There's Beauty in the Bellow

My son is set to turn 2 before the end of the year. He's developed rapidly over the last few months after several slower-paced months of growth since he started walking in February. It really is marvelous that one's body can knit together another human being totally apart from one's own willpower. But amidst the awe, I've only seen one person acknowledge that bearing a child subtly changes a mother. (I don't remember whom, unfortunately.) Not just the physical changes or that a child "made me a mother" (a sentiment I don't embrace). Childbearing is a surrendering. Perhaps that's why so many fight against motherhood and why Shulamith Firestone believed that only surrogacy -- to a machine -- could make the sexes equal. Childbearing is a superpower too, but it is more of a surrendering. Sleep and sleeping positions, range of motion, energy, appetites, activities, perceptions of this or that body part, and time have all been circumscribed by a bein

I won a Persian rug off eBay. It arrived a week before Hurricane Michael hit the Florida coast -- only 50 miles east of us. As I cleaned up our little house, two truths lay before me in tension. The first is simply this: do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust and mold destroy, where thieves break in and steal, and where hurricanes ravage. The second is that the good man lays up an inheritance for his children's children. My momma has a Persian rug that her grandparents bought through the Sears and Roebuck catalogue when they married. She remembers dancing on that rug as a child, and I danced on that rug ... picking out step patterns by choosing which geometric element to step on next. So I bought a rug from the same region in hopes that my children and grandchildren will dance on it too. The rug by itself might not be that valuable. But more significantly, I hope that it becomes a tangible reminder of love. My paternal grandmother, although not a

We visited family recently and one member had a borrowed copy of "Tranny" by Laura Jane Grace. Grace was formerly a male and frontman of a band I had never heard of (in an angsty genre I never listen to). So I had no preconceptions when I picked up the memoir, other than the title was intriguing. Plus, the title and front matter gave no indication as to whether the epithet was owned or disowned. (There was no dust jacket.) It opens with the writer as a very young child, idolizing and aping Madonna. It's not immediately clear whether it's not a girl pretending to be said Madonna. I mention this only because I have a problem with anyone wanting to be like Madonna at all. She's not worthy of emulating, although she is talented at least as a performer. (I've only heard a few of her songs and she's mostly posturing, so I have no idea of her vocal talents.) I read the first section about her childhood and the last bit where she transitions. Apparently most o