Thoughts on Edward Kennedy

When I was twelve, my parents packed my brothers and myself up and took us to Martha's Vineyard, to spend two weeks on the island.

We stayed, as we always stayed during our visits, in the funky, catawampus home of my aunt and uncle, standing on a hill above Oak Bluffs. Slapped together from the partial remains of two smaller homes, you had to step down to get into two of the bedrooms, step up to move from the small living room into the larger dining room and kitchen. You could see the ocean and watch the activities in Oak Bluffs from the front porch. If you were feeling especially mischievous, you could spy on guests utilizing the outdoor shower from one of the bedrooms.

One day my dad decided to take a walk from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown Wharf, six miles away. I went with him, sporting a pair of shoes unsuitable for a six mile hike.

We walked along Seaview Avenue and Beach Road, through the state park, a salt pond on our left and the ocean on our right. It was a bright, beautiful day full of the sounds of the moving ocean, the screaming of the gulls and the scent of salt and wild roses.

As we entered Edgartown my father started talking about Senator Edward Kennedy and the incident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. He pointed out the island to me, told me where the pond was located, described how the car went into the pond on that night, how Kennedy swam to Edgartown. My father was very clear that he believed that Kennedy was responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne's death.

Imagine a man who had to bear witness to the mental illness and deterioration of a sister and the death of all three of his brothers, the first in war, the second and third publicly murdered, assassinated. Who barely survived a plane crash, who believed himself to be cursed like his brothers. On the night he drove that car into a pond he was drunk, he was driving, and he abandoned the scene of the accident.

My father left me with the impression of an Edward Kennedy who was an incredibly flawed human being in a lot of physical and emotional pain before the accident. Of a man who paid and repaid the consequences of every single bad decision he made on the night his car went over the bridge. He was an alcoholic, he was a womanizer, he destroyed his first marriage, he set a bad example for the younger men in his family.

I don't remember if we talked about forgiveness during that conversation. I like to think that I asked my father if Mary Jo Kopechene's family forgave him for causing her death, if my father forgave him for his mistakes. But my memory of 24 years ago is faulty, I'm not sure if my twelve year old self was that precocious. If my memory is correct, my father left me with the impression that it was not his role or my role to forgive Edward Kennedy for his myriad of sins. That was a job better left to the people he directly harmed and his god.

But out of that conversation was planted the idea that any individual could be terribly flawed, could make terrible mistakes and still find a way to redemption. This is the Edward Kennedy my father taught me to see, a man on a constant quest for redemption, who fought for the rights of those who did not have the privileges of his gender, his money, his stature or family name.

Rest In Peace Senator. My you be granted the redemption that you spent your lifetime seeking.

R.I.P

Senator Edward Kennedy.

Muddlng Through

I hate being pregnant.

There are the biological and physical changes. Weight gain. Tiredness.(1) The increase in my (already substantial) bra size coupled with a serious lack in supportive lingerie to offset the increases, topped off with the sickly sour, rotten cherry of far too many lectures on why pregnant-women-should-not-wear-underwire-because-it-is-bad-for-you.(2) The complete absence of anything resembling sexual desire.(3) The occasional episodes of public dry heaving in restaurants and on the bus. The constant aching.

There are the emotional changes, which can be summed up as me having the most spectacular episodes of depression I have ever experienced. Too many days spent having to call up every ounce of will power I posses to get out of bed, get on the bus, carry on with my day. Flashes of anger so intense that I don't recognize myself. Random fits of crying. My first ever episodes of hysterics, which lasted well over 15 minutes and was spent on the bed, J sitting next to me not saying anything, just stroking my hair, telling me to breathe and cracking highly inappropriate (but truly funny) jokes.

At the end of the hysterics, J confessed that washed the kitchen floor earlier in the week because he had smashed an orange in a fit of anger. He suggested that I try it and volunteered to wash the floor again.

I said no thanks, a smashed chair was enough for my lifetime.(4)

There are all the tests, the sodding tests that I have to go through. As of this date, two ultrasounds, a first trimester blood draw (nine vials), an urinalysis, a repeat blood draw because the lab screwed up and lost my blood type/antibody results(5) and the doppler at every checkup. Upcoming I have a third trimester blood draw, including the infamous 1 hour glucose tolerance test. Followed, most likely, by the even more infamous 3 hour, multiple draw, blood glucose test, since 15-23% of the women who take the 1 hour test fail it, since it is only a screening, not a diagnostic. Out of the 15-23% that take the 3 hour test, only 2-5% actually have gestational diabetes.

A digression – why am I taking a screening test which such a high false failure rate?

I hate the clichés. At a recent family gathering, I managed to score BINGO on my mental “pregnancy cliché BINGO card” in under three minutes just by listening ONE person, the mother of one of my in-laws.

