First prize winner was Hilda Banks Shapiro. Her essay can be read here:
MOTHERING BY MOONLIGHT
By Suzanne C. Fowle
Dedicated to the generations of women who were told they were “cursed.”
P.O. Box 339 Housatonic, MA 01236 / sfowle@verizon.net
Suzanne Fowle
Whenever my ten-year-old daughter calls out “mom!” from the bathroom, I get a pit in my stomach. I know she is not due for her period yet, but I have this little panic anyway. And I always feel relief on discovering she only needs help with an earring, or more toilet paper, or some such innocuous thing. But the panic is there because I am not yet ready for the day when there is blood on her underwear.
I want to be ready. I want her introduction to womanhood and the way it just happens to your body, like it or not, to be comfortable, maybe even positive, unlike my own. If I can delve into the meaning of femininity – its true meaning, not the associations our culture has prescribed – then perhaps I can show my daughter a path that embraces the feminine, or at least knits the masculine and feminine together in equal parts.
I have been female all my life, but my forty-three years have been focused on the masculine, accomplishing tangible tasks and feats. I am a scientist. I have learned how to be objective in gathering and interpreting data. I am proud of these skills, but I have not placed equal trust in the feminine, in intuition and shifting tides. As my daughter starts to take a shape that is distinctly female, I feel I have some catching up to do.
About a month ago, while listening to recorded interviews, I heard author Joseph Campbell emphatically say: “woman is the giver of life…woman is identical with mother earth.” Why had I not heard this before, or at least not ever heard it stated with such clarity and by a man? I have two sisters. I went to an all-girls school for ten years. As the mother of two children, I have played the part of “giver of life,” but I was never taught this in an explicit way, not by my parents, not by my culture, not by my “tribe.” What if menarche, my first period, had been a celebration, or at least an affirmation, of my life-giving potential? What if my mom had received empowering messages when womanhood happened to her? Would my answer to “what is femininity” flow more easily now, thirty years and over three hundred cycles later?
For me, menarche did not involve any discussion of my inborn power or my intimate and inextricable link with the earth. It involved my mom in the bathroom with me, sitting on the edge of the tub, peeling a maxi pad, in an apartment fourteen stories above the earth. I remember expecting a hug from her, wanting a hug from her. As the introductory lesson on maxi pads came to a close, and I felt the wadded pad jammed between my legs for the first time, I still had not received my hug. So I moved over to my mom, and I hugged her.
My friends have similar tales to tell: Anni, Andrea, Victoria, Annie. Few of them would reenact their mother’s or their culture’s response to their first period. They groaned or rolled their eyes when I asked them to tell their stories. Anni wished she had received a gift of some sort. “A necklace, or something!” she exclaimed, hand on her heart.
My friend, Carla, hiked the Appalachian Trail a few years ago. The whole trail, from Georgia to Maine, solo. She came through my town in western Massachusetts and stayed with me for a few days of recovery, good food, and laundry. She showed me her ring of tiny charms that her female friends had given her at send-off. It was to give her strength. It was to remind her, without adding more than a few ounces to her backpack, that those friends were with her along the journey. From the clinking, shiny, little handful emanated tremendous intention, a communal awareness of Carla’s specific needs at a specific time.
I think this is what I would have wanted on that menstrual beginning. Something small enough that it would not announce my bloody state to the world, but containing boundless meaning. Something made for me, deliberately.
So for my daughter, I am devising a plan. I will ask them all – Anni, Andrea, Carla, Annie, Victoria, my sisters, my mom – to contribute a charm. I will link them up, perhaps into a necklace. I will also ask them for their thoughts – a word or two, a sentence or two, whatever they would like to say – and I will gather them in a keepsake pouch. I am going to make a bona fide care package that assists my daughter on that day, and also stays with her. When I get that call from the bathroom (or from summer camp, or from school), I am going to be ready. Ready, so that she can begin a journey, be it from Georgia to Maine, or simply out of the bathroom.
This, I think, is femininity. It is a reflection of the physical form: the womb at the core whose function depends on connections to the rest of the body. It is not just the monthly shedding of blood, but the circle of women who understand and allow your ebbs and flows. It is not just the girl and the mother in the bathroom, but the friends who helped ready the mother for that moment. It is not just the cramping and the signals to stop “doing,” but the safety net, the tribe, that hugs you like moonlight and sees you through.
