Malihini, n. visitor, newcomer, guest, transplant
This was once a nice little blog about Hawaii, but since my husband's suicide it's devolved into a place where I mutter against the wall about grief, fandom, religion, queerness, and nonsense. As one does!
"Wow," said Auntie Val Hanohano, looking around as the Hula performance ended and all the parents and friends got up to push their way out of the theater, "the natives are getting restless! Ha ha ha!"
Sunday, September 8, 2013 I first heard of Claudia Brown when I was about 8 weeks pregnant and nauseated by the smell of oxygen. I had already had one extremely disappointing visit with an Ob-Gyn out in Waimea (grimy carpets, dead-eyed nurses, and a dismissive and distractingly attractive male gynecologist). I was taking my toddler for a walk along our little gravel road to see the horses (don’t breathe: horse-sweat, hay, grass, animal hair, poop) and feed them papayas (don’t breathe: too pungent, too fleshy, with an overripe kerosene off-gas). We ran into our neighbor and her leaping and spinning three year old, who was tanned to mahogany and naked except for a tutu. The little girl pointed at her mom’s watermelon-sized belly. “HIS NAME IS POPCORN!” We chatted about birth and doctors and midwives, I told her how much I had loved the midwife-run birth center on the Big Island and how unimpressive my visit to the Ob-Gyn had been. She said, “Oh, you’ll love Claudia,” and dash...
I have to say, I was shocked to discover that Mormon widows go through a slutty stage. I mean the church-every-Sunday, garment wearing, sealed in the temple types. The things they get up to, honestly I was clutching my pearls! (And my opera glasses!!) They engage in heavy petting after playing pickleball, they hike the Y and make out in their Suburbans with divorcees they met on LDS Singles dot whatever. They enjoy necking with elder singles they find on facebook recently bereaved widows groups. Those widowers, they’re a hot commodity. They have no shortage of action. I was in Utah right after Matt died, and all of my widow friends were nice Mormon ladies in grief. And, not gonna lie, in heat. And I love that for them! Even though I thought it was kind of funny to hear about their moms-gone-wild-exploits, it made perfect sense to me. They've been married -- they've been sexual grownups for years or decades. And they are not messing around for the sake of it-- they are takin...
Do you know that there is a whole rich ecosphere of Mormon feminism? And it's been fermenting and mossing and mulching and growing and sprouting and reseeding along for 50 years? My mom, way back in the late 70s, was the kind of feminist it was possible for a 20 year old Mormon from Provo to be. She saw the face of God and called her Mom. These ladies were her pals. The Exponent II Magazine was founded in 1974 as a-- what is the appropriate gathering place for Mormon feminists? A Foyer? A Forest? A Grove? And these amazing women have been holding conversations and each other for decades. When the Mormon church opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, and fired BYU professors who talked about Heavenly Mother, and disfellowshipped ladies who wanted to come to church in slacks, and fought same sex marriage, the Mormon feminist forest floor was the soft mulchy place where people came to fall apart and be nourished and regrow. And I just had a piece published there! It is in the volume on th...
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