I read something on Facebook this morning that will not leave my brain: an article posted by a former student that condemns gay marriage, saying there is no evidence that gay couples can raise children in a healthy way and therefore the institution of marriage, as a heterosexual one, ought to be protected.
I fundamentally disagree with this on so very many levels. Family comes in many, many forms and what I believe children need above all else is love. Everyone knows how to love, no matter your sexual preference. If churches want to decide not to marry people, I have no beef with that. But I believe from the depths of my soul that our governments, both state and local, have a responsibility to provide equal rights and protection to all citizens. That is somewhat fundamental to our constitution.
The kicker in the article is this: the student who posted it is, I'm fairly certain, gay and very, very closeted. When he was first my student, I simply assumed he was gay (trust me, after enough years in this industry you just come to know when such things are the case). He set my gaydar off from his mannerisms, his speech, his projection of himself. He managed the Stars on Ice event on campus his senior year and bounded
into his lesson the week after proclaiming that he'd gotten Paul Wylie's
phone number....Then, as I got to know him he would often talk about how girls in church would throw themselves at him. He always expressed it in such a way that he sounded rather uncomfortable with their advances and I sometimes wondered if he was asking me for help in a backwards kind of way. Then I learned that this was not just any church that he attended. It was the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. Yup. He's a Mormon. From a big, Mormon family with a dad who is a prominent business man and professor in Boston and a slew of older brothers who all excelled at sports and business. This young man loved music and singing and wanted to be an architect. He participated in an organization on campus that was a haven for so many gay young men finding their way through a world that was not always gay friendly. Maybe I was wrong in my assessment of him, but my gut tells me I'm not.
I've seen him periodically in the years since he graduated and at each encounter I've seen him move more into the hetero sphere and often felt saddened for him as his religion and his family would so likely reject him if he were to embrace his true self.
His posting of the article today just seems one more move towards distancing himself from a world he might really want to embrace. To lead a life of repression and denial, where, as the character in Book of Mormon says about his homosexual tendencies, you take your feelings and "turn it off like a light switch" and "find a box that's gay and crush it!" makes my heart break for him, his future wife and any children he might have.
He's taken a lashing from friends on Facebook over the article and I wonder if any of them see the person I saw those years ago and might want to approach him in a loving way to support his own right to embrace his true self.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Noting the Good
Plenty of what I write here is about processing the bad, so every once in a while, I want to take time to celebrate the good.
Today I'm celebrating signing my first student up for my home voice studio. He's beginning on Thursday. Hooray! May a few others follow in his footsteps.
This morning I also had a voice lesson. It feels amazing to be able to sing while I'm pregnant. I adore the woman I'm taking lessons with. She is such a warm, happy person who is a few decades older than I am. Her children were grown, but she's been where I am and is so unbelievably empathetic and encouraging. Today, as I told her about the issues with my current workplace, she nailed it when she said that we are so made to think we have to hold onto any teaching job we have because the jobs are so few and far between and we feel horribly guilty to think about leaving. But, there will be other jobs, there always are. I needed to hear that. I feel hopeful to plan a little concert that can happen before #2 arrives.
Last week I also had a meeting with a woman who lives here in Natick and has started a yoga-based company that is a system of teaching yoga to children and adults with disabilities. It is also something that can be used to teach yoga to toddlers. After several years of doing it all herself the business is set to grow and she recognizes that she needs someone to take on the tasks that she doesn't enjoy doing - most of it operational and financial. Voila, here I am. Someone who loves organizing, planning and being entrepreneurial.
We are meeting later this week to suss out the particulars of what I will do and then I'm ready to get started. I feel very hopeful about the prospect of this job. It solves so many of the issues that currently exist in my professional life: no long commute, year round employment, feels meaningful to me, working with someone else, will cover the cost of two in daycare for the time that I work and bring some money into the household.
So there you have it. Some of the good. The very, very good.
Today I'm celebrating signing my first student up for my home voice studio. He's beginning on Thursday. Hooray! May a few others follow in his footsteps.
