For 10 Years

Last year around our anniversary, Melody had just come out to me as transgender and I was awaiting my fairly definite diagnosis of MS. We took extended family photos on the eve of our anniversary, with our wedding photographer 🥹, immortalizing the wildest time in our years together thus far.

I remember telling Mel one morning in the shower, "I of course want us to support each other, but right now I think it makes sense if I worry about my body and you worry about your body, independently, instead." Oxygen-mask mentality, you know?

Today life feels a lil more relaxed, a lil less disruptive. We aren't 100% settled (who is?), but we aren't still wondering whether we must inevitably split over huge pieces of news that rock our worlds individually and collectively.

It's just one year later, and I can see some light at the end of this tunnel. A silhouetted image against that light reveals two scenes: one of me caring for Mel and Mel's body, and one of her caring for me and my body. The image is stunning and honest and true. It is the truth of where we must go.

As it turns out, we cannot just each worry about our own selves and bodies, not within the context of this marriage and this family. Our relationship was built on mutual respect and understanding, strengths that led us both to enjoy relatively early independence within our marriage. Now we understand our selves and our bodies mutually, acknowledging that interdependence is also strength (or STRANK!, as Brooks would say 😂). (Football is life, but football is also death.)

Ten years ago (!!) we bound these two bodies together by marriage. Then, we spent nine years trying to keep them distinct and discrete, coming together at times to connect and connect deeply, but only if we each stood to benefit individually. Oxygen-mask mentality.

In one year, we have married like complementary flavors placed in the fridge for a few hours to "marry." We have married like two pieces of rope, spliced and rejoined together seamlessly. Married! We have married each other in such a way that we are both changed, renewed, totaling more than the sum of our individual parts, a chemical reaction (as opposed to physical reaction, yes, seventh grade science) where something new is formed. 

We still leave the door open for things between us to change if they must. We still choose each other explicitly and often, and I think we manage to keep appropriate boundaries of self. But this year I have been absolutely struck by the magnificence of caring for each other in such a way that I do NOT always know where Mel ends and where I begin. And we're just at the start!

Love generates through and between us both by virtue of deliberate and consensual joining, relaxing, marrying. This I could not have conceived of before last year. And I gotta say: it is one hell of a way to marry. 10/10, would recommend.

I love you, Melody Facer.

Tikkun Olam: Repairers of Creation

This weekend I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor, a documentary about Fred Rogers. When he was asked to come out of retirement for a video message after 9/11, he said:

"No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be 'tikkun olam,' repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself."

Last night I broke a glass dish. It was my left hand's fault, the one still recovering from my MS relapse last year. My hand slipped, the bowl fell, and glass scattered across my kitchen floor as I said, "Shit." 

I thought about Fred's injunction to be tikkun olam, a repairer of creation. I didn't really want to attempt to repair that glass bowl. I could neither repair nor eat the avocado that I'd been smashing into the bowl. I may never fully repair my left hand. In a quick moment of almost-bedtime defeat, I thought, "Why bother repairing?"

Michelle Thorley (@florafamiliar) shared about repair on Instagram this weekend. She wrote:

"To create can be exciting and rewarding. To break can be satisfying and final. But to repair--that is long and often difficult."

I thought again of Fred Rogers and his injunction for us all to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation.

Michelle's post was a clue! Fred and Michelle both argue not merely for the repair of immediately personal issues, though there is value there. They argue instead for societal, systemic, interpersonal repair.

But here's the thing: I've been learning the skills I need to help enact societal repair, and it's also super personal. I (and you) cannot repair creation without acknowledging that repair is needed, without seeing where it requires mending, without watching closely for cracks and chips. And where better to practice noticing cracks in creation than within my own self? If I truly desire to be a repairer of creation, I must first shatter open, myself, to the brokenness of the world on both large and small scales. I have to experience disrepair.

I will remain unable to comprehend the world's brokenness until I claim my being part of it. I both require repair and owe repair. We all do. 

Today is 9/11. In 2001 the attack on the twin towers shattered our collective understanding of safety. The news coverage shattered most Americans' positive or even neutral perceptions of Islam and its adherents. It shattered relationships between nations and individuals. Death itself shattered the heart of anyone who lost a loved one to the tragedy.

