Ellington

On some rather innocuous Sunday eight years ago, I was a 21-year-old recent college graduate just back from a camping trip. I sat on the edge of a bathtub and anxiously awaited the results of a pregnancy test. It wasn't mine. The test belonged to my last official college roommate. She forced me to take the second test in the two-pack just to make her feel better. She then forced me to watch two white plastic sticks for the longest 300 seconds in my life and tell her the results. When she finally screamed "What does it say?", I could only answer, "Well, one of 'em ain't good, but it ain't mine."

By "ain't good," I meant positive. She was unmarried, unfinished with school and wholly unprepared for that extra line. That one tiny little pink line. I wouldn't understand for years what that line meant, and I had a college degree. I didn't know it meant compromises and heartbreaks and high school graduations. When that little pink line looks at me now with toothy grins, dirty hands, and wants to play with "Aunt Ali's kitties," my heart melts in ways that half the population of Earth will never understand. I stared at that pink line, and I understood in a moment that something big had just happened. I just didn't know what it was.

The story I just told will be recognized in some form by almost any woman that reads it. There are moments women share that are never truly captured in both their intensity and their earth-shattering commonality. The bonding that happens between females during these rites of passage is not easily explainable. It is 300 seconds of loving someone and hoping with all the cells of your being that they are ready. It is knowing on certain days you really shouldn't bring up their mother-in-law. It's understanding that sometimes, even when they complain, love will keep them there. It is nuanced conversations and thousand-year-old dances.

This week I spent the evening with some female friends at a jazz show. I needed the night out. I needed to talk about being a professional woman and the challenges at work. I needed to talk about wanting kids and a white sofa. I didn't know it, but I needed to talk to a woman.

One of the women's mothers was there with us. At the end of the night I apologized for visiting our angst upon her explaining that we really hadn't had any time alone in a few months. She looked at me with 60 years of life in her eyes and said, "You guys remind me of my old tennis buddies." I looked at her and said, "I only hope I get to grow old with these women." I hugged her, and she left with her daughter. The knowing look she imparted to me only served to enforce my belief that there is a power in women that has yet to be harnessed.

We create life. Therefore, we carry it. We carry it on our hips and in our purses and our conscience. We carry it through sickness and health. Richer and poorer. Heaven and hell. We carry. We complain at times only to be met with "whore" and "bitch." We are then quiet. We decorate for birthday parties, and we bury our dreams. We make new ones tied to little ones, and thank God they will never understand, so we won't have to share.

We love everyone and cry for them when no one watches. We make decisions and keep quiet until someone else figures out what we have known. We sit in doctor's offices and hold our hearts together while our children get shots. We wake up in the morning and understand that we will love little pink lines more than anyone will ever comprehend. We go to bed at night and grieve for everyone's lost lines.

On the day that extra pink line appeared, I ordered pizza and called my mom. She told me to hug my roommate, talk to her, and make sure she knew that she was loved. I did all that. I then brought home boiled eggs covered in honey mustard from the salad bar at the restaurant in which I waited tables every night because that's what the pregnant best friend wanted. I stood in the delivery room when the little one came into this world, and I held her hand when the epidural didn't get there in time.

What I understand now, more than ever, is that I would have held her hand whatever she decided. As a woman, I hold hearts and lives in my palms more times than I care to admit. I wield power in that caress and understand it is a secret that is to be whispered, not spoken. It is not a fairer sex, it is wholly "un-fairer," unappreciated, un-honored and wonderful.

It is being a woman. It is beautiful, and it is mine.

Previous Comments

ID

70955

Comment

Beautifully written, Ali. GLB

Author

GLB

Date

2005-11-10T15:00:08-06:00

ID

70956

Comment

Agreed. Wow.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-11-10T15:14:26-06:00

ID

70957

Comment

Thanks, guys. This had a little different "tone" for me. So, I was a little unsure of it to begin with. I think I like it now. ;) Good to see you around GLB. Haven't been around for a while...:)

Author

Lori G

Date

2005-11-10T15:42:24-06:00

ID

70958

Comment

Thanks Ali. It's good to be back. I spent a month staring at piles of garbage on the Mississippi coast. But I'm back now, at least for the time being.

