We just got back from voting.  We waited in line for 45 minutes.  We were reminiscing with neighbours about past elections including the time I strapped both kids to my chest in a double carrier, slung a heart monitor over each shoulder, and walked down to the station to vote, barely able to see over their infant heads.  Or voting at the pool the year our school was being renovated.

Then the twins and I got our electronic card and walked up to the voting booth.  We did what we always do for the votes they feel strongly about: one votes, we erase her vote, the next one votes, and then we erase his vote, and then I vote, finally hitting save.  So we get to say that we all voted for Obama and in favour of marriage equality. (They didn’t have strong feelings about the other 8 questions on the ballot nor other offices so they gave me free range of the screen.)

And now I’m turning over this blog post to them, both because they asked to be hired to do work today and because they had thoughts they wanted to express about the election without needing to set up their own space to say them.

Wolvog: People should vote because it’s fair for the president — so everyone can have a say in the election. Everybody should have to vote because without a president, we couldn’t have a country. Everyone should vote for Question 6 so no matter what gender* you are, you can still marry somebody you love. Please vote (for Barack Obama!).

ChickieNob: People should vote because it gives them a chance to choose the leader of the country. If you don’t vote, then you get what you get and you don’t get upset. You should vote for Question 6 because everybody wants to get married to the person they love. And that could be a boy or a girl. I once went to the White House, and I saw a lot of things that the president borrows while he’s president. And I helped my mum vote. So go out and vote!

* We’ve talked about the difference between gender and sex, but I didn’t feel like correcting him.

This is what changed.

A long time ago, before social media, when people spoke to me, they tailored the conversation to what they sensed was a common ground between us and avoided minefields, and I tailored the conversation to what I sensed was that very same common ground between us and avoided minefields, and that was — for the most part — how I communicated with people.  For instance, if my friend had a Romney lawn sign in front of her house and I had an Obama lawn sign in front of my house, we’d know that we may not be the best people with whom to discuss the election, and if we talked about the candidates at all, it would be in a lighthearted manner or the importance of voting in general.

We both knew that we weren’t going to convince each other of our point-of-view, but we had the potential to do great damage to the relationship by arguing, so we both politely went our way in order to preserve our friendship.  The same is true for many emotionally-charged topics from current events to religion as well as the appropriateness of topics.  I didn’t talk about punk rock with my grandparents, choosing instead to save those conversations for my friends just because I didn’t want to be annoying.  And I didn’t have deep conversations about Judaism with my Christian friends unless it was to answer one of their questions since I didn’t think they’d want to hear (nor understand) my thoughts on kitniyot.

And we all lived in relative peace, save for the occasional asshole.

And then came Facebook and Twitter and suddenly, everyone needed to tell everyone else everything.

During the last election, great-aunts and PTA presidents didn’t have their act together to utilize the sites in all their glory.  But this election?  My G-d, we moved from benign status updates recounting everything a person ate in a day to horrifically offensive name calling in the name of supporting a candidate.

In my Facebook and Twitter feeds, people whom I considered to be my friends — both in the face-to-face sense and in the sure-I’ll-add-you-as-a-friend-on-Facebook sense — inadvertently called me an idiot, a bitch, a whiner, and a steaming pile of crap.

I fully expect people who don’t like me to call me these things.  But when you write something along the lines of “anyone who votes for Obama is a fucking idiot,” what you’ve done is call me a fucking idiot.  And then that same person asked if I wanted to go in on a Groupon together in the next status update.  I really didn’t know what to do because she just called me a fucking idiot but also wanted to know if I wanted to go in on a Groupon.  Normal social behaviour would dictate that I walk away from you if I had a shred of self-esteem.  But we’re also being told not to take social media too seriously, and that it’s ridiculous to unfriend people due to things said on Facebook.  So I’m really between a rock and a hard place.

Because I don’t actually want to be someone’s friend anymore once they’ve inadvertently called me a fucking idiot.

The reality is that if I spoke directly with the people who have written these things, they would tell me that they weren’t talking about me.  Except that if someone makes a statement such as “anyone who votes for Obama is a fucking idiot,” they are talking about me because I am voting for Obama.  I am in that faceless crowd they were denigrating.  We’re actually made up of humans.  And when we’re called fucking idiots, our feelings get hurt.

We’re responsible for what we say, but we’re also responsible for what we type.  We’re even responsible for the things we retweet or like or share.

