Author: Bekki

The monthly roundup – it’s not supposed to rain in May edition

On By BekkiIn The Weekly Review1 Comment

The serendipity of kittens. A few weeks ago, after Princess Diamond had been gone about a month, I asked a friend if he thought any of the feral kittens he’s been feeding and partially domesticating might be amenable to a new home. Definitely not, he said, but my partner’s co-worker rescued three kittens from a storm drain a few days ago.

Acquiring the kitten was a bit like buying a TV from a guy in Brooklyn – “so you’re gonna drive to this address, and call my cousin Joey when you get there” – kinda sketch, but ultimately a great deal. And while my preference is generally not to replace a pet right away, Kit came into our life at just the right time for Z, and is the sweetest, friendliest cat we’ve had yet. If you’re local, Kit would love to meet you.

At least the tent didn’t leak. Z and I went camping the first weekend in May, with a big group of families called, predictably enough, Family Camp. The highlight of Z’s trip was an activity called the Gopher Stack, in which a kid (or adult) in a climbing harness attempts to stack and climb milk crates. It requires persistence, grit, and a fine sense for your center of gravity. The low point was when the sky opened up on Saturday and the rain started coming at us sideways. We made a mad dash for the tent, dropping Z’s burrito along the way, but found a backup lunch and, most importantly, the tent was warm and cozy and dry inside.

Mother’s Day Adventures. My mom came out to spend Mother’s Day weekend with us this year. I was a little nervous about this, as the last time my parents came out for Mother’s Day weekend I almost bled out. We had a lovely day though. We started off with breakfast at Z’s favorite bakery, and then, at Z’s request, went on a San Francisco adventure that included pizza in the North End, a detour to a playground with the most marvelous balancing swing contraption, multiple types of public transportation, and ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli.

The Jonathon Livingston Seagull of turkey vultures. Z and I went camping in Pinnacles National Park (two weeks after Family Camp, because I’m a glutton for punishment) with a few other families. We managed to get the kids out for two short hikes, one going up into the rocks a bit, with a magical tunnel through the mountain, and one that we hoped would lead to condors. About a mile down the trail (not nearly far enough for birdwatching) the kids tapped out and asked us to turn around. The adults heaved a collective sigh, briefly considered splitting into two groups, then decided that since *all* the kids were getting melty, discretion was the better part of valor. As we made our way back, a group of birds flew over the pinnacles, including one holding its body and its wings very differently than the rest. For a moment we all held our breaths in collective wonder. Then it turned, and we realized it was just another turkey vulture, although perhaps a more advanced flier than the others.

Oh well, said the same friend who helped us acquire Kit. I guess you’ll have to go back.

If I were a dragon, books would be my hoard. I recently acquired signed copies of The House in the Cerulean Sea and Babel and they are very, very pretty. House in the Cerulean sea is a queer love story about found family and belonging. Babel is a heartbreakingly cruel examination of colonialism and revolution. I highly recommend both.

Links and Things

Most of the signed books I buy come from Subterranean Press and Grim Oak Press. I don’t love that Sub Press still tends to focus on white male authors, but the quality is amazing and the fact that they keep picking up books like Babel gives me hope.

I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt’s Substack After Babel, which focuses on kids and smartphones. I’ve particularly enjoyed the guest essays by folks like Freya India, who talks about what it was like to be a teenager as algorithms were taking over social media (spoiler: not great).

On the lighter side, Z has been tearing through Phoebe and her Unicorn, a comic about a sarcastic ten year old (who kinda channels Daria) and her unicorn companion.

The monthly roundup – trees & weeds edition

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I love the idea of continuing these – and trying to do updates on a weekly basis does not feel at all sustainable. Going to try a monthly cadence and see how that does

1. Trekking the Parks. Z and I went up to Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. We lucked out on timing, arriving in between two storm systems – meaning that the road between the parks was open and we had two days of gorgeous weather and that the hour detour we made to pick up chains was completely unnecessary. 

It’s hard to describe how breathtaking it is up there, so I’ll drop in a few photos instead.

2. Work-trade program: retiree edition. My dad spent two weeks here helping out with things around the house. It was lovely to have him here, and Z had a blast. He and I worked together to prep the patch of weeds Z claimed for their garden spot – I removed the weeds, he did everything else. He also helped me put together the library kit that had been sitting in a box for two months, so now the Capitol Street Stairs has a library box.

