Toddlers in Rainbow Tiaras at Gay Pride

Yea.  I took my two year old to San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade this last Sunday.

It's funny; I didn't even think twice about it until people responded with such shocked expressions.  Not shocked as in disgusted, just shocked as in "wow!  really?! I'm not sure what to say next."

I did not even realize the parade was coming up until I invited my friend to dinner Sunday night and he told me he would be at Pride.

"Oh, cool.  We'll probably take Celaya this year."  That's what I thought.  And that's what we did.

We woke up, we had breakfast, we packed up some light gear, and we took BART from Hayward to San Francisco.  We arrived around 10:15 AM with the parade schedule to kick off at 10:30.  We got off at Embarcadero, the first San Francisco stop, because we wanted to wander from one end of the parade toward the other until we decided to head home.  We left around 1:00 P.M. when all the party people had begun arriving and lighting up their joints in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.  When it was obvious that things were about to take a turn for the drunken and stoned, we took our cue that family time was over.  It was time to leave.

And that's what we did.

It was all very matter of fact for us.  We told Celaya we were going to the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco.  And I have to admit, it was very cute to hear her say, "Gay Pride Parade" in her nasal little voice.  I explained to her that sometimes boys marry boys and girls marry girls, and we were going to celebrate those differences.  I told her the parade was about love.  About acceptance.  We had long conversations about Gay Pride all day long.

And for two days now my daughter has been talking about the BART train.

What did I expect?  A highly evolved conversation with a two year old on civil rights and equality?

Not exactly.

This morning:  "The speaker says, 'your train is coming soon,' and we don't go on other people's trains, and don't go past the bumps because the train goes 'VROOM!'"

Yep.  Boys love boys.  Girls love girls.  And my daughter loves BART.

She did enjoy the parade of balloon people and giant balloons that clapped their hands.  She danced to the fun music as giant speakers rolled by.  She completely missed the enormous, fully erect penis that walked right past her father while she was on his shoulders.  Her father did not miss it, however.

He freaked out a little.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful celebration of love, of happiness, and of difference.

Difference.

This lesson is one I struggle to get across to Celaya on a daily basis.  Celebrate difference.  We examine different leaves, different bugs, different flowers, different cars, different body parts, different body parts on different genders:  "boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina," she is quite fond of repeating.

Yes, Kindergarden Cop, they do.

We do also recognize different ages, sizes, "baby is small.  Mama is large."  Hey, hey, slow down there with all that "large" talk, kid.

We talk about countries and regions, Papa is from Mexico, one of her books is set somewhere in Africa.

And yes, we talk about color and sexual orientation.

Celaya has very brown skin.  Many of the other children and parents at the playground when we are there have very white skin.  Our friends and family also range from very dark brown to very white.  Her dolls range the color and ethnic spectrum.  Her dolls kiss.  Her animals kiss.  Her cups kiss.  Everybody and thing in our house kisses and hugs.  All the time.

So I take every opportunity I can to have discussions centered around celebrating difference.

Because we don't live in a world yet like the one Martin Luther King, Jr. foresaw when he said,

"One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.
Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?

You will answer them.
You will tell them:

Those words are not used anymore,
Like stage-coaches, galleys, or slavery.

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."

I long for that day.  I live for that day.  And I prepare my child to live for that day.

But I also prepare her to fight for it.  Because she will not grow up in it.
Children still go hungry.
Children are still segregated.
The atomic bomb still has lasting effects.
We are still at war.
Racism is alive and thriving.
And hate crimes are still a daily occurrence.

So my child will have to reach across the aisle.  To work to not be consumed by ignorance.  She will have to work to make a difference in the name of difference.

I will continue to teach her about ladybugs and saw bugs, about pine needles and oak leaves.

I will continue to teach her about black skin and white skin.  About homosexuality and heterosexuality, and that there is much that comes in between.

I will also teach her about the effects of black skin and white skin on society, and of society on those skins.  About the fight for equality that the LGBT movement has carried on for decades, and that still needs to carried on.  If I want change in the world, I begin with me, which means I continue with my daughter.  She must be a warrior for change.  What is the alternative?