Author

GLB

Date

2005-11-10T15:45:17-06:00

ID

70959

Comment

An excellent article, dealing with a highly volatile subject, Ali. Five stars. Me thinks the Pro-Choice movement has a banner in its midst....but even deeper it feels like this piece strikes at some kind of essential middle-ground that is needed in relation to this topic, in this country. What I understand now, more than ever, is that I would have held her hand whatever she decided. It's such a simple statement, but it's a statement that a person can make EVEN if they don't agree with abortion. From that ground it feels like a kind of beacon in some way to me, like: "This is how you do it. Even if you don't agree with the choice, you 'hold space' for The Other to make their own." As a Buddhist I try to hold multiple realities in my line of thinking (sometimes successfully), and I also hold an unswaying belief in the laws of karma (cause and effect, what we seed with choice and consciousness bears fruit or unfurls in some fashion that will have an impact on us and others). In this instance, I am both pro-Choice (abortions should be legal and accesible) and personally pro-Life (abortions should be rare and people having them should truly contemplate the implications of what they are doing because all acts make an imprint in consciousness, mother and child). For those who are absolutely engrained with either/or thinking, or are dedicated to polarization, such a "gray area" stance may not make sense or even seem possible, but I believe it's the only compromise if our country is to move forward on this issue. I like how you addressed this topic and I really appreciated the tone as it relates to the emotional dimension of whatever choice it might be. Naturally, there are those who begin barking, "There is NO compromise when it comes to Life." I hear that. I understand that. I understand they want to apply that to the unborn. "We should consider the seven generations yet unborn."--Iroquois saying (something I wish Bush was doing regarding our economy) And, yet, I often wonder why those who hold the more rabid and acidic versions of the pro-Life argument don't apply that same level of feeling and empathy to all living things -- animals, nature, the earth, indigenous people, Iraqi children having their limbs blown off by American "shock and awe" campaigns, Palestinian children whose neurology gets fried by poisonous psychotropic invisible colorless odorless gas from canisters shot onto playgrounds by the Israeli Defense Forces (which was outlawed by the U.N., but the U.S. keeps paying for even today) -- or why these same venomous pro-Lifers don't also adopt a more holographic (all thing are interconnected) and longer-range perspective about how certain choices we make as a country, as consumers, and as living being dependent upon our environment could very well endanger those same unborn fetuses they are so concerned with... I don't think any of us actually comprehend how important or how powerful choice really is..... Thanks, Ali.

Author

whateveryouwant

Date

2005-11-10T19:42:22-06:00

ID

70960

Comment

addendum:: I just received a note and was informed that the above article is NOT about abortion, but about women bonding.... I re-read it and I still had the same experience. As the writer, Ali may have had one intention. As the reader I got that, AND I got something else... It's about choice... And the pink line puts a person on the line of choice... The choice might be to have a baby, or to have an abortion. Women bonding, the only way women can, and supporting one another in WHATEVER the other chooses (holding them as THAT sacred)....I feel, HOLDS THE KEY to cultivating a kind of perspective that feels like a potential solution for some of the volatile ways that the two camps are aligned against one another, precisely on the matter of choice. In other words, if individuals from the two camps of the abortion issue were holding one another with the same kind of reverence as Ali did her friend....something shifts in the energy, in the dialogue. So, I gues my point is, I "got" the "women bonding" part....but I carried it another step in my own way of seeing....Women, bonding..... serving as a model for people, bonding.... Just my $.02

Author

whateveryouwant

Date

2005-11-10T20:18:14-06:00

ID

70961

Comment

ali, you're still my hero :)

Author

casey

Date

2005-11-11T10:20:08-06:00

ID

70962

Comment

This was wonderful to read, lots of tender/raw sense that comes from an honest effort to be Aware. Thanks for making the effort.

Author

yoyomama

Date

2005-11-11T19:58:19-06:00

ID

70963

Comment

Casey-you're still so cute I could VOMIT. Yoyomama- Thank you, very much. I try to be Aware everyday. I then try to write so that other people may see the process.

Author

Lori G

Date

2005-11-11T20:09:19-06:00

ID

70964

Comment

Thanks for making the effort. I find that this statement discounts the possibility that there may be people all over this state that make an effort. Or rather, I find that this type of writing is more natural than "effort". I find that all the things humans do to NOT be Aware is more of an effort for me than writing from the heart.

Author

Lori G

Date

2005-11-11T20:22:43-06:00

ID

70965

Comment

Ali, now you've hit two nails on the head--one with your column and one with your response to "Thanks for making the effort." Too many humans spend way too much effort making sure they're not aware of the delights and plights of their fellow humans. Oh, and you're right about Casey--the cutest and the brightest.

Author

Lynette Hanson

Date

2005-11-12T08:10:50-06:00