Doable men and boy panties

Editor's/Liza's Note : Unfortunately none of the editors here at www.culturekitchen.com were aware of the "Blog For Choice" blogswarm. Enjoy BL's entry (posted yesterday) but promoted and re-dated.

** The previous note was misconstrued as a swipe to the good people of NARAL. Apologies for the tone. Nice does not come easy to me.

A while ago, I mentioned to Thagmano and Rachel that I would probably post my "I'm not sorry" story.

I had an abortion last January. I wasn't exactly pleased about that. Inn my dotage, I'm just fertile goddamned myrtle. I guess I'm just a horrible person, but I didn't feel the slightest bit of anguish over anything but the fact that I DO want children with R but, uh, with both of unemployed at the time and hoping to move out of this state, it wasn't exactly the best time was it?

So, no anguish here. Nothing but relief and love and admiration for my sisters. I can safely say that it was a wonderful experience, with terrific women with whom I'd have loved to have become friends.

We talked about my underwear.

Carrie, the woman who did the intake counseling that day, came in to say "Hi" after the procedure. I don't know why, all I could tell in that hazy state was that she seemed interested in hanging out. We ended up chatting and the conversation became more animated when the other nurse, Patty, also came in. Patty was the one who'd taken a blood sample and other tests earlier. We'd talked about my blood pressure -- which was surprisingly in a healthy range given that I'd thought I was going to die from the stress of my job just two months earlier.

Patty started asking Carrie about her new beau. Carrie was blushing like crazy and I was wondering if I should try to pretend that I was otherwise occupied. Patty wasn't going to let up, even though Carrie obviously didn't want to answer the question Patty kept hinting at.

Finally, Patty just blurted it out: "Is he, you know, doable?"

I sat there in a haze of nitrous, smirking. I waited for Carrie's blush to return to a more normal pink because, the minute Patty said "doable," Carrie had turned a bright, high red. But, as it turned out, it was an obligatory blush. Her pink-cheeks smarting, Carrie smiled and her eyes twinkled as she related to both of us just how doable he was. Mostly, she talked about where they'd had dinner, what they planned to do the next date, and some concerns she had about this new man in her life, the date, and where she thought the relationship might be going.

When Patty left, Carrie and I started talking about nursing. Like my mother, she'd become a nurse later in life. I told her that my mother was a nurse who specialized in geriatric care. My mother often gets right in bed with someone as they are dying. She hugs them, the only person by their side as they die.

We talked about how emotionally draining that kind of work could be and Carrie mentioned that she'd one done hospice work before she'd gotten her LPN. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought about the people she'd cared for. We talked about death and god and taking care of our loved ones as they died from a long-term illness -- something with which I'm all to familiar.

Age. Illness. Death. God. She talked about faith and how she knew God was in the room when her mother passed.

I smiled, which was about all I was capable of. All I could hope was that she saw in my eyes how amazing I thought she was -- how amazing she and so many people like her are. People who take care of their loved ones. People who sacrifice. People who do the work that makes this world go 'round. People who hold hands with and hug dying people, to comfort them. People who feel God in the room as a body passes away.

She asked if i thought I'd like to stand up as it was likely that the nitrous had worn off enough.

I smiled and nodded and thought how nice it would be if everyone who believed in God could work for ob-gyn's who provide abortions.

I haven't been a lot of doctor's offices, so I guess I can't compare, but that few hours at the ob-gyn office was one of the best medical experiences I'd had in my life. It was far better than the way I'd been treated when I had to have a broken tooth repaired last August. It was better than most of the reception I received at the hospital when sonshine was in his accident last year.

There were exceptions -- like Kashandra, who shared with me thoughts about the war and God and working hard to get out of what she called "her hole." I remember when she told me that, giving her the hugest hug in the hall outside sonshine's room. After that, she kept coming back in to check up on us before going home and she'd end up pulling up a rocking chair to talk about going to community college and she'd been learning.

It'd be rude to forget to mention Miguel, the night orderly. I met him the night sonshine started to feel better and a slew of kids showed up. Someone had borrowed someone's van and carted a van-load of kids from the old 'hood to the hospital.

Every member of Testosterone Central was there, plus some of the young women who'd been part of sonshine's life. The night orderly, Miguel, kept hearing them call me "Ma" or "Mama" and he thought they were all mine. He said, "Did you start having babies when you were 12 or something? And how many men have you been married to?"

I laughed and told him they were my "other sons" and "other daughers" -- a rag tag band of kids I've collected over the years since I had to good fortune to work from my home. I was often the only mom around during the day to dispense band-aids, cold drinks, advice, hugs, and concern. So, they all called me 'Ma,' or 'Mama,' or 'Sonshine's Ma.' It was always fun to drive into the complex with all these kids hollerin' at me, "Hi Mama!" or "There's Sonshine's Ma!" I never lacked for someone helped me carry the groceries up the flights of staris.

