Made My Day: The Em-Meme

So it looks like I'm actually going to graduate.

Not that there was ever any risk that I wouldn't, due to like flunking out of graduate school or anything like that. But when you've been working on a dissertation for 852 years, sometimes it's just hard to imagine ever reaching the finish line.

Anyway, yesterday after my advisor gave me the go-ahead to actually schedule my defense, I went to the bookstore to get my regalia. I wouldn't say I was feeling particularly excited about it. At this point, it's easy to feel like it's all just slogging through slog. Getting the cap and gown, and going through graduation is just one more thing you have to do...like filling out yet another form...or doing yet one more round of edits to remove the excessive number of gerunds from your dissertation. (Not that I know anything about that last item...)

So I rented my robe. And I bought my cap and hood. I took it all back to my office and started to unpack it, figuring it made more sense to hang it up there rather than bring it back to our disaster of an apartment and then move it to the house a week later.

And this funny thing happened...

I unpacked the rented robe...black and flowing and just a tiny bit worn...and started to imagine the other graduates who'd worn it. I wondered what programs they were in...what their dissertations were about...what their journeys toward graduation were like. I hung up the robe.

Next I unpacked the hood...heavy and substantive, with royal blue velvet on one side and maroon and gold satin on the other. I placed it over the robe, positioning and folding it exactly as it should be on graduation day. I remembered how my ever-so-fashionable-and-always-adept-with-accessories sister adjusted my hood on the day I graduated with my masters degree. She fussed with it until it was just perfect.

And then I unpacked the cap...the ridiculously poofy, polygonal, tasseled tam. Alone in my office, I started to cry. Suddenly it was all so real. I was finally graduating! And I was finally excited about it.

So I put on the cap and took a terrible self-portrait. I posted it to Facebook...and you all rushed in with embarrassing amounts of support and excitement. It was fantastic. I felt giddy and excited. I felt grateful for such wonderful friends. You guys really are the most supportive group of folks a procrastinating, attention-seeking PhD candidate could ever ask for! I mean really. All that love would have been more than enough.

But then one of you (R.C.P., Esq.) put it over the top...made it epic, if you will...with a whole series of Em-Memes! As I scrolled through these, I felt so much joy...so much relief...maybe even a little bit of pride. The magnitude of the journey finally felt worth it.

It was finally real. It was finally time. I am finally graduating.

Lighting Candles: Caine's Cardboard Arcade

This video by Nirvan Mullick is everything that is right with the world...and the power of social media.

The star of the video, Caine Monroy, is imaginative and innovative and entrepreneurial. His father (who let him take over his auto parts shop and build this amazing arcade) is patient and supportive and just all-around awesome. Nirvan Mullick, the filmmaker, saw a beautiful story and shared it with all of us. Everybody wins in this story...just like in Caine's Arcade!

I'm gonna stop yapping (for once)...this story tells itself so beautifully. Enjoy this one, my friends...it's the sweetest!


Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

PS - All the information about Caine and his arcade can be found here. This site includes a donation link for Caine's scholarship fund. In the 5-6 minutes that it's taken me to put the post together, total donations have gone up about $300...like $1-5 at a time. I'm excited for our industrious friend Caine and his promising future.

And information about Nirvan, the filmmaker, is here. This guy makes my heart happy. Hooray for him and what he did with this video. :)

Monologuing: Husbands, Wives & Partners

I don't know exactly how what I'm about to say fits into my blog theme of "Warming the World"...but I guess since it's my blog, I'll end up doing whatever the heck I want anyway, right? Think of this as the e-equivalent of the conversations you have with yourself in the car. You know, the ones where the idea that was rattling around in your brain suddenly becomes the conversation you're having aloud to no one in particular? The ones where you eventually realize that people at stoplights are watching you rant like a fool...all alone in your car?

That's what you're reading right now. My car rant...or at least a blogged-up version of one of them, anyway.

Here goes:

My skin totally crawls when married, heterosexual couples refer to their spouse as their partner. It drives me crazy. Say spouse. Say husband. Say wife. But please, please stop saying partner.

I know that many of you reading this right now do call your husbands and wives partners. This isn't a swipe at you personally. I'm not annoyed with you, my dear friends. I'm annoyed that this whole "straight people calling their spouses, to whom they are legally wedded, 'partners'" is even a thing. It drive me bonkers.

"But Em," you're saying, "You're a crazy, bleeding heart, died-in-the-wool-liberal! You're supposed to be into all this inclusive, PC, let's-never-never-not-ever-offend-anyone stuff."