3. Get off my lawn. I’ve started buying cayenne pepper in bulk to mix in with my birdseed. My eyes water and I sneeze like crazy every time I refill the feeder, but the squirrel is finally leaving it alone.

4. Socially non social. Even though I host a bunch of events, I’m fairly introverted. Meeting new people can be exhausting. This last weekend, I brought a waffle iron to the parenting brunch and alternated between making waffles in the kitchen while talking to 1 or 2 people, and wandering into the mixer proper and being more host-like. It may be my new favorite way to socialize.

5. The Cats of Eldritch House. We have a new addition to the roster. I’m calling this one Tiny Tuxedo. And we lost the Princess, who got sick and Houdini’d out of the front porch where I had locked her in to keep an eye on her. She hasn’t come back, and I haven’t been able to find her in any of the usual spots. I keep hearing stories from people about cats who do things like this and show up a month later, so I’m still holding out some hope that she returns.

Tiny Tuxedo
Princess Diamond on the Capitol Street Stairs

Links & Things

We’ve been rocking our National Parks Pass, thanks to every kid outdoors. It’s super easy, you just answer a few questions – but make sure you print the paper form! Not all parks will take it if you have a PDF or other electronic version.

People sometimes ask what I do for work, and I say that I work with refugee. I’ve not been a fan of the NY Times lately, but this article was spot on.

The weekly roundup – funerals and cupcakes edition

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I’m making an effort to start these up again, to get myself writing more often. And I’m using the Magic of the Internet to post this one in the past, due to a slight hiccup with my hosting provider.

1. My uncle died last week, and so I spent a good portion of this week in transit so that I could make the funeral. My brothers both made it out as well, which meant that the three of us got to squish into the backseat of the rental Kia. You can guess who got the middle seat. I remember going to a cousin’s funeral, back when I was still married, and thinking about what a beautiful community my cousin had built and comparing that to my own life and social circles, which was limited almost entirely to my husband. This time, as I looked around at the community who came for my uncle’s funeral, I thought about all the various connections I’ve made in the past few years, all the community building and volunteering I’ve done, and had a moment of profound gratitude for all the people I’ve made part of my life.

2. Speaking of community, I finally managed to get to the Sex Positive Womxn’s Sangha yesterday. I love that I’ve created something that doesn’t need me present to happen – and I love even more when I am able to show up.

3. Interested in hanging out with me? I’ve been running a social experiment the last few months with an Activity Buddies Google Form, as a way to increase the amount of friend dates in my calendar. It’s definitely producing interesting results.

4. Z made red velvet cupcakes this week, almost entirely solo. I’m equal parts proud of them and concerned that I no longer have an office to take baked goods into. If you’re local and willing to take extra goodies off my hands, let me know!

5. I ordered a Little Free Library kit a few months ago, and it’s sat in the corner of the dining room waiting for me to have time to tackle it. I’m hopeful that my dad and Z will be able to get it assembled, painted, and installed while my dad’s in town the next few weeks, but it’s entirely possible that it will spend the next few years half assembled in the basement.

Links and things

You should have asked: French webcomic artist Emma has a great explanation of the mental load and how this invisible aspect of household labor is borne almost entirely by women.

I’ve been loving Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, which takes the political events happening today and situates them in an historical context. It never ceases to amaze me just how often history repeats.

I was recently given this recipe for the world’s moistest chocolate cupcakes, and if you can get past the inordinate amount of times the word moist is used, the recipe is pretty spectacular.

Statistical Nightmare

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My partner had emergency surgery yesterday. Today, he and his nesting partner are heading to their vacation house. Saying I’m not happy about this decision is like saying the ocean is a little bit wet. Even so, he is an adult, an autonomous being who gets to make decisions I don’t agree with.

***

I told him I wanted to give him a hug before he left. “Ok,” he said, “but you need to get here quickly.” His nesting partner was itching to get on the road.

“I’m scared,” I told him. “I’m scared you’re going to end up in an ER again, 3 hours away from me.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “The doctor cleared me to go.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The doctors let me go a bunch of times, too.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “I think maybe you’re a little bit traumatized,” he said.

***

We see the world through the lens of our experiences.

