PeaceBang

Before Papers, and Before Class

Because it’s good and right for beagles and boys to be on the beach. And because it’s good and right for me to be with them.

Whirlwind

Hola, chickadees!

I am currently on a five-week sabbatical from church and taking an intensive course in the spiritual discipline of discernment. I leave on Sunday for the Festival of Homiletics.

It was SO HARD not to go to church yesterday… but it helped that I’ve had a stomach bug and a bad back for a few days. It took the strength of ten men not to call my DRE and ask, “HOWDITGO?”

This time away from the rhythms of church is interesting. I sometimes can’t figure out what day it is. I read for three to four hours a day, spend hours thinking and figuring things out (how is God really calling me and my congregation to use my sabbatical time next year? What does it mean that my life has changed so radically in the past six months? How does the body respond to letting go of consistently hurtful and even abusive relationships?) and write papers. I am working on a 20-page paper that is due for another class. If it wasn’t for SweetieBang and PuppyBang, I’d probably stay in my pajamas until 2 pm and eat cereal for every meal. Having the guy and the dog here give me different kind of energy and a focus outside of myself, thank Gods. I use laundry and cooking as welcome distractions from brain work (although I don’t hesitate to yap at SweetieBang if I need him to contribute more in that arena).

I await the birth of a healthy, precious Baby Philocrites. I hope to fit in a Washington, DC trip in July for ChaliceChick’s birthday soiree. Life is so sweet, and having things to look forward to make it even sweeter. Some people counsel always to live in the moment but as far as I’m concerned, some moments aren’t worth giving that much attention to. Most moments these days are, and I’m so grateful for that I could toss a bunch of flowers in the sky just for God.

Three Month Check-In

As my regular readers know, I met SweetieBang while vacationing in Florida at the end of January. We spent four days together which were not the torrid days you might imagine, considering what happened next — which is that he drove up the entire East Coast a week later and moved in with me. Those days were filled with laughter and yes, romance, but mostly with comfort. With a sense of kinship. With a feeling of having come home in some ineffable way.

We are not an obvious couple. We are, in fact, total opposites in many significant ways. He is Buddhist in his ways of thinking and processing information, while I am thoroughly imbued by Christian practice. I am an academic. He is intellectual but definitely not academic. I am ambitious. He simply wants to do a good day’s work and earn an honest paycheck. I am mercurial, extroverted and dramatic. He is almost consistently positive and definitely introverted, more animated around me in the privacy of our home than anywhere else. I am a leader. I set a course and want to bring others along. He is an true individualist; not leading and not following but finding his own path and ambling along it.

We are also alike in some important ways. We are both inescapably Jewish in temperament and humor. We are generational peers, but I am four years older. We are both musical. We share a love of food and have large appetites. We love animals and neither of us has ever wanted to parent a child. We both have an edge, but mine is far sharper and honed by years of feminist rage. His is keen, sharpened by years of silent and solitary observation of inane human behavior. We tend to have the same visceral admiration or dislike for the same people and things.

“It’s the people that you hate together
Bait together
Date together,
That make marriage a joy.”
- from “It’s The Little Things You Do Together” from Company
Lyrics, Stephen Sondheim

We have no idea what insanity led us to agree to share our lives after knowing each other only four days. Had a friend of mine done this, I would be shaking my head and predicting disaster. But my friends and congregants, thank God, have been wonderful, respecting an innate wisdom that I myself doubted and welcoming Greg with open arms. He has a good natural knack for being the Minister’s Guy. His sophisticated technique in establishing the appropriate persona is to be himself and not worry about anything, which I think is a good one. He likes church. He goes sometimes and not others. He genuinely likes and cares about people and is comfortable at coffee hour. He admires the church’s commitments and hopes that his work schedule will allow him to be involved in our environmentalist work in some meaningful way. He does not own a tie but says that he wants to buy a summer-weight blazer so he can “doodly do” around with me to formal events. For a guy who lived on a tropical island in swim trunks and flip-flops for years before I met him, I think this shows fairly astonishing flexibility.

