blessed among women

Ode to Veiled Women

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
As you see the world around you through the blue haze of the veil,
do you ever wonder what you are missing?
Do you ever stop to think that the world is missing you?

You, my sister, who sees only that which is in front of her, never to the sides, and never behind…
do you stop to mourn what you are missing,
do you know that you’re only getting one third of the picture?

Does it make you angry that God made you a girl?
Does it make you angry that even though God made you a girl,
Man made you a veiled woman?

Do you wonder what the wind would feel like on your whole face,
raising your dampened hair and wilted spirit?
When was the last time you raised your whole face,
your whole head, your whole self,
naked and unashamed into the bright Sun of the afternoon,
glowing like the mother of all creation?
Are you even allowed to think of that?

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
Your eyes were opened a long time ago.
You know that you are missing nothing.
Child of the West: this world misses nothing you cast forth.

You, my sister, who sees everything in a three-hundred-sixty degree scope of present, past, and future…
You only mourn what you can’t imagine.
You never stop to think about what could be hiding under the rocks, waiting for you to slow down.

It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl.
It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl, because your fathers and your brothers agreed you could be anything you wanted to be.

Do you wonder what mountains there are left to climb?
Have you had enough of shaving your legs, painting your eyes black,
cutting your hair just so, smoking because you can?
Do you see yourself mother-naked in the mirror, or do you only see
What you have hidden in all of this creation?
Do you allow yourself to think of that?

I think about you, Fatima:
Daughter of the Prophet.
Mother of God.
Small child of Piedras, with her brown face upturned in my hands.
You have so many faces.
So many faces.
And they are all beautiful, behind all of the veils that we wear, for all of the reasons we wear them.

Yes, the faces are beautiful.
Even mine.

mil besos,

rmg

and now, for something completely different...

The rest of this piece said something about “at the front of your jeans”. I’m not sure I want to know what that means. Regardless, it’s an interesting question. “How big is the gap?” Which gap—gender, wage, generation, intelligence, socio-economic? There are gaps everywhere: small and large, profound and mundane, the truest definitions of the agony and the ecstasy.

There are gaps we don’t even see but that make themselves known in our daily lives. When I talk to an older person—either of my grandmothers, my grandfather, the old couples at my church, etc. , the gap I notice the most is between what I say and what they hear. I find myself having to modulate the pitch for my voice, the correct volume of speech, weeding out colloquialisms that they will not understand, being plain in my expressions. I wonder what the gap looks like from their end… how frustrating it must be to talk to me if I am over-excited, or get confused about which ear their hearing aid is in, or use the slang I pick up from my crazy friends. That must be hard for them.

I think about the gap between what happens and what might have happened, sometimes. The further you get away from a pivot point, the harder it becomes to really imagine how things might have been if that one pivotal point had occurred at a different place or in a different way. For the first few months after my dad died, I would imagine how things would have been if he had lived…trips home, holidays, conversations. But the further I get away from being 18, sense of relief or comfort I get from pretending or imagining that things were different becomes smaller and smaller. There is no point in trying to script out a conversation between my father and I as adults, about anything. It’s to the point now that it’s not even fun to think about, because it’s so far-fetched. Giving that up, walking past that gap, and not filling it with conversations that won’t happen, has been good, I think…profoundly hard, but good.

I think there is a gap between parents and children that is particularly important. There comes a time in early adulthood when I think you realize that there is a difference, no matter how small, between who you are as your parents’ child, and who you are in the world. My friends and I talk about this a lot. Sometimes, there’s this huge sense of betrayal in the children. Who am I to be anything other than what my parents have been telling me I am? Who am I to tell my parents “No”? Even my toddler-aged nephew knows not to tell his mother and father “no”. I imagine it’s hard for a parent to come to the realization that you will never fully know your child, not any more than you child will every fully know you. And I think that’s true, regardless of how close the parent/child relationship is. Coming to grips with that is vital. Ignoring that gap in knowledge, intimacy, authenticity just creates an atmosphere of thievery…parents robbing children of the right to grow up, children robbing their parents of the right to see the fruits of their labor.

I just got back from a weekend with two of my dearest friends. We try to spend at least one weekend together every year. Time has been our gap…the time between DC, Austin, St. Louis, New Orleans, New Braunfels, Durham, San Antonio. We have filled up the time between when we all lived together and last weekend with all sorts of experiences, other people, other houses, other friends. But, as in all transcendental friendships, the gap narrows to nothing when we are back in the presence of each other, the entity we call “us”. We lapse easily back into our rhythms of speech, our friendship roles, the way we all sit squished together on the couch to watch a movie, when we would probably be just as comfortable in other chairs or on the floor. You can believe that the gap is almost gone…just a hint of air in the middle of things.

Caroline’s poor husband always takes the invasion of his space with such grace. I promised I would try to find him a boyfriend to play with. Then, I realized that a boyfriend wouldn’t be enough to bring with me, next time. Adding partners into the equation of friendship is pretty easy to do, assuming you like the partner. Melissa and I love Caro’s husband, Alex. He’s a prince among men. He makes Caro sparkle. He has also made Caro a mother. And that, friends and neighbors, is something holy. There is nothing better than your friend telling you, after years of worry and not knowing and doubting and praying, that she is having a baby. I cried with happiness. But a little part of me was sad, too. A little tiny, awful, horrible, nasty, mean, selfish part of me cried because this changes everything, and not like getting married changed everything.

Partners can be left at home for long weekends. Partners can leave the house for a run, or errands, or to go beer-drinking with their own good friends. Partners can go to bed and read while you stay up and talk into the wee hours. Babies can do none of those things. Babies go with you everywhere. Babies are with you all the time. Babies are magnificent. Babies are breathtakingly gorgeous. Babies make me insanely jealous. There…I said it.

That being said, I can’t wait until the day that child makes her entrance into the world. I would be happy to never spend another weekend with my girls if it meant that the new little girl could have five more minutes learning about the exceptional creature that is her mother, and the repository of patience that belongs behind her father’s eyes.

The gap is necessary…the gap is the lost tooth of our 20’s, to be filled in with the tiny pearls of child-rearing wisdom. The gap is knowing that my couch-surfing days, cris-crossing the country on frequent flyer miles, going on adventures during school holidays and long weekends is rapidly coming to a close. Life moves on. 11pm becomes staying up late. Work can consume. Gym dues beckon you to stay one more hour.

The gap is that space between being asleep and awake, where you can see the face of the ones you love, and hear their voices, and know that eventually, all the gaps close. And you always end up right where you were meant to be.

mil besos,

rmg