them someday. My father was hooked instantly and I went along for the ride. My brothers were included but it was mostly about me for a change. I was the cute little one and got lots of attention for it. I ate it up. 

We’d ski on Sundays further afield, bigger mountains, scarier slopes. I fell badly that first year and broke my leg. I remember lying twisted in the snow screaming and strangers coming to help. I have no idea how they found my father but someone skied down and got the ski patrol to collect me. It was a comfort when they arrived and bundled me into the toboggan, tied up tight. I felt safe, comfortable even, apart from the aching pain in my leg. My mother learned of the accident when my father came home without me. I stayed overnight in a hospital in New Hampshire, not sleeping nor eating, scared and motionless, my heavy plaster cast resting on pillows, thinking I had ruined everything. I watched the nurses at their desk in the ward, starched white uniforms and caps, cinched waists, and sensible shoes. They took my full tray away without commenting and I never said a peep. The fun was all gone. I blew it. I don’t remember any pain except for when it happened but I’m sure there must have been. My family didn’t believe in dulling pain. In the morning my parents came to get me. I remember looking up to see my mother, dressed in a wool tweed suit and hat, smiling down at me. My father was next to her in a suit and tie. For once it was a family outing with just the three of us. And they were smiling. 

My father told me my leg would be stronger than before and I believed him. I skied again the following winter and the one after that. When I was ten I broke my other leg and when that bone healed and I went back again.

I am most happy when I am skiing. I feel free and strong in a way I don’t experience any other time. I’m sure my love of the sport began with pleasing my father, a lifelong quest, but that’s fine. I am grateful to my father for this gift. I’m grateful for the time we spent on chairlifts talking. I’m grateful for the stories of mishaps and wipeouts that made us laugh until we couldn’t breathe. I look back at how bones and family have left their mark on me. And my legs are still strong.

Love to all,

Linda