Welcome to Paradise (Part 4)

I'm usually pretty good at spotting snakes because I look for them even in winter, but we missed the first one because we were inspecting the old refrigerator we used to gauge the water height. Jaime grabbed me suddenly sinking his fingers between my ribs and under my armpit. There was a long, black snake just under his feet. We screamed and ran. 

That was at the very beginning of our hike. The next two hours were filled with talking about snakes, looking for snakes and worrying about snakes. We didn't see any more on the trail. 

But we still decided the water was a safer activity after lunch. By then, Harper had made it clear that she expected us all three of us to be on the same floating device. Just like she expects the three of us to sleep in the same spot on the bed and sit on the same seat in the living room or car.  

Barack and Margart Cho had a great canoe they said we could use, but it was heavy. Jaime grabbed one side but needed my help to flip it. I grabbed the nose and heaved it towards myself. An enormous snake came flying towards my face with it. I screamed, I ran, we got in the paddle boat instead. 

The next hour was filled with talking about snakes, looking for snakes and worrying about snakes while we powered the boat with our feet. And we did see another. 

I'm a suburban person who grew up a country person who's always wanted to believe herself a city person, so I know how snakes swim. 

Jaime didn't. 

The realization that the animals slither on top of the water just like they do on land made him ill. "It's just disappointing. It's so disappointing." He repeated to himself unprompted over and over again. 

We took our last evening walk along the gravel road instead of the woods to avoid snakes but turned around before the first neighbor's house to avoid neighbors. We ran into Barack and Margaret Cho. Margaret told us we could check out a little later because they didn't have new guests coming the next day. We thanked her and said we'd probably take her up on that kind offer so Jaime and Harper could paddle board one more time. 

We also asked to buy a dozen eggs, and she said she'd bring some by. 

Harper immediately knew something was wrong when we got back to the cabin. I figured it out shortly after. Jaime would have never put it together. 

An animal, we're not sure what kind, had come through the sliding screen door and eaten all the food left on the counter and table top knocking over whatever it couldn't eat. Jaime and Harper searched the house for the animal while I cleaned up frantically before Margaret came by with the eggs.  

She popped in as I was swiffering and told us we hadn't paid the pet deposit. I was more than happy to shove some money in her hands and get her the fuck out before she discovered what had happened. I was the last one out the door, so I was clearly the one who hadn't closed it. 

Jaime knew it despite my gaslight attempts to convince him he was at fault. Harper knew it, too. And I'd be damned if Margaret Cho was going to judge me as the future that liberals want. 

I didn't sleep well that night because I was convinced the animal was still in the house. The paranoia was a nice change from White supremacist paranoia and the crazy doppelganger paranoia that kept me up before. 

The first thing Jaime said in the morning was, "Let's go home." I told him I thought he wanted to get back on the water one more time, and he said, "No, we're going home." 

I love him so much. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 2)

Although she fell in a few times each event prompting the sort of chaos and panic from all three of us normally reserved for Bath and Body Works sales and bridge collapses, Harper did so well! 

We decided she could handle a whole tour of the lake even though it involved going past the neighbors' docks which isn't normally a scary prospect unless you'd just driven by their signs that read: 

"America: God, Guns and Guts! Let's keep all three!" 

"Repent Sinners!" 

"Make China Great Again" (with a picture of President Biden) 

"Don't blame me! I voted for Trump!" 

And sev-er-al "NO TRESPASSING" signs with pictures of AR 15s. 

Were we trespassing!? I felt like that was up to their interpretation not mine, and even though I don't consider a man wearing a wet suit that conceals no secrets, a nervous lab mix in a life jacket and a woman unsuccessfully trying to find her rhythm with a kayak paddle dangerous, I couldn't shake what I know to be true. 

There is no greater threat than an insecure White man with a gun looking for an excuse. 

But no one shot us that day. Not even the incel with a woman mannequin fishing with him off his dock.  

