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Granny, Nanny, Mom and The Motherless Child

My maternal grandmother was born and grew up in Bridgetown, Barbados. She married when she was sixteen, miscarried her first child, a girl, within a year, had four children by twenty-three and moved to Canada after the Second World War at twenty-seven. Her fifth child was my mother, born in 1947. She got a job with the Canadian National Railway as a seamstress where she worked until retirement in 1984. Her husband, my grandfather, passed away from cancer in 1994. She herself passed away over the Christmas holidays in 2007.

My paternal grandmother's parents were from England, but had most of their children in Canada. Not many from her generation went to high-school, so it was out to work in her early teens. She had married and had had her first child by nineteen. My father was her third child, born a few months after the end of the war. She  remained a housewife until she divorced my grandfather on that side in 1978. Other than some odd jobs as a cleaning woman, she never held a job from that point forward. Her eldest daughter died from lymphoma in 1995. She herself passed away from complications from a stroke last fall.

My mother's relationships with both her own mother and her one-time mother-in-law were stormy to say the least. There was always tension (racial as well as personality-based) between her and my father's mother, but it was somewhat muted after my parent's divorce. Her relationship with her own mother had deep resentments which were never resolved by the end of my mother's life and had been all but forgotten by the time her mother, suffering from Alzheimer's, died.

As for me, regarded as a "son" and "grandson" for so long, I often had tense relationships of my own with all three of them. Today, Mother's Day 2013, I find myself pondering this. As their daughter and granddaughter after all, I write this post as a tribute to them, as somber a tribute as it may be. In three different ways, I miss you all and although I had never those daughter moments with any of you, I am grateful for each you for giving me life. I will carry your determination to live life on your own terms forward with dignity and pride.

May Day Remembered

On May 1, 1886, massive demonstrations and rallies of striking worker's took place all over the United States, the biggest being in Chicago. A violent few days followed, culminating in the bombing and gunfire on May 4 at Chicago's Haymarket Square. The bomb thrower was never found, but eight anarchists were brought to trial, four of them were executed. The majority of strikers present at Haymarket Square, however, were struggling for one thing above all: an eight-hour workday.

Five years later, at the second congress of the Second International (an international delegation of socialist and labour parties) in Paris, May 1 was officially made into an annual commemorative day in which workers rallied for the eight-hour day and other demands. Eventually, May Day was made a holiday in many countries around the world as well as a state holiday in socialist countries such as Cuba. In the US, meanwhile, there had been, at the end of the nineteenth-century, a initiative to move the holiday further away from the anniversary of the Haymarket Massacre. Then-president Grover Cleveland, following the lead of the anti-socialist union the Knights of Labor, moved the labour holiday to the first Monday in September.

My own post on the September Labour Day can be found here. May Day, however, is often shrouded in more mystery and its history, based around workers' struggles for basic rights and humane working conditions desperately needs to be remembered. This is even more important in light of the recent workplace disasters in Texas and Bangladesh, both seen increasingly as the result of lax corporate regulations and poor working conditions, echoing historic industrial disasters such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City.

Perhaps today is an opportunity to begin the long hard work of pushing forward on labour issues, and regain the ground lost over the past few decades of rollbacks and losses.

Earth Day Lament

I was born mere months after the first Earth Day in 1970. In 1990, I marched, planted and recycled on the Earth Day twentieth anniversary. By 2000, Earth Day seemed like and after thought. In 2010, I was firmly committed to urban organic farming and buying, upcycling and reusing in a sustainable fashion.

This year, I find myself doing most of these things, but feeling very weary and, well, sad. That is, sad about the state of the world, the increasingly unpredictable, and even catastrophic, weather worldwide and in my own backyard. The spring fundraiser at my community garden (where I had helped plant fruit trees last fall and prune them, recently, over the Easter long weekend) closed down early, because a torrential rain: icy cold rain. I could not help, but think that we had it coming, not us at the garden, specifically, but us, as in humanity.

We have been carelessly messing around with things for sometime now. Over-consuming, burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate and standing by and doing very little, if anything at all to fight environmental injustices of many kinds. We have only begun to see the impacts that a radically unstable climate will have on our food supply, infrastructure, health and social and economic (even political) stability. And then, there is the havoc we are wrecking on other life, animals and plants. The animals, pets, must often wonder what kind of monsters we humans are, with our arrogance about our place in (or, more accurately, outside of the natural world). This is where members of older generations express relief that they will not be around when things "collapse" and, gee, isn't it too bad they we in the subsequent will be, or might be. So sorry.

I wish this were a cheery, feel-good Earth Day post, but, it is not. Nor do I think that I am being overly-negative (although, what does "overly-negative" mean nowadays with so many examples of our collective decay around us). I know that I am doing my part and doing my best; so are many others that I know and still others, around the world, even under great risk. I guess I am staring to feel the anxiety and fear of there being very little or no time left to have any positive effect on the direction of our societies.

But, next weekend, hopefully in good weather, I will continue to till the soil in my garden plots getting them ready for planting and tending. And soon, the summer farmer's markets will open selling seedlings, organic produce, artisan food and sustainable crafts. This summer I will continue to do and support all of these things. Through it all, I will keep my fingers crossed.

Out Like a Lamb? Not!

And out March goes ... phew!!! Busy month, no? Life still races along. Still writing, still getting my name/ID changes done, still getting my financial house in order, still remembering the rest, sleep, eat, etc. And the good news is that it's all getting done.

So in like a lioness, out like ... a lioness.

Now, for April!

In Like a Lioness

What a month March promises to be! Creative projects abound: including a certain TV sitcom (see my previous post below). All my new government issued IDs with my new legal name, and in some cases, changed gender marker should be arriving by mail this month. I am also, very humbly I might add, getting my financial house in order.

This month looks like the tipping point in my transition, and life.

I Feel It In My Fingers, I Feel It In My Toes ...

Over the past couple of years, since I began transition, I have finally gained something that had been elusive for most of my life: self-love. I now know, for the first time, what it means to truly love myself: in body and spirit as well as mind. I have also experienced a huge growth in confidence in all areas of my life.

When asked about whether or not I want to be in a relationship, I usually find that I do not have much to say. I know fairly well what it is like to rush into them only to regret it later, or to obsess about the "one that got away." Years of feeling not just bad, but hollow, about myself led to me striving to make others love me. All to no avail of course. Now, I feel my life is whole and complete, although of course not perfect (whose is?). For the most part, with relationships, I feel that I can take them or leave them. I am certainly not desperate for one.

That said, I do have moments (like right now) where I long to meet the right guy. Perhaps, one day it will happen: a nice, affectionate, smart, compassionate and exciting guy will come along. I am a somewhat old-fashioned, nostalgic, yet also progressive kind of gal who is looking for someone who likes candle light dinners with a little light jazz or soul music in the background, cooking a meal together, cuddling while watching old movies or old tv series, walking in the park or in the country, window shopping, gardening, and, yes, dancing.

The longing is quite deep right now, but with all that is going well, I can wait.

However, the light is always on.