Proudly I tell you I'm a Military Brat

 

I drive through Hickam Airforce Base timing this drive so that I wouldn’t have to stop, get out of the car,

and stand at attention while the American flag goes up. I pass by buildings with bullet holes still in the walls as a monument to the men who died during the attack on Hawaii that started WWII. Here on Hickam Airforce Base, I lived most of life in the shadows of that day. That attack along with the cold war kept my community on high alert. Dad’s military career started on Pearl Harbor Day. Mine started after the war when I was six months old.

This why when you ask me where I’m from, I tell you the military. That’s right the “Nation of the Military.” A nation that has territories all over the world. It’s hard to get you to understand this. The truth is that I’m lived in a constellation of geographic places. From the Midwest, to Japan, to Hawaii to Washington DC. With every new I place I was a card caring member of the “Nation of the Military.” I adjusted who I was depending on the geographics. I even changed my name in high school to Bobbie. This disorienting cartography of life in the “Nation of the Military” is just a part of being a military brat and why I call the “Nation of the Military” my home.

The Nation of the Military has fenced towns all over the world. These towns are called bases with strict rules and regulations for both military and civilian personnel. I’ve lived in these towns growing up. Hickam Airforce Base was one of the main stays. I left and came back so many times. I never felt like Hickam was home. Life without a physical home or a hometown was just a part of the topography of the Nation of the Military.

If you ever visit one of these towns you would understand what I’m talking about. As soon as you applied to get into the front gate as a non-card-carrying member you will be hit with the rules and regulations of the Nation of the Military. If you’re lucky to get in the gate you will see a self-sustaining city, with personnel quarters, commissary, post exchange, dispensary clinics, and even some recreational facilities You see we have our own language for everything.

Me, a military brat and card-carrying member of the Nation of the Military got these privileges but only if I followed the rules and regulations. These rules and regulations dictated what we wore; who our friends were; where we lived; where we could go in town. All this bonded me and other card-carrying members to the Nation of the Military. When and if you can enter a military town, you will feel this bound but as an outsider may not understand it.

What I’m trying tell you is that the culture of the Nation of the Military is a coming home for me. Think of the feeling you get when you go back to your childhood home, that warm familiar sense that feels cozy, where you get a sigh of relieve from the outside world. When I get in the mindset of the Nation of the Military I go back to old habits; I stand at attention when commanded, I say yes sir when spoken to, and I stay out of my commander’s way so I won’t get reprimanded. There is no standing at ease in “The Nation of the Military. This what my commanding officer, Dad, taught me. Today the comfort I get from the culture of the Nation of the military is mixed.

Commanders of the Nation of the Military keep all military personal and their families on high alert. Ready for the next battle. When I hear of a military crisis anywhere in the world I stay alert even now that I’ve been gone from the Nation of the Military for decades, because that’s what I’ve been trained to do. We knew the cold war heightened the threat of the atomic bomb. Every card caring member of the Nation of the Military knows this. We know this because of the Suez Crisis of 1956; the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962; and the numerous Korean Nuclear tests starting in 2006. These close calls to nuclear war give the members of the Nation of Military a heighten awareness of war.

Dad as my commanding officer made sure me and my siblings were trained to be on high alert due to cold war of my era. I learned at an early age that there were countries that wanted to take over the world. Dad taught me to be on high alert by schooling me and my siblings about life in Russia; telling us we would be sent to Siberia if we got out of line, telling us Russia wanted to take over the world. He told us how lucky we were to live in the United States of America. The power of Dad’s anti-communism talks kept me and my siblings on high alert and in line.

All my childhood, Dad was doing what he loved, fighting communism. First and foremost, my Dad, Hugh Stanly Ames, was an American. He was most fulfilled as a soldier of the US Air Force dedicated to his country. He’d kept secret that he’d immigrated from Cuba as a young boy which I found out later in life, giving me some insight into my Dad’s anticommunism sentiments that everyone in the military shares. In our lives in the military Russia was the #1 enemy.

The fear of Russia Dad instilled in me made me a willing participant in the base’s biannual evacuation drills. These drills required everyone man, woman and child to pack up provisions and evacuate to the mountains. No this wasn’t in Iraq, or Pakistan it was in Hawaii in the days of the cold war. These evacuations burned in my memory that high alert kept me save, they instilled the constant fear of the threat of communism. The truth is we mostly did these evacuation drills when there was a threat of a Tsunami and once only once there was a tsunami.

The “Nation of the Military” rules and regulations including keeping us on high alert came through my Dad as my commanding officer. If we questioned his authority, he laid down the law. I saw this with all the families on base. I saw them obeying commands that came down through the higher ups of the military to the head of the household who in turn barked orders to their family members. Dad kept military order in our family by barking out orders to my Mom who in turn told us kids. Yes, even military families have a ranking. Highest ranking was Dad, then his oldest son, then Mom, and then the other sons and daughters. If any family member got out of line, that is didn’t obey the rules and regulations, a reprimand would come down through the ranks to Dad then to the family member.