On our way back to paradise, I noticed Barack and...her named started with an A, so I will call her Margaret Cho...Barack and Margaret Cho's Trump/Pence flag had unfurled. I'd just missed it the first time. 

That night, I chose to watch Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed thriller US, the greatest critically acclaimed thriller made since Jordan Peel's Get Out. It proved to be the stupidest decision I've ever made in my stupid life. 

Note: I did NOT take photos of the neighbors' signs and properties because I want to live. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 3)

If you have not seen US, please watch it but watch it in a well lit room during the day time with other people and only after you have accepted that your one-sided relationship with Lupita Nyong'o will be harmed irrevocably but that your respect and admiration for her and her craft will go beyond the limits of what you ever thought possible. 

Anyway, I didn't rest well our first night. 

In my twilight sleep, Lupita Nyong'o's children crawled out of the walls and from under the bed. Her voice came down the hallway. 

Every time I bolted upright, my fear of fictional characters was immediately replaced by my fear of the real neighbors. The countryside is dark and silent. Every twig snap and scrape on the roof was a gang of vigilantes coming by torchlight to corner us at the dead end. 

Jaime slept soundly against the wall because he thinks sleeping closest to the door is a gender construct intended to make women feel dependent on men. He's a real fucking asshole. Harper was curled up where my legs were supposed to go despite paying extra for a king-sized bed. All three of us were naked and unprepared. I had to protect my family. But instead of putting pants on or making a plan, I obsessively designed outfits for Lupita Nyong'o to wear on red carpets for hours. It was our salvation. 

In the morning, two of us were refreshed and ready for a hike in the rain. 

For some reason, I'd recently read about flash flooding and knew we shouldn't wade through the creek running just over our boots, so we did. Despite the rain not being heavy, as the article warned it didn't have to be, the creek was already above our knees on the way back. Harper, newly empowered by the life jacket she wasn't wearing anymore, flipped over the bridge rail and got stuck with her head submerged under water. I froze, and Jaime pushed me out of the way to get to her. 

I told him later that I didn't do anything because we have to let her find her own solutions to problems. Neither of us believed me. I also told him we had to check for ticks and leeches when we got back to the cabin. He took that very seriously. 

I've never met someone who loves animals more than Jaime does, but even he has his limits. Ticks and leeches are on his "no" list as is my biggest "no": snakes. 

The second day's rain kept us inside playing a German game called Chinese checkers for hours. I don't know what the fuck the snakes were doing, but they weren't with us. 

Those scary bitches came to play the third day. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 1)

 Shortly before we turned off the highway, I told Jaime that I thought there were less MAGA signs in the rural part of the state than the last time we'd driven through. 

"Fewer," he said. 

The line between work and home has become way too blurred this year so we booked an Airbnb without wifi next to a small, private lake where we could teach Harper how to paddle board without embarrassing ourselves beyond the inherent humiliation of teaching your dog to paddle board. 

After losing cell service, I began reading the thorough instructions our hosts had written us to Jamie from a screen shot. But even in my distracted navigator's role, I noticed the signs. 

The first one posted on our cabin's dead end gravel road said, "We don't call 911." 

They got progressively more or less threatening after that depending on your gun control views and relationship with the lord god. 

The property owners' double wide was the last house on the road other than our slightly older trailer, and I was relieved to see no symbols of conviction on either except for an American flag on their front porch. 

Our host and his beagle were waiting to greet us under a sign reading, "Welcome to Paradise." He was wearing an "America First" shirt. The beagle wasn't wearing anything. I was wearing one that said, "Bad things happen in Philadelphia." 

I don't know if he got the reference, but I certainly got his. 

The owner's real name started with a B, so I'll give him the completely random name Barack to protect his identity. 

Barack thrust out his hand to shake Jaime's and told me I didn't have to wear a mask. I continued wearing a mask. He'd come by to collect some chicken eggs, which was a huge selling point for us. We don't eat eggs at home, but they are an integral part of the Spanish tortilla Jaime had been craving. 