So, yes, I will take her to pride parades.  I will take her to inner city parks and neighborhoods.  I will not flee my urban area for the suburbs.  And I will not think twice about it.

I will teach her to recognize difference, and to find the beauty therein, and then, hopefully, to reveal that beauty to others.

Beautifully Broken

What does that even mean?

I have been broken so many times in so many ways, by so many people that I have loved and trusted.  I do not look back on the breaking and think it was beautiful.  I certainly didn't think it was a beautiful breaking at the time.

I am patched back together broken.  In some ways I will never fully heal.  The scars are deep.  And yes, I have a horrible tendency to lash out viciously when my scars get grazed, or even glanced.

But I do not think this brokenness is beautiful.  Or anything to be proud of.  I do not bear my scars with pride.

The first time I heard this expression, "beautifully broken," was in a song by Government Mule.  The lead singer sings in a low voice about seeing "the way she plays her man," and that he knows he's "got to know her name."  He goes on, through whiskey tinted lyrics, to note that "she's so dangerously twisted, shaped by the wind."  He wants to know why he lies to himself, "pretend that I can break her, when she's already been so beautifully broken."

I know this woman.  In an alternate reality, I am this woman.  Hurting men because she's been so badly hurt.  Hardening to the world of love, using sex as a tool, never opening up to anyone, feeling dark and alone and, yes, dangerous.  I was well on my way there when I met Carlos.  She haunts me.

In one of our few intense fights, which means I used words like knives to cut at my husband, Carlos asked me, calmly, incredulously, "why do you hate men so much?  Who hurt you so bad?"  Hmmm... Where do I begin?

But no, that is not where I want to go here.  The point is that in those moments, there are always two Shannas.  There is the one that says, "fuck off," walks out of the room, the house, gets into the car, finds a bar, finds a new guy, finds a way to close off, close down, shut out.

And there is the Shanna that asks herself what makes someone think that about me, especially someone who knows me so well, and knows that I love him.

Do I hate men?

No.

But that other Shanna surely does.

And I have to acknowledge the path not taken.  I have to recognize that there are myriad choices I made and did not make that got me here, to this point, a healthier place emotionally and psychologically, but that the perpetually broken path is the slippery one I can always slip back onto.

It is not beautiful.  It is dark.  It is lonely.  It is constantly painful.  It is a path I nod at when it beckons me, and I look at my husband, I look at my darling daughter, who has no reason to hate men, and I look in the mirror.  I do not want to be Miss Havisham.

I get that men find that unavailability attractive, in the same way so many women drool over the "bad boy" who always hurts them because they too are closed off and empty inside from selling away their souls piece by broken piece.  Darkness is tempting, it is alluring, it beckons.

What I do not understand is women want to be known as beautifully broken.

I googled the term after a coworker yesterday told me that her sister has a tattoo across her lower back that bears that insignia, "beautifully broken."

First of all, I do not think you are supposed to refer to yourself that way.  I think it only works when someone else uses it to describe you.

Second of all, apparently Ashlee Simpson, the incredibly vapid pop singer has a song with the same title.  So, scratch my first of all; I guess it is okay now to refer to yourself that way.

What is the appeal then?  I am broken, but I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or I am so broken that I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or better yet, I am broken in such a beautiful way; oh yea, and please fix me?

Or use me?  Or break me some more?

For me, it connects quite cleanly with the Marilyn Monroe quote women are so fond of adopting:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure.  I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle.  But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Marilyn Monroe was an asshole.  She could not stay in a relationship.  She slept with the president of the United States, and his brother, behind their wives backs.  She was selfish, needy, thoughtless, and moronic.  And hot.  Ergo beautifully broken?

There is a great blog about this mentality on Huffpost that I read months ago.  It really struck home.  The basic point:  If I can't handle you at your worst then maybe you should stop being so horrible.

Being broken is not a license to be an asshole.  My past hurts do not give me the right to go around hurting everyone else.  Intentionally!

When I hurt my husband through my own pain, when I nip and bite at him because of my own twisted psyche, I do not say, or even think, "yea, well, deal with it.  You're lucky to have me."