I experienced this first hand when the Military Police (MPS) stopped me at nine years old. I was out after base curfew. Yes, the military knows all when you’re on base. When the MP got out of the jeep, he noticed I didn’t have shoes on which is also against base rules. The next day Dad came home and called me to come see him. His commanding officer had been notified about me being stopped and had a talking to with my Dad. The military keeps order, keeps people in line to follow the rules and regulations through this kind of hierarchy of commands. Military families followed this role model maybe out of survival or maybe because the rules and regulations dictated this I don’t know.

That’s not to say I don’t remember some good times within the restraints of the rules and regulations of the Nation of the Military. It’s on Hickam I climbed trees, road my bicycle, ran through fields with parachutes, and swam at the NCO swimming pool to my heart’s content. The water tower is where I had my first kiss when I was 13. These memories seemed to me what having a home would be like. I always tried to separate these childhood memories from the military. I wanted to live my life outside any kind of regulations.

In high school Dad’s ideas against communism and Russia shattered. I learned Russia was an ally of the United States’ during WW II. How could this be? This wasn’t the first time I questioned the military, but this insight on Russia brought my questioning of the military and the cold war to a whole new level. This truth coincided with the anti-war movement. A time in my life and history when everything was being questioned. As the world questioned and even my Dad’s kids started to question Dad dug in, holding on to his 110% military world.

There was the reprieve from military regulations when Dad went to Vietnam for a year. We were used to Dad coming and going over the years on different tour of duties away from home. What kept military regulations in our lives when Dad was gone was living on Hickam Air Force base. When Dad was in Vietnam we lived in civilian housing in Arlington Virginia. In Arlington it was Dad that kept the military regulations in our lives by barking out orders to regulate our day-to-day lives.  With our commander and chief not barking out orders the military lost its hold on me.

Dad’s absence and our civilian housing made the constant pressure of potential war a distant reality. For us this pressure was part of the cold war and more recently the Vietnam war. With Dad gone the cold war and the potential of war was not front and center; didn’t keep a strong hold on me. The feeling of doom and gloom and a state of constant readiness brought dissipated. I never realized the rest of America wasn’t in the middle of the cold war in the same way my family was. I was on vacation in Arlington with Dad gone. We ate when we wanted to, enjoyed movies, and eating pizza out. I didn’t even have to stand at ease, I was at ease.

When I left my family, I didn’t realize the hold the Nation of the Military had on me. I didn’t understand how intrenched I was in this bond until I got some distance, years of distance. I even had to get ideological distance. I guess after nineteen years as a card-carrying member of the Nation of the Military I shouldn’t have expected anything less. Even today I can go back to the Nation of the Military mindset in an instant. I realize I will never change the fact that I’m a military brat. I sometimes say Military Brat with pride; sometimes with sass; sometimes I say it in a whisper with my head lowered.

In shedding the culture of the Nation of Military I have sought out a more democratic way to live. I do best today when I have a say in something I am a part of. When I’m barked orders at, I sometimes obey out of habit but sometimes I question the authority which you would never do in the military. In the Nation of the Military, you never: I repeat never question an order, or a command. You see it’s a mixed bag for me today. There’s the comfort in it because it feels like home but also stresses me out. I never liked standing at attention; never liked not being able to question the status quo. What has stayed with me is being on high alert to any danger. I’ve accepted that its just a part of being a military brat.

Today I say Military Brat with pride.

When do you get Old?

 

My mind wanders during class. It wanders what my classmates are thinking about me when they look at

me, with my gray hair and wrinkled face as I sit in this zoom session. I’m at least 20 – 40 years older than anybody else. I imagine their thinking that I have nothing to say. I imagine that they’re thinking I’m going to write something that’s going to bore them, I’m thinking that I won’t be relevant to them. I imagine their jumping to conclusions just by seeing how old I am.

I think this because I get these kinds of negative stereo types about aging projected on me all the time. According to Sarah Barber of the Georgia State University people who are stigmatized—whether due to race, socioeconomic status or age—perform more poorly when they are faced with negative stereotypes. She found expectations of others can play a powerful role in how well older adults perform on cognitive tasks and motor skills such as driving. She believes that “Those who have positive attitudes about aging live longer, have better memory function and recover more easily from illnesses.”

Fighting the stigmatism on aging is a daily practice for me. It used to be sexism but that has taken a back seat to agism. I also turn this fight inwards. My aching joints are just part of my day. I have to admit that aging has slowed me down but the old wife’s tale that aging makes you less productive hasn’t been true. I’ve had an internship at the Counsel on American Islamic Relations; I study Human Rights in Thailand; I had a short memoir piece published in a book of memoir pieces; I have had a feature article published in the Dhaka News. I continue physical exercise. All of this since I retired at age 66.