We decided the chickens wouldn't mind if we ate their eggs before we met them, but the geese were a different story. We hadn't known about the geese. 

Barack told us the birds' back story. It was genuinely romantic, and Jaime decided he wanted to try a goose egg. I sent him out to ask our host because the bigger eggs weren't a part of the deal. The menfolk quickly found themselves at an impasse and asked me to come settle the score. 

Jaime learned that sure we could try the eggs, but they might have some premature goslings inside. Barack couldn't understand why Jaime was pooping his pants (his expression) over this, but I could. It was because we couldn't ask Mother Goose if it was okay with her. 

I felt that if I laid several eggs a week with the goose I loved, I would not mind if someone ate some of our babies. Jaime accepted my feelings and we decided to sacrifice the potential life for a novel experience that we felt could bring us closer to understanding our place in the universe. 

Barack was thoroughly confused at this point, but he collected two eggs and rinsed them off in the spigot.

To our relief, there were no overrated but universally handsome goslings in our eggs. We ate well then took Harper for a paddle.    

The Dress Code

 My friend Kelly has a themed fancy dress party for her birthday each year. When she turned 26, the dress code was glitter and flowers. 

And I fucking brought it. 

I wove some roses into a crown, found my sheer dress at the bottom of my closet and hand adhered as many rhinestones as I could fit onto nipple pasties.  

I did it for a combination of people: 

1. My Friend

2. The Guy I'd Just Met (Jaime) 

3. The People on the Street on the Way to the Club

4. The People in the Club 

5. Myself

6. Not My Long Suffering Family  

But more importantly, I looked amazing, felt even better and told someone in the bathroom who'd been hitting on that guy (Jaime) "no" when she asked to borrow my lipstick. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. 

That same guy (Jaime), and I heard about Switzerland's burka ban on the radio this morning. 

Within a year of bedazzling bandaids for my chest, I was standing fully clothed before a classroom of international college students in Parkville, Missouri. The majority were from Saudi Arabia and wanted to improve their English skills before entering bachelor's programs in the U.S. 

My male students didn't stick out too obviously in a college town, but most of my female students were in a hijab or niqab. 

And outside of our floor on campus, that drew some attention. 

After the radio story, I told Jaime that my feelings about head coverings had changed after that teaching experience. He already knew this, so I explained it to him again. 

The Saudi women in my classes were among the most confident, capable and powerful people I've ever met. It was quickly apparent to me that their headscarves were a matter of personal choice and expression. Maybe they had to wear them in Saudi Arabia, but they didn't have to in Missouri where a woman's autonomy over her own body is always sacred and protected. Men don't have any say, and women are not gaslit into voting against their own interests. 

Anyhoo, only one of my students wore a burka. She came late to every fucking class and scared the shit out of me every fucking time. After the split second it took me to realize she wasn't a ghost, I'd say, "Good morning, Nora!" And she'd answer, "Good morning, Miss Emma!" 

To this day, I have no idea what she looks like, and it doesn't matter. 

Because what people choose to wear or not wear just doesn't matter. Unless it's like an AK-47 to a capital building or school or something as whorish as that. 

What does matter is a country of 8.5 million people forcing a dress code upon 30 of its residents. That's not about freedom or security. That's about some racist Swiss. 

What matters is a country mandating women to cover certain parts of their bodies. That's not about religious beliefs. That's about some incompetent misogynists. 

And what matters is a school sending girls home for wearing tank tops and shorts because their education is less important than protecting boys from being held accountable for sexual harassment. 

It's so fucking stupid. I just hope that Nora and I chose to put on a burka and pasties because we wanted to, and that's what we felt most comfortable wearing. But let's be honest, with the amount of adhesive they have to put on those things, Nora won the comfortable contest. 

My Sparkle Queen Kelly 

My New Boyfriend (Who Didn't Have to Cover His Nipples)

My Choice

Judy Garland is Dead!