This morning I also had a voice lesson. It feels amazing to be able to sing while I'm pregnant. I adore the woman I'm taking lessons with. She is such a warm, happy person who is a few decades older than I am. Her children were grown, but she's been where I am and is so unbelievably empathetic and encouraging. Today, as I told her about the issues with my current workplace, she nailed it when she said that we are so made to think we have to hold onto any teaching job we have because the jobs are so few and far between and we feel horribly guilty to think about leaving. But, there will be other jobs, there always are. I needed to hear that. I feel hopeful to plan a little concert that can happen before #2 arrives.
Last week I also had a meeting with a woman who lives here in Natick and has started a yoga-based company that is a system of teaching yoga to children and adults with disabilities. It is also something that can be used to teach yoga to toddlers. After several years of doing it all herself the business is set to grow and she recognizes that she needs someone to take on the tasks that she doesn't enjoy doing - most of it operational and financial. Voila, here I am. Someone who loves organizing, planning and being entrepreneurial.
We are meeting later this week to suss out the particulars of what I will do and then I'm ready to get started. I feel very hopeful about the prospect of this job. It solves so many of the issues that currently exist in my professional life: no long commute, year round employment, feels meaningful to me, working with someone else, will cover the cost of two in daycare for the time that I work and bring some money into the household.
So there you have it. Some of the good. The very, very good.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Testing, testing...
Oh, modern medicine. I have such a love-hate relationship with you. So much of the time you do so much good. When I had a heart condition that needed surgery, you were there for me, giving me a non-invasive, fairly low-risk cure. When my father-in-law was recently ill with an infection that was not responding to treatment and his life expectancy suddenly looked like days, rather than years, you came through again with the ability to scan the body, pinpoint the infection and provide treatment, bringing him back to life.
However, on the subject of the care of pregnant women over 35, I'm a bit more on the fence. Sure, you've helped many of my friends have children who otherwise would have been unable to conceive. You provided me with a safe environment to deliver my first child with pain managed (thank you very much) and a flawless birth. And, most of the time knowledge is power, but sometimes knowledge is unnecessary and anxiety producing. Sometimes it is possible to get information that probably never needed to be known in the first place.
Since I'm over 35 I get to have all kinds of genetic testing done. An ERA blood test to calculate risk for Downs and Trisomy 18 (my risk was 1 in 3700 and 1 in 10,000 respectively based on solely bloodwork. For perspective, the average risk for a 38 year old woman is 1 in 150), an ultrasound at 11-13 weeks, an AFP blood test to give further risk for Downs, Trisomy 18 and Spina Bifida and another ultrasound at 18-20 weeks.
Yesterday was my 18-20 week ultrasound. We found out we're having a boy (yay!) and we also saw what are called soft markers for both Downs and Trisomy. Ella had the same soft marker for Downs - a light spot on the heart. It doubles my risk, so I'm now 1 in 1850, or, put another way I have a .05% chance of having a baby with Downs. The Trisomy 18 soft marker is a cyst in the brain, which doesn't effect anything after birth and, in fact, most fetuses outgrow the cyst and it won't be seen on later ultrasounds. I can't remember what that does to my risk, but let's assume it doubles it as well so I have a .02% chance of having a baby with Trisomy 18. To look at it another way, I'd have to give birth 1850 times to have a baby with Downs or 5000 times to have a baby with Trisomy 18 (PERISH THE THOUGHT OF GOING THROUGH THIS THAT MANY TIMES!).
The only way to definitively know whether I'll have a baby with either is to have an amniocentisis, but the risk of having a miscarriage as a result of an amnio is 1 in 300, or .33%. That's a greater risk by far than actually having either in my baby, so it isn't worth it.
What the doctor recommended is to come back in 3 weeks for another ultrasound to be sure the baby is growing. With T18, I guess they just don't grow. From there, if growth is stunted, I could have the amnio, get results and still be in the window of time to terminate (T18 babies rarely survive past the first week of life) if it came back positive.
It is all so horrible to think about and honestly, I think I stopped comprehending at the point the doctor told me there was a cyst in my child's brain. Once I left the office and we had lunch and I had a chance to process, I began to wonder why we even had to be told any of this. I also felt a sense of calm come over me with a strong sense that no matter what we'd be okay and the best way for me to proceed is as though I have a totally normal, healthy child (so I went shopping for baby boy clothes).
