Sunday Morning ~ The Collective Drumbeat 

Ng’oma ilira ikaona inzace. ~ The drum makes noise when it sees another drum.

~ Chewa proverb

May 30, 2021

Hi Everyone,

Our annual midwifery meeting ended this week with an hour-long fireside chat with Angela Davis. The speakers, always great, were phenomenal this year. The meeting was virtual again and, though I missed being in the midst of all the midwifery energy, it was nice to log on and be part of the event while doing spring chores between sessions. Plus, I didn’t have to miss seeing my lilacs bloom. I’m a little worried I might have to ease back in to socialization, which, concerns me, having been such a part of who I am. I love(d?) being around people but now I find myself a little skittish at the thought of large groups. I hope I get over it.

Preparing for Angela Davis’s talk, I made my tea (happy it did not cost $4.95), got my note pad and pencil, and prepared to be wowed. I sat in my sunny greenhouse and thought about how different it might be sitting in a huge room with 2,000 midwives, seeing her small figure distant on a stage. The energy in the room would have been powerful. Many times she would have been interrupted with applause. But in the pandemic year 2021, she sat comfortably in what looked like a study or office, a frosted glass door behind her, her face filling the screen. Her words seemed perfectly chosen and none were wasted. Occasionally I could see the silhouette of a cat walking by. Having gotten so accustomed to using zoom and having conversations on a screen, it felt familiar.  She looked much younger than I expected. The vice president of our organization asked her questions on a split screen, then as she began to answer, the screen would become fully her again. It was so well thought out, so well orchestrated, so easy to hear, even though the topic wasn’t. She did not disappoint. 

I knew she’d been an activist during the 60’s and 70’s but really hadn’t understand her history or the magnitude of her influence. I knew she’d been arrested but thought it was for protesting. I had not known it was for accomplice in murder (a charge that was dropped after she served 18 months in prison). She talked about the fear of a potential death sentence. Then she talked about overcoming that fear and looking at the prison experience as a gift––“for how can you truly advocate unless you truly understand?” I scribbled down words as she spoke hoping to capture her wisdom, “transform grief into expressions that make new meanings for that grief. Create new futures.” She’s an educator. I think about the power of the position and wonder about a new focus. Her grace was magnetic. Every sentence was a lesson, a branch to hold on to. I stopped trying to write them all down. When asked how she maintains hope when the struggle has been going on so long, she talked about how change is a process; we should not look at it as a specific goal, but to lay the groundwork for the process to continue. She said in her lifetime she never expected to see as much progress as we’re experiencing now. I think that’s what I found most inspirational. That outlook, that recognition of how slow progress should not wear us down, that change is a process not a commodity. I decided to cling to that line, reframe my outlook, and stop the impatient feeling of failure when my goals are still unrealized.

She talked about the force of the collective as opposed to individuals. She said no matter how charismatic or influential a single person is they can never create the desired outcome; only a community can do that. The State of the World’s Midwifery report was recently released from the United Nations Population Fund, WHO, and the International Confederation of Midwives. I had my students read it and was impressed with their insights. We only had one class to discuss it but I wanted them to get a taste of the global perspective. The report also emphasizes the need for collective effort. It’s not only the US with a shortage of midwives, it is a worldwide problem. The educational programs are too small, too few, with too few educators modeling respectful maternity care. I found the report both upsetting and reassuring. Upsetting because this was identified thirty years ago, reassuring because it is now being discussed on a world stage. There are two bills in the US congress now allocating money to midwifery education. That’s a huge step forward. We now have a nurse-midwife in the Maine state senate. That’s another huge step forward. 

So I’ll think of these steps as drumbeats, believing the noise will grow.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Breaking the Taboo

Kulaula ndi kuzula m’mera. ~ Breaking a taboo is like uprooting a germinating plant.

~ Chewa proverb

May 23, 2021

Hi Everyone,

I’m nearing the end of the course I’m teaching and find it hard to concentrate. I asked the students if it is the same for them. They nodded. I think about sitting on the balcony of my apartment in May 1978 preparing for a final exam. It was sunny and warm and I had blocked off the day to study. I read my scribbled notes in the spiral notebook, little bunches of illegible facts and phrases, and wondered which of them might be my salvation. Boston was beautiful in May: tulips, swan boats, falling in love, Red Sox. We’d gone through the big blizzard that year and as I tried to memorize all possible malfunctions of the pancreas all I could focus on was whether I was getting evenly tanned. I remember telling my roommate, “I hope it rains tomorrow or I am going to flunk this test.”  Who can concentrate when the lilacs are blooming? 