Last night, Jaime yelled from the kitchen table, "Judy Garland is dead!" 

This post has nothing to do with that. 

We hadn't taken Harper to the dog park for awhile because she had pink eye, and the whole of the Midwest has been smote by god for continuing to let Republicans have children. 

It was -1˚F (-20˚C) when we arrived at the park this morning. The car was trying to tell us that something was wrong, but we didn't listen because we fear taking responsibility for anything. The dog park is part of our Saturday routine along with picking up take out in midtown, so we pushed it.

Conjunctivitis Mary was napping in the back seat when Jaime got out to pick up our bento boxes. Normally, I am thrilled when he volunteers to grab the food, but today was special. We'd also decided to get something sweet from our favorite bakery, and that was far too important a job to trust to the man who once shouted, "Vanilla!," at a girl behind the counter of the most famous ice creamery in Missouri. She and I were both mortified. 

But he pulled vaccine rank on me (he managed to get his first shot) and hopped out. I turned the car back on so Harper and I wouldn't freeze the many nipples we have between us off while we waited.

Cypress Hill was right in the middle of Insane in the Brain when the car died a few minutes before Jaime returned with way too many things. I pretended to know nothing as he tried and failed to start our Sentra several times. 

I called to request roadside battery assistance from AAA, and the operator informed me a driver would contact us shortly. 

We ate every single thing in the first ten minutes of waiting. 

When we finished, Jaime told me to stay off my phone to conserve the battery as he leaned back in his seat and got on his phone. Harper snuggled him, and he started stroking her ears. 

Now that my family and phone were out, I decided to just let my mind take me wherever it wanted, and I was excited about it.  

The first thing I tried to imagine was being paralyzed. We watched Penguin Bloom last night, and even though it wasn't very good, I couldn't shake the willies of how easily life can fuck us. I was bad at being paralyzed. I couldn't not use my leg muscles to shift in my seat and wouldn't let my arms lift completely dead weight. 

The air bag warnings were in English and French. I was surprised at how well I could read the French version checking myself with the English side. Reading French is easier than being paralyzed. 

Then I tried to discern how many flavors I could still taste in my mouth from our lunch, but I could only taste the last thing I ate. I traced all the power lines around us with my finger and then with a pen. It was more fun with a pen. 

By then, Jaime was typing something. I asked about it, and he said he was leaving a goodbye message to a sociologist he liked. He is dying and his children had set up a message board for people to leave well wishes. I asked him if it was really more important to write a man he'd never met than to talk to his wife, and he said yes.  

I thought about the debate my 6th graders had, unprompted by me, this week. Is cannibalism a form of bullying? They were pretty split down the middle. 

The last thing I did before calling my brother was write "help us" backwards in the condensation on the window. It had been over an hour. No one was coming for us. I added the word "please" while he was on his way. 

It took him less than a minute to jump start our battery. He asked if we'd tried to stop anyone in the busy parking lot we were in for help, but we hadn't thought of that. 

He nailed it!

The Vaccine (Part 2) ***Please Read the First Part First***

 While futilely setting up my classroom in October, I found a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A kid I don't know had written her name all over it, and I wondered what Jazmine had thought about the book. I took it home. 

Henrietta Lacks was born in an old slave cabin in rural Virginia, but she was living in Baltimore when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins. She was 31 years old and had just given birth to her fifth child who had grown alongside the cells that would kill her. She liked to dance. She was buried within the year. 

The small piece of her that wasn't, a small scraping of her cancer, had begun dividing and multiplying months before her death, but she didn't know it. None of her family members did, and they wouldn't find out until many years later. At that point, if we collected all of Henrietta Lacks' nearly weightless, microscopic pieces, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons. She was 5ft. tall. 

