Politics...

***In my head I was singing, 'I am Woman' with a great big smile on my face...  In my head I could hear you singing with me.  I don't know where you stood on the issue of abortion, it wasn't really anything we ever spoke about.  I know that you did everything you knew to do to make the world just a little bit better for your daughters than it was for you.  I figure that you would understand the sentiment, no matter the politics of the thing.  I guess that I'll never stop wondering what you would have said to this thing or that - hopefully it will just get easier.  I love you - and I felt your presence this weekend.***

Here is the speech I gave at the rally:

"My name is Heather Hall.  I have been fighting for reproductive rights since I was a teenager.  For 17 years I have been fighting encroachment on my personal privacy and medical rights but still, there are some that would like to write their legislation on my uterus.  From Dr. Gunn in 1993 to Dr. Tiller in 2009, I have mourned the loss and murder of our medical providers.  Our opposition would say that they are protecting unborn children, but those of us here know that this issue isn’t as easy as that.  The reasons for a woman choosing to end a pregnancy are many and varied and anything but easy.  The impact a pregnancy has on a woman’s body can’t be argued... it’s incredibly drastic and in some cases incredibly detrimental to her health and well being.  These are issues too big to fit into small minds.

When my mother was pregnant with me she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease and given the choice to end her pregnancy and seek immediate treatment for this life threatening cancer.  By my presence here, I honor the choice she made.  When I was pregnant for the first time and we found that the fetus wasn’t viable, I was given the choice to wait for my body to flush the tissue or to undergo a D & C.  I chose to have the D & C rather than waiting.  Each subsequent pregnancy I have been secure in the knowledge that it was my choice to carry a child to term or to terminate the pregnancy.  No one honors my choice by taking it away.  You do not honor the truly difficult choices your mothers made by revoking the choices of her daughters and granddaughters.  Being a mother is big.  Being a good mother is a job bigger than the Oklahoma sky and I am here to tell you that you were each chosen.  Your mothers chose to carry and nurture you in their bodies at, in some cases, great risk to themselves.  You honor your mothers choices by being here and respecting that they had the right.  They had the freedom to make a choice that some Oklahoma legislators would like to revoke.  This is not a direct action, but a yawn and grab maneuver that is better left to teenage boys in darkened movie theaters.  

These attacks on our privacy and freedom aren’t just localized to the shiny buckle of the bible belt, but are occurring across the nation.  I stand with you.  I say that no means no.  You cannot legislate my rights away and you cannot use public funds to propose unconstitutional laws.  This has already been settled in the Supreme Court of our great nation and I am tired of having the same fight over and over.  Current proposed legislation would seriously curtail a woman's ability to make unimpeded health decisions and it would potentially cut down at the knees an agency that has been on the front lines in the battle against AIDS and other STD’s.  An agency which has taken on the task of providing education and resources to promote safe sex practices.  I stand with Planned Parenthood.  I stand with any health care providers that support a woman’s right to choose what grows in her body.  I stand by my mother’s choice, and the ability to make it."

It's clear to me that you can't give a speech like you would read or perform a poem... as Ike said, '[I] forgot to leave space for applause!'...

Today, I am going to seek new ways to make the world and this life just a little better for my children.  I am not going to be afraid of the unknown and I will not be afraid to stand up when the issue is important.

Working it out...

***I wish you were here to enjoy the beauty of a 70 degree day in the midst of snowstorms... to watch Eli playing in mounds of snow in short sleeves.  He is endlessly fascinating, and I wish you were here to share in rapt observation of his rapidly growing discovery of the world. One of the hardest things over the past year and a half (it still feels like I’m counting minutes) has been that no one else on the face of this planet could love my children as much as I can, except you.  Except you are gone and I don’t have anyone who is interested in the inanity of my day and the complexities of being a mother of two children under two years old (just left that club thank god)...  I miss bouncing ideas off of you, and I miss having someone else truly enjoy caring for my children.***