On Friday my class finished reading the history of Martha Ballard, a midwife in colonial Maine, based on her diary. Every day for twenty-seven years she made a journal entry during an era when few women could read or write. She was the first person in America to keep birth records. Laurel Ulrich took Martha’s daily entries and wove together a story of women’s lives when our country was emerging and at war with England. In her corner of Maine on the Penobscot River, Martha was healer and midwife for her community. It’s remarkable to read how she cared for the settlers with the herbs she cultivated. Her wisdom in attending families safely and with dignity is deeply inspiring. We read each chapter and discussed how it relates to where health care is now, how it evolved, and how women contributed so much with so little recognition or respect. Martha recorded delivering a baby on April 26,1812. She died a few weeks later of an unknown condition at the age of seventy-seven. In that period, elderly women were revered. Ageism was a century away. 

The last month of her diary is mostly about her garden. She describes planting cabbages and turnips, feverfew and tansy. She had a seed bed on the east side of her house where she started the seeds she’d save from the year before. She then transplanted the seedlings into the garden, her families lives dependent on the harvest. She overwintered roots of cabbages in her cellar to plant in the spring, providing fresh greens early in the season. Clever, sustaining, nurturing. I asked the students how she knew which herbs would be helpful? There were no guides to herbal remedies. “Wisdom handed down from generation to generation”, they replied. It’s amazing how we’ve buried and uncovered that wisdom over the years, rejecting, then rediscovering without honoring those who already knew…

Martha’s descendants. were also healers. Clara Barton, who started the American Red Cross, was her great niece. Mary Hobart, one of the first female physicians in America, was her great great granddaughter. We traced how midwives were critical to maternal health care until they were nearly eliminated by our health care system in the 1940s. There were 20,000 midwives in the country in 1920. In 1960 there were 2,000. By the time I graduated from midwifery school in 1987 there were approximately 5,000. I remember our motto was 10,000 by 2000 in the big push to increase our numbers before the turn of the century. In 2019 there were approximately 13,000. Not a lot considering how many women don’t have access to a provider. The elimination of the profession was rooted in racism. The south had thousands of African American midwives, providing safe compassionate care with few resources. But there was money to be made and races to oppress and the male power structure took over maternity care and white supremacists made midwifery a white woman’s profession. None of it was about saving women; it was about enriching a dominant race. The plants were uprooted and everyone has been paying the price. 

The students asked, that given how there are so many similarities with the power structure then and now, did I really think things would change for the better? I said I believed they would. The midwifery profession is recognizing it’s racist past; there is no going back to not facing it. I look at what I learned in history, how slavery was depicted as almost quaint, how heroes were white males and women only occasionally got best supporting actor. I never took a class about the history of women’s health care. My history courses were based on memorizing dates of wars that men started. I scribbled my notes in a flimsy notebook, spent weeks in the library to do literature reviews from books written by the dominant race. We’re not going back to that. I want to share my lessons learned with the next generation, consider midwifery as an option, hand them the baton, and watch them finish the race. I told them, “Just the fact you are in this class gives me hope that things are changing.” I tell the students to write their own stories for future generations. Who tells the story makes a difference. So yes, I do believe our voices can shape a better future.

Love to all,

Linda 

Sunday Morning ~ Understanding, Little by Little

Gwada, umvetse. ~ Kneel down in order to understand. 

~ Chewa proverb

May 16, 2021

Hi Everyone,

When we could only afford to live in cheap rentals I was always miffed when people complained about house maintenance. I’d loved to have had that problem. I was aware even then of how owning property creates wealth and how so many have been excluded from that privilege. While longing for a home to care for I spent years reading everything I could about houses as if they were living beings. I clipped photos from magazines, learned about passive solar, natural materials, tools, and energy flows. I had always wanted to buy an old house and renovate it, but my husband wanted to build new. He had childhood trauma of home maintenance and thought a new house would require less of it. He adamantly refused to consider wallpaper because he’d hated removing it, provoking many an argument. (I think we ended up in marriage counseling over that one.) I relented on the new construction and am so grateful for the home we created, custom for our lifestyle. I like taking care of it and thirty years later I’ve finished painting original woodwork and now it’s time to fix things. I love knowing the bones of this place, watching it grow from the ground up. I love knowing how the water lines travel to each sink, where the electrical wires split, how the windows are situated to catch angles of the sun. I can’t imagine leaving it, though at some point I know it will become too much.  