Before social media, we tailored our conversations to each person rather than trying to interact with everyone all at once.  And if we had to share something en masse, we did so politely and with restraint.  Hurtful words, back then, were spoken and though the memory of them remained, I didn’t have to look at them over and over again every time I opened up a social media platform.  All those times we were called idiots, bitches, whiners, and steaming piles of crap (since all sides engaged in this name calling) are still floating for eternity through the Internet.  And they can be called up again at a moment’s notice.

I wish we’d go back to those days when we’d remember that after the election, we’d all still need to be neighbours, so it would be best if we tried to shape the world through kind actions and kind words, asking people to consider another point-of-view rather than berating them.

Back then, we also realized that there were people who weren’t going to change and we left them to be assholes while holding them at arms length.

I’m not just thinking about who is going to lead the country for the next four years today.  I’m also wondering how to repair relationships after all the vitriol I’ve read from this election.  Not the stating of beliefs because I’m always game to listen to the stating of beliefs that are different from my own.

It’s the name calling that did me in.

We have an idea in Judaism: Kol yisrael arevim zeh la’zeh.  It essentially says that all Jews are responsible (liable) for one another.

כל ישראל ערבין זה לזה

It’s a saying tied to your obligations — that your obligations are your obligations plus every single other Jew in world’s obligations.  So your to-do list is never done.  But most people use the saying in a more community-driven way to mean that it is my responsibility to stand beside every other Jew in the world and help them to fulfill what they need to fulfill.  It’s my responsibility not to turn my head from another person’s need whether that is food or shelter or legal rights.  That if I do that, I am harming myself as well because we are all interconnected.

It’s a driving thought behind the way I vote and why I’ve gotten involved in this election. I apply it to all my fellow Americans: kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh: all Americans are responsible for one another.

כל אמריקני ערבין זה לזה

I personally believe there is a candidate — Barack Obama — who embodies to the best of his ability kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh.  He is standing up for marriage equality and offering the same benefits of marriage to all Americans.  He is ensuring that health care is accessible to all Americans and not just those with certain income levels or those who were born without certain health issues.  He is doing a lot to make sure that it is financially feasible for all Americans to go to college if they wish and to be prepared to apply to college in the first place with equality in education.

And yes, in order to have those things, we will need money to make them happen.  We’ll all need to chip in because kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh — we’re all responsible for each other.  Our interconnectedness means I hurt myself when I hurt you.  That I muzzle myself when I don’t speak up for you.  And that I am setting the tone for my future as well as your future based on what I do today.

*******

Until recently, we were the only people in our town outwardly supporting with a lawn sign Ballot Question 6 for marriage equality.  I’d seen a few against marriage equality, but until Sunday afternoon, no other lawn sign asking people to give other people the rights that they enjoy themselves.  At the same time, I’ve yet to speak to a person who is voting against marriage equality in the election.  I know that not everyone who supports marriage equality will place a sign on their lawn, but it is hard to be one of the only people visually standing in support even though I feel hopeful when people tell me they’re voting for Ballot Question 6.

We were driving on Halloween to a party, passing a patch of common ground in our town, and the Wolvog called out from the backseat, “there’s a Ballot Question 6 sign!”

“For or against?” I asked because I hadn’t seen it.

“For!” he called out, so excited to see someone else standing with our family on this issue.

Josh asked me that night if I saw the Ballot Question 6 sign that day and thinking he had noticed it too as he drove to work, I told him that I hadn’t but the Wolvog had and it made him so happy.  Josh pointed at himself.  “I put the sign there.”  It was kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh to the greatest degree: a dad wanting to send a signal to his child that we’re not the only people on the block who support other people (since kids do need to see the tangible sometimes in order to believe), a sign placed to remind people that the rights they enjoy would like to be enjoyed by others as well, and standing in solidarity with a group who needs our voices.  It’s true; I drive by that sign a few times a day and I always smile when I see it.

On Sunday, we were going out to see Argo and we passed our sign on the common ground.  Someone had taken an against Ballot Question 6 sign and put it in front of our sign to cover it up.  Josh pulled over the car, got out, and moved our sign over a few feet so it was visible once again, standing next to the obnoxiously-placed sign.  And then he sent a note to the town listserv that was much more evenly-tempered than what I would have constructed if he had given me access to the keyboard:

To the anti-marriage equality activist who placed a “Don’t Redefine Marriage” sign directly in-front of my “Vote Yes on 6” sign, blocking the view at the corner of a decently busy intersection in my neighborhood;

I’ve moved my sign over and left your sign where it is because unlike you, I don’t wish to deny people basic rights like free expression and the pursuit of happiness through marriage equality. Have a nice day.

