My Life, My Rules
Recently, I attended a meeting for caregivers of LGBTQ+ kids. It was my hope that this group could become my new tribe of changemakers. Much like my clan of nursing home warriors, I envisioned us standing shoulder to shoulder at protests, raising our voices in love for our children and in resistance to the violations coming for them. But two days prior, a Turkish PhD candidate was snatched off of the street by our government less than four miles away from where we sat. The entire room, rightfully so, was blind with terror. For three hours we sat in a circle discussing how to make a difference from the shadows. I felt sick.
After the meeting was over, I stumbled back onto Mass. Ave. dazed and dangling on the edge of disassociation. My head swam with all the ways my email, my public comments, my social media accounts, THIS BLOG! could betray me and my family. All those years of me advocating for my father, sending screaming emails to the NYS Dept. of Health, speaking out on television and in newspaper articles, reporting his facility and calling out the government when they did nothing. And now, submitting public comment on behalf of my kid to the city council, submitting comment on the executive order removing his rights, showing up in protests, years of emails and social media posts about him. What had I done?
Cars whizzed past headed into the fray of Harvard Square and people streamed along the sidewalks, popping in and out of takeout joints and Harvard buildings. The day had reached a high of 55 degrees, one of those sanity saving gifts bestowed each New England early spring, and the descending night air was struggling to hang onto that divine warmth. As I walked in my cocoon of confusion, I passed three ice cream shops. The first one surprised me. People spilled out onto the sidewalk with cones and cups in hand, talking, laughing and enjoying the first sweet samples of the summer to come. “Don’t they know?” I wondered to myself. “Are they that removed?” As I walked along, more and more people appeared—all bustling with a delightful energy. At the second ice cream shop, young kids ran about underneath the neon glow of the shop sign. A young man explained to his friend the laws around leaking classified documents on Signal. As I came upon them, I realized something: both things were true. Student protestors were being taken, war plans were being leaked, every day some new policy horror appeared in the headlines, but flowers were still blooming, the snow had all melted and ice cream always tastes amazing.
Our high school senior got into every college he applied to with the highest merit scholarships: Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Vermont, Emerson College and Syracuse University. He has decided to attend Emerson College here in Boston to study creative writing and film. His one act play about astronauts in a romantic gay relationship who must face up to their ultimate fear has been selected to be performed at the Massachusetts Young Playwright’s Project. Our MassArt junior has been selected to exhibit in a gallery showing of artists employed by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (not at the museum, but she’ll get there). And I was accepted into the Grub Street Novel Incubator program where together with nine other writers, we will workshop our novels with two published authors for a year. Our finished manuscripts enter into meetings with editors and agents when the work is done. And in May, Brian and I will BOTH be attending our nephew’s wedding in Rome.
Both things can be true. At the third ice cream shop, I ordered myself a scoop of chocolate and walked the remainder of the way home smiling. We can be cautious because the moment calls for it, but we can also refuse to stay silent and hand over our joy. Revolution in the face of tyranny is still laughing, still speaking up, still living life. Our defiance is not only a stunning revenge, it is a call to action for everyone who is told that a joyful existence, exactly as you are, is forbidden. Thriving as a filmmaker, an artist, a writer, a trans kid, a protestor… this is our revolution. What is yours?
I believe it is a brilliant example of cosmic poetry that this Saturday, at the same time we will be attending Emerson College’s Acceptance Day, the largest national protest this year—Hands Off Our Rights—will start in front of the school. And to drive the point that joy goes hand in hand with speaking out… the event will be headlined by the Dropkick Murphy’s.
We can be silent and terrified in the dark, or we can give it everything we’ve got with joy in the light. They’re coming for us either way.
We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
—Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action”
Author’s note: Yeah, I’m still going to have to scrub my accounts, etc., which might include this blog getting real crafty with innuendos and going dark at times. But never total silence. Sign up for the newsletter if you want access even if it means an encrypted handwritten letter.