Ok - I have no business blogging before work, but I have to get news out! Otherwise I'd have to be getting dressed, tending to kids, and facing work, all too much today.
I'm still looking for my tribe every weekend, and my sweaters. It's starting to get cool, which is my favorite favorite time of year. Leaves have been turning and dropping for weeks, (cold snap up here fooled all the trees;). Still, I'm ready for the change of seasons, for football games and long brisk walks.
I'm still riding my road bike but not near as much as I wanted to be. For those of you who know I was going to ride in the MS150 (link) here, know that I couldn't make it happen this year, and I'm ok with that. Just too much going on.
(Aside: P is singing loudly in the bathroom - lovely Jewish songs - I think he's imitating the cantor! Now it's gone from choir-like voice to raspy muppet voice. Hmmm wonder if he realizes he's the entertainment of the house some mornings?)
Later
The draft - big rumours that it will be reinstated if Bush stays in office. My take? We need to reinstate it.
No, I don't like war, and I hate killing. But I do love fairness. The fact is that the poorest, least educated people make up the majority of our armed forces, something Michael Moore pointed out eloquently in Farenheit 9/11. What justice is there in our President and Congress sending hundreds of thousands of kids and young adults in to fight his personal vendetta?
If we reinstated the draft, with absolutely no exemptions for college or social position or Daddy's money, then we'd have a fair chance at staying out of superfluous wars and engagements. Maybe we would be conservative on national security and in throwing our weight around the globe.
So yes, I support the draft. And the first ones to sign up better be Jenna and Barbara Bush.
Maybe then we'd find out who the real Patriots are: obviously not the politicians who lie about how we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, who feel they don't have to answer to the public who elected them, and who don't have any children serving in the armed forces. The real patriots are the men and women who serve our country by signing up and showing up.
Look at Israel, if you want further proof that a universal draft is good for defense. What clearer message can we send to the terrorist that we are serious about defending our shores and our allies (such as they are after this reckless Cowboy administration).
Here's more proof, by the way, that the rumours of a draft aren't just rumours, but is a huge hot potato!
Shalom,
v
Who are we when we aren't in our regular place? Would you become someone else in a strange land? If all you knew were gone, what possibilities would you grasp? The chance to be someone else is tempting. But who are we away from all that is familiar?
When I went away to college I didn't know anyone really. What friends I had from highschool were back in Atlanta. I was adrift and alone, surrounded by thousands of students, with the prospect of making my own way in achingly beautiful Athens.
Eventually I found both friends and my place. I certainly didn't have a lot of confidence. Overabundant in anger (mostly at G-d, who I had thought was misogynist, but turned out to be worse - cold and unconcerned and vengeful, after he took a young man I dearly loved.) I bluffed my way through, inwardly reeling from losses beyond my control.
Besides the death of my former boyfriend, my family moved to Texas in the summer before I started school, so I was a thousand miles from the little comfort I had in parents and siblings. And as classes started I broke up with my current boyfriend - a serious relationship of great intensity. It was as if I needed to free myself of him to be free to recreate myself.
On one level it was all "no big deal", but on another I realized what an enormous leap I had taken. No larger, than most freshmen face in starting college, I suppose. We all examine our beliefs about life, about love and the nature of reality at that phase in our lives. I guess my search was just compounded by grief.
So now, 23 years later I've undertaken a similar transformation*, without realizing it. At this middle age I thought myself more settled, prepared to relocate 800 miles from friends and family, ready to leave the South, and all it represents to me.
If we form ourselves in relation to others though, then a move of this magnitude surely tests our beliefs about who we are and what we stand for. What do I represent? Can I do that in a place where no one knows me? If I fall in the woods alone, will anyone hear or care? (grin)
Even with my children and husband and things surrounding me, my relationship to the world is somehow disconnected, surreal some days, like an avante garde film.
Fall is here, predictable and sweet. Pets still love me unconditionally. Knitting and spinning still draw me as moths to the sun. But I am one who pushes outward to find my limits, looks for my reflection in friends faces, even as I know, deep down, who I am.
Every now and then I have to check myself in the mirrors of their eyes.
It's more than I just haven't found my tribe. It's that it takes me years to forge those deep friendships that sustain. The losses were bound to catch up with me. Had not the ones who love me loved me so well, the leaving would be much easier.
As I read about the journeys of thousands of women who migrated on the Overland Trail, making their way west to California and Oregon in the 19th century, I wonder if they were somehow better equipped for the same sort of losses, leaving so much behind.
v
*ok - I'm not questioning everything - so that's good news:)