I am not a bitch

I just arrived home from school. I’m in the 4th grade. My daily walk home is about a mile and is mostly on sidewalks (involving not stepping on cracks to save my mother's back), traveling down a big long hill past the train station (through which my Dad commutes to the city everyday), then along a level road, called Highland, over Blind Brook, where I check for mallard ducks (my grandmother and I love to feed the ducks at the Playland pond and the marina) and then after turning left at the corner, the road becomes the gravel surface that is the “private drive” upon which I live, so that means I walk over a few speed bumps (and end up remembering the time one of them tossed me off my bike 2 years ago, which added perpetual gravel to my knee).  As usual, I head to my bedroom, across from my parents room, on the second floor and unload my book bag. My brothers are watching TV in the sunroom, downstairs. Somehow they are home before me, maybe because I stopped to chat with my teacher after school. (He built a gerbil run, using tubes made of chicken wire, that went from one cage to the other across the room, with the route being along the top molding of the wall and out through a little window into the hallway and then returning along the other wall into the cage on the other side of the classroom. I liked to stay late because I was really hoping to see a gerbil travel the long route to visit its neighbors.) I guess also I stopped to look for those ducks. 

When I get home, my mother is always laying down in bed, reading or napping, so I stop in to visit with her. The discussion usually involves my brief summary of notable school issues, maybe today it’s something about the gerbils, and then she gives me some sort of chore related assignment. Often it’s, “go tell your brothers to _________ [pick 1: empty the dishwasher, take out the garbage, clean up their room, clean up the living room, set the table] or your Dad will be angry when he comes home.” I don’t remember him ever being angry about this stuff, though sometimes on weekends he would seem angry and would pick up all the clutter and pile it in the entryway hall and say “clean this up or it’s going in the trash!” On this day it is, “empty the dishwasher.” So, I head downstairs, and enter the sunroom full of the brothers watching TV, and say “Mommy wants you to empty the dishwasher,” and receive what’s becoming a standard response of “don’t be such a bitch” from the brother who is 14 months older than me. I feel a weight in my chest and legs.  I head to the kitchen and empty the dishwasher myself, because I don’t want Daddy to be angry when he comes home.  I accept that being called a “bitch” is somehow my fault. It’s happening more frequently, so I must be doing something wrong.  I also reflect on the meaning…a female dog…which in reality is not bad. Female dogs have puppies, and puppies are cute, which I know because our springer spaniel had 6 puppies when I was in first grade, but also soon after she was hit by a car, so all the puppies had to be bottle fed. We kept one, who was also a female, and which was so fun to play with and comforting to lay beside. However, I know at this point in my 4th grade life it’s a bad thing to be called a “bitch” and assume that girls/women/sisters must deserve to be treated this way, or at least I do.

When I became engaged to my now spouse, my parents had an engagement party for us, in the same house I grew up in, because that was forever our family’s house. My siblings, friends and neighbors were all at the engagement party (see the goofy photo of spouse and me that I'm including with this post). During the party, the same 14 month older brother said to my then “fiancé”, “Laurie can be a real bitch sometimes.”  He was lucky my spouse didn’t punch him. My then fiancé, now spouse, told me what my brother said and assured me I am not a bitch. However, it also unsettlingly occurred to me that this brother may have said this to boys at the two schools we co-attended.

So, the point of this post is to announce this, I am not a bitch.  I am a kind, empathetic, compassionate, curious person, who doesn’t like anyone to suffer or be uncomfortable and who is now learning to take better care of myself and to release that old weight (but it’s super sticky so I’m also getting some help). Fairness is very important to me.  I apologize to cockroaches when I smush them. I have a lot of love and insight but often hold it inside me because that old weight puts up fences. However, in my next life, I would love to come back as a female dog that lives with a loving family, preferably near the beach.

"Like a small boat

On the ocean

Sending big waves

Into motion

Like how a single word

Can make a heart open

I might only have one match

But I can make an explosion

And all those things I didn't say

Wrecking balls inside my brain

I will scream them loud tonight

Can you hear my voice this time?"

Fight song, Rachel Platten