Today, I…
Click through to a comments thread knowing full well that it will make me see red.
Become deeply discouraged by the ability of the American middle class to divorce our politics from a global context. From any context.
Consider installing parental controls on my own computer.
Compose a 3.5 page (single spaced) letter asking American women to consider the global context of anti-feminist economics, particularly the causal association of the Women’s Movement and the current struggle of the middle class, aka Two Income Trap. It begins, “Women have always worked.”
Disagree with my own main points. Throw it away. Return to the news and bring myself to tears reading about starvation in Congo.
Play with my son, who is 97th percentile in weight by American standards.
Enjoy radio coverage of the toilet on the International Space Station. This, for some reason, makes me feel better.
Visit the Peace Corps site. I’m not eligible to volunteer because I have a child. Draft some points for a future post called “Why I Bring My Baby to Work.”
Make a small donation to the United Nations Population Fund, the international development agency that links sustainable development to reproductive health and gender equality. I am satisfied with the small amount. My 25 dollars can buy more for them than it can for me.
Think of the lessons on cultural insensitivity and imperialism that are present in The Listener, and pray that my money travels without strings attached.
Money never travels without strings attached.
Check in with Jen Lemen, who just returned from carrying several boxes of love and art to Rwanda. I don’t make a donation to her because it is not in my budget to go around making two spontaneous donations every day, even at $25. But I soak up her faith. I budget her into the month of June and imagine bundles of money wrapped in beautiful, brightly-colored strings of hope. Strings that bring us together. Strings that empower and do not bind.
Get my son ready for bed. He is learning language. Sounds. “Buh buh buh.”
Go to work. Work tonight is the Cygnet Theatre forum on A Number, Caryl Churchill’s play about human cloning. The first commenter compares it to Genesis. ”The sons are like Cain and Abel,” she says. I nod. That thought is too big for my words. Mostly, we talk about process.
Come home and look in on my sleeping baby. I am haunted by the shadows of the emaciated, the bitter, the hopeless and the smug. He is full of peace.
I borrow his ignorance.
So I checked out the Thursday inspiration and read this email…all while I listened to the peacful sound of my daughter sleeping in her beautiful nursery. I cried my eyes out…donated some money and reflected on a recent conversation I had with my husband about our daughter’s future.
We talked about what it means to be born into privilege. Some might not consider a one income family residing in a small condo who still owe a small fortune for our appliances privileged…but the truth is…we are. It is very unlikely our daughter will ever go hungry, be homeless, lack education or want for any of the basic things in life. Her fortune has nothing to do with her own effort and everything to do with the family she was born into. Luck. And if she chooses to have children they will probably be born into the same good fortune. If I am not responsible for my own luck then how am I responsible for the bad luck of others? This is a thought which creeps into the corners of people’s minds when they try to justify why they don’t need to give back. I am not too proud to admit I have had this same sad thought when I try to explain away why I can’t afford to donate to a good cause.
Last night I watched a special on Nasa and felt moved by the sentiment that sending a man into space was a huge event for all humankind. But why are we so quick to assign successes to all of humanity and not failures? Is a human traveling really far into space REALLY a more significant achievment than allowing a young girl to starve is a failure? Isn’t her death humanity’s failure? Doesn’t it belong to us all as the success of space travel is supposed to? Can we unite as a people and celebrate the great achievment of saving one person from starvation?
Iwas so inspired by your thoughts and also connected them to the work we are currently producing. What I love about the play is it looks at the future of earth…it warns us to be careful with our planet but what it really asks is for us to be careful with each other.
This is what I hope people take away from the play.
Thanks for stirring up these thoughts Esther!