I've long believed that there has to be more than a mother's age to predict the potential to have a child with issues. I understand that western medicine needs to quantify and qualify and age is the one common factor they have found, but surely your own family history, that of your husband's, how you and he take care of yourself and the environment you live in also have to play a role. Hard to quantify those because they vary so much from person to person.
Hopefully the next 3 weeks will pass quickly and on June 1 at 11:30 we'll see a strapping, young lad who has grown beyond the 9 ounces he weighs right now. Lord knows if I keep gaining weight, but he doesn't I'll be pretty pissed. Until then, I'm planning to stay positive, hopefully not wake up in the middle of the night and play the what-if game and put this mostly useless knowledge provided by modern medicine out of my head.
However, on the subject of the care of pregnant women over 35, I'm a bit more on the fence. Sure, you've helped many of my friends have children who otherwise would have been unable to conceive. You provided me with a safe environment to deliver my first child with pain managed (thank you very much) and a flawless birth. And, most of the time knowledge is power, but sometimes knowledge is unnecessary and anxiety producing. Sometimes it is possible to get information that probably never needed to be known in the first place.
Since I'm over 35 I get to have all kinds of genetic testing done. An ERA blood test to calculate risk for Downs and Trisomy 18 (my risk was 1 in 3700 and 1 in 10,000 respectively based on solely bloodwork. For perspective, the average risk for a 38 year old woman is 1 in 150), an ultrasound at 11-13 weeks, an AFP blood test to give further risk for Downs, Trisomy 18 and Spina Bifida and another ultrasound at 18-20 weeks.
Yesterday was my 18-20 week ultrasound. We found out we're having a boy (yay!) and we also saw what are called soft markers for both Downs and Trisomy. Ella had the same soft marker for Downs - a light spot on the heart. It doubles my risk, so I'm now 1 in 1850, or, put another way I have a .05% chance of having a baby with Downs. The Trisomy 18 soft marker is a cyst in the brain, which doesn't effect anything after birth and, in fact, most fetuses outgrow the cyst and it won't be seen on later ultrasounds. I can't remember what that does to my risk, but let's assume it doubles it as well so I have a .02% chance of having a baby with Trisomy 18. To look at it another way, I'd have to give birth 1850 times to have a baby with Downs or 5000 times to have a baby with Trisomy 18 (PERISH THE THOUGHT OF GOING THROUGH THIS THAT MANY TIMES!).
The only way to definitively know whether I'll have a baby with either is to have an amniocentisis, but the risk of having a miscarriage as a result of an amnio is 1 in 300, or .33%. That's a greater risk by far than actually having either in my baby, so it isn't worth it.
What the doctor recommended is to come back in 3 weeks for another ultrasound to be sure the baby is growing. With T18, I guess they just don't grow. From there, if growth is stunted, I could have the amnio, get results and still be in the window of time to terminate (T18 babies rarely survive past the first week of life) if it came back positive.
It is all so horrible to think about and honestly, I think I stopped comprehending at the point the doctor told me there was a cyst in my child's brain. Once I left the office and we had lunch and I had a chance to process, I began to wonder why we even had to be told any of this. I also felt a sense of calm come over me with a strong sense that no matter what we'd be okay and the best way for me to proceed is as though I have a totally normal, healthy child (so I went shopping for baby boy clothes).
I've long believed that there has to be more than a mother's age to predict the potential to have a child with issues. I understand that western medicine needs to quantify and qualify and age is the one common factor they have found, but surely your own family history, that of your husband's, how you and he take care of yourself and the environment you live in also have to play a role. Hard to quantify those because they vary so much from person to person.
