Category Archives: girl

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bears

Those aren’t bears! Oh, yes… this is the New Year’s Polar Bear Plunge and these intrepid swimmers are now Polar Bears. The plunge is at noon on Marrowstone Island. A cannon is fired and people jump off the dock and into the water, cold Salish Sound water, in the low fiftys. Brrrr. The ambulance crew stands by and family and friends to witness this transformation into bears for the day.

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gratitude!

I took this in the early morning at the Northwest Maritime Center.

For the Daily Prompt: gratitude.

I am full of gratitude this morning, for friends, for love, for living near the water and the boats. My daughter was home for college this summer teaching sailing at the NW Maritime Center to children who were here visiting and to children who live here. She says that some of them had hardly been in a boat before. If one child got scared in the pair out in sailboats, they might get others scared and crying. Still, she felt that they had enough staff and good training and were very safety conscious in this cold water.

One week half the kids said that their favorite thing the whole week was when one of the instructors went overboard. Honestly, he was pretty cold after that but learned to bring extra clothing.

My daughter took the Level One Sailing Instructor Course in Seattle before she started teaching. The instructors here at the Maritime Center got to know each other and work as a team.

The small land pirate ship is on the water side of the Northwest Maritime Center and is popular all summer, during the Wooden Boat Festival and for the younger Messing Around in Boats program in the summer. Small pirates ho! Gratitude for imagination and cameras and play and the sunrise and sunset.

 

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Make a difference

In medical school I made a difference.

I was with two women and two men from class. We’d had a lecture on rape that day. One of the guys piped up, “If I were a woman and I was raped, I’d never tell anyone.”

“Man, I don’t feel that way.” I said, “I would have the legal evidence done, have the police on his ass so fast his head would spin and I would nail his hide to the wall.”

He looked at me in surprise. “Um, wow. Why?”

I took a deep breath and decided to answer. “You are assuming that you would be ashamed and that as a woman, it is somehow your fault if you were raped. I was abused by a neighbor at age 7. At age 7 I thought it was my fault. I thought I might be pregnant, because I was a bit clueless about puberty. I made it stop and tried to keep my sister away from the guy. When I went to the pediatrician the next time with my mother, I decided that since he didn’t say I was pregnant, I probably wasn’t. When I started school that year, second grade, I thought sadly that I was probably the only girl on the bus who wasn’t a virgin.

In college, I heard a radio show about rape victims, how they blame themselves, often think they did something to cause it, are often treated badly by the police or the emergency room, and feel guilty. All of the feelings that I had at age 7. I realized that I was 7, for Christ’s sake, I wasn’t an adult. It was NOT my fault.

If I walk down the street naked, I’m ok with being arrested for indecency, but rape is violence against me and no one has that right no matter WHAT is happening.

And child sexual abuse is one in four women.”

The two guys looked at the three of us. After a long pause, one of the other women shook her head no, and the other nodded yes.

The guy shook his head. “I never believed it. I didn’t think women could be okay after that.”

“Oh, we can survive and we can heal and thrive.”

We had the lecture on child sexual abuse a few months later. My fellow student talked to me later. “I thought about you and — during the lecture. I thought about it completely differently than before you talked about it. I would deal with a patient in a completely different way than I would have before. Thank you.”

 

previously posted on everything2.com in 2009

for the Daily Prompt: release

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brave women

For the Daily Prompt: brave.

I took this in 2010, at a synchronized swim meet. These are very young swimmers, yet each girl is being lifted by three others, who are lifting only by swimming. They may not touch the bottom. It takes enormous amounts of practice and teamwork.

I hope that more women speaking up and saying “Me too” and refusing to tolerate the Weinsteins and all of the others will change the pattern.

Strong girls and brave women.

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fortune

For the Daily Prompt: fortune, an old poem. This is the version I learned, but there are others… I think that I learned this from a nursery rhyme book, that had been my mother’s. A cautionary tale, perhaps….

“Where are you going, my pretty maid?”

“I’m going a-milking, sir,” she said

“May I go with you, my pretty maid?”

“No one will stop you, sir,” she said

“What is your fortune, my pretty maid?”

“My face is my fortune, sir,” she said

“Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid.”

“Nobody asked you, sir,” she said.

Other versions:


https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Where_are_you_Going_My_Pretty_Maid_(A_Baby%27s_Opera)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Book_of_Nursery_Songs_and_Rhymes/Nursery_Songs/LIII._WHERE_ARE_YOU_GOING_MY_PRETTY_MAID%3F
http://www.bartleby.com/360/2/138.html

I took the photograph a few days ago at sunset. We are almost at the solstice. Blessings all.

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sing for the girls

Sing for the girls who grow up in war zones.
Sing for the girls who grow up scared.
Sing for the girls who grow up abused.
Sing for the girls unprepared.

Sing for the girls who grow up with alcohol.
Sing for the girls who grow in broken homes.
Sing for the girls who don’t tell anyone.
Sing for the girls alone.

Sing for the girls who grow up beaten.
Sing for the girls who grow up raped.
Sing for the girls who care for siblings.
Sing for the girls who learn to hate.

Sing for the women who now look frozen.
Sing for the women who now look old.
Sing for the women who survived it anyway.
Sing for the women who told.

Sing for the girls who grow up broken.
Sing for the girls who break everything.
Sing for the girls who break the silence.
We are broken and breaking: sing.

I took the photograph at the US Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012.

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Cindy gets real and skips the ball

We had a lovely dinner with family and friends. I look at the tablecloths and napkins that I have inherited and I am glad that I live in a time where I can work as a female physician and am not embroidering elaborate tablecloths and napkins. Some of the ones that I have WERE done by female relatives. Amazing and work that is currently not very valued.

So my centerpiece was an acknowledgement of the changes: Cindy is not going to ride in the coach. She has a canoe and paddles and a backpack, sleeping bag, stove, water bottle and GPS. She is going to find her own way and paddle her own canoe.

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Dream state

I am in the soft dream state
longing for my love and mate
my heart won’t stop or hesitate

I cross the border into dreams
nothing quite is what it seems
I stop and play in bubbling streams

I wander in the tall green grass
years since the mower’s pass
unsullied by the smell of gas

I lean against a tree
I feel quiet happy free
I feel accepted just as me

my childhood was a frightened place
the woods were the safest space
if I spoke my heart would race

my work is with adults in pain
scars deep as canyons bleeding strain
my tears fall as gentle rain

my youngest child has reached eighteen
she’s bright and smart and kind not mean
I wonder what her eyes have seen

my adult work is nearly done
it’s time for me to have some fun
beneath the tree in moon or sun

I wander as a child
heart gentle meek and mild
connected to the world so wild