And Another Thing....

Women's sacrifice

Friends, you know I hate being one of those aggregators, just posting links to other places. Nevertheless. Do try to read Debra Dickerson's interesting commentary on  Michelle Obama. I like it not because of what it reveals or doesn't about Michelle herself, but about how Dickerson brings to the front a worry I have, too: What happens when America's smartest 30something women start exiting the office in droves in order to raise their families?

I'm really not judging (unlike Dickerson, who keeps saying she isn't, but then does). I think--nope, I know--that I would make the same choice were I to have a child. Yet I look around at my Wellesley cohort and see woman after woman dropping out to raise their kids, and I think about the loss of brain power for America and stunted job experience for my friends (or stunted life experience for lawyer friends who don't want to have kids until they make partner), and I worry about how this is going to play out.

I don't have answers or even thoughts of answers. Just concern.

Alone

Sitting across from me tonight on the train was a stocky black girl with short hair and a quiet way about her. She was a teenager, maybe 14 or so.

She stared at the pretty, Latina teenage girls next to me, who were joking with each other, and laughing.

Then she rose. She stood in front of the middle of the pack of girls, and she slid an ear of yellow corn--uncooked, wrapped in plastic--into the waistband of her pants, so that it stood upright, like an erection.

She stood there, and looked at them, and waited. They laughed.

Then she stood in front of me, her hands still quiet on the ear of corn. Our eyes met. She looked old and sad and like she was asking for something she didn't have the words for.

I looked away.

She sat down again, where she had been. The Latina girls laughed and whispered. She stared at them. I got off the train.

Space women

I just heard on NPR that one of the most coveted jobs of an astronaut--spacewalking--is barely available to women.

Why?

The space suits are TOO BIG.

NASA is working on next generation suits for its trip to the moon,  but experts interviewed seemed doubtful there would be women-sized suits because, well, that's just not a financial priority.

Come on. Give the girls a suit that fits.

Sometimes my gadar just doesn't work.

I was riding the subway with Eddie and Fernando. I like them both very much.

Eddie is softspoken and that charming sort of tough-gentle; his friend Fernando is big G gay, with his Dolce sunglasses and so he was talking, of course, about Madonna, and that led to him ranting about Catholicism, and that got Eddie--Mexican, Catholic--so upset he couldn't speak.

And there I was trying, like always, to be the mediating voice.

"Well," I said to Eddie, "you can see what he's saying, right? I mean, he feels this negatively because he was an alterboy---"

"I was an alterboy, too!" Eddie said.

"Sure, OK," I said. "But it's diferent. You're not gay."

Eddie blushed and Fernando started laughing.

"Oh." I said. "Uh, or you are gay."

Way to make friends, New Girl in the City.

Transgender stuff

I've gotten a lot of really interesting mail on my "When Butches Become Men" column. I want to respond to the throughtful responses thoughtfully---I've asked one writer in particular if I may post her (critical) letter here, because it was excellent.

Today, though, I spent the day in the ER with my grandmother, who collapsed this morning. Maybe she needs surgery....maybe it's a stroke....maybe it's an infection run amok....maybe it's some combination of all three. We brought the DNR papers with us, but so far haven't needed to use them.

Back to the hospital tomorrow. During the L-O-N-G hours of waiting there, I'll keep thinking---but feel free to post in these comments, if there's something you'd like to say.