I sound defensive and I am. Some of this is to convince you that not all old people stay at home; sit around waiting. I get defensive to convince myself too. I want to convince myself that I can keep my body from aging; keep my thinking contemporary; and keep me poised in the game of live. On my better days I think people stare at me and see the old person they’re going to be. They stare at me and worry about the time when their youth will have slipped away. I would tell them, that it will happen slowly. Then one day you will look in the mirror and you will think your best days are gone. This dichotomy of perception versus reality helps me plunge into life like I’ve always dreamed in retirement.

After I get defensive, I recover and turn away from the people that tell me I’m too old. I’ve learned to turn to physical activities to forget my own aging. One place I turn to is the wind.  Riding my windsurfer, I fly through the water to a place of agelessness. You see the wind never sees my wrinkles, doesn’t notice I have gray hair, nor hears the beat of my aging heart. The wind just blows to meet me just like it would any other person.

Riding the wind reinforces that I’m not too old for adventure. I crave these times. Yet my positive image here is fragile. It can easily melt away when I walk into a bike shop and they tell me I want a comfort bike. They don’t realize that someone who looks like me could have ever toured all over the world, worked in a bike shop, taught bike mechanics.  I muster up the courage to fire back and tell them exactly what I want. The conversation changes then and they treat me like I know what I’m talking about. Even at age 73 I bicycle 15 to 20 miles regularly, I’ve toured Italy. And this is just part of my story of aging.

In the eyes of the people I’m talking about I’m already old, old enough to be laid out to pasture. People like my father-in-law who told me, “People your age shouldn’t be doing things like going out for a 20-mile bike ride.” I turned to him and asked why not. He told me old women shouldn’t be doing things like that. Then I turned away from him and said, “I will never stop riding my bicycle.” Sometimes I turn to look at the person in the eye and fight straight on.

Shortly after my father-in-law made this comment, I asked a friend of mine in his eighties when does being old start, “I don’t know but I’ll let you know when it does,” he replied. I thought about this and realized one has to take control of when old begins for themselves. People’s perception of me and my gray hair and wrinkles shouldn’t influence when I grow old.

Sometimes, the good times, I fight back with sarcasm. Like when I’m standing on crowded bus after a long bicycle ride and a young man says “Here have a seat.” This is when I look them in the eye and say, “Thank you I am kind of tired from bicycling 18 miles.” This is how I fight back when I’m feeling bold, feeling like I can do anything. I love the look of shock on peoples’ faces around me. People who look at me in disbelieve that an old person who they perceive to be weak and frail could bicycle at all because they might break a hip, have a heart attack, or just plain can’t do it.

I want people to ignore my gray hair. I want them to see me as an active alert person. Not the person who rides a comfort bike, not the person who sits at home and knits not the person who has already checked out from life. I read recently that older adults are anchored in the past; that youth are looking ahead at the future. My pass spans seven decades. My future if I’m lucky is one decade. There’s a lot more to think about in the past seven decades than the decade ahead. Instead of thinking about the decade ahead, I dream up what to do today, or next week or in a month from now. There is no long-range plan. The good side of this is that there are no standards, no regulations to follow,  just the moment.

I might get a look or two or even a couple of second takes when I’m doing things I love. At times like this I say to myself I still have a wild and precious life. I don’t have to figure out a sense of self, I know who I am, where I ‘ve been, and I know the things I want to do. This all has come with age. My understanding of world has deepened with every year I’ve lived. I cherish this, I want to share this, I want to continue experiencing the world on my own terms on this 17^th of February 2023 on my 73^rd birthday!

 

My Life’s Work Unravels

 In 1967 the birth control pill became legal for single women. I was seventeen. Three years later I got on the pill. It was too late I was pregnant the first time I did it. My two female roommates assured me this couldn’t happen. I believed them then it happened to me.

I was lucky, through a network of women I knew a doctor who did abortions. I lived in Hawaii one of three states that just months before passed laws legalizing abortion. This was before Roe vs Wade. I was lucky I went to Plan Parenthood to get birth control. The world was on the brink of reproductive rights for all women.

I was lucky I didn’t have an illegal abortion. I had a safe abortion by a certified doctor. I was not added to the list of women who were found in a dumpster; found bleeding to death in a hotel room; found in a taxi on the way to someplace unknow after a blotched abortion. The women’s reproductive rights movement was already mobilized. The network of women calling themselves “JANE” was aiding women to find safe abortions in places where abortion was illegal.

After my abortion my longing for reproductive rights got more desperate. By now I was living in New York City. I went to get an IUD at a clinic in Spanish Harlem. I was barely able to make rent at the time. They promised complete reproductive health for $10. I believed them. For some reason I still had some trust brought about by all those years of conditioning by the male establishment.