After Miguel helped sonshine figure out how to use a urinal for a bowel movement, he decided to hang out with Sonshine and flip through some of the magazines the kids had brought him. He got a kick out of holding up some of the girly mags for my amusement, pretending to read the articles.

What amused me more was that he was actually far more interested in the car magazines, than in the nudies. He kept trying to make me laugh all night long with hilarious and not-so-hilarious jokes. What it really did was cheer up Sonshine, who was entertained by this guy trying to make me laugh.

Later that night, about 1 a.m., he came into the room. With one of my other daughters curled up next to me sleeping and Sonshine zonked out from morphine, we talked late into the night about his wife, his son, baseball, and his hopes and dreams for his son. He wanted his son to be a ball player so badly and, since it turned out they lived near the old 'hood, he invited us to watch his son play.

It was like that with the women at the gyn-ob office, too. I sat there smirking, listening to Carrie and Patty talking about doable men. I laughed when both of them oohed and ahhed about my underwear. I thought it was funny that anyone noticed. I'd carefully tucked them beneath my slacks.

The both made me laugh as Carrie flouncing the boy panties around the room while Patty snickered and said, "Carrie's going to run out tonight and buy a pair for this weekend!"

As I was getting ready to leave, collecting my things, Ann, another assistant, who was in the room, asking me about the business we were starting. As I tried to formulate a coherent answer I couldn't help but think, "You know, this is just beautiful. Lefty men and others who disapprove of abortion would be wagging their fingers at us for not caring about the fact that we'd just offed an 'undead baby.'"

We were just four women who believed that what we were doing was the right thing and it was nothing to be ashamed of. The room wasn't filled with the scent of vigiliant martyrdom, of people hell bent on making a political statement about feminism and women's rights. It was a room that smelled of women who just were: this is what we do. We choose to give birth or not and we talk about our underwear, doable men, whether we like our jobs, the latest forms of birth control, the weather, and if the ex was every really any good in bed and why did we put up with it for so long.

It was a room of women -- a women's room -- where life was filled with laughter, grimaces, tenderness, hugs, sadness, warmth, grumpies, gripes, tears, and smiles.

Somehow it came out that I was in a somewhat challenged financial state. So, there they were, these women who liked my black lace boy panties stuffing a bag full of maxipads, condoms, soaps, and all manner of doctor's office giveaways. There was so much that the bag was overflowing and ripped, the contents spilling to the floor.

Carrie, Anne, and Patty gathered it all back together, stuffing it into a bigger bag. I was still kind of woozy and not quite capable of keeping my balance enough to help, so instead I stood there thinking, "What did I do to deserve this? Do I look like a total charity case that I need free maxipads and chuks? How could my attempts at smiling under the effects of the nitrous and my garbled mumblings have indicated anything particularly special? I'd been up all night the night before, working on that damn Web site. Maybe I just looked like death warmed over?"

And then I thought, "You know, there was nothing special about me at all. I hadn't done anything to deserve this. They were simply beautiful women. A room full of beautiful women. Beautiful women who had abortions and helped other women have them. Beautiful women who escorted me back to the loving arms of R. Beautiful women who commented on how obvious it was that we loved each other from watching us in the waiting room."

As I left the offices to go back to the waiting room, we stood in the entranceway and shared hugs all around -- except for R who kind of stood to the side as all these women hugged.

As R and I gathered our things, I watched them welcome the next woman who was accompanied by her mother. They all gave the new patient warm, bright smiles as her mother escorted her into the back office.

Earlier, while I'd been in the waiting room, I'd watched her. She had tears in her eyes the whole time as she filled out all the paperwork they occupy you with while you're waiting. She must have been 15, wearing clothes designed to hide the growing tummy. Her slacks were all big and baggy and she was stooped over as if she were ashamed. Afraid. Embarassed.

Her mother was beside her looking grim and concerned. Mostly, she looked like she didn't know what to say in spite of having a great deal to say. It was stuck in her throat, I thought, a story of how she and countless others had been here in this waiting room before -- or a waiting room like it. Perhaps she'd been here before, with a friend, or here herself? What was it like twenty-five or thirty years ago? What had it been like in the 70s?

What is it like, now, with the vestiges of her culture haunting her -- a culture where all too often women must be ashamed, must stoop and slouch to hide their bodies in shame, women who feel obliged to prostrate themselves before the outstretched, judgmental finger of a wrathful Christian God.

Four beautiful women hugging and smiling and talking about doable men and black lace boy panties.

I'm glad that maybe that young girl saw four beautiful women smiling and hugging and talking about underwear, not bowing their heads in shame.

Dedicated to Mike and Jennifer.

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