Because the truth of kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh is that we’re not only listening to those who think like us.  We’re also listening and thinking about others who are on the other end of the spectrum.  Though we can’t help them to fulfill any obligation they may personally feel which removes rights from other Americans, I do believe that we all need to engage in polite conversation.  I’m always willing to listen to a reasonably-stated argument.  It’s through conversation rather than obnoxious acts such as childishly placing your sign in front of someone else’s sign that we actually see community in action instead of a bunch of voices screaming louder and louder at each other without ever listening to anything being screamed back.  That’s just noise.

When we went back at night to check on the sign (because yes, I wanted to check on our little sign before bed), the two paper signs were still standing upright, side-by-side.  For and against.  I hope other people in our town see our sign and feel supported by a fellow community member.  Josh certainly received enough emails back from people expressing their thanks for his words on the listserv.

When you go to the polls, all I ask is that you think of whether or not the person you are voting for is best representing your interests or America’s interests.  Think of all the people who don’t have a voice and be obligated to them.  Because if the positions were switched, if you were the person who was denied marriage rights, education opportunities or health care, you’d want someone speaking up for you.

And hopefully they will if we all agree to engage in kol americani arevim zeh la’zeh even when it is not election season.

I am a nervous flyer.  Let’s just get that out there first and foremost.  When I say “nervous flyer,” what I really mean is that I am bat shit insane when it comes to placing myself on an airplane.  I am the person you don’t want to sit next to, the one who will involuntarily grab your shirt sleeve for dear life at the slightest motion of turbulence and is drooling continuously as my head rolls about due to the massive amount of drugs in my system to calm my anxiety.  I am physically tiny, so people think they want to sit next to me when they choose their seat on a Southwest flight, but they shouldn’t.  Choosing the seat next to me simply because it appears as if I won’t invade your space is a bad idea.

My fear of flying runs so deep that I get dizzy watching that commercial for Denzel Washington’s new movie, Flight.

My fear of flying runs counter to my love of traveling, and I remain just a shade on this side of the I’ll-do-it-if-I-have-to line, flying in order to get somewhere cool.  But I must — and this is an important part of the story — MUST must sit on the wing.  I cannot sit in front of the wing (I once rejected a free upgrade to first class because it was in front of the wing) and I CANNOT sit behind the wing.  Believe me, I once tried.  I walked onto the plane and tried to sit down in my seat assignment at the back of the plane, promptly had a panic attack where I felt (and behaved) like a rabid animal, foaming at the mouth and moaning that I had to be removed from the plane.  Please remoooooooooooooooooooove me.

Why is it that they kick people off of flights for silently wearing saggy pants and then won’t kick me off a flight when I am screaming and thrashing and shrieking, “let me off the plane!”

So we’ve set the scene.

Josh purchased four tickets for the Ford family to go to London.  He did this from his office, without me hovering next to him, reminding him like Rasputin about the wing, wing, wing. (I also like to whisper it and knead my hands together like a villainous hypnotist when we make flight arrangements.)  He picked some seats that were close-enough (in his opinion) to the wing and hit buy on these non-refundable tickets.  And then he told me about them.

It took a day or two until we could access the reservation, and when we did, I told him that these seats were not okay.  So he made the first of what would be many calls to try to get us on the wing.

At first we were told that they didn’t release those seats on the wing until 24 hours before the flight, and that made me cry like Dumbo’s mother, one of those head-tilted-back-insane-with-fear cries.  I literally didn’t know how I was going to get through the four weeks until I knew where I was sitting.  Another call or two where Josh told them that I was a “nervous flyer” got us seats right behind the wing.  I wasn’t happy, but I could breathe again.  He asked for a confirmation email to be sent with our seat assignment, but the email never showed.

He called back several times to ask for the email to be sent, each time receiving a promise it would arrive in 24-hours (it didn’t), and on one of those calls, he was cheerfully informed that (1) no seat is guaranteed and we could be bumped from our seat at any point and (2) the only way to guarantee a seat on the wing was to purchase extra leg room seats for an additional $300.  Which is a considerable sum of money.  But Josh decided that we would spend nearly that much in therapy before and after said flight if he didn’t do something about this, so he put his foot down and paid the extra cost and asked — for the love — to have an email confirmation sent to quell my fears.