When I got to the clinic, I laid down on the exam table while the doctor took his time to get ready to insert my IUD. He started stroking my leg. Asking me personal questions. I looked at the nurse she wouldn’t look at me. Finally, I moved my leg away. The doctor continued asking me personal questions but at least he stopped stroking my leg. Finally, the doctor inserted the IUD. I clenched the table having no idea what he was doing.

No one every explained what they were doing when they did a pelvic exam. A pelvic exam was just something women didn’t talk about because it might educate us on our sexuality, might give us some control over our bodies. We don’t talk about women’s labia either. You don’t see pictures of women’s labia in the movies, or even in pornography. We hide our labia not only from everyone around us but from ourselves too.

Years later I found out the copper IUD I got inserted was experimental. I don’t remember this ever being explained in the paperwork I signed. Soon after getting the IUD I went back to the clinic for a follow-up exam that was included in the $10. The clinic gave me a clean bill of health. I questioned this because I could feel something was going wrong in my vagina. They kept the truth from me. The clinic, the doctor, the scientist had me right where they wanted me. They wanted me to doubt myself. They wanted me to believe them, count on them to keep me healthy, to keep me from getting pregnant. I was serving their purpose. Later I learned not to believe them.

Later I joined a Self-Help Health women’s conscious raising group.  I learned to do a speculum exam on myself and on other women. I got a look at my genitals for the first time. It was obvious I had some kind of an infection. This moment was not a moment of shame, it was a moment of power. That first meeting I realized the impact that a group of women can have. I got new ways of thinking about my body. That’s right “MY BODY.” For months after this I tested the medical establishment to see where the weak spots were. I looked for all the places I could grab more control.

This control didn’t always come without harassment. I found this out when I went down to a medical supply store and asked to buy a metal speculum. The man behind the counter asked for my medical credentials. I told him I didn’t have any. I asked him if I needed a prescription from a doctor. He said no but they only sell to doctors. I told him I have a right to buy a speculum and that I already owned a plastic one but wanted something of better quality. He sold me that metal speculum. I have now officially joined a new wave of women’s liberation.

This new wave of women’s liberation gave me the courage to say out loud “I want birth control on demand.” “I wanted total control over my body.”  “I wanted to help other women get the same.” I was lucky, abortion had become legal during my fight. Clinics for women; controlled by women; started up all across the country. I moved to Seattle where there was a network of women’s clinics. Fremont Women’s Clinic, which I was a founding member, was one these clinics. There was Aradia in Seattle too. It lasted thirty years, longer than any other women’s clinic in the nation, closing its doors in 2007.

Through these clinics we educated ourselves and the women who came in about reproductive rights and how to take control their bodies. We made a network of doctors that were allies. We made ourselves known to the medical establishment that served women and let them know we were watching. We were not alone. The second wave of women’s liberation swelled into millions of women, breaking out of the old mold. Reproductive rights were a critical piece to free women.

I continued my work for reproductive rights even after I came up of the closet as a lesbian. My daughter was conceived through alternative insemination in 1984. I was part of the first wave of Lesbians having children. We first coordinated with Fremont Women’s clinic until the Seattle Times got word of what we were doing and wrote an article about lesbian’s inseminating to have children. Afraid of backlash, we immediately left the clinic, took the network underground.

To avoid the healthcare establishment and to have control of my body, I gave birth to my daughter at home. A friend of mine who was about to sit for her midwifery license helped me through the birth. Her and I were comrades in our goal to create reproductive freedom for all women. When I tell people I had a home birth, they look at me like I some kind of fanatic. I’m not a fanatic, I just want healthcare my way. A way where I am a participant, not a bystander. This has been one of my life goals.

Today I’m unlucky. Reproductive rights are being taken away. I remember thinking the start of this was in the 80’s when pro-lifers started disrupting women’s reproductive health establishments by blocking abortion clinics, degrading women trying to get in those abortion clinics to the point women turned away out of shame. Pro-lifers got more aggressive over time. They seemed to be taking their playbook from historical events like the 1916 raid on the first birth control clinic established by Margaret Sanger and her sister Ethel Byrn. This clinic only lasted nine days before it was raided, shutting it down. Both women were charged of crimes related to sharing birth control and abortion information.

Today my daughter is unlucky. She can see abortion rights going backwards.  Her future is reflected in the past. Starting with the 1821 Connecticut law outlawing abortion after “quickening.” Onto 1860 when twenty states limited abortions.  Then in 1873 the Comstock Act made it illegal to share birth control information with the public. We’ve seen hints of this in the Bush and Trump policy known as “the gag rule.” 