When I was a kid, I had a like 8 - 10 extra parental units... I’m not sure if it was because of my mother’s brush with death (did she consciously want me to have other adults who cared for me just in case she were to die?) or if it was because my parents were so young... they didn’t have friends with kids, so I didn’t have friends my age.  My best friend when I was 4 was in his 20’s... for some reason he was fascinated by my ability to converse.  He would sit and talk with me for hours during parties and he would watch out for me.  A kid at a college party needs as many people looking after her as she can get! ;)  When I was a teen, my mother actively encouraged other women to mother me... she had a deal with several women that, as long as it wasn’t dangerous, they were to keep our conversations to themselves - that I needed an adult outside of my actual parents to get information from.  This, I’m positive, was foreshadowing... it’s as though she knew that I would need someone else at some point.  As though she knew she wouldn’t live long enough.  We’re all still trying to recover from her loss, and I’m trying to understand it when certain women whom I’ve come to lean on simply aren’t there... it really isn’t their job.  No woman (anymore) can say that she built me, cell by cell, in her body from love and DNA.  No woman is genetically predisposed to remember the day of my birth or to remember that I need her...  I’m learning to live with this.  It makes me feel awfully lonely and awfully adult.  I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready for that level of adulthood... I still need someone to blame it on sometimes, and someone to celebrate my accomplishments.

***Today, I will KNOW that I am a good mother... no matter if my children are well or horribly behaved.  I will be in the moment with them (as soon as they wake from napping) and I will enjoy every moment.  I will remember to breath when frustrated and to laugh when delighted.  If I need to lay blame then I will lay it on the universe, because adults need to be excused sometimes... and the universe can take it.***

To begin

***I miss you.  With every breath that I take and every moment that passes it seems that I miss you more, and I thought the opposite would be true.  I thought that this feeling of loss would fade until your memory would shine like a well loved toy, a worry stone I polish between my fingers nervously.  I thought your memory would keep me, and it turns out that I am much needier than I could have ever imagined.***

Cancer has always been a member of my family, a part of my life, an essential ingredient in my identity.  The first story I ever learned by heart was about my mother's diagnosis of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and that it had been caught earlier than usual because of the unusual hormones playing havoc on her body.  The hormones were, of course, my fault.  A lymph node on her neck became alarmingly swollen, prompting her to seek medical care.  I wonder how the doctor felt having to deliver the news to an obviously pregnant woman... How do you tell a 20 year old who is ripe with life that she has a fifty-fifty chance of death?  This story always involved my father tearing up and my mother leaving the room.  I knew at a very young age that I wasn't a planned pregnancy and always wondered why she didn't end that pregnancy to improve her odds of survival... I figured that my PURPOSE was already accomplished.  (I'm not sure how much of the abortion option is truth and how much was fabricated by my pro-choice drama filled adolescence... As I look back, I'm not sure of the facts... how far along was she when she was diagnosed, would have abortion even been an option at that point?  Was it an option at all in August of 1977 in the very shiny buckle of the bible belt?  All I KNOW is that the story always ended very fuzzily, probably because my father was trying to protect me from the scary dark days that followed the diagnosis.)  I was a dramatic child.

My mother's labor was induced at 7 months or so (again, things are fuzzy here) and I was born with slightly underdeveloped lungs to a young couple with a ton of love to give and an axe hanging over their heads.  My mother went into treatment, and I went to stay with my grandmother 90 miles away.  My first six weeks of life were spent with grandparents who loved me and worried about their son and the woman he loved.  My Grams is still my special person... the person I turn to in joy and in pain with every expectation of acceptance.

My mother fought the cancer.  She had tiny dot tattoos placed on her body marking the grid and Cobalt Radiation hammered her her body on a regular basis.  My father took care of her... and me.  In her weakness she couldn't lift me.  My father lost his job because of too much missed work and was terrified about how he was going to feed us, but my mother still worked.  She was the one with the medical insurance that was paying for the poison that was supposed to kill the cancer.  All of these details become fuzzy in the telling because by this time my father had begun trying to edit so as not to terrify me.  I think the minutiae would have been less terrifying than the shades of gray that have been left behind.  I don't really know how they paid the bills, or anything about how they finally knew that she had won the fight and the cancer was gone.  Maybe that part isn't allowed to be as medically definitive as the diagnosis, I don't know.  I was left with a story, poems written to me by a dying mother who managed to live and cancer as constant companion.  We walked (for all the good it ever did) every year in the 24 hour walk for life, took turns introducing her and watched her don the special colored shirt that marked her a survivor.  I admired her because that was what you were supposed to do with people who had stories like this.  I didn't understand the depth of the terror she must have survived or the strength of character it took to do so with any grace and dignity.

***Today I am celebrating Valentine's Day with my husband.  I am going to remember that he loves me, in spite of his tendency to forget romantic gestures.  I am going to remember that my body has hosted and built, cell by cell, two amazing little people.  I am going to bask in the freedom that a babysitter provides.  I am going to live joyfully.***