It didn’t come.

At this point, I decided to call myself because I was literally crawling out of my skin with anxiety.  I called Virgin Atlantic and got Matt.

Matt cheerfully informed me that it was already noted in my file that I was a “nervous flyer” but I still painted a much more accurate description of my neuroses for him until he agreed that nervous really didn’t do justice to my insanity.  For the next 41 minutes, he talked me through my fears, checked my flights and our seats, and then moved heaven and earth for me.

Our extra leg room seats on our outbound flight were indeed on the wing.  They had to be — that is where all extra leg room seats were on that plane’s formation.  All was well in the outbound world, though Matt did warn me that we would likely experience turbulence due to the time of day we were flying.  He rocked for giving me a heads up.  All was NOT well on the inbound flight home.  Very much NOT well.  The extra leg room seats were in the back of the plane, starting many rows behind the wing.  In fact, our old seats, the ones we had before we upgraded were on the wing — you know, that non-refundable upgrade that we were told by another person would guarantee us seats on the wing.  I immediately felt like a rabid animal again now holding that information in hand.

And Matt, sensing that I was ten seconds away from a nervous breakdown, put me on hold to talk to a manager who agreed to refund me on two of the extra leg room seats and move me and the ChickieNob back to our original seats on the wing.  Josh and the Wolvog would remain in the extra leg room seats which gave us a backup plan because on the insanely-bad–luck chance that someone had defecated moments earlier in our assigned seats rendering them unusable for the flight (I believe he used the term “broken” in his example), the farthest back we could be would be the extra leg room seats behind the wing.  He also refunded the non-refundable leg room seats for the two of us since it wasn’t really fair that we had been given wrong information.

I also asked him to note in the file just how insane I am about flying, and please move anyone’s seats but mine so I don’t have a nervous breakdown.  And he promised that I’d get an email confirmation within a few days and if I didn’t, he gave me his full name and extension so I could reach him again.  41 minutes later, after talking me through the best places to sit on a plane and how not to pass along my flying anxiety to the kids, we hung up.

And the email confirmation came.  And our flights there and back were perfectly situated on the wing.  And he saved our trip by removing most of the stress from the travel portion of it.

So this is a love song to Matt at Virgin Atlantic.  I sent a separate, more sane letter to the company thanking you profusely for saving my sanity with this trip.  But I also wanted to address what you did for me publicly.  Because you could have laughed hysterically in my face (and perhaps you did after we got off the phone, and that’s okay.  I would laugh at me too, to be fair), but you didn’t.  You used up a considerable amount of time making sure that all would be okay, and when I hung up the phone, I finally felt a modicum of calm.  I mean, yes, I still had to actually fly, but I would cross that bridge when the time came.  But before that point, I could finally stop crying like Dumbo’s mother.

Thank you, Virgin Atlantic.  You are currently my favourite airline in the world.

And to the rest of you, I have one last post of Alice photos and information I’m putting together.  Stay tuned.

I could talk about Hurricane Sandy and how we spent the two days that we couldn’t leave the house, but I will tell you instead about the dream I had as the storm began overhead on Sunday night because it involves an enormous bear penis.

So.

In my dream, the Hawk of Achill is circling above our town, except it doesn’t look like our town.  It is a lush, green landscape as found in the Maritimes or Ireland, and the town is in a valley, surrounded by verdant hills.  The hawk is enormous.  At one point he lands outside our kitchen window and each flame-coloured feather is the size of a small bush.  I seem to be the only person in town who is concerned that the hawk keeps circling over the school playground, and the explanation everyone has for this behaviour is that there is a bronze mouse statue — about six feet in length — that has been placed on the playground.  The Hawk of Achill thinks this is a real mouse and is therefore circling, but I’m terrified he’s going to carry off one of the kids who is climbing on the statue or playing near it.

As I’m watching the hawk circle, he descends several feet above the school and transforms into an enormous, floating bear.  And this bear whips out his enormous bear penis and urinates on the town.  It is mostly hitting the trees and hills, but all the residents around me agree that the hawk, in the form of a bear with an enormous penis, releases the contents of his bladder on the school playground and our children frequently.

Still, I seem to be the only person who is concerned.