Texas has taken the time line further backwards with its newly enacted anti-abortion law. This law empowers ordinary citizens to police all aspects of women seeking abortion. Doctors, nurses, an Uber driver who takes a woman to an abortion clinic and even a person who shares abortion information with another woman could be at risk of a law suit as of September 2, 2021. This gives all pro-life groups who have been bombing abortion clinics, blocking access to clinics, and murdering abortion doctors, the green light to openly organize vigilante groups to police Texas’ anti-abortion law.

My daughter has taken note; this is her future and her children’s future if something isn’t done. Reversing Roe vs Wade was not the final blow. The guerilla warfare against women’s reproductive rights has rallied today State after State. Today three states don’t protect abortion rights, twelve are hostile to abortion rights and in twelve states abortion is out and out illegal. That’s a total of 27 states where it’s dangerous to seek an abortion. That’s over half of the states.

All these anti-abortion laws have deteriorated Planned Parenthood’s capacity to provide reproductive services. They have had to close clinics in rural America. It breaks my heart to see this backward motion. I worked so hard to get women their reproductive rights. This impacts women’s access to birth control and other reproductive health. This is not the age to be a young woman and I’m afraid for my daughter’s future and her daughter’s future.

Now at age 72, my life’s work is dismantling. Brick by brick, state by state. All the women-controlled clinics have long disappeared. I have no idea on what to do. I don’t know what to tell my daughter to assure access to reproductive rights. Maybe smuggle the day after pill to women in restrictive states, organize transportation networks for abortions. I look around, I no longer have a network of likeminded women. That kind of network started in the universities back in the day. Today I can’t think of one alternative organization to turn to besides Planned Parenthood. I feel more helpless than I have in a long time. I know this is not a good place to leave you but I hope you will be moved to find something to turn the tide of reproductive rights around for all women.

You Swear You Won't be Like Your Parents

You’ve watched your parents drink, drink into oblivion.  You swear you’re never going to be like them. 

You know all about drugs of choice. You know all about people whose lives are given into a drug and that drug rules their life, changes their temperament with one drink or one snort. You are a strong woman, you are present, you've earned all A’s.                                                                                                             

You are going off to college and you know you want to be, a writer. In college you work hard. In a Women’s Study class, you get attracted to another woman. You realize it isn’t the first time. You get close to her. Go out to a gay bar, you allow yourself two beers. You never had two beers in row before. Then she buys another round. You accept the third beer. She takes you home with her. This is your big coming out. You’ve secretly thought about this moment for a long time.

The next morning you don’t remember much. You go back to your dorm room. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what the fuck did you do last night. You weren’t present, you didn’t enjoy yourself. But you keep thinking about her so you back to the bar the next night hoping she’ll be there. She’s there. She buys you several of rounds.

After a couple months of going to lesbian bar and drinking with her you two decide to move in together. Now you’re drinking in the morning and on weekends. You drink with her. Your grades start to slip, you don’t call friends. You start buying hard liquor.

You graduate from college with mediocre grades. You’re broke and go out and get the first job that comes along, an Administrative Assistant at a drapery company. It pays the bills. You start smoking pot. You console yourself that it’s to relax in the evenings after working hard. You console yourself smoking pot keeps you from drinking.

You don’t notice your smoking more and more pot with the occasional LSD trip, or cocaine at a party. You tell yourself; it was just a couple of parties. You tell yourself you’ll never do cocaine on your own. You know what it was like to see people checked out of life. See them check out into a drink every day. You weren’t drinking. You joked that drugs cured your alcoholism.

You never told your parents that you drank. You would be embarrassed after all you berated them for their drinking for years. You know you shouldn’t tell your parents that you smoke pot or that you occasionally do drugs. You know they wouldn’t understand because after all their drug of choice is alcohol. You say to yourself that you don’t have a drug problem. You start to deal drugs to supply your habit. Mostly marijuana but you do any drug that is presented to you. This why you go to a lot of parties.

You walk into work one morning so hung over from doing drugs and drinking your boss says to you,

“You must have had a wild night last night.”

You lie to avoid the fact that this was a regular night at home. “Yaa, it was my best friend’s birthday, we went out on the town.”

Things got so bad you lose your job. You start to hustle money in illegal ways. You sell drugs. You scam travelers checks and more. Somehow your lover manages to keep her job and keep drinking. Your lover pays the bills. You do drugs and illegal activities to pay for your habit. You’re journalling habit of years is uninterrupted. You start to write about your addiction. The words you write reflect how helpless you feel.

You finally start limiting your drinking to the weekends. Enough is enough is what you are thinking when do this. But you don’t quit dealing drugs. You justify this because you need the money. First your weekend is Saturday and Sunday. Then you make something up to include Friday; then Thursday; then somehow you justify Wednesday being part of that weekend. You find yourself craving getting high on Monday and Tuesday.

Your lover doesn’t notice, she’s drinking more and more all the time. You substitute alcohol with pot. When the two of you go out to parties, you still find yourself around the people doing drugs, hard drugs not just pot. You join in. You realize things are still out of control when you are you the only person at a kid’s birthday party lighting a joint to get high.