All of this is intensified by the awful feeling that all those well intentioned offers to help are nothing more than hot air.

In spite of my repeated requests, J has yet to visit any of the daycares that I asked him to check out several months ago, leaving me the inevitable feeling that I will be forced to take yet more time off, in between doctor appointments and lab tests, to tour centers. The longer J puts it off, the more difficult it will be to find a decent placement. The current budget impasse in PA state legislature has lead to cuts in funding, causing over 100 centers statewide to close. Those that have managed to stay open have limited availability and it is very difficult to find an infant care placement. Which means that staying at home may go from an option to a necessity.

I resent the hell out of the fact that J has yet to do the one thing I specifically asked him to do. I resent having to ask him over and over again. I resent listening to him say that he'll take care of it, but then doing nothing. I resent being angry at him about it. I don't want to feel this way. I'm tired of hearing that if it is that important, I should do it myself. He is the father. He is equally responsible. Not “should be”. Not “could be”. IS.(6)

I still have no idea how much maternity leave I will have. The feelers I have put out to see which of our friends and family would be interested in helping us out after the alien is born have been met with a lukewarm reception. So lukewarm that I almost feel compelled to send out a mass email apologizing for the inconvenience I am causing by delivering the alien at Christmas, thus keeping people from their orgy of shopping, cooking, gift wrapping, gift unwrapping and eating.

But mostly, right now, I hate the fact that I will have to wait at least 17 weeks, 6 days for a shot of tequila.

(1)I have not seen the inside of a gym in months and probably will not see the inside of one for at least six more. Common sense would dictate that I cancel my gym membership. J insists that I maintain it, even if I'm too tired to go right now, and is helping me to figure out a way to get there 2-3 days a week once I'm cleared for exercise.
(2)There is absolutely no such thing as a wire-free supportive size [enter my ridiculously large size here] bra. It does not exist. Stop telling me that it does. ESPECIALLY if your breasts could be described as “lemon sized” on a good day, as almost every sales clerk I spoken with possesses. You have no idea what you are talking about.
(3)All those websites and books that claim that I would get happy hormones at some point? They lied.
(4)A long ago incident provoked by a run in with a misogynistic attorney while negotiating the sale of our first house.
(5)This turned out to be a surprise. For years I was under the impression that I was B+. As it turns out, I'm not. I'm A+.
(6)As I was writing this, J asked for time off to go tour the centers.

The blogger formerly known as PittGirl, Ginny Montanez has returned!

Bad Manners

If I had any sense at all, I would have realized that my encounter with the elderly lady on the corner of Forbes and Murray on Friday afternoon was a predictor of the sudden and wild change in weather from the temperate (albeit slightly rainy) summer that has made sleeping under a down comforter a comfortable necessity to the sudden and unexpected 80+ degree temperatures the city will swelter under for most of the upcoming week.

On Friday afternoon I sat on a seat in shelter, quietly waiting for a bus to take me back downtown. The stop was completely empty when I arrived, the passel of teenagers missing from the church steps, both the shelters devoid of humanity. I took a book (J. Martaan Troost's Lost on Planet China) out of my bag and commenced quietly reading.

The bus stop began to fill up with people. A woman sat down next to me. As we were sitting there, I quietly reading my book, she looking around, an older woman walked up to the shelter.

What transpired next was one of those moments in which I, humbly reading my book and minding my own business, suddenly become the target of an absolute stranger's ire because I lack the ability to read minds.

The woman beside me (WBM) offered the older woman (OW) her seat. OW refused offer of seat with expected comment about “age before beauty” and WBM needing the seat more than she does. OW then segued into an indirect harangue of indeterminate length (I really should time these things) about my rudeness in not offering her my seat first, before WBM.

I tried, very hard, to keep my mouth shut, my head down, my face expressionless, my eyes focused on the text of my book as OW expressed how “[her] children were raised better than that” and how disrespectful “the youth” of today were towards their superiors. But something inside me snapped at hearing OW snidely say “Here comes someone who really needs a seat. I wonder if she'll have one offered to her”.

I looked up from my book. I wished I had been calm enough to look OW straight in the eye, but I could not. I know it would have been more effective, but it took a lot of will to get the words out.

“Ma'am, I'm 20 weeks pregnant, I'm tired and I'm not moving”.

There was a momentarily pause as OW digested this information, suddenly aware that perhaps I was not the teenager she assumed me to be. Then she snapped back “Be quiet, I wasn't talking to you”, moved closer to WBM and lowered her voice to a mummer. I put my eyes back on my book. When the bus pulled up I waited as OW cut to the front of the line, boarded the bus and sat in one of the seats near the front.

Then I got up, hauled my tired, pregnant self onto the bus, walked to the back and sat down.

J's response when I told him this story: “What are you doing to attract these people?”