It has been incredibly stressful at times. We have fought. But we fight pretty constructively, and we have quickly learned how to make up and move on. He has a talent for defusing terrible situations that I greatly admire. We brought a dog into our little family almost right away, contributing another set of stressers to our new relationship. Our beagle baby is expensive, he requires constant care and discipline, and Greg and I don’t always agree on how to achieve those things. For all his Zen equanimity in most other matters, I find that he is an over-protective, worried Jewish papa when it comes to Max. This makes me laugh. I love having found the chinks in Greg’s peaceable warrior armor.

He is Togetherness Man, I am Give-Me-Some-Space Girl. We are learning to cross borders into each other’s territory, to grant space or companionship as acts of love, respect and compromise. This makes me want to spend more time with him and I think it makes him much more comfortable with my desire for privacy and time alone or with others. He goes off to work and says, “I won’t see you for another seven hours.” I say “ONLY SEVEN?” We laugh a lot. He makes me laugh every day. He does not take me too seriously, which helps me to not take myself so seriously. This is a wonderful development, even though it makes me peevish at times.

He never used a personal computer before he met me, doesn’t have an e-mail account, and doesn’t mind that I write about him, as long as its in the interest of sharing wisdom about relationships in general and not just to dish. My interpretation, not his words.

What happened here? What is this story about, so far? I think it is about timing and luck and I think it is about commitment. I have been attracted to plenty of men I’ve met on vacations. I’ve been smitten in St. Louis and intrigued in New York City and gone ga-ga in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I’ve been addled in Philadelphia and pined in Columbia, Maryland and almost married in Minnesota. The big difference here is that this time, the object of my initially very-casual-interest turned out to be a true mensch who was ready to commit himself to someone, who recognized in me that someone, and did not hesitate to take his heart out of his body, slap it on the table in front of me, and say, “Take this. I want you have it.” It was a good heart. I could see that immediately. As for my own, it was split in two: I had a Minister’s heart that was joyful, open and pulsing with life. My women’s heart was cold, shriveled and tucked away under layers of anger, resentment, hurt and disappointment. I took it out, showed it to him, said, “It’s not in very good shape but it’s what I’ve got.” He said, “Looks good to me, we’ll have it all fixed up in no time.”

This was a non-verbal transaction. For a woman who is used to analyzing everything within an inch of its life, that is profoundly refreshing. We don’t talk endlessly about “our relationship,” we just have it. A friend said to me that the first three months would be a nightmare, and then we would know whether or not we had something real. My friend guessed that we would. He just felt it.

And we do. So I want to say happy spring to my Pan, my ocean blue-eyed boy, my Troll Mate, my sweetheart. Congratulations, kid. We made it through the first three months and for all our struggles, they’ve been revelatory, and you are the best insane decision I’ve ever made.

Fat and Domestic Abuse

SweetieBang and I have developed a little Saturday morning tradition. I wake up early, walk the dog for a few minutes, then come inside and read for class or church while Greg sleeps in. Then he wakes up, walks the dog for a second time (Max prefers to do his serious business with Doggie Daddy, which is fine with me!), then we go to Weight Watchers where I get weighed in, then we noodle around the mall or somewhere else, and have lunch together. I drive Greg to work and then I go home and work on church stuff or whatever else I need to do.

Lately I’ve been very happy with my Weight Watchers weigh-in, so I tend to do a little “Rocky” arm pumping victory jump when I share my news with him across the room from the scales. He, being a shy guy, gives me a little grin and saves all the “Heeeey, Skinny” comments for when we’re alone (really corny stuff like, “Where’d ya go? Oh, you turned sideways, I didn’t see you!”). He’s very supportive, but it means a lot to me that when we met I was as heavy as I’ve ever been and he was still attracted to me. Hetero men who manage not to have their libidos totally colonized by Madison Avenue and the fashion industry have a special place in my heart. This isn’t to say that all men are necessarily naturally attracted to heavy women, but plenty who are wouldn’t dare act on that attraction for fear of being thought less a man by their peers. As I’ve complained many times in the past, a simple cruise through the personal ads of any American newspaper or on-line dating site will inform even the most casual observer that American men are intensely fat phobic, equating extra pounds with sloth and fair game for ridicule and even demonization. It’s ugly out there for big girls. And no, it seems to matter not one bit if the fat-hating gent in question is himself in possession of a beer gut, flabby or distinctly unhandsome physique, ear hair, foul breath, rampant dandruff or is a self-absorbed, ignorant, unemployed marijuana addict who lives at home at the age of 47. “No fatties need apply!” There is no greater moral crime in America today than to be obese.