I know. I am a crazy, bleeding heart, died-in-the-wool-liberal. Guilty as charged. And proud of it!

Here's the thing...I am usually pretty darn supportive of all sorts of things that might be derided as "politically correct." I have all sorts of appreciation and respect for communities of folks talking about what terms or symbols (or whatever) are most representative of who they feel they are as a group. And I don't mean this in regard to trite labels or narrow constructions of diverse communities. None of my previous objections have anything to do with not supporting the idea that what we call people (or what people call themselves) or how we portray people (or how people portray themselves) influences how we all think about one another. It does. I couldn't agree with you more. It totally does.

To that end, when heterosexual couples refer to one another as "partners," I appreciate what they're trying to do. They're tipping their hats to ideas of marriage equality. They're distancing themselves from antiquated gender roles. They're creating a more inclusive space for honoring a diverse range of committed relationships. They're probably doing all sorts of other things too. Great. I'm supportive of all that.

But here's what troubles me:

I feel like married, straight people calling one another "partner" actually ends up mucking up a space we'd created for gay couples in committed relationships (or even straight couples who have chosen not to marry) that are not legally recognized in our country. It makes me feel like in an attempt to show support, we've actually ended up co-opting and cheapening something that actually meant something to another group of people.

515 privileges...515 discriminatory laws

I also just think it's a really hollow act. I don't think it contributes anything meaningful. I can call Jay my partner as an act of solidarity...I can be symbolically supportive. But at the end of the day, as Minnesotans, Jay and I still enjoy the privilege of over 515 different laws that actively discriminate against my "partnered" gay friends. We have rights they don't have. Calling ourselves "partners" doesn't mitigate our unearned privilege. I think it actually glosses over ugly realities of inequity.

Finally, I think using the word partner as a substitute for a legally recognized relationship actually muffles the importance of why we need to fight for marriage equality. Not some other type of relationship status. When I spend time with the wonderful folks at Minnesotans United for All Families, we're not fighting for "partnerships." We're fighting for marriage. The people who work there, the people who volunteer, the people who donate...we're doing this so people can be married. We're saying that separate is not equal. No one is fighting for civil unions. No one is fighting for a "marriage-like" institution. We're fighting for marriage...we're fighting so all Minnesotans who want to make a commitment to the person they love most are considered equal under the law. As we often remind ourselves, and the people with whom we are having conversations, "There is just no substitute for marriage."

What are you doing?
How are you helping?

Maybe the reason I'm so fired up about this is because I want more people to join in this fight. I want people to do more than just use terms like partner. Fine. Use inclusive language. But what else are you doing? Have you donated money? Have you volunteered? Have you written a letter to your elected officials? Have you encouraged your church or community organization to join the coalition? Have you talked to your neighbors? And not just the ones who already agree with you?

You use the word partner because you want to demonstrate that you value marriage equality. Fine. But how about you do something that actually makes a difference? Go ahead and call your spouse your partner...but every time you use the word "partner" in public, put a quarter in a jar...or a dollar, if you've got it. And at the end of the month, add up all those quarters or dollars and send them to your favorite LGBTQ organization. Send them to the organization that is fighting for marriage equality in your state.

Move past symbolic acts. Put your time and money where your values are. Because those are the things we need to do to actually make a difference. That's how we effect change.



Anyway. That's how I feel about all of that.

How do you feel? Why do you call your better half whatever you call them? Am I way off base about this? Tell me what you think. Agree. Disagree. I want to hear it all...

Blooming Where You're Planted

So a few weeks back I ran into a former [thus-and-such] from [here-or-there], (see how I'm being painfully vague so as not to disclose any hints about who this person is since I'm totally going to bitch about what an ass-hat s/he was?) and we were catching up on what each of us had been up to, since last we'd spoke. 

S/he said, "And didn't you move into an apartment on Grand Avenue? Such a great area of St. Paul!"

"We're still there," I replied, "though we're in the process of buying a house."

My words were met with stunned silence. And then, "Wow! Huh! Wow...you're still there. Wow. For like 8 years, huh? Wow. That's just amazing. Huh. Still there. After all this time. Wow." 

There were also plenty of non-verbal cues...just in case all the "Wows!" and "Huhs!" weren't enough to convey the extent of his/her disbelief and shock.

I swear s/he stuttered on like this for like an hour and a half. Really, it was only about 30 seconds, but I wanted to scream, "I GET IT. You've made yourself perfectly clear! You can't believe we've lived in a crappy one-bedroom apartment for almost 8 years. I can't believe it either, now that you're stammering on about it. But we have. So shut up already, would you!?!?!"

