Is there anybody out there?

During the first seventeen months of my journey down Parentage Lane, I have carved a cave out of urbanization where I casually and safely perch at all times. Even while engaging in the inevitable social settings of the outside world, I remain in my sacred space. No eye contact. (What has happened to me?) I have fortified this safe place by disregarding the pressures of societal expectations of connubial relations with my partner, securing an entourage of peers that accept, encourage, and emulate my life-style, and avoiding the outside world of critics, oppressors and drooling, snotty, diseased youngsters and their mums and pops. (The kid as never been sick!) Doing so has allowed me to completely surpass the inevitable struggles of raising a breast-oriented, unvaccinated, vegan babe in this world, with my radical and over-analytical mind full of thoughts such as: “keep your hateful, fucked-up school system and its ill-teachings away from my holy kid”, or “ No you fucking idiot, just cause she intakes my breast milk does not mean that my vegan child wants your shitty puddin’ cause it is “dairy-based like my milk”(HA!) or how about this one: “I really don’t want her to go to the slumber party cause they will force her to eat foods with processed sugar and animal-products”. Am I really the weird, anal-retentive mother that I recall from my youth? The one that ruins all of the fun cause she imposes “different” regulations and rules on her child? Or will my child love the way we do the things we do? Will she understand that animals are her equals? Will she love and support our holy notion of Veganism? HEY MAMAS OUT THERE THAT UNDERSTAND- I NEED YOU! Let’s take over the world and create a friendlier place to raise children! A place where “they” don’t judge and ridicule our choices as parents! A place that supports and understands the very breadth of a hard-working stay-at-home-mama. Shit ain’t easy, yo!

I can feel my safe temple crumbling as I am moving more into the light and dark of the outside world. A world where family is right around the corner and we will no longer have the excuse of “well, we don’t really know anybody or really any place that is babe-friendly, so let’s just hang around at home where mama can be topless so the babe can suckle as she pleases, daddy can put his pj’s back on at 3 in the afternoon and watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report reruns, and where we don’t have to worry about scheduling our lives around social gatherings or plans—cause ya know, we are hardcore homebodies.” How will I react to the outside world? How will I react to society and its fangs and claws plunging at my throat? How can I express to the “others” that I don’t like the idea of public schools, even though I come from a long line of teachers? How will I remain close to my child when I need to make financial ends meet? This child needs to run in grass and pick wildflowers not fall on concrete and mounds of chicken bones.

I want to live under the Golden Canopies. Run free. Drink pure water. Eat good food.

Oh, dearest bubble; don’t burst on me now…you control the Monster of Anxiety that is caused by Post-Partum Depression.

The calm is dying as the sun begins to set beneath the thunderclouds.

Civil Inequality

Our country is allowing unconstitutional inequality to plague our homosexual community. Not only should the government permit “contractual civil unions between gays and lesbians as a matter of equality and fairness,” they should permit and advocate equal marriage rights, equal acknowledgement of those rights, and equal respect of those rights. In addition to providing equality to all citizens by allowing same-sex marriages to occur, the American public and government should focus on the usefulness of same-sex marriages.
An individual’s unalienable rights, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Homosexual American citizens are just as deserving of these unalienable rights as heterosexual American citizens. Impeding on a homosexual individuals right to legally commit his or herself to a member of the same gender in a legally binding contract is in direct violation of his or her right to pursue happiness, right to obtain privacy, right to be treated equal and have equal protection under the laws. We must learn to balance the interests of individuals (including individuals that are homosexual) with the interests of the general public, state governments, and national government. If we continue to perpetuate civil inequalities and our strong democratic government continues to fail in alleviating this discrimination, we are surely headed in resolution by revolutionary force. We cannot continue to violate certain minorities’ fundament rights. Oppressed minorities seeking freedom founded our country. Those particular founding fathers declared to protect minority rights by ratifying the fourteenth amendment, which states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of laws (qtd. in Wayne, Mackenzie, Cole 625).
Same-sex marriage is still controversial in the eyes of traditional, conservative members of society, and more importantly the judges on the Supreme Court. The idea of same-sex marriage also stimulates federalism issues of power between state and national governments. Can the national government force the individual state governments to uphold other states decisions to allow same-sex marriages in regard to the “full faith and credit” notion? These issues will not be resolved without controversy, yet it is crucial that we proactively engage them. As Stephen Wayne, Calvin Mackenzie, and Richard Cole argue, “Indeed, whenever the Court sides with the individual or with a minority against the state, its decision will be controversial” (136). Similarly, focusing on the benefits of same-sex marriages is still controversial.
Instead of imposing on the unalienable rights of homosexuals, opponents of same-sex marriages should busy themselves by advocating saving millions of orphaned children’s lives. Two inexplicably linked salient issues in the world can refute arguing that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples based solely on the biological need to procreate: overpopulation and orphaned children. Allowing homosexual couples the right to marry and adopt some of the millions of orphaned children worldwide will aid in our crippling overpopulation crisis. This basic premise is only one of the many reasons to support the fundamental right for homosexuals to have equal marriage rights.
Homosexual couples are not demanding unfair, bias rights; they are demanding basic, equal rights that heterosexual couple’s are so easily granted. Until this issue is resolved, we will remain a society that harbors minority discrimination and inequality: a condemning characteristic we have spent decades trying to overcome.

A Typical Day, in our Typical Way

What do we do to pass the time? How will I remember this period and phase of my life? I am almost 24 years old, which seems so young to me. It is hard to grasp numbers and what they mean. What have I done for 24 years on planet Earth? How have I grown? Have I been a cooperative vessel or have I stunted my physical and spiritual growth? ( insert dry joke from my dad that he repeats over and over at family gatherings:" Well, hehe, Karla stunted her growth by smoking cigarettes at such a young age.") Okay pops, funny, funny. We have laughed a million times....Although, now that I think of it you are pretty short yourself. By your logic, you are either keeping something from us, or perhaps we are both genetically shorter than others.

Huh.

Anyway, what I have I done? Well, I have breastfed, I have learned my shapes and colors (without you BABY EINSTEIN), I have urged forward and onward...I am now a mother, a transient being that absorbs emotional, factual, and subconscious influneces. I turn those influneces into adaptable and viable resources for emotional, physical, and spiritual survival. I am becoming myself again and again year after year. And on Feb. 8th I will have renewed myself 24 times.

SO, what is it that I really do to pass time? I spend virtually every waking moment with my little child. WE HAVE to have goals that are timed to survive. So, we laugh, we read, we watch dvd's and public broadcasting television shows, we cuddle, we sleep, we build things out of nothing. We bathe. We sing and snicker. We run in circles...

We change. We move to the beats of our hearts. We plot to take over the world...Or at least create a space to exist peacefully.
We eat good food. We listen to good music. We find comfort in breastfeeding, which we love and love...

Most importantly, we learn from eachother.

I teach her restraint and she teaches me spontaneity...