Nothing has become the sum of your life. This is when you have a aha moment.  A moment when you look at your life. A life where you have nothing and you add what you see as possibilities as nothing. You’re not a math wizard but you know nothing plus nothing is nothing. You’ve been surviving in the underbelly of the world of dope dealing. Finally, you’ve had too much.

You’re a college graduate. You write every day you know what you want to be and this isn’t it. You start writing about your spiral of drug use. You write about getting out of the relationship. You write lists of things to do. Save money, cut back on the drinking, don’t do drugs at parties. You know you need to expand your world beyond your lover.

You decide to take a writing class. Cutting back on the drinking isn’t easy. It was easy to quick the drugs. This saved you money. You make friends in your classes. You stop going to the bar with your lover. You use the excuse you have homework. You find yourself drinking and doing drugs alone so no one will see you, make you accountable.

One day you call the gay alcohol and drug treatment center. They’re booked up two months out. You make an appointment. You decide you to use this time to get it all out of your system. Then you’d be ready. Ready for what? You weren’t sure but you didn’t want to be here anymore. In your usual check out way you take off for a road trip with your lover. She was in the same boat, a boat sinking so fast one or both of you were going to drown if something didn’t change. You didn’t tell your lover your plan before you left.

On this trip you took indulging to a whole new level. You digested every kind of drug and drink you could get your hands on. No holds barred. When you returned you couldn’t remember a blow-by-blow account of the road trip. You weren’t honest with yourself that it was because you were fucked up 24/7. You started to withdraw from your lover. You knew if you get sober, you’ll have to leave the relationship.

The day came September 7, 1982. You go down to Stonewall Recovery Center. See a counselor who goes through question after question for induction into treatment. You are humiliated by some of the questions. You wished he’d just asked you if you had a problem instead of asking you all those questions. At the end of the questioning the counselor proclaims, “You’re an alcoholic.” Well da, you think, you could have told him that. That’s why you are here, that’s why you’re putting your whole life on the line. You want to somehow crawl out of this addiction. But in the same moment relieve seeps out of your pores. Your brain dumped years of all the shit you’ve been fighting, into the hands of? You aren’t sure.

You go home to your lover; tell her you are leaving. You walk out with nothing. Homeless and unemployed you hustled a friend, well actually one of your drug customers, who is moving out her apartment. You arrange to pay her the deposit so you can take over the lease without telling the landlord.

You move in with only your bed before she moves out. As soon as the woman moves out you walk the ally the night before garbage day to scavenge furniture. You find a kid’s bed for a couch, a table for the kitchen. You do this several weeks in a row until the apartment feels livable. The fact that the apartment’s heat isn’t enough to prevent the widows from freezing on cold nights doesn’t faze you. You are still numb from using.

The counselor requires you go to three AA meetings and one counseling session with them every week. After a month of this you drop the counselor and go to more AA meetings. You now have six months clean and sober. You get a job at a 7-11. This is step up from the illegal activities you’ve doing to survive.

You write about how you’re crawling out of the underbelly of society. Clawing slowly out of a fog that took years to settle in. You don’t always feel positive about all this but you hold on with dear life. You learn to live a life without drugs and alcohol. This means learning to socialize and know what you did in the morning. This means taking responsibility for what you do. This means making an honest living.

All of this isn’t easy, but you do it one day at time as they tell you in AA. You start getting in touch with your goals before all the using started. Goals like writing, having a healthy relationship, you think you even want children. You learn you have to patient that these goals only come about through paying attention and hard work.

You still go to AA meetings to remind yourself how vulnerable you are. About how you were drowning in destruction. You remind yourself how you’ve turned your life around. You know you can never turn your back on how bad things were when you were using. This important some days to get you through a hard day.

Years later now you feel so blessed to be sober. You have a lover that is your wife. You’ve been together 28 years. Your daughter just 38. You had a good career as an accountant to make money. You never stopped writing. Now in retirement your writing is your life line to being present.

Abortion Then and Now

Christmas,1969, I was 19 working at Sears, Ala Moana in Hawaii. The only other woman under 30 working in the lamp department and I became friends.  She shared her sex life with

me, none of my peers had ever done this so vividly.  I had been contemplating becoming sexually active and how could I not, the sexual revolution went on all around me. My friend at Sears talked about a doctor who would prescribe birth control pills to single women and she told me to take note. 

 

Months later I decided to take the plunge.  I lived on the North Shore Oahu, with my roommate Karen. My cousin Lea was crashing with us.  Lea sat in the living room as I walked out the morning afterwards, she looked at me as if asking, “how was it.”  She reminds me even today that I panicked not that I did, “it” but because I could get pregnant.  When the man left Lea and Karen assured me you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex.  They being experts with years of experience, I thought this good advice.