Hopefully the next 3 weeks will pass quickly and on June 1 at 11:30 we'll see a strapping, young lad who has grown beyond the 9 ounces he weighs right now. Lord knows if I keep gaining weight, but he doesn't I'll be pretty pissed. Until then, I'm planning to stay positive, hopefully not wake up in the middle of the night and play the what-if game and put this mostly useless knowledge provided by modern medicine out of my head.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Giving it a try
I've written a fair amount recently about my unsureness (probably not a word) about my career path and whether staying in my current field is the right thing. So many days I am left feeling a bit empty from my job and not feeling as though I am doing much to contribute to the greater good. I understand what is missing and know much of it is related to the 'where' of my job and also that I am now teaching people to do something that I no longer do myself.
To that end I've started to take some steps to rectify things. This weekend an opportunity came through my email to get 'mommy cards' at 50% off. Now, the last thing in the world that I ever want to do is to have my entire identity become being someone's mommy and advertise it on cards that I hand out to people. But, the company didn't care what you chose to put on the card, so I ordered myself some business cards. The last business cards I had were made in graduate school circa 2000 and they had a copy of my headshot on them. Let's just say my cell phone number hasn't changed, but my face sure has. I'm excited for them to arrive, so when I meet new people I can actually have something to hand out.
This morning I spent a long time going through all of my contacts on gmail, yahoo and facebook to create a list of people to email and advertise the start up of a home voice studio. I know that if I wasn't staring down a long commute, spending 15% of my earnings on gas, tolls and parking and a manager who, every time he meets with me, saying he needs to find a way to cut my pay (NOT KIDDING HERE), I might like what I do a little more. On my list of other things to do is to get signs made to put up in some public places around town and try to meet with, or at least email, the head of the local school system's performing arts program and eventually put a website together.
Then, there's the element of me as a performer. With my last pregnancy I had such awful reflux and general overwhelmedness (I know that's not a word) with life that it got put on hold. I hadn't realized how impossible it would feel to go back to singing. What I've realized is that as long as I think it is impossible, it will be. So, I've been working on redefining my thinking on what it takes for me to be a performer. Maybe I can do it with only 3 days a week to sing and lessons every once in a while. I won't be the performer I was, but that's okay because I'm not the person that I was. So, I scheduled a voice lesson for myself to do in a week or so and I want to start to nail down what I'm going to work on and work to find a time that I might actually do it in public before #2 arrives.
It seems as though I owe it to myself to take these steps and see if I can construct something that feels personally rewarding as well as financially viable for my family before walking away completely. We'll see how it all goes.
To that end I've started to take some steps to rectify things. This weekend an opportunity came through my email to get 'mommy cards' at 50% off. Now, the last thing in the world that I ever want to do is to have my entire identity become being someone's mommy and advertise it on cards that I hand out to people. But, the company didn't care what you chose to put on the card, so I ordered myself some business cards. The last business cards I had were made in graduate school circa 2000 and they had a copy of my headshot on them. Let's just say my cell phone number hasn't changed, but my face sure has. I'm excited for them to arrive, so when I meet new people I can actually have something to hand out.
This morning I spent a long time going through all of my contacts on gmail, yahoo and facebook to create a list of people to email and advertise the start up of a home voice studio. I know that if I wasn't staring down a long commute, spending 15% of my earnings on gas, tolls and parking and a manager who, every time he meets with me, saying he needs to find a way to cut my pay (NOT KIDDING HERE), I might like what I do a little more. On my list of other things to do is to get signs made to put up in some public places around town and try to meet with, or at least email, the head of the local school system's performing arts program and eventually put a website together.
Then, there's the element of me as a performer. With my last pregnancy I had such awful reflux and general overwhelmedness (I know that's not a word) with life that it got put on hold. I hadn't realized how impossible it would feel to go back to singing. What I've realized is that as long as I think it is impossible, it will be. So, I've been working on redefining my thinking on what it takes for me to be a performer. Maybe I can do it with only 3 days a week to sing and lessons every once in a while. I won't be the performer I was, but that's okay because I'm not the person that I was. So, I scheduled a voice lesson for myself to do in a week or so and I want to start to nail down what I'm going to work on and work to find a time that I might actually do it in public before #2 arrives.
It seems as though I owe it to myself to take these steps and see if I can construct something that feels personally rewarding as well as financially viable for my family before walking away completely. We'll see how it all goes.
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