But I didn't say any of those things. Instead, I just smiled and said, "Yeah, we've really loved it there! Who would ever want to leave Grand Avenue, right?" Then I found a way to end the conversation. And I walked away...thanking the powers that be that I only run into this person about as often as it takes Jupiter to orbit the sun (which is a pretty long time, for those of you who are not planetarily or cosmologically inclined).

It's easy to feel defensive or annoyed when people do things like that. Heck, it's easy to feel defensive or annoyed when you ask yourself the same questions. Why did we stay there so long? Was it money and the housing market? Was it comfort and convenience? Was it sentimentality and nostalgia? Was it fear? 

There's no real reason. We just stayed.

It's also particularly easy to wonder why we stayed now that we're in the midst of packing and getting ready to move into our new home. (Oh, the house thing finally worked itself out, by the way. I'll tell that story another day.) There's so much to look forward to! And we are ridiculously excited. We really are.

But the other night, when we took all the dusty, dusty (dusty!) magnets and fortune cookie fortunes and ticket stubs and photos and off our crappy old fridge, we were struck with profound sadness. There we were, standing on the shabby, uneven linoleum, crying in the kitchen. For some reason, that was an act that made the move seem really real. Even more so than the dozens and dozens (and dozens) of boxes piled up all over our disaster of an apartment.

Because here's the thing, as excited as we are to move into a 3 bedroom house...with a finished basement...and a quirky little gas stove in the living room...and a bathtub with whirlpool jets...and a laundry chute...and top-of-the-line, super-fancy windows...and a brand new privacy fence...and a lawn that I can garden the heck out of...as excited as we are about all those things, we'd be remiss if we didn't appreciate all we've enjoyed about our messy little one-bedroom apartment on Grand Avenue.

I'm not talking about things like proximity to markets or restaurants or bus routes or boulevarded streets for walking. I'm not even talking about the convenience of calling the maintenance guy whenever the water pressure in the kitchen petered out or the fact that I really haven't had to shovel snow in the last 8 years.

I'm talking about appreciating the actual place...the actual apartment and all of its wonderful qualities.

I'll miss the radiator in the bathroom...on chilly winter mornings, Jay would always put my towel on it while I was in the shower. I hate mornings, and I hate showers. So a radiator-warmed towel was pretty helpful. (Jay's pretty helpful too.)

I'll miss the creaky wood floors...Jay has NEVER been able to sneak up on me and scare me. I like that a lot. It's also been fun to hear the floors speak as we wander around the apartment, doing this and that. Sort of like the breathing and stretching of a home while its people go about their lives inside.

I'll miss the view from our south-facing windows on the second floor. Though it was brutal in the summer (not a tree or another building or anything else to block the sun), it was a delightful perch for viewing the world. We looked out over the alley, as well as a wonderful neighborhood in St. Paul. It was the perfect vista for snow storms and rain showers and sunsets and starry nighttime skies.

I'll miss opening the door to Jay's closet and being hit with a wave of heat. The hot water pipe ran through the wall behind it...so it was always toasty warm in there.

I'll miss my closet...in the living room...home of an old Murphy bed, decades ago. It was big enough to hold all my clothes and shoes, as well as a healthy stash of quilting fabric. And even on the hottest summer day, it was somehow still cool in there.

I'll miss how the "dining room" got turned into my always-messy study nook, complete with an Ikea desk and shelving, dangerously tilty piles of books and articles, plastic stadium cups full of markers and highlighters, and stacks of post-it notes that I wouldn't share with Jay. In fact, I'll miss the vibe of that whole kitchen/dining room/office/fortress of solitude area...it was this wonky little nucleus of the apartment that could never be replicated in a house that has more than enough space.

I'll miss how every year, after we put up the Christmas tree (in the only place it would fit), we would stand in the exact spot where Jay proposed to me...remembering how Ray Conniff's "Christmas Bride" was playing in the background as I spotted--tucked into the branches--my engagement ring hanging from a satiny red ribbon. 

I'll miss how--whether we liked it or not--we were never very far from one another, no matter where we were or what we were doing.

Jay said it best last night...as we were cuddled up against the weathered old windowsill in the living room, him on the radiator and me on the corner of the futon, enjoying the thunderstorm..."This is the place where we grew into one another."

So very, very true.

Our new home will be wonderful. It will truly be ours. But there was a reason we stayed in that apartment for many, many more years than we imagined we would: we bloomed where we were planted...and we loved every cramped, creaky, dusty, delightful moment of it.