I apologize.  I am ashamed.  And I hope one day that I don't push him too far.  Right out of my life.  So I work on healing, on making better choices, on (wait for it) thinking before I speak or act.

How about this:  break the cycle.  Do not aim to scratch and bleed out the same scars on someone else that have been etched into the timeline of your skin.

To be clear.  I am proud that I survived.  I am not ashamed of my scars.  But I do not claim to be beautifully broken.  There is no dignity in that calling card.  Marilyn was wounded.  Open, bleeding, weeping, seeping, wounded.  She killed herself.  She was a living, breathing, dying, tragedy.

I want to be a success story.  I want to continue to heal.

I want the other Shanna to move further and further away, for our paths to diverge so widely that mountains and rivers would have to be traversed for me to become her again.

No, don't call me beautifully broken.  That woman moves "from star to star."  She "casts her spell.  It's like drowning in moonlight..."

Rather, call me hauntingly healed.

Lose 15 Pounds in 15 Weeks!

Okay, actually it's 14 pounds in 16 weeks, but let's be honest, this title sounds better.  I'm a writer; what do you expect?

I keep seeing these ads scroll up my Facebook page and hearing about celebrities that lose weight for a part (and wow! they lose it so fast!) and listening to friends and family members talk about losing weight for the summer.

Here's my disclaimer:  I have never tried actually dieting as a verb.

If you're looking for a "diet" plan, you've come to the wrong place.

If you're interested in how I began the move toward a healthy lifestyle and a healthier weight, please read on.

I have always been active.  Thank the gods for that because if that were not the case, I easily would have ballooned well up over 200 pounds and into the 250 range considering my past relationship with food.

I did not love food.  I abused it.  As a teenager and a young woman in my twenties I would have seconds for dinner on a regular basis and then polish off a bowl of ice cream or a piece of cake.  As I got further into my twenties, this lifestyle caught up to me; my metabolism slowed down and my weight went up.  But because of my build, I tend to gain weight everywhere gradually, I convinced myself that I was, as Winnie the Pooh says, "short, fat, and proud of that."

I have never really had body issues.  I never thin shamed people, or fat shamed people.  I have never really been "unhappy" with my weight.  I simply always knew I was heavier than it was healthy to be for my height, and I simply ate my way around that knowledge.  I never looked for a way to lose weight fast.  But I have tried different life long approaches to food when I have been able to acknowledge my sick relationship with food.

Once, right before moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area from Humboldt County (an area quite proud of its large, well cushioned women) I tried out the Atkins Diet, thinking I could make that a lifestyle change.  I read Dr. Atkins book.  He convinced me that high fat, lots of meat, no carbs was the way to go, for life.  I lived that way for about a year.  It did help me drop from pushing 200 pounds down closer to the 150 range.  And I loved the lifestyle!  I exercised, walking on a daily basis.  I ate salami and cream cheese for breakfast.  I drank lots of water.

And I smelled bad.

There's something about the high meat diet that releases ketones from your system, and you always smell like a warm ham sandwich.  Without the bread of course.

Not sexy.

Then one day I walked into Whole Foods and asked an associate where I could find the Atkins bars I was so dependent on to get me through the day.  The nice girl kindly explained to me that Atkins bars were not made from whole food.  They were loaded with processed, synthesized gods-know-what, so Whole Foods did not carry them.

I realized then that what I was doing to my body was fundamentally unhealthy, and more than losing weight what I was looking for was living healthily.

A few years later I was trying to get pregnant and not having much success.  I was about 40 pounds overweight BMI-wise, and I kept reading that weight could be an issue.  This time I was going to lose weight the healthy way, and keep it off.

I joined Weight Watchers and lost the weight.  They teach the basics that every person should know.  Eat fewer calories.  Make most of your calories come from plants, grains, and lean meats.  Exercise regularly.

At 32 I was in the best shape of my life and I felt great.  I smelled great too!

It worked.

Then I got pregnant.  And relapsed.  I ate all the Jack in the Box, all the Taco Bell, all the Coldstone, all the chips and dips and fries and fritters I could get my hands on.