When I was in college, my gynecologist who had patted my knees and told me to keep my legs together called and told me I had HPV. I was devastated not because I was worried I'd develop cervical cancer but because I thought that was the end of my sex life that was just beginning. That same year, I learned that everyone has HPV and received the Gardasil vaccine. I will never get the strain of HPV that killed Henrietta Lacks, and it's because of her. 

My mother's smallpox vaccination scar is on her left arm. It's circular, and I like looking at it. She doesn't remember getting it. 

I asked my friend if she was planning to get the Covid vaccine. She said she was really nervous about it. I said I wasn't nervous at all and that I'd applied to be in the trials. It's easy to be brave when nothing bad has ever happened to you. 

Then she told me this: 

The smallpox vaccine predates Henrietta Lacks. She may have gotten it herself and been immune. It's impossible to know what she was exposed to in life, but every single day of her afterlife, she battles something: polio, cancers, HIV and AIDS, zero gravity in space, radiation from nuclear explosions, cosmetics, tuberculosis, experimental treatments, Covid 19, etc. in Petri dishes and test tubes.  

Henrietta Lacks would have turned 100 years old in 2020. She probably wouldn't still be alive, but she could be. She might have been one of the very first people to receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Or maybe if she were still alive those vaccines wouldn't exist? 

I don't know how many big decisions she got to make in her life. She certainly didn't get to decide the circumstances that caused her cancer, how her cancer would be treated or if her cells could be used in scientific research. She also didn't get to decide who would capitalize off her miraculous cells. It wasn't her family. It was mostly White people, including myself, who would use them and her story to their benefit. 

If she could have known that the study of that small piece of her would eradicate polio in the US within a few years and worldwide within decades, save millions of children from developing the cancer and receiving the treatment that left her in agony in the last months of her life, help people have the babies they want but can't make on their own and provide hope to billions during a global pandemic, would she have felt scared or proud? Or would she have just wanted her life to be saved? 

The woman who stood in front of me in line for the vaccine was very small, and I noticed the sweatpants we were both wearing were the exact same color. The man who'd given me directions to the building would have said we were wearing red pants, but we were wearing maroon.

The only time I saw her face was when she looked back while the hospital employee was explaining to me that I couldn't get it that day. Through the shine of her visor, I could tell that she was very old and had a very beautiful face. I have no idea exactly how old, but she certainly would have shared some living years with Henrietta Lacks, and I wonder if they would have had more in common than their pants. 

I'm sure the small woman got the vaccine on Wednesday. Her second dose was probably scheduled that day, too, and I really hope she can see her family and friends soon. 

Henrietta Lacks, on the other hand, is still multiplying because she's infinite as long as we let her be. 

https://www.npr.org/2010/02/02/123232331/henrietta-lacks-a-donors-immortal-legacy

https://www.statnews.com/2017/04/14/henrietta-lacks-hela-cells-science/

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/vessels-for-collective-progress-the-use-of-hela-cells-in-covid-19-research/

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.

The Vaccine (Part 1)

 The email saying I could register for the Covid vaccine hit my inbox while I was teaching 8th Grade American Government. 

But at the same time, and for the very first time, my students had meaningful questions about their assignment. 

The website kept crashing as I frantically tried to enter my information in between hearing my name called from black, faceless squares on Zoom. One attempt went through. I had an appointment for Wednesday, January 27th at 9:10am. 

The morning of my appointment, I felt elated. I had absolutely no concerns or fears. It was just pure relief. I put up independent work for my students, kissed Jaime and said, "Bye. I'm going to get a life changing vaccine now." 

I got to the hospital right on time despite the ice and snow from the night before and put two quarters in the parking meter hoping I'd bought myself enough time. Then I got lost twice. A nice man gave me directions to the building where they were administering the vaccine. "It has a big purple sign in front of it. Can't miss it." 

The sign was more of a taupey mauve, but I trusted that I was in the right place. 