Repair of these wounds is tikkun olam: repair of all creation. And despite 9/11 being over 20 years ago, some of those wounds are still wide open, still awaiting their healing and repair.

In the great Jewish tradition of interpreting, reimagining, and reinterpreting scripture, one modern interpretation of tikkun olam theorizes that the Creator left a bit of the world unfinished, waiting and ready to be repaired (improved upon) by its inhabitants. Human action, rather than the hand of divinity, will therefore be the primary driver behind the world's final completion and perfection. Our role as repairers of creation is not just superfluous to existing creation; rather, it is the completion of creation.

Today I cried remembering the large-scale tragedy of September 11, 2001. Today I also cried remembering the small-scale tragedy of my clumsy left hand. They were the same tears. And they were tikkun olam, at least for me, as I cried them. 

*"He couldn't fit a whole woman in his head."

Tonight I spent an hour or so in the same room as a dude in this outfit, name tag and all. We chatted in a group setting, made eye or conversational contact at least three times.

After a bit, I moved to another part of the party. When I came back, I decided to put on my sweatshirt and I sat one seat over from where I had been since my old spot was now taken. I still had my name tag on, as pictured.

When that same dude left just a little bit later, he said goodbye to the room, and I joined the crowd in saying goodbye to him, to which he replied, "Oh but we didn't meet!" He pieced together quickly that we had met, or maybe he didn't; I don't know. He was gone quickly and it was hard to tell. I don't need to know.

Now. I'm not here to throw shade on this particular dude cuz he seemed lovely in a bunch of ways. 

But I do wanna point out two things that this FEELS like for me:

:: Apparently my clothes are me and I am my clothes and what I wear is the most memorable thing about me.

:: The ideas and jokes I contributed in our earlier conversation were not significant, at least not enough for this dude to bother remembering me or connecting with me over them in a meaningful way.

Again. No shade to this dude. We're unlikely to cross paths again anytime soon, and not all of us can fit everyone we meet in our brain.* But let's zoom this out a bit.

I could spend the rest of my evening or weekend or life letting it be the story that I am forgettable outside of my clothes, but I don't think that's true. I think it's more likely that these thoughts and feelings are a misdirected attempt to solve a problem that exists fully outside of me.

I haven't seen the Barbie movie yet but that felt like a Ken moment for me. From what I understand of the movie, Ken(s) in Barbie's world are dispensable, unnecessary, eye candy.

And I'm just here to note for me and for you, should you also be suffering in this world made for men, that I am none of those things. I am here to stay and here to say what needs said. 

Again (again!), no shade to that dude or to that party dynamic (it was lovely!) or to any of the specific players in this scene. But TONS OF SHADE PLEASE to the patriarchy that tells us we can just go ahead and forget the women we meet unless they are there to serve and serve well. The patriarchy doesn't serve me--I'm braver and more worthy than it would have me believe--and it doesn't serve him/them/you--anyone who might never get to know my bravery or worth despite having a chance to do so. And that's not about me; I want every person to feel like their bravery and worth and words are memorable. No matter what they might be wearing.

Grow grow baby

I love watching things grow.

Plants are my latest thrill, every new leaf is like a shot of straight dopamine.

Rising dough.

My kefir!

My child. There is no greater feeling than seeing him develop new skills, words, ideas.

A bead of water as it runs down the window, collecting friends.

Our garden, which I do experience in a way that feels separate from my indoor plants.

A playlist of eternally good songs.

Relationships, individually and in general.

My hair!

Mel's hair!

Brooks' hair!

Our bank account (oop).

Hell, even mold is fascinating to watch grow.

I am trying to grow myself, perpetually asking "where should I focus next?" to reach maturity. But for someone who loves watching things grow, I harbor some hesitation in my belief that we (humans) will and must always grow. Isn't there an end of the line?

What I WANT to believe is the opposite: I have all the time of many universes to experience it all, to grow into and through and beyond further light and knowledge and whatever comes after that. I do not need to grow small now, leaving room for growth later without accidentally running out.

There is no end to growth. Grow, grow, baby.