That day I decided I needed to get some protection.  Instead of going to the doctor my coworker told me about I went to Planned Parenthood, they had a sliding fee scale and I lived hand to mouth those days.  A couple of days later I left Planned Parenthood with two months’ supply of “The Pill” with directions to start the first day of my next period. That period never came.

Hawaii was one the first states to legalize abortion. I first went to a military doctor, I was 19, the legal age in Hawaii but was still considered a dependent by the military because I currently attended Leeward Community College.  The military doctor told me that the military didn’t do abortions but could give me what he called a voucher to get services from a civilian doc.  It was now that I called the doctor my coworker had told me about.  Dr. Chan was forward thinking.   Mom never talked to me about sex, birth control or anything about women’s health issues.  Now I was in the middle of a reproductive crisis.

Luckily for me in 60’s and 70’s women’s reproductive health landscape started opening up with more options for both single and married women, I took full advantage of this.  Even today I consider myself lucky to have come of age during this time when 30 states went from having laws prohibiting or restricting the sales and advertisement of birth control to Planned Parenthood winning a US Supreme Court case making it legal for married couples to buy contraception.  The landscape continued to expand in the years that followed.  At the end of the 60’s even though married women had won the right to buy birth control single women still needed the secret network passing around names of doctors that would illegally give out birth control to unmarried women which I had become a part of.  Social attitudes changed faster than laws in those days.

Today the vast landscape of women’s reproductive health shrinks from the gains of the 60’s and 70’s marking a new era of open season in using women's bodies in the war of public policy.  Women’s bodies have been laid out in the public realm where people, mostly men, talk openly about women’s sex lives, women’s bodies and reproductive standards.  Starting during his 2016 presidential campaign Trump abused women publicly, women’s reproductive health became a prime target and overturning Roe v Wade became a major campaign promise.  Steven Bannon, chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign, allowed the posting of an article on the Breitbart News website entitled “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.” Trump also added his own brand of talking about women’s intimate parts when the Access Hollywood tape aired publicly capturing Trump saying, “You can do anything, Grab 'em by the pussy.”  During this time Trump paid off two women, who claimed they had sexual relations with him, keeping them silent during his presidential campaign.

Once Trump became president one of his first executive orders overturned President Obama’s directive of birth control for all impacting an estimated 62 million women.  He reinstated the “Gag Rule,” setup by President Bush with even more restrictions.  Trump’s “Gag Rule,” prohibits women on any federally funded healthcare program from going to Planned Parenthood and prohibits any health care provider receiving funds for giving a referral for a safe and legal abortion.  Trump didn’t stop there he legalized policies allowing religious employers to refuse birth control in their healthcare packages to their employees as a religious right.  Trump appointed federal judges recommended by pro-life groups to establishing a long lasting legal and social climate against access to safe and legal abortion he’s completing his agenda with Supreme Court nominees.

Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Judge Kavanaugh sealed the deal on restricting women’s access to reproductive health.  Even with the limited documents released about Judge Kavanaugh we knew he participated in delaying an abortion for an undocumented woman in custody a tactic anti-abortion activist use to limit abortions.  Judge Kavanaugh also submitted a decision supporting the Priest for Life, a pro-life employer, giving way to religious freedom while sacrificing a women’s right to birth control.  The timeline of women’s health care is tied to US Supreme Court decisions and Trump and his supporters know this. Judge Kavanaugh as a supreme court justice will totally wipeout any gains women have made in the past. Access to reproductive health may even go back as far as 1821.  This will affect every woman's life, so women take note and be prepared for impacts to your family, career, and economic well being and men this will affect you too.

Women know that reproductive decisions impact their whole life more than it impacts the father who is an equal participant in producing children yet society supports men in thinking they are just bystanders in reproduction and raising children.  There is little known about male birth control and only 34% of absent fathers are court ordered to pay child support, 72% of those don’t pay a dime, that’s a total of 9 out of 100 absent fathers pay child support.  We don’t hear men’s stories in this conversation.  We have created a society where men are not held to equal responsibility, nor equal joy in raising their children.  Where is the justice in this, who suffers, and who’s responsible?

Women’s Liberation health movement story of the 70’s also gets lost in this conversation.  During this grassroots health movement women took over the narrative on reproductive healthcare talking about women’s bodies, sex lives, and attitudes on reproductive health openly and respectfully like never before.  Starting with my conversations with my co-worker in 1969 I participated in this story which led me to joining a self-help women’s health consciousness raising group when I lived in New York City in 1971.  My first self-help exam is still vivid to me today.  We talked about all things of women’s reproductive health sharing our common experience, our common birth control history which by this time was extensive because of the challenges single women came up against.

