watching my friends get wrinkles on the backs of their hands.

Watching babies come and grow,

girls and boys into women and men.

Listening to learning.

We don’t know anything, anymore.

Our love has become broad with our shoulders and hips and necks.

Our friends have become our heroes.

Up here in Tulsa, my daughter requires less care.

Down in Texas, my mom more and more and more.

And I never knew the love for me that broke her heart

when I kept fucking up as a teenager was just foreshadowing.

Now my love for her breaks my heart,

even on the calmest evening.

What when your pain is an historic one?

What when your joy is a victory for all?

Put your head up. 30 is a busy year.

With the bombs and drones and the rich getting richer,

enough is never enough in the free market first world.

Boobs can be fake but not feed and not checked for tumors.

It’s as much money not getting pregnant as raising a child.

No encouragement for prevention.

But there’s a pill or a tax break for everything else.

Busy. Busy. 30 is a busy year.

The death of my father over a decade behind me.

I’ve buried dogs and horses and cats in my backyards.

Mean religion telling women that the father knows best.

Mean women blaming themselves

put on pink camouflage and point their loaded fingers at other women.

The oldest trick in the book.

Divide and conquer from within.

Meanwhile…

All the new converts to libertarianism scream about intrusion,

But we can’t do with our wombs what we want.

And freedom?

Get in line, cry in turn.

One marriage and one divorce under my belt.

The guilt over the split,

every time I remembered our daughter playing in the kitchen,

almost did me in.

Instead of buckling and bleeding myself out,

I planted a garden,

I started taking care of me.

I’ve never been one to ignore pain.

So I just let it be.

And people look at me like I’m the crazy one.

Like I shoulda stuck it out,

moved to the suburbs and stocked my cabinets with cans.

But this is my one life, my one body, my home, my own.

I don’t know much but my mom and dad taught me:

tend the soil where planted, and don’t waste gas when you can walk.

And Emily Dickinson taught me that forever is made of nows.

So, once every other week or so,

we women deal by binding together in private.

More if we’re not too busy.

My friend Holly asked why this place isn’t on fire yet.

We decided it’s because we’re kinder than anyone will ever know,

and the bad reputation is just a big joke smear campaign.

Sitting around drinking tea and beer,

we are all smart and somewhat queer.

First items on the agenda:  food and love.

31 is a busy year.

For more stories like mine, you gotta go here: PLANNED PARENTHOOD SAVED ME.

Thanks to my friend Maurice for showing me this site. It’s a great response to all the haters that have been hating on PP lately.

To healthy bodies!

Spring

“In a survey of thousands of teenage mothers who had unintended pregnancies, about a third who didn’t use birth control said the reason was they didn’t believe they could pregnant.” Read more here.

In the meantime send me your children, and I’ll tell them there’s no such thing as storks bringing babies. Nor is there any scientific evidence of immaculate conception.

-from Jazz by Toni Morrison

]]> http://progressontheprairie.com/2012/01/30/2184/feed/ 0 POP Writers http://progressontheprairie.com/2012/01/12/okie-stories/ http://progressontheprairie.com/2012/01/12/okie-stories/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:44:34 +0000 okiefeminist http://okiefeminist.wordpress.com/?p=2225 ]]> I haven’t been blogging very much lately, but I have been writing and busy in other ways. Recently, This Land Press published a story I wrote about the time me and 2 of my friends killed, dressed, skinned, and butchered a goat. Check it out HERE! It’s a reworking of the story I related here on Progress on the Prairie a while back. Also, a very talented journalist named Abby interviewed my friends and me about the killing experience and our personal views on eating meat.  She made a nice audio piece — like a mini This American Life episode — out of our interview, and you can listen to it here.

Here’s to Okie stories!

Spring

I got a note in the mail this afternoon from a sweet, sweet, strong friend. She wrote to me, basically, to tell me that she loves me. Gosh. It brought me to tears. And she inspired me to write more love letters. So, here’s one for her.

Dear K,

How much healing has taken place in your presence, because of your presence? On your old porch and at your present comfortable country home, you have loved like a father penguin. Through you, I found my way to a meditation teacher who isn’t a hokey bullshitter but a hard worker committed to doing right. Fuck yeah.

It makes sense that we’ve grown closer over the course of this year. This year, I was searching the universe for solid and sincere and open people. When I was younger, I valued fun and likability and friendliness above all else. I, being a bit of a pagan hedonist, still worship pleasure. Don’t get me wrong. But now I appreciate honesty and perseverance and calm just as much. You, my love, are a woman who represents an eagle-eyed mixture of fantasy and honesty and strength that is rare.

It’s heartbreaking, at times, to watch you grieve and work to heal. It’s strange to watch you hurt. I know you are so used to being the tough one. The invincible. The fiercest. The thing is, you still are.

I love you,

Spring

The other side has Seminole patchwork that my former mother-in-law gave me to use in a project, and so I did.

I gave it to my ex-husband/ the father-of-my-child/ friend for his birthday. He liked it. I’m glad.

Spring

And so I begin my silk scarf collection. But how does one wear a silk scarf without looking prissy or stuffy? I want to be a smart-looking lady with a fine and diverse collection of scarves for my children and my friends’ children and our children’s children to see and touch. But I don’t want to look like a snob or Fred from Scooby Doo. I think I will keep only the most wonderful scarves, and I will keep them all smelling nice, like the Medici Cocoa natural, artisan-crafted perfume that my friend Tara makes in her very own home. And then when I die, my scarves will tell people about my interests and my character. People shopping the selling of my estate will say: “Oh! A silk scarf with fishing lures! My, what an odd mix of rural and intellect this saucy lady must have possessed!” They will. Then they’ll see this picture I tried to take of myself wearing my scarf:

And they’ll giggle. But one of the people, probably a bookish girl who grew up on acreage, will see the scarf and she will not be able to carry on living without buying it for 65% off 5 dollars. And she’ll love it and consider it the beginning of her silk scarf collection, just like me. And just like me, she’ll figure out a way to work it into her wardrobe. And she’ll live happily ever after.

She will. Just like me.

Spring

My dad’s boots on the left were custom-made in Texas. Always. He had all of his boots custom-made because not only did he have small, wide feet, but he also had big preferences. For example, he preferred to have a belt buckle that matched his boots exactly. So when he had his boots made, he had a matching belt buckle made, too. The quilted leathers: each individual square is made from a different hyde and specially dyed. Cow, snake, ostrich, alligator, blue, brown, black, tan. That was success to him: being able to pay an American crafter a decent wage to create unique items, and lookin’ good.

The concert was wonderful. Dolly opened to “Light of a Clear Blue Morning.” I cried. This was the song that carried me through my first major break-up and relocating with my daughter to a new city by myself when I was 24 and she was 4. The memories that a song can unearth are as strong as a woman giving birth, I think.

The rest of the concert was equally great: I thought about my mom, my dad, my childhood home, the beautiful rural landscape of southeastern Oklahoma where I grew up, people workin’ hard with their hands, where nobody I knew had a cubicle job. I thought about love and loss, life and compassion, musical traditions, community and friends, growing old, and happiness. I realized I have had plenty of happiness. And I look forward to plenty more.

And I realize that Dolly Parton can turn me into a sappy pile of sentimentality.

And that’s okay,

Spring

P.S. Here’s a beautiful version of “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” by the Wailin’ Jennys: listen.

“Change starts with self, and relationships that we have with those around us must always be the primary site for social change.”

The above is some beauty from Patricia Hill Collins’ essay “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection.”

Love!