***

I learned at an early age to be cautious around all things medical. My younger brother had asthma, the kind that lots of kids don’t live through. The year we moved to Massachusetts was the same year I went trick or treating at Children’s Hospital in Boston while he was hospitalized with an asthma attack.

My family rarely went anywhere “fun” for vacation. Mostly we went to see my grandparents in Oklahoma. We never went to Cancun, or the Caribbean, or to any of the other places the families in our suburban town went for breaks. I’m sure part of this was the financials. But my parents told me, much later, that they’d been terrified of going on vacation somewhere that might not have the kind of medical care my brother needed.

I will note here that when I told my mother they’d let my partner out a few hours after surgery, she was astounded that they weren’t holding him overnight.

***

My metamour and I balance each other out. She is enthusiastically optimistic; I am not. Before I left last night, I told her to call me if something happened, even if it was 2 am. She said she would, but that she was sure everything would be just fine. It was. On the other hand, when he’d told me Thursday that he was going to the ER, I knew in my bones that he’d be having surgery in the next 24 hours.

***

I haven’t written about what happened last spring. I started to, but it’s still too big, too raw.

The short version is this: according to my OB, I’m a statistical nightmare.

The less short version is that for three ER visits in a row, at almost every point in the decision tree, Kaiser made the wrong call.

I’d had a LEEP done about 3 weeks earlier – a minor, barely-even-surgical procedure to take some abnormal cells off my cervix. The doctor told me to take it easy for the next 2-3 weeks and sent me home.

I started bleeding the Saturday before Mother’s Day, profusely enough that I got an ambulance ride to the ER. The ER doc did a perfunctory exam, ignoring me when I said what he was doing hurt. The OB on call diagnosed me with a heavy period and sent me home. Never mind that I have the IUD that mostly prevents bleeding. Never mind that even my postpartum periods weren’t ever that bad.

I started bleeding again Monday night. The ER doc recognized me, and maybe paid a little more attention this time, because after staring at my cervix for a bit, he looked at the nurse and said, “arterial bleed.” The OB on call decided to try cauterizing it with silver nitrate – closing the offending blood vessel by inducing a chemical burn – because she didn’t want to sedate me to suture it. (For the discerning reader: she burned me in the exact same place where I’d been saying ouch when the doctor poked me on Saturday night.) Then she sent me home, even though I was still bleeding a little bit, saying that was normal.

I’d been home maybe an hour when the bleeding got bad again. On the upside, by this point all the triage nurses in the ER knew me, so I was out of the waiting room in less than 15 minutes. The ER doc – still the same one – took one look at me and told me I was going into surgery. The on call OB – the third OB, and the only one of the three OBs I’d seen who seemed to take the bleeding seriously – was the one who demanded that the OR take me ASAP. Even then, it was 11 am by the time they took me in.

As with my partner, they discharged me as soon as I’d come out of the anesthesia enough to pee and walk on my own. They took my blood pressure, but didn’t check my hemoglobin levels – despite the fact that by the time I went into the OR, I’d been hemorrhaging on and off for three and a half days.

I ended up back in the ER the next day, after passing out at my partner’s feet in the bathroom (much less romantic than in the movies), after my heart started racing uncontrollably every time I stood up. They ran the bloodwork. I’d lost over half the blood in my body. They gave me 2 units of blood, iron and calcium pills, and instructions to take the rest of the week off work.

It took me almost 3 months to get back to normal functioning. I have (mostly) stopped panicking when I see that first drop of period blood. I still have nightmares every now and then where I am bleeding uncontrollably.

My partner saying I am a little bit traumatized by this is like calling the ocean a little bit wet.

***

I told my metamour “thank you” as I was leaving this morning. She gave me an odd look, like she wasn’t entirely sure what I was thanking her for. Maybe it was because it wasn’t a big deal to her to wait a few extra minutes so I could get a hug. Or maybe it was because, just as I can’t conceive of a world in which medical emergencies don’t go horribly wrong, she can’t conceive of a world in which everything is not, at the end of the day, just fine.

***

We see the world through the lens of our experiences, but that doesn’t mean they have to define us.

“I can probably see you Monday afternoon,” my partner said this morning.

“I can’t answer that right now,” I said. “I’m too scared, and that’s making me all prickly and defensive.”

“I don’t have a lot of capacity to hold your feelings right now,” he replied.