It wasn’t until 1972 that the Supreme Court in Baird v. Eisenstadt legalized birth control in all states, irrespective of marital status. A year before this decision I looked around for a birth control provided in NYC and ended up going to a clinic I saw in an ad that offered an IUD birth control program including insert and unlimited follow up visits for as long as I had the IUD for $30.  At the time of my first self-help exam I had gone for at least two follow-up visits complaining about pain and other symptoms that should had been followed up on and weren’t.  My inners did not look well compared to others in the group and I needed to find help.

Within a week of my self-exam I started going to a woman doctor women in the group referred me to. The doctor went through a litany of medications to no avail.  A year later still not cured I took off bicycling to Seattle and my symptoms continued.  In Wawa, Ontario hundreds of miles later a male doctor actual took a sample to see what bacteria had caused the infection to prescribe an antibiotic that would work.  Days later and 180 miles of bicycling I called the doctor for the results, he called a local pharmacy setting me up for yet another potential cure.  Arriving in Seattle three months after leaving NYC the infection persisted.  Hope of a cure faded as I set up my new home in Seattle. 

Seattle’s political community turned out to be as progressive as New York City’s.  Within months I started meeting with a newly formed group of women to establish a women’s clinic, our goals included training women as para medical providers under a doctors’ oversight. In the true fashion of the Women’s Liberation Second Wave the clinic group operated as a collective where all of us participating equally, one vote, one person.  As part of the clinic we participated in a citywide women’s reproductive health network with all four women’s clinics run by women activist. I represented Fremont Women’s Clinic at those meetings.  We set agendas establishing a city wide standard for women’s reproductive health care in Seattle from access to birth control, abortion and founding a midwife program for home births.  We networked with medical establishments to provide low cost women’s healthcare for medical procedures we didn’t or couldn’t do in our clinics.

We did pelvic exams on each other as part of our training.  We invited medical professionals to hold educational sessions covering topics such as simple lab work we could do in clinic, how to do a pap smear, breast exam, what a healthy cervix looks like.  We learned a lot doing pelvic exams on each other talking about our birth control history and female medical problems we experienced.  Talking about our treatment at the hands of the medical establishment gave us reasons as to why setting up a women’s clinic was important in 1972. 

During the beginning of the clinic several Supreme Court decisions opened up the landscape of women’s reproductive health care starting with the 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird case that established the right of unmarried women to obtain contraceptives followed in 1973 by Roe v. Wade that characterized women’s right to privacy when making decisions on ending her pregnancy as a fundamental right to Bellotti v. Baird giving adolescent women the right to make reproductive decisions on their own.  These decisions fueled the women’s health care movement of the day, a movement that opened independent clinics in Boston, NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.

Take note women the gains made in the sixties and seventies are gone thanks to Judge Kavanaugh and the US Supreme Court.  The latest political policy put women’s reproductive narrative back solidly in men’s court and the narrative returns to demeaning language by ridiculing women on topics including birth control, the #MeToo movement, immigrant women who have had their children taken away from them, to openly harassing women sexually in tweets.  These images dominated by President Trump during his presidency fueled a new age where men can now openly degrade and abuse women.  The conservative movement has turned a blind eye from the people in turn Trump’s delivered the kind of control the Republican Party has been working towards for decades.

We working are way back into history starting with 1821 when Connecticut became the first state to outlaw abortion after “quickening,” onto 1860 when twenty states limited abortions.  Are we going to see reproductive information become illegal as the historical 1873 Comstock Act, supported by the American Medical Association, which banned disseminating abortion and contraceptive information by mail?  Is this similar to Bush and Trump’s “gag rule.”  Working so hard expanding the possibilities for women’s reproductive health it breaks my heart to see this backward motion.  This is not the age to be a young woman who is just starting to discover her sexuality.

In the 80’s we started living through a climate of pro-life groups busting into women’s reproductive health establishments or blocking abortion clinics bringing brings to mind the first birth control clinic established in 1916 by Margaret Sanger and her sister Ethel Byrn.  After nine days of operation the police raided the clinic, shutting it down and charging both women with crimes related to sharing birth control and abortion information.  In recent years Texas has adopted several laws resulting in Planned Parenthood clinics closing all over the state.  This wasn’t done with propaganda outlawing abortions but by instituting some of the toughest restrictions in the country on abortion clinics.  This is how it’s done in the 21st century and is quite effective resulting in Texas going from 44 abortion clinics to only six that survived these new restrictions.

Laws over the decades have eroded not only abortion rights but also access to women’s reproductive health. Laws like the ones passed in Texas over the years have closed many Planned Parenthood clinics impact access to birth control not just abortions and the first clinics closed have been in the poorest areas of the State. In 1960 after the FDA approved the sale of birth control pills, 25% of married women in the US under 45 took the pill not counting unmarried women.  Today reports state 98% of reproductive age women have used birth control at some point in their life. Trumps was the finale in this anti women’s movement that has impacted access to reproductive health for 62 million women.