When we moved here we were eager to become part of a community but found it’s not so easy to make close friends once you are out of school. Spending hours of your day living with others creates a unique intimacy. It’s a time consuming investment. Raising a young family and finishing a house while working full time didn’t allow for nights out at a bar or weekend days carousing with friends. We wondered how to create those kinds of friendships. My sister told me about a barter group they had in western Canada where a few families would alternate helping each other do home chores. For me, this checked every box. We would be productive (something I live for), creative, and build relationships. It rang of an old fashioned barn building and I thought we could make lasting friends. I set about finding a few interested families. It took about a year, but three families from church got caught up in my enthusiasm. They had young kids, a similar life philosophy, and overwhelming home maintenance projects. They loved the idea. We had a couple of meals together to discuss how to set it up. We were all giddy at the prospect of getting a ton of shit done at our houses while making friends. It was brilliant. We planned one Saturday a month, no excuses. We rotated houses so we each got four work days a year, one for each season. The host family provided three meals and unlimited beer. We started at seven a.m. and usually ended around seven p.m. when the kids got whiny and beer ran low. 

We had some harrowing experiences mostly involving ladders and chain saws, but once everyone survived without lasting injuries they became hilarious stories to be told over and over. One project at our house was installing a hot tub. This was a few years into our “Work Day” experiment and we already knew each other well. The guys prepared the site, dug the trench, laid the wire, then laid the cement pad. They carried the large seven-seater tub around the house, set it up, wired it, filled it, and we were soaking in it later that evening. We sat under the stars, drinking beer, talking about what a great group we had and what a great idea this had been. We reviewed all the projects we’d done: built a deck at Jim and Louise’s, built a shed at our house, kitchen renovation at Jeff and Laura’s, and many, many smaller jobs: thresholds, trim, wood clearing, bonfires.

We laughed about all the near catastrophes: falls from ladders, dumb ideas about taking trees down, etc. and someone suggested we write a book about it. It had been such a good idea and we had gotten so much accomplished we thought others might want to know how we did it. It could be a how-to manual! Someone enthusiastically said, “It’d be a best seller!” Then Jim said, “But someone should have an affair. That would make the book so much better.” We laughed about that and made some funny (we thought) remarks about who it should be, etc. etc. Unfortunately, it was my husband who ended up doing that and two years later he was gone. And so was the group. And it wasn’t funny.

I kept the house and the hot tub got a lot of use over the following years. The entire high school track team would be in there after a meet and (I learned much later) plenty of other teenage partiers when I was away. Fortunately, no one drowned (that I am aware of). I read many books in that tub, cried a river, bird watched, and pulled my life back together. It became my haven of relaxation after long days and nights of work. It was a place where friends had long wine-soaked heart to hearts. It was worth the price for all the therapy it provided. It lasted longer than expected but gave out this year and I reluctantly added it’s disposal to the home maintenance list. Instead of hiring someone to take it away I thought I’d rent a dumpster and cut it up. I sat down to YouTube to see how to go about it and was shocked to see how many videos there are of people cutting up hot tubs! And they make it look so simple! Five simple cuts with a reciprocating saw and haul it all away. I couldn’t wait to get to it. I even own the saw!  Hahaha. Very funny. I’m glad no one was filming me. I spent ten minutes trying to cut through the rim, my arms jarring out of their sockets, and barely made a dent. I was about to give up but then thought, wait, I told a bunch of people I was doing this and am reluctant to admit defeat. That won’t work. I knelt down and looked at how I could cut through small sections then thought,  “I can just do it like a cake, piece by piece. I’ve got the dumpster for a whole month, what’s the rush?” So, four days, a twenty dollar blade, and a sore back later, that puppy with all it’s memories is ready to be hauled away along with a couple of mattresses and an old rug. Pangono, pangono as they say in Malawi. Little by little, it can be done.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ The Way of the Butterfly

“Ndaonera momwemo” mamba wa gulugufe. ~ That is how I have seen it. It is the way of speaking of the butterfly.