“I don’t want you to,” I told him. “I can manage my own feelings. I just want you to hug me.”

So he did. And I told him I loved him. And that I would be incredibly angry if he went to the ER again. And that he was by no means ever to attempt to beat my record of 4 visits in 5 days.

He laughed, and he hugged me, and then he got in the car to go.

***

I don’t like the decision he made. But it’s his decision to make, not mine, and it’s probably going to be just fine.

That which yields is not always weak

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I spent ten years in an abusive relationship with my ex-husband.

It’s taken me three and a half years to be able to write that sentence.

***

The first incident I really remember happened when we’d only been dating a year or two, shortly after I moved into his place. I’d gotten in the habit of folding his PJ pants and putting them on the bathroom counter, so they’d be ready for him after he got home from work and showered. I didn’t do it one day – I don’t remember why. I forgot, or I was busy, or I didn’t see them on the floor.

He pushed me over the side of the bed and spanked me. Hard. Hard enough that it hurt, a lot, much more than was fun. When I asked what was going on, he said he was punishing me for not folding his pajama pants.

***

Abuse is rarely obvious. It starts slowly, creeping up on you, until your sense of “normal” is so far from okay that you don’t have any idea how much is wrong.

You probably read the bit above and said to yourself, how on earth could she not see that as abuse?

Easy.

We’d been playing around with a bit of spanking in the bedroom. It was something I’d said I’d be interested in trying. So when it happened, I thought that I hadn’t been clear enough about what I wanted or that I wasn’t enjoying what was going on.

I tried telling him I didn’t like being “punished.” That it hadn’t been fun or exciting for me when he did that. I couldn’t quite articulate what about it I didn’t like, though, just that I didn’t like it. I don’t remember exactly what he said, just that he didn’t listen to me and said something along the lines of, I said I was masochist, so I should like getting punished.

I walked away from the experience feeling like it had somehow been my fault. But also, I don’t think I ever folded his PJ pants again.

***

Abusers are masters at making you doubt yourself. Again and again, my ex-husband refused to listen to me. He told me what I thought and what I felt. He did it so often, and so forcefully, that there didn’t seem to be any point in speaking up for myself.

There were words I had to excise from my vocabulary because he didn’t like when I used them. “Worry” was one. I wasn’t ever allowed to worry about things – I could only feel concern. “Hate” was another. If I used these words, he would tell me that I was wrong. I wasn’t worried about something, I was concerned. I didn’t hate a thing, I disliked it.

***

By the time I was done with law school, there were people I wasn’t allowed to see, either. He never said it in so many words. Instead, he told me he didn’t like hanging out with certain of my friends. He couldn’t ever give me a good reason why, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about. I thought the transition from “my friends” to “our friends” was a normal part of the relationship escalator. It seemed to be how everyone else did it. I attributed the fact that it became harder and harder for me to make friends to my job at a law firm, since I was working crazy hours and didn’t have much time for anything else.

***

Abusers isolate. They make you feel that they are the only source of comfort, the only one you can turn to. They get upset when you go elsewhere for your emotional needs.

A few years, after Harvey Weinstein, after #metoo, after my Facebook feed became flooded with my friends’ stories of sexual assault and rape, I wrote about my own rape.

My ex-husband was furious. Not at the man who raped me. At me. For daring to tell my story to my friends, to the Internet, to total strangers – but not to him. Even though he knew about it, even though he’d watched me struggling with rape triggers for months.

***

I got out. I met someone who slowly and gently and kindly told me, over and over, that it was not normal. And by that point, I’d had enough to grab that lifeline and hang on.

***

I’m still not out.

Yesterday evening, at custody exchange, when I asked him to use my preferred name and not my given name, he said “I’ll call you whatever I want.” And then called the police to force me to give him a document to which he is legally entitled but does not need – and which I had said I would give to him at the next custody exchange.

***

I have been silent about it for three and a half years. I rarely tell my friends how bad it was. I haven’t said anything to his friends or family. I didn’t want it to get back to him, because that would make the abuse worse.

***

But. I watch woman after woman come forward with their own stories.

And I have learned these past three and a half years that there is nothing I can say or do that will make any difference at all in the way he treats me.

So I am saying it. My ex-husband is abusive. What he has done is not ok. It was not my fault. And my voice is worth being heard.