By then, I was no longer on time so I too excitedly said "yes" when a women inside the entrance asked me if I had an appointment. She told me where to stand, and I got a clipboard. An employee came to collect my paperwork and check me in before skeptically asking if I had any conditions that allowed me to get the vaccine today. I said I didn't but that I'm a teacher and we'd been given the go ahead to register. 

She acted exasperated and explained that they'd realized they didn't have enough of the vaccine the previous afternoon to vaccinate teachers unless they had conditions that put them at a higher risk. 

Okay. Well, I was clearly not at that fucking meeting and quite frankly would have appreciated an email. 

She asked me...and it's very important to me that you know that she asked me...if I wanted to speak to the supervisor. 

This Karen did, so I parked my ass aside to wait for the supervisor. It was during this time that I could finally look down the line I had been standing in. Not only was I the youngest person, I was the youngest by decades, maybe centuries? I was clearly also the healthiest and among the wealthiest despite my sweatpants and serious split ends. But you can get away with those things in your youth. 

Jesus Christ, Karen. 

I got information from the supervisor detailing the list of conditions I thankfully do not have and an explanation that teachers are in Phase 1B- Tier 3: Critical Infrastructure not Phase 1B- Tier 2: High-Risk Individuals and that they only had enough for them...hopefully. 

I spoke to my HR director and sent her a photo of my hard copy, another list in history that might actually decide who lives and who dies, because I didn't want my colleagues to be surprised if they were lucky enough to be turned away, but I also didn't want to discourage them from trying if they weren't so fortunate. 

I wasn't disappointed anymore. I just wanted to get home, but I couldn't find my car. 

When I finally got back to it, I had one minute left on the meter. Fuck yes. I'd timed it perfectly. 

The Things We Don't Want Back

Disclaimer: This post has been edited to delete the name of an abuser, rapist and racist. We don't want him back. 

For the first time in our lives, Jaime and I have really started to plan for the future, and the only reason we're doing this is because 2020-2021 won't allow it. 

Q: Should we sell the house after we pay it off or rent it to traveling nurses? 

A: Well, if it weren't for this doggone virus, we could convert a church in the Basque Country into a vacation home with a paella oven and skate park.  

Q: Should we have a kid? 

A: Well, why not? The community could help us raise it to be anti-racist, and they'd be at least trilingual. We'd dress it in non-binary clothing until it teaches us who they are, but alas, Covid. 

After 10 months of this, we're annoying even ourselves, so we've switched to planning what we will not return to even when it's safe, and that's much more fun. 

Concerts are pretty high on our list.

We came to this understanding after I told Jaime about my experience at a goth rock show when I was 16 having no way of knowing then that my future spouse was simultaneously performing trash metal concerts shirtless in Spain.

Still want us to have kids? 

I'd gone with my high school boyfriend who was imposing and a pretty good creep block, but realistically, what chance does an 18-year-old boy have at a concert that catered to Incels? 

That spooky rapist put on a fucking fabulous show, and I was really into it until the first time the crowd broke the front barricade. The barrier was fixed, but the crowd broke through again. After the third time, we saw a helicopter take off from behind the stage, and assuming their abusive nymph king was in it, the concert-goers started to riot. 

Being at the level of most every one else's armpit was suffocating and scary. My boyfriend was trying to block me from the worst of it, but he was also looking for a way out of the crowd. It was really the person behind me who was protecting me from the crushing sea of goth Midwesterners. 

In a quick letup of the chaos, I glanced back to see who'd been so thoughtful. 

It was Charles Manson. 

I am not kidding. Between his two crazy eyes was a swastika. Thank goodness it was Halloween. 

Anyway, I repeated versions of this experience for years getting drinks spilled on me, strangers' penises pressed against my back and even crowd surfing close enough to Billie Jo Armstrong to realize it was not worth it before doing it for another decade or so. But this time I swear I'm done. 

Jaime says this shirt-on photo is from one of 

his rock concerts and not from his trash metal days. 

Teenage Emma would not have had a chance in hell.