~ Chewa proverb

April 9. 2021

Hi Everyone,

The violets have strewn themselves all over the front and side of my house. I don’t remember them in such mass before, but I love them and am grateful for their appearance on this Mother’s Day. They brought me back to little patent leather shoes with slippery soles, special and shiny, worn only for church, weddings, and wakes. I wore them with white ankle socks and chilly legs under my puffy ribbon-waisted dress. Someone had to tie the bow for me in the back. Those shoes would be surrounded by little purple flowers as I picked violets for my mother before we left for Sunday mass. It was always sunny on Mother’s Day but I may be remembering only one or two of those years. I’d carefully hold the little bunch, and place little green leaves around the perimeter, framing the bouquet. What was I, six? Seven maybe? 

The Mother’s Day ritual began with bringing her breakfast in bed on a Japanese motif bamboo tray. The tray was small, only enough room for a cup of instant coffee, glass of orange juice, toast of Pepperidge Farm bread slathered with grape jelly from an oversized jar, and an overcooked scrambled egg. My brother did the cooking. I did the arranging and he carried the tray. I carried the cards my father bought and had us sign, crowded around the kitchen counter. One card read, “Do you remember when I was a wee wee tot, and you took me out of my warm warm cot, and made me sit on a cold cold pot, and made me wee wee, whether I could or not? Happy Mother’s Day” We thought this was the funniest thing we’d ever read. We laughed hysterically in the kitchen as we signed our names in big letters. It was conspiratorial and exciting. My mother obligingly set herself up in bed, propped the pillows behind her and squealed her delighted expressions of surprise and joy at the (nearly inedible) feast before her. The window shades were tugged just so and they’d rise and coil around the wooden rod so the room would fill with morning light. We had to be careful not to pull too hard or the shade would fall flaccid and just hang there. Then my mother would have to get out a fork and wind the spring to tighten it–– miraculously it worked again. I never understood why we needed those shades. For some reason we had to cover our windows at night. It felt like we were hiding. What were we hiding from anyway? Who looked in our windows? And if anyone did, so what?

The violets came after breakfast. The tray was too small for any vase, even a tiny one. So after the merry making and jolliness of the (rather insulting as I look back on it) cards, we’d be urged to hurry up and get ready for church and into the party dress and straw hat. While I waited for the family station wagon to fill up, I’d scout for violets, my offering to a woman who got very few thanks in relationship to how much she gave. 

In later years we’d make her cards. I think this was initiated in art class, our required half hour per week of cutting up construction paper and using the crayons unavailable the rest of the week. We’d fold a piece of spring-colored paper in half and decorate it somehow, usually just a crayon drawing with a offset message inside. Did we get graded on this? I remember getting an A in art but I wonder what metrics they used? The art teacher came into our classroom with a tray full of supplies. I wonder if she hated her job? Was she an artist? If she was, the creativity was quite repressed, though granted, she didn’t have much to work with. We’d take these creations home, hide them until the anointed Sunday and they gradually started replacing the store-bought ones my father provided. Eventually, the breakfasts in bed stopped, too. 

When my mother was dying, we sat with her in those last days, surrounding her bed, talking to her quietly, and reminiscing amongst ourselves when she slept. I’d brought her here when she said she was ready, and by then she had only a few days left. I’d packed up her possessions, which by then, were few. While we sat with her, I pulled out some boxes I’d packed from her apartment.They were full of bits of her past: her father’s birth certificate, her marriage license, a hotel receipt from their wedding night, and bundles of our Mother’s Day cards. We each took a few and read them aloud, barely able to breathe we were laughing so hard. One I’d made said, “It’s Your Day! You won’t have to wash floors! (A stick person bent in half with a rectangle meant to be a sponge in her hand was next to this declaration.)  Wash dishes! (Same stick person holding a circle) Do laundry! (Same stick figure with arms up apparently putting rectangles on a clothes line). And then the large “Happy Mother’s Day!” and the exclamation point had a purple flower at the top, which I’m sure, was meant to be a violet. I’d sobbed realizing these cards were among the few documents she chose to keep.

I’m not sure when I stopped picking the violet bouquets for her. Probably when I stopped wearing the patent leather shoes. This morning when I went out to feed the chickens and saw the violets, I thought of how much I miss my mother. I imagined recounting past Mother’s Days with her. She’d laugh and we’d sip cheap wine and reflect on how it doesn’t seem that long ago. She seemed so content with her meager breakfast and her violets. Like a butterfly satisfied with enough from each flower. 

Happy Mother’s Day to all who have cared for another in a mothering way. It means a lot.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Being In The Moment

Kunja kuli kutali. ~ Outside is far away.