With this in mind, it suddenly and with some real horror occurred to Greg and me last weekend that some people probably think he goes with me to Weight Watchers to make sure I’m losing weight, like some abusive control freak boyfriend would do. And Lord forgive us — we laughed our heads off about it. As soon as we leave the Weight Watchers storefront now, we do this whole skit where I say, “Honey, I lost two pounds this week” and he makes a *slap* sound effect and growls, “I thought we said FIVE.” Or he’ll put his arm around my waist, softly grab a handful of flesh and sneer in my ear, “Two pounds? What about this?” And I pretend to cry and say, “I only got to the gym seven times this week! I’m sorry! I’ll do better!” And we laugh like hyenas and get iced coffees.

And yet there are couples who live this way. And I’m sure we all know some of them without knowing that this is going on behind closed doors.

Today we were in breathless hysterics because I lost over 3 lbs. this week (don’t congratulate me for my discipline, I’ve had some sort of flu since Tuesday night) and we decided that, in our skit, before the woman even got the word “three” out of her mouth to announce her great success for the week (”Sweetie, guess what? I lost thr…”), the guy would interrupt by saying, “STILL. FAT.” and totally shut her off.

Of course this is all the funnier to us because Greg is considerably overweight himself and first feared that if he entered the WW building with me, he’d be dragged into a meeting and would be counting points from that moment on. (”C’mon, big guy,” he imagined them saying. “Get on the scale!”).

It really isn’t funny. I know it and so does he. I remember being in my early twenties and starting to get seriously overweight (”seriously” back then being 20 lbs. or so, but in my own eyes I was an enormous blob and desperately insecure about it, although on my good days I felt sexy and curvy and angry that the rest of the world –including women — tended to be so stupid and hateful about women’s bodies). I read Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach and it really opened my eyes to the ways that the diet industry conspires with society’s misogynist impulses to keep women focused on shrinking down to an acceptable size so that they won’t get their teeny tiny brains on other things, like, say, running for president.

When I see slim, fit women at the gym doing their thing, I cheer them on. “Go, sister!” However, when I see them striding into a Weight Watchers meeting and they’re in their early 20’s or maybe not even that old, and they’re thin and beautiful and they’ve joined WW for $9 a week because they’re miserable about the six pounds they’re frantic to lose, I can’t cheer. I want to pull them over and say, “Lovely young woman, take a 45 minute walk three times a week, cut out the sugary beverages, eat three healthy meals a day and nothing in between and you’ll drop that six pounds in no time. Meanwhile, there are so many better things you could be doing with your time than weighing and measuring your food and attending Weight Watchers meetings on a Saturday morning. Whoever told you you should be here, or whatever put it into your head that you need to be a size 2 or 4, let’s do an exorcism for that and you can get out of here and go live large in mind and spirit, ’cause your body is nowhere near it.”

As Auntie Mame said, “Life is a banquet, and most sons-of-bitches are starving to death.” With starvation a reality for so many of the world’s men, women and children, it seems especially important to remind women that there is more important work for us to be doing than achieving conventionally sexy, impossible model proportions that occur naturally in something like 2% of the female population. Health is one thing. My heart and joints are thanking me today for having released 10% of my body fat. Anxiously capitulating to a fat-phobic society that has, at best, a very ambivalent relationship to women’s largeness of being on all levels, is another phenomenon entirely, and not a good one.