I gained 75 pounds.  I tipped the scale the day I gave birth at 213 pounds.  I'm 5'2".

My baby came out looking like a swollen, sumo wrestling panda.

After Celaya was born I wanted so desperately to breast feed successfully for a year that I didn't bother to even think about trying to take the weight off.  I lost 45 pounds in the first months after she was born and then hovered for two years at about 165.

As her second birthday approached I realized that I was not modeling the life I wanted her to live.  Sure, we ate healthy.  I walked every day.  But I was still eating way more than I needed (going to bed stuffed at night most nights) and my "walking" was usually down to the park two blocks away.

Armed with what I had learned at Weight Watchers, but knowing that I had no time or patience for calculating the points of every bite or step I took, I slowly moved our entire household toward a healthier food and exercise lifestyle.

And here I sit.  Down from 166.4 to 152.4 in 16 weeks.  I get on the scale every Monday to check in with myself and write the number on a pad on my fridge.  I know that the number is arbitrary.  I know that 152 for me is different than 152 for someone else.  I know that muscle is denser than fat.  I know that the fit of my clothes and the energy I now have to climb the five flights of stairs to my apartment is a far better measure of success than the number change on a scale.  I know all this.  I also know that scientifically, medically, being dramatically overweight, or obese, is detrimental to my health.  I know that more children are born diabetic (mine could have been one of them). I know that more children get diabetes at a younger age.  I know that an increasing number of people in the world, and particularly this country, is getting fatter and fatter in a really unhealthy way.

I know that I do not want my child to be one of those people.  I want her relationship to food and exercise to be about fuel and energy, about love and life.  And treats!

Here's what I've come up with:

Fruit should be the regular sweet in life.

Sugar should be a treat, i.e. let's go get an ice cream!

Vegetables should be a constant, at every meal.

Fat should be a condiment, not the main course.

Whole grains and nuts should be daily staples.

Exercise should be an every day matter of life.  Whatever it is you love to do physically, do that an hour a day most days of the week, on average.  For example, my brother golfs a couple times a week, which takes three to four hours at a time, so there's his average.

And enjoy food, do not abuse it.

Those are the rules I have lived by for the last four months.  And I feel truly healthy down to my bones.  And I am having a love affair (as opposed to an abusive relationship) with food and drink.  I drink wine every night I'm home, but only two glasses.  I have dark chocolate (85% cocoa dark) and greek yogurt for dessert every single night.  I eat grains and protein for breakfast every morning (dry honey wheat toast and a fried egg and grapes, or almond butter on bread with an apple, or oatmeal with slivered almonds and a banana).  I have a salad for lunch every day, a delicious, sinful salad with spinach and avocado and black olives and tomatoes and cucumbers and anything else I happen to feel like throwing in their that is a plant with an awesome full fat red wine vinegar and olive oil dressing from Trader Joe's.  And for dinner I eat whatever we have that night.  My husband cooks one night (usually Mexican), my brother cooks one night (usually something with sauce or gravy) and I cook four nights (it varies from Mexican to American to Italian, to Greek, to Chinese).  Nothing is off limits.  We eat beef one night, pork one night, we eat a vegetarian meal one night, and chicken, turkey, or fish the other nights.  I always use real butter, olive oil, canola oil.  I put bacon in my refried beans.  I put full fat sour cream on my fajitas. We eat a lot of cheese.  A lot!  The big trick for me is variety.  I don't make two heavy meals two nights in a row.  The heavier the meal, i.e. beef stroganoff, the smaller portion I eat.  And I try never to eat until I'm stuffed.  I stop when I'm satisfied, reminding myself that I still want to drink one more glass of wine, and that I've got dark chocolate and greek yogurt waiting for me around the corner.

I also run 5 miles a day 5 days a week.  Because of that level of intensity, I never feel bad for a heavy meal, I never worry about counting points or calories, and I never question how quickly or slowly I'm losing weight.

To be clear, if you do not want to exercise that much, and I understand some people consider themselves allergic to strenuous physical exertion, you must eat less.  As my mother said to me yesterday morning, "You and Breezy [my sister] run 5 miles so you can enjoy your food, Tammy [my other sister] and I watch carefully what we eat and eat way less so we can enjoy not exercising."