~ Chewa proverb

Hi Everyone,

When I was twenty years old my future husband borrowed a boat and took me out sailing in Boston Harbor. He’d brought a bottle of wine (drinking age was eighteen back then), and packed a picnic. It was a beautiful late summer day. He’d asked me to marry him a few weeks before and I’d refused. I’d been completely blindsided by the proposal, not even thinking we were in a serious relationship. I’d panicked and suggested we make a clean break as he was way more serious than I was. He didn’t want that and asked if we could be friends. I agreed, emphasizing I was not ready to get serious. I loved him but had places to go and people to see and the last thing on my agenda was being tied down by marriage. We were too young. I had too much to do.

When he asked me to go sailing I agreed and the day on the water was beautiful and romantic. I felt safe with him in the boat. At twenty, he was already an experienced sailor and watching him get us out into the harbor was admirable. I could follow simple instructions but was not much help. I trusted him. I felt safe, which is saying a lot since I rarely feel safe in a boat. I should have been completely content. It was the perfect temperature. The sky was bright blue. I had the day off from work and was out on the water with a great guy. He was smart and funny, handsome and competent. He loved me. I took a lot of that for granted. I had one more year left in school and could not stop thinking about the possibilities. 

I think my yearning started with the family subscription to National Geographic. As a kid, I read little of the text, but pored over every photo and caption. I wanted to travel to every single one of the exotic locations. I wanted to wear safari outfits and sleep in primitive tents. I skimmed the underwater stuff, ruling that out as a destination, but flipped those pages until I got to the jungles, mountains, lakes, and savannah. I imagined myself as one of the healthy-looking explorers. I spent hours daydreaming about sitting around an open fire in the evening, tin cup of something delicious in our hands, discussing the findings of the day. How convenient that the Peace Corps commercials coincided with my youthful longing. I was going there. Nothing would stop me. I hadn’t imagined a marriage proposal from someone who mostly stuck to home. He didn’t wax poetic about distant lands. True, he’d tracked whales around Labrador on a sailing scholarship as a teenager; that was noteworthy. That, however, involved a boat so was instantly off my list of enviable experiences. But I did think it was pretty cool that he did it. I just never saw myself marrying until later in my life. Say, twenty-five or so, time to be single and carefree, flirty, flingy, but with plenty of childbearing potential left in me. I imagined meeting Mr. Right on one of my adventures, not in a bar on Charles Street, a street not nearly as elite in the 70’s as it is now. Students could afford apartments on Beacon Hill back then for God’s sake.

There are many times over the years I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I’ve said many hurtful things in my life; most were out of anger but many were unintentionally insensitive. Some stand out more than others and that day sailing in Boston Harbor was one of them. I didn’t mean it to be hurtful. I meant it to convey my desire for adventure, something he said he admired. He was proud of himself having organized the whole day, and it was incredible. I don’t think I said that enough that day. What I did say I wish I could have reeled back in as it was coming out of my mouth. A plane ascended from Logan airport and we watched it pass over us, heading east. “Europe”, I thought. “That plane is going to Europe.” And all I could think of was strange lands and foreign languages, cheap hostels and interesting people, trains taking backpackers to remote locations, alps, experience. I had another whole year of nursing school. I had weekends to work yet, angry father to placate, exams to pass, and papers to write. It seemed it would be a year of stress and toil. That’s what I was thinking when I said, “I wish I were on that plane.” 

The look on his face is branded into my brain. In all the fights we had in our twenty five years together, all the mean and nasty things we said to each other in anger, that sentence is the one I regret the most. He’d worked so hard to put the day together. I don’t even know where he got this big boat. He might have had to pay a week’s wages for it. And I said something that stupid because I wasn’t living in the moment. I was always looking ahead for something more exciting. 

There’s a balance between having future goals and being content with the present and I’ve struggled to achieve that. Much later in life did the idea of mindfulness come in to my consciousness. I’m always itchy to move, anxious for the seedling to come up so I can start planting, then anxious for the harvest, then to eat. When I’m home I’m always thinking about where I can go, when I’m traveling, I’m thinking about where I can go next.  I thought of this when I looked for the meaning of this proverb about things being far away, to stop complaining about not having them, to use what I have, and stay present. This year has been a good lesson for me. I feel the agitation diminishing. I’m looking at every leaf and bud with a new appreciation. I’m grateful for my warm dry home when it rains. I’m less apt to fill my calendar. I understand more those who don’t crave adventure, relish what they have, grateful for where they are. 

Love to all,

Linda