If I haven’t made this perfectly clear, let me say to the women reading this that if you are involved in a relationship with a man who viciously shames you about your weight, ridicules your body if you gain a few pounds, objectifies body parts with cruel nicknames, threatens to leave or cheat on you if you don’t lose weight or habitually tears you down, telling you that you’re lucky to have him and that you’re so fat no one else would want you, you are in an abusive relationship. You don’t need to go to Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or LA Weight Loss Centers or Overeaters Anonymous. You need to call a domestic abuse resource center where you live, your best friend or family member, your minister or priest or other supportive and loving advocate for your health and safety, and make a plan to get out of the relationship. Okay? If you decide to lose weight at some point, that’s up to you.

And I promise that my chubby baboo and I will stop laughing about this issue from now on. We were only laughing because it’s such an atrocious scenario and all too common. Lord have mercy.

(Highly Recommended Natural Weight Loss Method: Beagle Puppy = four or five ten minutes walk per day = hundreds of extra calories expended per month and you won’t even notice it!)

Easter Joy With Bologna Ears and a Tail

He is one year old.

He came to us already named Max. It’s a name that I love because of the character Max Bialystock in my favorite movie, “The Producers.” SweetieBang loves it for its reference to “Where The Wild Things Are.”

I have wanted a dog forever but vowed that I would never get one while I was single — too busy, away from home too often, etc.
SweetieBang is just as insane about dogs as I am and we planned to get one this summer; maybe a French bulldog or a yellow lab or some kind of labby mix. But of course that’s never how it works. Greg works right by the local shelter and as anyone hankering after a dog will do, he stopped in to have a look. And there was Max. And Greg fell in love. He came home and woke me from a nap and said, “Come with me to meet Max.” I read his mind immediately, jumped into my coat and we sped off right away, because I know how it is when your animal chooses you. I had to see this little guy. I had to see his little bologna ears. I adore beagles but SisterBang always warned me that they’re a HANDFUL so I never seriously considered trying to be a Beagle Mom until I met Max.

We know that beagles are incorrigible, willful dogs. We know he will bay and howl and dig and require lots of walks, lots of attention, and obedience training. Also an outdoor fenced in run. And a crate. We will spend weeks carefully introducing him to Ermengarde and she to him (he lived with a cat before and likes them — she, of course, will initially hate him). I’m sure he will chew shoes or furniture and pee and poop in the house until he’s potty-trained (what kind of dog owner doesn’t do this immediately with a puppy? We are disgusted! AND… it doesn’t help knowing that Max’s former owner was a local minister!). There will be times I rue the day I ever looked into his brown eyes and saw him nuzzle his whole little body hopefully against Greg even though I was the one holding the treats.

But he is a cuddly, sweet, affectionate pup who might be the tiniest bit not-so-bright but we love him and are brimming over with excitement to bring him home on Tuesday and make him a huge part of our lives.

So this is my Easter joy. At long, long last I will fulfill my heart’s desire to become a doggie mommy. May God bless you all with new life.

(This really isn’t the best photo. He looks kind of funny and bow-legged here and he’s not. But you get an idea of his beautiful markings. Also, jeepers creepers, where’d he get those peepers? *thump, thump*).

Men Are From Kashmir…Women Are From Venus

I’m sorry but this is just too good not to share.

I was running to an appointment yesterday afternoon while SweetieBang was deciding that the load of dishes we washed with the eco-friendly cleaner had come out gross and smelly (too true, and it’s too bad), and so I grabbed a box of Cascade from the pantry and thumped it on the counter. “That stuff obviously doesn’t work, we might as well use this more toxic product since I already have it on hand.”

I ran into the study to shut down my computer and I hear maniacal laughter from the kitchen. I call out, “What? What’s so funny? What happened?” “Oh, nothing,” he says, muffling his guffaws. Then another burst of helpless laughter. “Tell me, tell me!” I say. I go into the kitchen.

I had thumped the Cascade down on the counter next to a carton of Chai Tea that had a similar spout-like opening. SweetieDingbatBang, in his intense domestic concentration, (*rolling eyes*), had opened the CHAI instead of the CASCADE and filled the dishwasher detergent tray with it.

As my friend Robin used to say at such times, “Om nama shivaya.” Or as both Greg’s and my Jewish ancestors would have said, “Oy, gevalt.”

And yet there is no sweeter sound than that of a human being laughing heartily at him or herself.