Sori Tru
by Sheela Clary
Sheela Clary
“Please don’t leave me alone with this guy,” I silently beseech David, my host Papa. It’s 2 am on day 8 of Peace Corps training, in the house of the village chief, in Nalepa, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. I am sitting at the feet of David’s other guest; a sloppy drunk politician who’s had me roused from sleep so he can enumerate the things he knows about America. David is nodding intently, though he doesn’t understand English. He flashes a broad grin my way, which I interpret to mean, “What a proud moment! Two important people in my home!” Abruptly, the Governor cuts off his tutorial on skyscrapers, and announces he’s going to bed. As he shakes my hand, he carries on, “If something should happen in the night, don’t fight it. Try to enjoy it.”
“Uh….Okay”, I stammer, and retreat under the skirt that is my bedroom door. There are salutations outside, the door bangs shut. A bit later, snoring. I stare at the mosquito net and contemplate my predicament.
Seven days earlier, I’d written a letter home: Dear Mom and Dad, I’m lying in my new bed, room, house and village, with my new family next door. I live in a 3-room house made of bamboo bark, leaves and a tin roof. I have my OWN room, with a mattress and night table. Papa’s a little overprotective, but that’s it for hardship.
Oh, dumb girl, coveting a place of her own, where one with any smarts would share it with armed children. Where are you, Papa? How could you abandon me for a sound sleep at your sister’s? Then again, in terms of terribleness of crime, rape here seems about equivalent to petty theft. I witnessed a village trial where three brothers brought a case against a cousin for violating their sister. The rapist’s family had to give the brothers two pigs for their loss.
Don’t panic, this girl’s not getting raped. Let’s take stock. No phone, no power, no nearby road. Flashlight batteries died, as did the watchdog. Efforts at self-defense would be unpersuasive. So much for applying a first world brain to third world problems. Tears emerge. What did I do to deserve this? I’m just a well-meaning volunteer, a good girl who’s quick to follow rules. No exposed skin above the knee? I packed long skirts. No walks by myself? I can adjust. The trainers bawled me out for wearing headphones in public; no more headphones. Yet here I am, at home with mama and papa, wearing amorphous pajamas, and one of this nation’s most powerful men thinks I’m asking for it. The alarm! I fumble for the Peace Corps issued ‘personal safety device’ and hold it to my thumping chest. I wait.
The letter home finished with: I sat with a girl named Lynette on the bus. She loved touching my hair. She told her mama she wanted me for her mama. We walked hand in hand along the road to Nalepa. She asked why I left my family; kids here don’t understand why a young woman would leave her parents. Obviously, she’s not met you guys. Ha, ha. Love, Sheela
Actually, New Guineans of all ages ask me why I left home, and I have no clear answer. “To find myself”, of course. “To make the world better”, naturally. Because I could. For me, gender discrimination has mostly come in handy; I was introduced to it in the form of a high school Calculus teacher who only called on boys, which prejudice fit nicely with my complete ignorance of Calculus.
When Peace Corps assigned me to Papua New Guinea, I had to find it on a globe. It’s north of Australia, about as physically and culturally far on Earth as you can get from Western Massachusetts. In PNG, ‘sexism’ would make as much sense as foie gras. The value of a woman in Nalepa is measured in livestock. I learned this from proud Papa David, who assessed me at 100. Pigs, that is. (Could’ve been 200 were it not for narrow hips and small breasts.) Women are commodities to protect, and men distribute power amongst themselves according to ferocity. David has a reputation in that area. On my first night, David had performed a reenactment of a tribal fight for a houseful of guests. As he mimed both victim and victor, I wondered if he was fond of Charlie Chaplin. After the audience’s laughter subsided, he turned to me, face stern, and said, in Pidgin English, “Mi wok dispela samting long wusat pulim yu, pikinini bilong mi.” (This is what I will do to whoever hurts you, daughter.) I laughed again, alone.
When my eyes open, light’s poking through the bamboo. Made it.
At the training center, the Peace Corps staff tell me I can stay with them. But I’ve not escaped the Governor; in fact, he’s holding a rally on the adjacent field. The content’s unclear, but his tone and the crowd’s response bring Hitler and Nazi hoards to mind. I have no choice but to listen, my head and stomach churning with bitterness. Lynette’s question was right on. What the hell AM I doing here, making sacrifices for people who treat their females like dogs. God has forsaken this place, and I can too. For the rest of the morning, I consider the option of returning home, less than two weeks into a two-year commitment.
Heading outside for lunch, I hear an insistent shout from the field. “Sheela! Sheela!” There’s a small, lone figure pressed up against the fence, waving wildly. Up close, Papa David’s face is shiny with tears. He reaches his arms to me through the fence, sobbing, “Sori tru, pikinini bilong mi!” It’s not the last time during my life in PNG that I will give up on comprehending, and give in to love.
My papa and his machete had been standing watch outside my bedroom until daybreak, ready to do battle for me.