Then the dream switches and I am hanging out with Zora Neal Hurston, and she is teaching me how to make a chocolate pie called Sister’s Pie which her sister taught her how to make.  And… that’s pretty much all I remember.

Freud?

*******

A 2012 Creme de la Creme update: we now have 95 entries on the list.  We’re trucking towards that December 15th hard deadline of being on the list.

For everyone who has already submitted early, thank you.  For everyone who has already blogged about it or tweeted about it or Facebooked about it or Pinterested it or Google+ed it or emailed about it… THANK YOU.

For everyone who hasn’t submitted a post from 2012 yet, what are you waiting for?  Take some time this weekend to skim your archives and then carefully read this post and learn how to get on the list.   I want every single person in the community on it.

*******

Eleven years ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer.  Her daughter had two guinea pigs, and the smell of the rodents made her sick after chemotherapy, so I offered to take them and I made them my classroom pet.  I taught middle school English, so classroom pets didn’t really fit into any lesson plans, but the kids loved them.  I had all of my desks in a circle, and we would close the door and allow the guinea pigs to run free.  They mostly sat in the center of the room, turning around to look at all the students.  And sometimes they’d walk up to a kid’s desk and the kid would hold the guinea pig in his or her lap for a bit during class.  These guinea pigs shat EVERYWHERE and the carpet in my classroom needed to be replaced by the end of the year.

I haven’t spoken to my friend in about four years.  I learned through a mutual friend that she died last week from the cancer that she started treatment for eleven years ago.  I wanted to tell a story about her, but it came out as a story about her guinea pigs instead.

Let me start over.

On the day that I learned that we were down to a few dollars in our savings account and I needed to find some job that could be done from home a few hours a week, I bumped into my friend in the dentist’s office.  Without even knowing how desperate I was for a job, she offered to hire me to do some work for her right there in the dentist’s waiting room.  I worked for her for about two years until I was fairly steady in my freelance writing work.  She literally took me from the first day when I realized we were in need until a little after the day we were standing on our own financially.  Because that’s the sort of person she was.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “An Accidental Gift” (By the Brooke)
• “To Mom or Not To Mom” (The Infertility Voice)
• “To Mom or Not To Mom” (Silent Sorority)
• “Proper to Grow Wise in” (Mrs. Spit)
• “50% of X Ends in Y” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “Defcon 5 or Just a Little Off the Edges Please” (Expecting to be Expecting)
• “Get Your Bologna Out of My Vag” (Stupid Stork)
• “Recapping the #ALIMomSalon This Week” (The Infertility Voice)
• “Infertility and Extremes” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “The Business of Being in the Business” (Single Infertile Female)
• “Your Child Only Has 3 Months to Live” (Rasta Less Traveled)
• “What Would Cthulhu Do?” (Nuts in May)
• “Characters in Our Own Stories” (The Smartness)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever has a sweet post about saving her son’s voice mails when she misses his phone call at work and playing them.  I was drawn into the post due to our shared feelings on e-reading, but it was the ending of the post that made me smile.

Serenity Now has a beautiful post about life after her D&E.  It’s about trying to find peace with the question of pursuing more treatments with the embryos she has on ice.  She writes, “And, if I’m being truthful, I am tired. Tired of putting my life on pause, wondering if we should plan for that trip next spring because maybe I’ll be pregnant and won’t be able to travel then. Tired of interrupting my running training programs because I need to slow my running down or stop running altogether, because my clinic tells me to “take it easy” during the 2ww. Tired of not being able to set long term running/career/life goals, because things might change if we end up pregnant and with a baby.”  It’s about not losing sight of the things she wants to do in addition to adding to her family.  To not placing one goal in front of all others.  Please go read the whole thing.

Lastly, Magpie Musing has a post about the far-reaching effects of endometriosis and Hilary Mantel’s decision to live child-free after infertility.  She quotes an article about Mantel pointing out that the decision doesn’t affect a single moment in time: “Of course, it follows that if you’re not a mother you’re not going to be a grandmother, but that’s not something you think of in your thirties. So the loss keeps changing its shape.”  I was so drawn to that turn of phrase: the loss keeps changing its shape.  Magpie brings together the article with an additional post and muses on the possible futures she hadn’t considered.

The roundup to the Roundup: The Hawk of Achill is urinating on my town with a giant bear penis.  Update on the 2012 Creme de la Creme.  Goodbye to my friend.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 26th and November 2nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.