This way works for me because I do love food, but I also love running.  I am by nature an anxious person and running helps me control my anxiety quite a bit as well.

I plan to live this way for the rest of my life.  If it takes me another 16 weeks to lose the last 14 pounds to get me into a healthy BMI, fine.  If my body decides this is my new set weight, fine.

I feel healthy.  And my daughter sees me living a healthy life.  I'm happy to move forward this way with very few changes.

Though I will likely need a double jogging stroller at some point.

A Love Letter to the Best Father I Know

I sat last night thinking about what I wanted to say today.  I sit here now typing words, knowing that there is no chance I will find the right ones.  Still, I have to try.

There are no words.  There are in-between words.  There are smiles.  There are laughs.  There are sighs and shrugs and head shakes and winces.  There is a welling up of emotion.  There is, of course, because it's me, a chilling sense of foreboding if the unthinkable were to happen.  But the words do not exist, have not been invented to describe, to express, to reveal the type of father my husband is to my daughter.

I knew it from the moment we started talking about children.  He wanted so badly to be a great father, the kind he never had, the kind I never had, the kind neither of us had ever really seen.

My dad and my stepdad, I can truly say at this point in my life, did the best they could with what they were given.  They were never evil, never absentee, never "bad" fathers.  They were young and stupid when they had kids, and made the best of the chaos of parenthood.

We were not young, and a little less stupid, when we decided to have Celaya, and two years later, when we finally had her, we were even less young, and hopefully even less stupid.

My husband works at being a father.  He tries to teach her letters and numbers, colors and shapes.  He plays in the sand and the dirt.  He makes the dinosaurs attack the village and throws balls around (usually avoiding breaking things).  He dances with my daughter, and he even dances with her giant panda bear when she insists.  He plays with her and snuggles her and dreams big dreams for her.

And that's just the fun stuff.  Three nights a week my daughter's father comes home from work and usually doesn't even have a chance to change out of his work clothes until after he puts her to bed hours later.  He engages with her as she leaps into his arms.  He feeds her, bathes her, reads her stories, rocks her gently and sings her songs when she implores him to "snuggle for a minute," and he puts her to bed.  He is as much a father as I am a mother.  And even today in this progressive society of equality between men and women, I think that is rare.

Sure, he makes mistakes.

He almost drowned her in her own breast milk once.

I was at work, he was feeding her a bottle of breast milk, and, to clear her nasal passages that were stuffed up from a cold, he gave her a dropper of breast milk in her nose, as we had been doing for a few days.  Except he couldn't find the usual tiny dropper we had been using, so he improvised with a dropper easily five times as large.

You can imagine the rest.

In many ways he is a typical dad.

I come home from working all day on Saturdays to find Celaya in an orange top, lime green leggings, purple socks, an off center top ponytail, two crooked ponytails in the back, or just her crazy hair free flying around a dirty face, with paint on her toes and paint on my walls.  Toys are everywhere, the music is too loud, and the kitchen is a mess, because, "man, she's a lot of work!"

And that's what keeps me from wondering if this is all just a dream, too good to be true, too perfect to be real.

Nope.  It's real.  My husband's old hiking backpack stocked (by him) and ready (just in case they decide to take off somewhere) with diapers, wipes, a few toys, a bag of fruit snacks, and an extra outfit is there to prove it.

I love him more now as the father of my daughter than I ever did as merely the man I fell in love with and chose to spend the rest of my life with.

I love him because I truly believe he strives to be a better husband to me because he know his daughter will grow up to choose a man like her father, and he wants her treated the way he treats me.

I love him because he will fight for her in a way I would never think to.

I love him because he will teach her things I would never be able to.

I love him because he is the knight who will slay her dragons.  He is the warrior who will battle her demons.  He is the astronaut who will help her reach the stars.  He is the light that will chase away the dark for her.  He is.  He is.  He is.

And finally, and most importantly, I love him so much, as much as I do, because I see how much she loves him, and just how much she does.  He has become such an irreplaceable part of my world because he is such an irreplaceable part of hers.